Kudos to bigreddog for raising this - I'm VERY skeptical about the utility of a fire in most situations. The number one problem (not mentioned) is opsec - do you think our special ops troops on a three day mission are building fires? Of course not - flame gives away your position in the dark, and smoke gives away your position during the day. Fires require time to gather fuel (most people DRASTICALLY underestimate the amount of fuel consumed by a small fire in one day) and they are terrible for security. I think the reason why we focus on fires is because we like them.