2007-06-06

Fire on an island

Test your survival instincts:

You're on an island that is completely covered with dry grass. A fire starts at one end and the wind is blowing it towards you, fast! The fire is too wide for you to go around it, and the coastline of the island is jagged cliffs—no sandy refuge for you, I'm afraid. What is a good strategy for you to avoid being burnt?

4 comments:

Mr. Kite said...

Can I assume that I have mtches and can create my own fire break? That is, move towards the fire and start a new fire behind me. The winds should blow the new fire away from me, burning up the dry grass as it goes. Then when the older fire gets close, I can move backwards to the area that was previously burned. The old fire will stop advancing as soon as it hits the spot where the new fire was started becasue there will be no more dry grass to burn.

fiona-h said...

yep! smartie...

Anonymous said...

Alternatively, if you have no matches or sticks/rocks with which to spark a flame, grass fires sometimes don't burn that hot. You could just get up a tremendous head of speed and sprint through the flames into the burned area. You should make it...

Mr. Kite said...

Maybe I should stop answering your puzzles so quickly and give other people a chance to play. :-)