{
 "source": "Scored by Fable 5 against the manuscript compiled 2026-09-08. Recovery years are order-of-magnitude readings of time back to pre-purge knowledge output, not precise measurements. Civil War, Cultural Revolution and Cambodia recoveries reconciled to the book's Figure 19 caption (2026-09-24); the Meiji, French Revolution and Executed Renaissance readings are the site's estimates and are not in the book.",
 "definition": "Same word, opposite objects. A prescribed burn consumes the dragon's own treasure: the deadwood, the locked canon, the stolen wealth an institution mistook for its hoard, and leaves the carriers standing. A clear-cut consumes the carriers. Recovery time is the measurement that separates them.",
 "types": {
  "burn": {
   "label": "Prescribed burn (burned the dragon, not the carriers)",
   "color": "#199e70"
  },
  "clearcut": {
   "label": "Clear-cut (consumed the carriers)",
   "color": "#d55181"
  }
 },
 "cases": [
  {
   "id": "civil-war",
   "name": "US Civil War",
   "type": "burn",
   "recoveryYears": 1,
   "burned": "The extraction economy and the laws that made teaching a slave a crime",
   "spared": "Four million carriers, freed",
   "detail": "The Civil War burned the richest extraction economy on earth to unlock four million carriers, and the carriers began compounding before the ash cooled: a few seasons (Ch 19). Freedmen's schools opened while the war was still burning.",
   "recoveryLabel": "a few seasons"
  },
  {
   "id": "meiji",
   "name": "Meiji Restoration",
   "type": "burn",
   "recoveryYears": 10,
   "burned": "Sakoku and the Tokugawa status order",
   "spared": "The terakoya-built carrier population, already among the most literate on earth",
   "detail": "The restoration broke the closed system, not the schools. The carriers were already built, so the windfall compounded almost immediately — forty years from black ships to industrial state."
  },
  {
   "id": "french-revolution",
   "name": "French Revolution",
   "type": "burn",
   "recoveryYears": 10,
   "burned": "The ancien régime's orders, venal offices, and corporate privileges",
   "spared": "The knowledge class — with exceptions like Lavoisier, the Republic of Letters continued",
   "detail": "For all the Terror's famous victims, the burn took the structure and largely spared the carriers. The École Polytechnique opened in 1794, inside the revolutionary decade itself."
  },
  {
   "id": "cultural-revolution",
   "name": "Cultural Revolution",
   "type": "burn",
   "recoveryYears": 11,
   "burned": "Intellectuals purged, universities closed, a decade of carriers sent to the countryside",
   "spared": "The seed bank: it was in the grandmothers",
   "detail": "An attempted clear-cut that achieved a burn. From the Cultural Revolution to the gaokao's return in 1977: eleven years, because the seed bank was in the grandmothers (Ch 19).",
   "recoveryLabel": "11 years"
  },
  {
   "id": "cambodia",
   "name": "Cambodia / Khmer Rouge",
   "type": "clearcut",
   "recoveryYears": 47,
   "burned": "The carriers themselves: teachers, doctors, anyone with glasses",
   "spared": "Almost nothing — an estimated three-quarters of teachers dead or fled",
   "detail": "A purge aimed squarely at the carrier population. Cambodia to functional universities: still counting, forty-seven years later, because the soil was scraped to mineral (Ch 19).",
   "recoveryLabel": "still counting, 47 years"
  },
  {
   "id": "executed-renaissance",
   "name": "Executed Renaissance (Ukraine)",
   "type": "clearcut",
   "recoveryYears": 40,
   "burned": "Ukraine's writers, found by name: the maw turned its fire on a dragon's mint",
   "spared": "Institutes gutted and refilled with Lysenko's people",
   "detail": "The book's Executed Renaissance is Ukraine's (Ch 21), and it stands beside a geneticist's cell in Saratov: Vavilov starved in prison in 1943, and Lysenko held Soviet genetics until 1964. The recovery reading here is the site's estimate, not a number from the book."
  }
 ]
}