The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

Ripley investigates a range of disasters and tragedies – natural and man-made – with an eye toward her sub-titular question of who survives and why. Of course, in the process she answers the [often more interesting] converse question of who dies and why? By that I’m specifically referring to those who die while facing the same situations as survivors. i.e. Who dies having had the capacity to survive? Obviously, some people fail to survive because they face a fundamentally unsurvivable event (e.g. a plane explodes in mid-air with said person in it), but a surprising number die who could have walked to safety if they’d have managed to get moving – and some die because they play out a mental script that makes no sense contextually, e.g. trying to get a carry-on out of the overhead compartment as though one is at the gate at Heathrow Airport when in fact one is sinking into the ocean while the crashed airliner one is in is being buffeted by ocean waves.Over the course of eight chapters, an introduction, a conclusion, and ancillary material, the author presents cases involving airplane crashes, tsunami, hurricanes, police shootings, hostage situations, fires, stampedes (of humans by humans), and even touches on the psychology of tragedies of a personal [rather than mass] nature (e.g. sexual assault.) A particular emphasis is given to events that the reader will likely be familiar such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, but the book also opens up the reader to events they may have scarcely heard of from the many crushing deaths in Mecca during recent Hajj pilgrimages to the Halifax harbor incident of 1917. Along the way, the reader hears from survivors, heroes, and a wide-range of experts on subjects such as gunfights, risk perception, evacuation dynamics, the physics of crowds, evolutionary psychology, and emotional resilience.After an introduction that sets the context for the book, the first chapter discusses one of the most salient features of whether ones lives or dies, delay. The case of the evacuation of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 is used to examine why some people loiter about while others are johnny on the spot to hit the road. The World Trade Center on 9/11 makes an interesting case because there were certainly people who died who could have survived if they’d had better knowledge or training. However, at the same time, it could have also been vastly worse if some of the people didn’t have the training they did (famously, a huge WTC tenant, Morgan Stanley, had a man in charge of emergency procedures, Rick Rescoria, whose persistent drills no doubt saved many lives [though he did not survive, himself.])Chapter two discusses risk, and the weird way in which human beings perceive and respond to uncertainty. For example, the author describes Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory, which showed that a person responds to risk much differently if there’s a possibility of losing something rather than only of making gains. (Prior to work of these two social scientists, the prevailing view was that humans were rational actors, i.e. a $100 is a $100.) Prospect theory confirmed that anxiety mattered, and people didn’t just use their clockwork frontal cortex to calculate and compare expected values. (This may seem self-evident, but it began the process of up-ending the precise and predictable rational actor model from classical economics.)Chapter three is entitled “fear” and it discusses that emotion and the various behaviors (and lack of behavior) that goes hand-in-hand with it, including: distortion of the experience of time, tunnel vision, and self-talk. (Panic and paralysis behaviors are each given their own chapter later in the book.) This chapter presented a fascinating discussion with a man who may have been involved in more shoot outs than any other police officer (the officer, no doubt, having a valuable perspective on how to respond in fearful situations.)Chapter four is about the personality traits that link to resilience and the survivor personality. There is a fascinating discussion with an undercover agent in Israel, a man who faced a number of situations in which he had to coolly make a life-or-death decision in the way that most of us only experience in Hollywood movies. It should be pointed out that while we all admire such people when they save the day, the personality traits they display aren’t necessarily ones that we find desirable in daily life. Chapter five is entitled “groupthink” and it discusses the role that social dynamics play in survival, which is often considerable. Some survivors are people who would’ve perished if left to their own devices – i.e. if a more resilient stranger hadn’t taken them by the hand or shouted in their face.The last three chapters discuss three relatively common behaviors that occur in the decisive moment of a tragedy. Chapter six discusses panic behavior. As it happens, there are some types of tragedies in which panic is almost unheard of and others in which it is nearly ubiquitous. Personality does play a role. Just as some people have personality traits that make them more resilient, others have traits that make them more likely to panic. However, researchers also found that there are characteristics – e.g. people feeling trapped but as if there’s a glimmer of hope of escape. [People who know they are unequivocally doomed are often surprisingly calm.] The chapter also offers some useful insights into how crowds kill people that may be useful for those who find themselves in massive crowds like those seen during pilgrimages or at any number of festivals in India (where human stampede deaths are disturbingly common.)Chapter seven is about “paralysis” behavior. Readers may be familiar that there’s been a tendency of experts to add either one or two new “F’s” to the phrase “fight or flight” – such as “freeze” or “fright” – to describe other extremely common responses to severe sympathetic nervous system engagement. It’s common to dismiss such behavior as that of cowardly or milquetoast people, but the reality is more complex. On the evolutionary timescale, there was one tragedy that counted for an overwhelming percentage of such dire events -- being in the jaws of an apex predator. It turns out that if a grizzly bear or lioness is atop you, freezing isn’t a bad strategy. You aren’t going to pop up and out run a tiger or defeat it in unarmed combat, your only hope may be to make it think you are a diseased carcass – i.e. shit yourself and lie limply. One has to train alternative behaviors; otherwise, the body does what is evolutionarily programmed into its genetic code.The last chapter is on heroic acts and why some people engage in them when most people don’t. (Consider the people in the Titanic lifeboats who listened to people struggle and drown for fear that their [almost empty] boat would be swamped with clawing victims. Or, the case of Catherine Genovese who was screaming bloody murder for half-an-hour while being raped and stabbed to death while none of the 40-ish witnesses so much as called the cops.) As with the question of what makes a survivor, the answer to what makes a hero is a mixed bag. While we tend to idolize people who engage in heroic actions, the evidence suggests that the image of pure beneficence – lacking all self-interest – may be mythical. Many a hero is as much responding with a combination of subconscious mind and genetic programming as is the individual who burns to death 100 feet from an unlocked exit – just to vastly greater adoration.I found this book to be fascinating. There are many books on this topic, but I think the author did an excellent job of choosing cases and experts to produce an interesting and informative read -- even for a reader for whom this literature is not new.

