It depends. Tin pest is an autocalaytic reaction that doesn't produce enough energy to destabilize its own progression. One could say the same for rust, as it f

It depends. Tin pest is an autocalaytic reaction that doesn't produce enough energy to destabilize its own progression. One could say the same for rust, as it flakes and is porous allowing further rusting. Or the chain reaction could proceed faster than the environmental changes destabilize it - like a nuclear chain reaction, or metastable vacuum collapse. Or it could self regulate into a steady state, like a nuclear reactor. Also consider that the energy released could itself cause further reactions - like a fire. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalysis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalysis for more. Yes, it seems unlikely that any such transition exists for liquid water - a water molecule doesn't have any molecular degrees of freedom like a protein does, nor any easy way to extract energy from it (it's "already burnt"), and we haven't found any exotic structures of water that are stable at atmospheric pressures.