Water extinguishes fire, as every elementary school student knows. However, there is a specific reason why this doesn’t work in Battlefield 6.
In Battlefield 6, you fight not only with tanks, helicopters, and an arsenal of firearms, but also with grenades of all colors and shapes. One of these is the incendiary grenade, which can really set your butt on fire.
If you fall victim to such an explosive device and try to extinguish your burning clothes with pool water, you will not succeed. Did the developers overlook an important detail? Actually, no.
“Worst realism I’ve ever seen”
On Reddit, one player is quite upset about this and titles his post “The worst realism I’ve ever seen in a game. Unplayable.” [Editor’s note: This could also be irony].
In the player’s video, you can see how he is set on fire by a fire grenade and then dives into a pool. However, this does little to extinguish the flames, which continue to burn merrily until they eventually go out on their own.
Right away, the top comment sheds light on the matter: ”That’s thermite/white phosphorus. Water can’t extinguish this stuff. Lol“ and also other users dismiss this situation as ”actually quite realistic,” because not every type of fire can be extinguished with water.
And they are absolutely right.
The incendiary grenades in Battlefield 6 are not simple Molotov cocktails in grenade form, but explosive devices that burn at extremely high temperatures due to a violent chemical reaction. To achieve this, they are filled with thermite, white phosphorus, and concentrated fuel.
We put on our lab coats
So that we can all learn something, we read up on the subject: Thermite basically consists of two fine metal powders.
When ignited, one metal oxidizes the other, releasing enormous heat.
The white phosphorus, on the other hand, reacts with oxygen and burns until it disappears, producing not only flames but also white smoke. The thickened fuel is there to “bind” the fire so that enemies can be burned away in a targeted manner.
Overall, these chemical reactions are significantly hotter than water can ever be—it simply evaporates before it can cool anything. In reality, water can actually make the fire even more dangerous because it breaks down into water and oxygen at high temperatures. Since hydrogen itself is also flammable, it further heats up the flames.
Something similar happens with cooking oil and grease fires. Under no circumstances should you extinguish these with water, as the water sinks below the grease, heats up extremely quickly, and catapults the burning oil upwards. Instead, quickly cover the fire with a pot lid so that it can no longer access oxygen. So much for our survival tip for today.
However, we don’t know whether Dice really wanted to be as realistic as possible with the fire grenades or simply forgot the most obvious way to fight fires. In any case, some users on Reddit doubt that the developers thought that far ahead and simply got lucky here.
