Elon Musk begins selling flamethrowers online – but there’s a catch.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, is ordinarily grabbing headlines with his dire prophecies of the fate of humanity which he claims will be destroyed by artificial intelligence or climate change – whichever comes first. His catastrophic claims have led to him being given a reputation for being rather grim and humorless and therefore it was surprising when he launched a bizarre marketing gimmick with more than a touch of wit.

Back in December, Musk announced that if his company – The Boring Company – succeeded in selling 50,000 of their branded hats then he would put his company’s flamethrowers on the open market. “I know it’s a little off-brand, ” Musk wrote on Twitter, “but kids love it.”

In the space of only two weeks, all of the hats had been sold and Musk proved that he was a man of his word by putting his flamethrowers up for sale, for the fairly reasonable price of only $600.

However, there is apparently a vetting process to make sure that not just anyone can get their hands on one of The Boring Company’s flamethrowers. As The Verge has reported, some of those people keen to get their hands on one of the flamethrowers found that if they wanted to get their hands on the weapon then they had to type the URL boring company. com/flamethrower into the internet. This address then redirected them to a page with a password box and no clues as to what the password might be.

One Reddit user figured out the password, which was ‘flame’ at the time but which has since been changed. Entering the correct password took them to a page where they were given the option to pre-order the flamethrower. It is alleged that the listing said that the image featured was a prototype and that the real deal would be much better. The flamethrowers are scheduled to begin shipping to their purchasers in April.

According to The Boring Company, the flamethrowers are totally operational meaning that they are formidable weapons. Let’s hope that the vetting process is rigorous enough to ensure that they do not fall into the wrong hands.

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