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| Drawing of a Ping Kuang Bu Zhan Sui Di Gun, from 'Wu Bei Zhi (《武備志》)'. |
Ping Kuang Bu Zhan Sui Di Gun (平曠步戰隨地滾, can be roughly translated as 'Anywhere roller for foot combat in wide plains') was a strange contraption designed to break enemy camps and disrupt enemy formations. It was essentially a tree log full of poisoned blades, hooks and nails, equipped with sixty linked black powder rocket propellers that pushed the weapon forward and doubled as short range flamethrowers. The tree trunk was also hollowed out and filled with explosives and blinding dust, so that it would explode into a shower of flaming wood splinters, smoke and blinding dust after a predetermined time.
For such a strange weapon, the idea of using explosive rolling log as weapon was apparently not unique to the Chinese, as evidenced with this similar German design, pictured below:
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| A German flaming/explosive tree trunk. Image taken from 'Ms. Codex 109', also known as 'Feuer Buech'. |
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