Predators and fire

[Willowest]

In all my many hours in The Long Dark, I've never had a predator attack me while I'm standing right next to a fire until now. Don't fires provide a radius of protection from them?

[Scyzara]

Fires do offer almost perfect protection, but there's one situation in which you might still be attacked by a predator despite standing next to a fire: If the wind starts to blow out your fire (duration sinks to 9min or lower), then animals may attack you even though your fire is technically still burning.

Recently happened to me for the first time during a speedrun to the TWM summit. At first the echo ravine wolf was waiting behind my campfire (as it was supposed to) for almost two hours while I was boiling some coffee. I simply ignored the snarling beast as I was pretty busy filling up my caffeine reserves. All was good until a sudden wind came up and my fire duration decreased to 9m (actually 8m because I needed a second to realize the change). I abandonned my coffee boiling immediately (by pressing Esc) as I wanted to light a flare and throw it at the wolf before my fire would have burned out. The wolf, however, didn't wait for the fire to really cease but jumped me immediately instead.

I thus guess animals start to attack you the very second your fire is set to 9min duration left. Which somehow makes sense because the fire animation already resembles glowing logs without any flames at this point. But it's definitely a pretty unpleasant surprise if you don't expect this possibility. ^^

Oh, and I assume animals can probably also attack you despirt a fire if you move to close towards them. There's some minimum security distance you should better not fall below.