For as much as they tell you about Stop Drop and Roll as a kid, I really expected to be on fire more times in my life.
All jokes aside, the real reason kids get drilled on ‘stop drop and roll’ so aggressively is because it needs to be a reflex. Sure, getting set on fire is unlikely, but if DOES happen, you will be terrified and in a lot of pain, and you’ll need to handle it FAST. The default response your brain will have to that is the standard monkey brain instinctive reaction to being terrified and in pain - get the fuck away from the danger. Which is the worst possible response to being on fire, because panicking and trying to run will just fan the flames and make it much worse. But if you’ve had ‘stop drop and roll’ beaten into your head a thousand times all your life, there’s a good chance that in that initial moment of ‘oh fuck I’m on fire’, instead of panicking, your brain will jump straight to the trained response of ‘hit the ground and smother the flames’.
And the fact that it’s NOT a common threat is why we need to drill it so hard in the first place - instictive reactions to pain/danger are usually the correct response! It’s survival instincts! Like, if you get a bad cut, your first reaction will be to slap a hand on it and keeo it there, because ‘apply pressure to bleeding wound’ is the correct response! But being set on fire just doesn’t happen enough to be a serious concern as a species, so the instinctive reaction to that happening will actually cause horrific burns and/or death, because we don’t really need a naturally programmed in response for such a rare problem.
But it does still happen sometimes, and the correct reaction is very simple, so basically programming kids to stop drop and roll if on fire is easy, harmless, and probably saves a fair amount of lives.
