A probability measure on the subsets of the edge set of a graph G is a 1‐independent probability measure (1‐ipm) on G if events determined by edge sets that are at graph distance at least 1 apart in G are independent. Given a 1‐ipm , denote by the associated random graph model. Let denote the collection of 1‐ipms on G for which each edge is included in with probability at least p. For , Balister and Bollobás asked for the value of the least p⋆ such that for all p > p⋆ and all , almost surely contains an infinite component. In this paper, we significantly improve previous lower bounds on p⋆. We also determine the 1‐independent critical probability for the emergence of long paths on the line and ladder lattices. Finally, for finite graphs G we study f1, G(p), the infimum over all of the probability that is connected. We determine f1, G(p) exactly when G is a path, a complete graph and a cycle of length at most 5.