  Ramification is induced by the presence of static laws which relate the direct consequences of actions to other changes.  Let’s use a car-starting scenario to illustrate the difficulties. There is one action, turn-on, which turns on the ignition; let’s suppose that this action has no preconditions. There is a fluent Ig tracking whether the ignition is on, a fluent Dead tracking whether the battery is dead, and a fluent Run tracking whether the engine is running. A static law says that if the ignition is on and the battery isn’t dead, the engine is running. (Let’s suppose that every other source of failure has already been eliminated in this scenario; the only possible reason for not starting is the battery.) We want to consider a transition in which turn-on is performed in a situation in which the ignition is not on, the battery is not dead, and the car isn’t running.