A lot of times you can see a situation is bad, like a car going too fast in the snow starts spinning out of control—you don't know whether it'll crash through the guardrail and off the cliff, or if it'll just break the left headlight, or if absolutely nothing bad happens.

Or a dry forest. You know a fire is imminent. You don't know which tree will be hit first. You don't know which of the ~ten sources will start it. But you know the system has evolved to a catastrophic state.