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Fire is useful. It generates heat to warm your house or cook your food, or to lights the fuses of your bombs. It's also handy if you can start a fire underwater and take it to the surface, so you can light someone's ship on fire (don't worry, we covered it in pitch, earlier). So how can mermaids generate fire?

Note these are pre-industrial mermaids. They do have basic electrical sciences via their breeds of electric eels, and advanced gas understanding. They can make pressure vessels out of copper alloys.

Fuel:

Part of the question is what fuel you can use. The mermaids do have gas tanks. So could it be O2 and hydrogen? Or Methane, or acetylene? The latter one turns into a toxin when mixed with water, so may not be ideal for mermaids.

Ignition:

After you have the fuel, how do you make it burn and keep it burning? Most of their technology is at the level of the 17th century or less. Could their electric science be advanced enough to create some kind of battery to create a spark?

Utility:

Depending on what is chosen for the other two... what will this fire be safe and practical to use for? Could it be used for lighting in the midnight zone? Would it be safe to use for cooking or will it blow you up?

ArchduchessFerdinand
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  • One question per post, please. – L.Dutch Feb 20 '24 at 10:55
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    I'll write an answer later today when my shift ends, but my answer on mermaid architecture may provide a seed on how to go about this. – Mermaker Feb 20 '24 at 11:20
  • @L.Dutch Hi, Dutch! To clarify, it is one question. I am asking for details to be elaborated in the answer, but they seem reasonable? If you make fire, you will have to use some fuel, and some method of ignition. I could separate it into three related questions, if you really think that's necessary, of, "if mermaids created fire underwater, what fuel would they use," and etc. Is that necessary? – ArchduchessFerdinand Feb 20 '24 at 11:53
  • I'm curious how do mermaids discover fire? A culture don't spontaneously make fire so maybe this detail will help us get familiar with your mermaids and result in high quality answers. Maybe. – user6760 Feb 20 '24 at 12:20
  • @Mermaker Looking forward to it! That was a good post, upvoted it. Will note my mermaids have islands, but not all do. Some are adapted to live mostly in the twilight and/or midnight zones. I have ideas for why I think this would be. Would be fun to discuss that or other facets in a chatroom, if people are interested. Would love to discuss mermaid cities with you, and how they use currents for power, sanitation, and oxygen. – ArchduchessFerdinand Feb 20 '24 at 12:21
  • @user6760 Hey User. I think humans discovered it a lot earlier. They interacted with humans, learned a lot of things like how to smelt copper and forge weapons. And some things they advanced beyond humans in. Fire is something they do on islands, but I would like an underwater method of fire, for all kinds of interesting possibilities. – ArchduchessFerdinand Feb 20 '24 at 12:23
  • Might be worth finding out what appears on the floor of the ocean every time a whale dies, (follow some of the links in the post too) figuring out some of the question for yourself - editing this one for focus, and posting additional queries in their own threads as necessary. – Escaped dental patient. Feb 20 '24 at 13:37
  • @ArchduchessFerdinand We've had this question asked many times and in many ways. I'm happy to retract my close vote (which, thanks to the gold badge, is a hammer) if you can look at those questions and explain why yours is materially different. – JBH Feb 20 '24 at 15:07

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