We can do better than commie blocks but we are usually doing a lot worse.

it's mostly not a problem these days because of all the other fire safety we do but exterior points of egress or having two stairways per unit are easy to have maybe at the cost of one unit width in that building

Japanese buildings often have an emergency hatch with a deployable ladder instead of full staircase style fire escapes. The hatches and ladder thing is usually on the balcony. Also the divider between balconies is often very fragile on purpose, so you can break through them and escape to another balcony if you have to.

It’s normal outside of the USA. They just have fire safety in other ways.

Do you have any peer reviewed evidence of that? Unironically asking for a friend. Although I think his claim was specifically large central stair case vs 2 at the corners?