Suppressing every small fire is the surest way to get an enormous one. The forest-fire model runs on three minimal rules: an empty cell grows a tree with probability p, a tree ignites if a neighbour is burning, and now and then lightning strikes a tree with a very small probability f. Because regrowth is far slower than the spread of flame, the forest density climbs by itself and then hovers around the percolation threshold, so fire sizes spread out along a power law: countless blazes of a few trees, and rare ones that swallow nearly the whole forest.
Suppressing every small fire is the surest way to get an enormous one. The forest-fire model runs on three minimal rules: an empty cell grows a tree with probability p, a tree ignites if a neighbour is burning, and now and then lightning strikes a tree with a very small probability f. Because regrowth is far slower than the spread of flame, the forest density climbs by itself and then hovers around the percolation threshold, so fire sizes spread out along a power law: countless blazes of a few trees, and rare ones that swallow nearly the whole forest.
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