All Quiet on the Western Front , Erich Maria Remarque . It ' s fiction , but the author served in WW 1 . Much of the book is based on his own experiences and those of other soldiers who were wounded on the front , which he documented while recovering in an infirmary . The reason I recommend it is because , while being fiction , it is still pretty harrowing . <| sep |> i looked back in the demo w net graph and i think it was him <| sep |> This was the post . This happened to me a little while back . Where I live , we have a little brook not sure what americans would call it , stream maybe at the end of the garden crossing across the full length . Whilst doing some gardening with my dad , we found a wasp nest built into the bottom of a tree trunk which is on the banking of this brook . At the time , we had been experiencing big wasp trouble in the house with them getting in and freaking out my mum and sister so as you can imagine , we were quite glad to have found the source . Now when it came to dealing with the nest , we decided it would be best to incinerate it and the wasps inside to avoid any angry ones escaping . So , finding some liquid that said flammable in the garage , we thought it would be hilariously cool to chuck this all over the nest and then make a little trail of it that would set it off . Both my dad and I are slight pyromaniacsWe now know that that flammable liquid was in fact petrol , a very volatile fuel that ' s fumes ignite and diffuse ridiculously well . So after making a nice line of fuel and dumping the rest on the nest , we lit it . Of course , being petrol , the fusetrail burnt much faster than we expected . Whoosh . Next thing we know the whole banking of this brook is alight , flames pouring out of the banking all over the place and lasting for a good minute and then the wasp nest explodes . Turns out the banking was riddled with rat holes and the petrol fumes had gone through a hole underneath the wasp nest tree . These rat holes then acted like bunsen burners , turning the whole thing into an early bonfire night for my dad and I . TLDR petrol fumes rat holes pyromaniac ' s dream