This page covers the 2012 DayZ Mod for Arma 2. For information from DayZ (2018), see Road Flare.
Road flares are a very bright source of light found in all areas in Chernarus. A road flare will be extremely bright, and very risky to use, as zombies from far away will see it, and players can see flares from kilometers away. It is recommended to use Chemlights for positioning at night, as they will attract far fewer zombies and players.
Flares come in packs of ten. Like chemlights, they can be picked up and carried around after being thrown to provide a mobile source of light, though this is ill-advised as both players and Zombies can see flares from long distances.
Flares can be used as a weapon-of sorts - flares are extremely bright, and will destroy a player's natural night vision if they look at flares, even indirectly. Flares can also be used to blind players using Night Vision. They can also be thrown near a player to draw zombies to their location, even during the day, and thus distract, injure and possibly kill them.
Because they can be seen from very long distances, flares can be useful for signalling other players.