PFM-100 Hydrazine Torch Flamethrower

The PFM-100 Hydrazine Torch Flamethrower, known simply as the Flamethrower, was an industrial mining tool used in the extraction of ores and minerals, of the same repurposed family as the Plasma Cutter and the other cutting equipment carried by survivors of the Necromorph outbreaks. Built as an oversized blowtorch for freeing ore from ice, it was commonly turned into a weapon when the outbreaks left survivors reaching for whatever tools were at hand.

Design and intended use#

The PFM-100 Hydrazine Torch Flamethrower was built to project a liquid hydrazine flame, reaching from several hundred to several thousand degrees Celsius, onto the layers of ice that trapped valuable ore within comets. Turned against a frozen meteor, the flame melted the solidified water held in the rock's cracks, splitting it into pieces with little trouble so that the ore inside could be recovered. It was, in effect, an oversized blowtorch, and despite its later reputation it had never been intended for combat.

The tool ran on hydrazine, a hypergolic fuel, carried in a canister clipped to the underside of the torch by a series of metal braces. When needed, that canister could be forcefully ejected from the tool and thrown as a makeshift fire grenade, a use the equipment lent itself to readily when survivors had to improvise.

Use against the Necromorphs#

Repurposed as a weapon during the outbreaks, the Flamethrower put its long cone of flame to grim use. The fire could ignite several creatures at once and could be played across individual limbs, and the flames clung to the dead for a short time and forced them back. This made the torch best suited to immolating swarms of smaller Necromorphs in close quarters, where its broad, lingering flame could overwhelm a crowd. At any distance it suffered, as the cone of fire reached only so far, and a survivor had to take care not to step into his own flames.

The torch had a clear weakness. Because the flame needed oxygen to burn, it would not function in the vacuum of space, nor in air fouled by the gas of a Wheezer, which left it useless in some of the very places a survivor most needed a weapon. Even so, against close packed creatures it remained one of the more effective tools a survivor could turn on the Necromorphs, and it carried a secondary use as well, ejecting its fuel canister or laying down a wall of flame to weaken creatures pressing in. By the time of the outbreaks on Tau Volantis, the Flamethrower was assembled from a blueprint alongside the other improvised arms that survivors built from salvaged mining and engineering gear.