Excerpt from An Anecdotal Assumptive History of Northwestern France - Volume 13, Chapter 23...

Fire was virtually unknown to the region until the last few decades. For without the intervention of man-made chemicals or prolonged exposure to intense heat sources (e.g. flame throwers or lasers), the wood, sticks, leaves and even litter simply refuses to burn. Lighting strikes are far too short in their duration to cause ignition, and any wildfires attempting to spread into the area would quickly extinguish within a few meters.

This peculiar near-unflammability was of great concern to Bronze Age settlers, who even with their hearty blast furnaces capable of smelting ore could not keep a fire lit for any appreciable length of time. What seemed to be a solid, roaring fire, would quickly snuff out as soon as the fire tender's back was turned. It wasn't until the advent of quantum physics that the mechanism of this behavior was better understood. Much like Schrödinger's cat is neither alive nor dead until observation, if there's no one around to watch, the flaming wood stubbornly resets to its natural unburned state. 

Since then, wood burning stoves have come to be known as duality engines, serving as a constant reminder to inhabitants visiting from normal places where wood just fucking burns like it fucking should not make a cop of coffee, glance at their phone, or attempt to write a blog post even with the damned fire blazing away because it will surly go out, and you may well freeze to death.

Shit. It's gone out again.