Fire is so familiar; it is both friend and foe, slave and master. Fire is a natural force, yet it was used by humanity’s ancestors many hundreds of thousands of years ago. Later, humans developed the ability to artificially generate fire. The control and use of fire has been a major factor in the development of the human race. The control of fire for warmth allowed humans to migrate into cold climates and build diverse and successful civilizations. Fire for cooling greatly increased the number of foods and improved their taste, ease of digestion, nutrition, sanitation, and preservation. Fire has long been used to drive game out of hiding during hunting and to scare away predatory animals during the night. Fire aided agriculture by clearing the land of brush and creating fertilizer with its ashy residue. With the help of fire, humans have been able to expand farmland and pasture against both climatic and vegetational gradients.
The possibilities of fire have stimulated creative thinking, which in turn has spurred human development. One invention has followed another. The use of fire to harden materials led to pottery, cookware, weapons, and more. The ability of produce ever-higher temperatures led to the smelting and use of metals. The use of fire provided the benefits of sterilization, which advanced public health. Fire controlled inside machinery supplies the energy that underlies our civilization. The heat from the burning of oil, coal, and natural gas is converted into the electrical and mechanical energy that powers our industries, the lighting and heating of our homes, and our ability to travel quickly to any point in the world. As a rough estimate of the benefits of fire, through it, each American today has available for her or his personal use the energy equivalent of owning 100 slaves in the past.
The destructive use of fire shifted from trying to control wild animals to trying to dominate other humans. Fire passed from the individual torch to a method of destroying whole cities. For example, troy was so obliterated by fire that its very site remained unknown to the world for nearly 3,000 years.
Another destructive use of fire has been to deny enemies their prize. For example, on 12 September 1812, Napoleon and the French army reached the hills outside of Moscow and looked down on its green, blue, and gold domes. Upon entering the great city, the French found it to be largely deserted with fires burning throughout. For six days, the fires raged until 90 percent of the city was incinerated. The Russians chose to destroy their own heritage rather than let it aid their French conquerors. Denied the support of a conquered populaces, Napoleon began his disastrous retreat from Russia during winter’s harsh conditions. Napoleon won the military battles but lost the war.
New destructive uses of fire were conceived with time and technological innovation. In the twentieth century,” fire” was packaged into bombs that could be dropped from airplanes. During World War II, entire cities were ignited as thousands of tons of bombs created massive firestorms, killing tens of thousands of people in such cities as Hamburg and Dresden.
Fire has always been an important part of the natural world. For example, about 1,800 thunderstorms are in action around the Earth each hour, and their lightning bolts start many fires. Humans have brought fire from the natural world into the cultural world, expanding its role. We control fire for our benefit, but we pay the price when this control is lost. In the United States today, the abundant strikes of lightning start less than 15 percent of all fires. Humans are the main source of fire ignition in the United States, as well as throughout the world.
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