Elon Musk has cleared up a pretty odd rumour about the flamethrowers his company is selling
The entrepreneur has just opened pre-orders on his company’s $500 flamethrowers.
Elon Musk has dispelled a bizarre rumour about the flamethrowers his company has just put up for sale.
“The rumour that I’m secretly creating a zombie apocalypse to generate demand for flamethrowers is completely false,” the Tesla CEO tweeted on Sunday.
“You’d need millions of zombies for a so-called ‘apocalypse’ anyway,” he added, “Where would I even get a factory big enough to make so many!?”
Another one of the SpaceX founder’s projects, The Boring Company, has just started advertising flamethrowers on its website, after Musk promised last December that would be the firm’s next product.
The $500 (£350) flamethrower is available for pre-order, and should start shipping in spring.
The Boring Company website claims the flamethrower is the “world’s safest” and is “guaranteed to liven up any party!”
“You can definitely buy one for less elsewhere, but this one comes with a cool sticker and the button is conveniently riiight above,” the website reads.
Musk posted a video to his 4.8 million Instagram followers showing him running at the camera using the flamethrower, captioned: “Don’t do this. Also, I want to be clear that a flamethrower is a super terrible idea. Definitely don’t buy one. Unless you like fun.”
Just a couple of hours after posting a link to purchase one, Musk tweeted that 1,000 of the 20,000 available had already been pre-ordered.
When one follower said the product “felt illegal”, Musk responded that the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives deemed that “any flamethrower with a flame shorter than 10 ft is A-ok”.
Musk founded The Boring Company in 2016, with the aim of building tunnels for cars to alleviate traffic issues.
At the end of 2017, the company sold 50,000 black baseball caps bearing the company’s logo for $20 (£14) each.
