Wildland fire management is a complex system with various scales, modes, plans, and operations. As with any system, fire management can be subject to stresses and strains that are, in some cases, easy to identify in isolation but highly challenging to diagnose at a system level. A suitable analogy is the homeostatic range in the human body - that is, the limits on levels such as body temperature, pH, and blood level. Modern medicine has a quantitative understanding of the normal, extreme, and fatal ranges of these indicators.