Military Glow Sticks

I don't believe there is any name for them other than "glow sticks."

The color is provided by a flourescent dye, so there is a variety of colors available, not one "standard" color.

Check out the wikipedia articles on "caving" and "glow stick" for more info. Both look pretty high quality.

tailstrike said:

First of all i would like to know if there is a proper name for these??...And secondly is there a particular colour that you would use say if you are exploring caves or tunnels??

Cheers

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Originally, they were Cyalume Light Sticks. Once they broke out into the general market, "light stick" became pretty generic. In military references & novels, I've often seen the term "chemical lights", sometimes shortened to "chemlights".

Green seems to be the most ubiquitous color. Red would likely be easier on the night vision, but I'm not sure how it would stack up in terms of usable light vs. other colors. I've seen references to specialized ones that gave off infared light as well, viewable only through NVGs. Might be a useful backup to IR goggles in case the integral lamp was damaged.

I believe they're known as "snap lights"
Because, y'know, you snap them to light them.

You've totally got me distracted with the mention of glow sticks and the military. If the military throws glow stick parties I'm totally going into the wrong career choice.

We always called them "Chem Lights." We used them primarily for marking areas at night that were dangerous like concertina wire (we had someone fall into the wire once). If I recall correctly, I think they had some kind of hole on the end so they could be tied up. They break with a loud snap and instantly start glowing as you shake them up. There's liquid inside that moves around when you shake it. They're very bright when they are first broken. Over time, they gradually fade out. In the morning, we would always find them littered all over the ground.

Green was the only color I recall ever seeing.

I remember on one field exercise, we used red and green glowsticks/chemlights to identify the right and left boundaries of a road (hah. . . more like goat trail) through some arroyos at Ft. Irwin, CA.

But, mostly, we had green ones.

White-Tean said:

You've totally got me distracted with the mention of glow sticks and the military. If the military throws glow stick parties I'm totally going into the wrong career choice.

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I, too, am surprised that the military is so into raves...

Linda Adams said:

We used them primarily for marking areas at night that were dangerous ... green was the only color I recall ever seeing.

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So you mark a dangerous area with GREEN lights !?

I guess everyone on site would know what it means, but it must backfire occassionally on outsiders !

Mac

Cyalume Sticks. We used different colours to designate certain positions in the field. For example, marking out ambush sites you would use one colour for the boundaries and another for your lay-up point, and another for the RV points etc.

JJ

Mac H. said:

So you mark a dangerous area with GREEN lights !?

I guess everyone on site would know what it means, but it must backfire occassionally on outsiders !

Mac

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Mac,

In the military, you want outsiders to walk into the dangerous areas.

Makes it easier to shoot them. *grin*

Usually outsider means "enemy".

Mac H. said:

So you mark a dangerous area with GREEN lights !?

I guess everyone on site would know what it means, but it must backfire occassionally on outsiders !

Mac

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We did not use them during Desert Storm. Only during the training exercises out in the field, where it didn't matter if someone saw the light. They were used to mark concertina wire and tent lines mainly, so that soldiers wouldn't trip over or run into them at night. Illuminated the area around them pretty well.

Color coding also doesn't always work that well. I have a relative who is color blind. A red one marking something dangerous wouldn't have meant anything to him because he can't see red like everyone else.

tailstrike said:

Do they actually have infared ones?

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http://glowproducts.com/glowsticks/infraredglowsticks/

tailstrike said:

Do they actually have infared ones?

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They are available but most of my experience with IR markers were with IT strobes or slime lights.

tailstrike said:

Is there anything like chemlights that still serve the same purpose??

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If you mean marking and illuminating terrain, there are flares.

For exploring a cave, there are flashlights (with chem sticks as a backup), and helmet lights (like miners wear). Or a torch, if you want to look like Indiana Jones.

As for color, there's a blue one that seems to be a little brighter than the other colors available (yellow, red, green, and orange), but I don't know if it actually puts out more light or if that's just an optical illusion.

tailstrike said:

First of all i would like to know if there is a proper name for these??...And secondly is there a particular colour that you would use say if you are exploring caves or tunnels??

Cheers

Click to expand...

As has already been mentioned, "chemlights" or "glowsticks" are the two most common names. There are other colors than the common green/yellow....but it's a case by case basis.

For tunnel crawls that I've been on, I rarely used them. If I can see the light, so can the enemy. If I pick up the stick and toss it forward each time I come to it, the bad guy can see me and pop me. No...if we did it with anything it was either NVG or infra-red sticks or nothing at all and let your eyes adjust....but those were not easy for us to get. Better to crawl in the dark and wait for the insurgent mercenaries to reveal themselves and then pop then show yourself with a light. Though, "well-diving" was a different thing. That was when the insurgent would take a vertical well and dig horizontal shafts along it's side as lay up points or cache sites and then you'd either drop a chem or dang a chem/flare on a twine downwards.