Elon Musk’s flamethrower is a real thing you can buy

As regular readers will know, we call this section of the Stuff website “Hot Stuff”. It may, therefore, surprise you to learn that we don’t feature a huge amount of flamethrowers. Until now. You’d think that laying the smackdown on petrol vehicles and carefully plotting the colonisation of Mars would be enough for Elon Musk to be getting on with, but the billionaire entrepreneur has taken a brief time-out to confirm that The Boring Company – one of a number of companies founded by Musk – is now taking pre-orders for its first flamethrower. Why is this happening? Because it sold out of hats, obviously. Is it remotely legal? Because of the relatively short flame length, quite possibly – in the US at least. Anyone with safety concerns can add on the “overpriced Boring Company fire extinguisher” for $30, bringing the total cost to $530 (around £377). And as Musk rightly points out, that could turn out to be a wise investment when the zombies arrive.