We discuss the emergence of common mathematical patterns governing the timing and severity of insurgent and terrorist attacks, across geographic scales and including cyberspace. We present mathematical models that provide a generative explanation of these patterns. Despite wide variations in the underlying settings and circumstances, the ubiquity of these patterns suggests there is a common way in which groups of humans fight each other. Our empirical findings follow from the analysis of myriad state-of-the-art datasets with resolution at the level of individual attacks, while our mathematical modelling involves numerical and analytical solutions of fission–fusion dynamics together with progress curve analysis.