Remember kids, Molotov cocktails depicted in movies are designed to injure the thrower.
If the depiction is that the rag is inserted into the bottle, as opposed to wrapped around/attached to a sealed bottle, then yes, that's a bad idea, but I've seen it depicted 'correctly' in some movies.
'Proper' molotovs are sort of like very small, very shitty fuel air bombs: you spread a bunch of flammable material around, and then an ignition source lights the spread around fuel.
You do not want the flame to come into contact with the 'payload' before the bottle breaks.
Sticking the rag into the bottle and liquid is basically a bomb with a very unreliable fuse timer, could easily blow up in your hands, or leak flaming liquid on you when you angle the thing to throw it.
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Also, cooking oil is a terrible choice for a molotov, the ignition point temperature is significantly higher than gasoline/petrol, you probably couldn't even get a lit piece of cloth to ignite contents of the bottle after it breaks... maybe a magnesium, survival style match would work?
What you want is gasoline/petrol, stirred together with a bit of styrofoam to create a poor man's napalm. Or the highest proof spirits you can find, gotta be higher than 100 proof or 50% alchohol for any realistic chance it'll work, or lighter fluid or isopropyl alchohol or something.
All of this general information (other than cooking oil ignition temps) can be fairly easily discerned from the wiki page on molotovs.
Isopropyl and gas are the easiest to obtain, gas is probably less likely to get flagged in "bulk". Styrofoam pellets and a funnel as well.
Oh. To discourage real life recreations of them?
How so? Isn't it just a rag stuffed into a bottle with gelled gasoline?
“I'm telling you, Molotov cocktails work. Any time I had a problem, and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem” -
Jason Mendoza
