Cunk on Fire

What if Philomena Cunk did a special about fire?

Fire.

[Montage of fiery scenes: a forest fire, the Sun, a building on fire, a barbecue. Our host, Philomena Cunk, talks as the images flash by.]

It can really burn the shit out of things.

[Cut to Cunk, strolling by the edge of a prim English wood.]

In this episode of Cunk on Earth, we take a closer look at the fiery phenomenon of …[awkward pause]

Fire.

[Cunk walks on, past the camera.]

Philomena Cunk, host of Cunk on Earth (Source: netflix.com, image by Jonathan Browning]

PC: Back in the olden days, before there was life on earth or Netflix or anything, there was all volcanoes and lava and magma and stuff.

[Stock video of erupting volcanoes, suggesting conditions on Hadean earth.]

PC: It was really cool, but because no kids or old ladies were stuck in a burnin’ house, it didn’t make the papers or anything. But that all changed when plants evolved.

[Cut to Cunk bending down and stroking the petal of a flower.]

[Cut to interior of a stereotypical modern academic office. Paleobotanist Professor Darla Smugdene holds forth.]

DS: We have paleological evidence of fire from almost the moment that plants first appeared on land. Over 400 million years ago.

PC: So like, at the time of mummies and Pharoahs and stuff?

DS: No, that was around 4,000 years ago. We’re talking 400 thousand, thousand years -

PC: You said 400 million.

DS: Well yes, one thousand thousand is a million.

[Cunk nods seriously.]

DS: Literally at the dawn of terrestrial vegetation.

PC: That must have been really annoying for those first plants. Imagine finally getting up on land and then all of a sudden someone sets you on fire. I bet some of them said ‘Bugger that, let’s hop back in the ocean. Not too many fires there’. [Pauses, thinking.] I s’pose with oil spills and that, now you can actually get a fire in the ocean. But how could the plants have known about that?

[DS looks unimpressed. Cut to Cunk standing outside a cave.]

PC: Early humans lived in caves, watchin’ the shadows of stuff that walked by flickerin’ on the walls, too scared to go outside. But them shadows came from a fire, which the cavemen made so they wouldn’t be scared any more. So they went outside and started settin’ animals on fire and stuff. [Pause] Ever since then, fire has been burned deep in our psyches.

[Cut to another office interior. Anthropologist Pedro Montoya speaks.]

PM: We know that fire changed us, and we changed it. We began to cook, which changed our gut microbiome. We used fire for cultural purposes. Fire became a symbol of humanity’s growing mastery of the natural world.

PC: How do we know that, like, our ancestors’ use of fire wasn’t just some naughty kids going off in the woods and lighting fires?

PM: We have a range of archeological, paleological and ethnographic evidence which points to an incredibly complex relationship between humans and fires.

PC: Including, possibly some naughty kids?

PM: Well, I suppose that’s possible, but I would hardly characterise our cultural history of fire as being dominated by -

PC: You know the type. Really naughty kids. My mate Paul had a nephew that set his curtains on fire. Must’ve got a hold of some matches or something.

[PM stares ahead blankly. Cut to Cunk, strolling through a wood.]

PC: Once we got a taste for fire, we couldn’t get enough of the stuff. People was settin’ fires all over the place.

[Montage of famous historical fires such as the great fire of London and the great Chicago fire.]

PC: In fact, we got pretty creative. We started burnin’ old rocks and oil, which turned out to be a great way to make money.

[Images of old oil wells, geysers and coal-powered engines on steam trains. Cut to Cunk walking through a busy city thoroughfare.]

PC: Nowadays there’s fire all over the place.

[Montage of wildfire disasters in Australia, the Western US, the Amazon and the Mediterranean.]

[Cut to another academic office interior. Professor Marjane Satrapi, an expert on contemporary global wildfire, speaks.]

MS: Thanks to satellite imagery, we can see patterns of fire on every continent on earth except Antarctica.

PC: Why can’t we see them on Antarctica? Is it because the penguins have put up some kind of privacy screen?

MS: No, it’s because there is almost no vegetation on Antarctica. Just a bit of moss, mostly.

PC: That must be quite slippery for the penguins.

MS: And by understanding global wildfire patterns, we can start to tease apart the drivers - weather, dryness, vegetation and ignitions.

PC: It’s those damn naughty kids with their matches again, isn’t it?

MS: Arson can be a serious problem, it’s true, although there are many other less nefarious human causes -

PC: [Looking puzzled] Nafari?

MS: Nefarious.

PC: [Still looking puzzled]

MS: It basically means naughty.

PC: Got it.

MS: We also cause fires by accident, through power tool sparks, arcing power lines, cigarette butts, escaped camp fires and so on.

PC: So what can we do about it?

MS: This is a great question! Right now we spend most of our efforts responding to fire and then trying to recover it. It might be wise to invest a bit more in preparing.

[PC nods, looking serious.]

MS: Some say that it is futile to wage a ceaseless war on fire, and that we must ultimately embrace it if we are to thrive in the Pyrocene.

PC: How come burnt hair smells so weird? My mate Paul was toking up once when he accidentally burnt off half his eyebrow.

MS: Well, combustion is a complex physical and chemical process -

PC: He actually looks a bit like one of them fancy rappers now, you know the ones that style their eyebrows on purpose?

MS: Not really, no.

[Cut to Cunk once more strolling through a field.]

PC: So there you have it. Friend or foe, fire seems to be here to stay. Can we find a way to live with it? How will we fight the megafires of the future, with climate change and hordes of little bastard kids setting fires? Or will sea level help us, by putting out all the fires for us? Only time will tell.

[Cunk continues walking.]

PC: Join us next week, when we ask: are earthquakes our planet’s way of farting? And if so, what does that make volcanoes?