The Thing- Have We Gone to War with the Penguins?

I just finished watching The Thing and I'm having a hard time accepting one of the premises of the movie. No, not that a 100,000 year old alien has awoken in the Antarctic and is copying and eating the members of a scientific expedition. That makes perfect sense to me. What I don't understand is why an Antarctic scientific expedition is so well armed.

In the opening scene, we see that the Norwegians are armed with a box full of grenades and an automatic rifle. As soon as the begin firing towards the American camp, they all seem to produce rifles of there own. One of the characters jokes about being at war with the Norwegians, but there doesn't seen to be any other explanation as to why they were so quick to arms. And what possible use could they have for grenades or military style rifles?

I understand why they might have a rifle or two. After all, they might get isolated for a long time and might have to hunt penguins and seals for food. But, I saw no less than five rifles and I can't see why they would need so many. If it was an Arctic base, that many rifles could be justified. Polar bears are big, ornery and hungry. No one goes out in polar bear country without a big gun. But, wildlife in Antarctica consists of penguins, penguins, and other kinds of penguins. Seals can be kind of dangerous, but they are easy to get away from and they don't seem to be on the coast anyway. That means they transported in about 50 pounds of unnecessary equipment.

I don't have a problem with the commander and one of the doctors having pistols. Someone might go a little crazy down there. And this seems like a reasonable precaution. But...

Dynamite! They've got enough dynamite to blow away a West Virgina mountain. Again, TNT has many potential uses. It's the volume that doesn't make sense. Are they are mining ice?

But more than anything else I want to know, why do they have flamethrowers? I cannot think of any possible justification for having flamethrowers. I saw two of them being destroyed and later on three characters were wearing them at the same time meaning there could be no less than five of them.

At this point, I want to know who is approving the budgets at the National Science Foundation. "You need ten million dollars for a tank and thirty million for a jet? Ok, will you be needing any land mines or machine guns?"