'Be Prepared' is the motto drilled into our heads in the earlier days of scouting. I've never veered away from that, but this book puts peeparedness in the context of situations with which we have little familiarity and almost no personal experience. I've always been good under pressure, with MacGiver-like instincts, but this book shows me how I can improve...and bring others along with me.

This was recommended by a speaker at a work shop I attended. Well worth reading.

What would you do if you knew that disaster could strike at any time? Would you train for it? Would you try to convince yourself that it won’t happen? Even when it does happen, would you pretend that everything is just fine? In the Unthinkable, Amanda Ripley does a pretty good job of laying out a lot of information on how others have answered these questions both before and after a crisis.Analyzing multiple scenarios that include shootouts, kidnapping, panicking mobs and even 9/11, she talks to the survivors about what their behavior was as well as the observations of the behaviors of the victims that did not make it out alive. There is a very in depth look at the psychology of the Fight, Flight or Freeze condition that we as humans often find ourselves in. There is also a fairly spansive look at what I have referred to as Normalcy Bias. Normalcy Bias is essentially when you have a predisposition to believe that nothing other than what could normally happen is happening. “That wasn’t a plane hitting the building. It’s probably just another one of those damn drills.”In the interviews with the 9/11 survivors it is amazing the amount of people that even in the situation, refused to believe that anything could be really wrong. There is a great analysis of one company that was inside Tower “?” Who had appointed a safety officer that took the job very seriously and made the rest of the office (much to their chagrin) run constant drills on egressing the building. When disaster did strike, there was a fair amount of grumbling and belly-aching but their evacuation response was quick and calculated. Unlike many other poor souls who brushed things off as just another annoying drill just a little too long and found themselves trapped among the collapsing floors.Others that do not have the Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Denial could go into a “disconnect” mode. It’s not like the Freeze when the panic and fear binds and immobilizes you. It’s more like the state of shock that detaches all of your emotions. There are multiple cases where this disconnect runs through multiple levels of functionality. Some were able to function completely normally, save the presence of any emotion. Others became nearly catatonic. Some of the folk that went through the disconnect actually saved quite a few people lives. They stated that they saw someone that needed help and they helped them. Not because they had any sort of drive to do so, but because “that’s just what you do, right?” It was more like they were following a social rule than being heroic. Not to discount the heroism of anyone involved in the tragedy.One of the things that stands out to me the most about this book is that most people that had base level training were able to respond with a fair amount of efficacy. Whether it was an evacuation or a kidnapping, people that have had even the tiniest bit of training seemed to be just a little better off than those who did not. The folks that have a lot of training though were the ones that, on average, seemed to respond the best.What I get out of this book is not what to do when a disaster strikes. What I get is what I should do before disaster strikes. Training, training, training is what we should be doing all the time. Yeah, it’s okay to let your mind relax and decompress a little here and there. Just don’t let decompressing become a favorite pastime. A little unwinding is good from time to time is okay but if that’s what you do for six hours every night in front of the television and twelve hours on weekends you contribute nothing to yourself.Being a Bad Ass means that you can respond in emergencies. When the stress levels start to rise, your mind sharpens and you can focus on what the right response will be. Just a few minutes a day, spread out through the day, can mentally prepare you for the crisis. If there is a safety manual take a minute to read it. If there is an evacuation route, take a minute figure out where it actually says to go. When we go under stress we revert back to our base level training. If our base level of training is a base knowledge of the appropriate planned response, you give yourself an edge and you might just save some lives.-chuckThis review was taken from The Art of Bad Ass website at theartofbadass.com

This is an interesting and educational book. It draws on various disasters and tragedies in recent history and evaluates why some people survived whilst others did not. It helps the reader to examine their own 'disaster personality' and contemplate whether they would be a survivor and if not, why not. I recommend this book to everyone, in particular Governments and the designers of buildings and transportation - which should take the behaviour of humans under extreme stress into consideration for their designs.

I absolutely love this book. It has answered a lot of questions that I had and some I didn't know I had.I fully believe this book should be read by every single person in the world. It analyses what happens to people in a crisis, be it big or small, and in a number of conditions - hostage situations, plane crashes, 9/11. How different people react and why; what heroism is; and most crucially of all how you can help yourself - practice!I have gained a lot of insight from this book. It is all encompassing and yet detailed at the same time. The most fascinating point I learnt from this book is that when you are in a crisis, your brain automatically shuts down as a defence mechanism, that's why it is absolutely vital to practice so that you can react appropriately, but also snap yourself out of negative modes.I really wish there were more books like this.

The wonder of people and their responses to severe threat and fear. Fight. Flight. Freeze and Fiddle about beautifully and coherently explained in a methodical and well researched manner. Includes positive ways to improve personal performance when placed in threat situations and meeting everyday challenges. Should be required reading!

I really enjoyed this book. Well written and full of sensible advice that could save your life. The psychology of how people act in a disaster is fascinating.All the case stories of disaster survivors were thought-provoking.

Brilliant, essential reading. Fascinating, and potentially life-saving.