General Knowledge
Survive a Wildfire Quiz
Embers, defensible space, and go-bags — could you survive a wildfire?
Embers, defensible space, and go-bags — could you survive a wildfire?
Wildfire embers can travel more than a mile ahead of the fire front — and cause 90% of home ignitions. This 50-question deep dive covers the fire triangle, the wildland-urban interface, home-hardening tactics, evacuation planning, vehicle and on-foot survival, Santa Ana and Diablo winds, and lessons from the January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires that killed 29+ people and destroyed more than 18,000 structures.
Each round presents 10 randomized questions from a pool of 50, with four multiple-choice options and instant feedback after every answer. Your final score comes with a performance tier and shareable results.
You'll explore defensible space zones, ember-resistant vents and Class A roofing, go-bag essentials like N95s and cotton clothing, what to do if trapped in a vehicle, how fires accelerate uphill and through canyons, red-flag warnings and foehn winds, the 10 Standard Firefighting Orders, post-fire ash hazards, and the role of backfires and burnouts in modern firefighting.
Defensible space is the buffer of managed vegetation around a home that slows or stops wildfire. Zone 1 (0-30 ft) requires removing dead plants and pruning trees, Zone 2 (30-100 ft) reduces fuel density, and Zone 3 extends to 200 ft in high-hazard areas.
Leave early rather than waiting for a mandatory order, identify at least two escape routes, register for local alerts like Code Red or Everbridge, and take a pre-packed go-bag with N95 masks, water, medications, documents, and a battery radio.
The area burned in the western US has increased roughly 2x to 4x since 1984 due to hotter, drier conditions, decades of fire suppression building up fuel, and rapid growth of the wildland-urban interface, which held about 16 million US homes as of 2020.
Last updated: April 2026