From the book "Unthinkable"

I'm reading a book called - "Unthinkable; Who Survives When Disaster Strikes- And Why". A very interesting book so far! Some points:

The author, Amanda Ripley, starts off with a story about the destruction of the French freighter, the Mont Blanc, as it was pulling out of the Halifax harbor, Nova Scotia in December of 1917. It was leaving the harbor loaded with explosives and ammunition - headed for the war in Europe. On its way out, it seemed to accidentally get rammed by a larger ship. It wasn't inconsequential, but it wasn't a huge deal either. Or so they thought.

Well, as it turned out, one thing led to another, and eventually it got to the point where the ship actually blew up. The explosion was the largest recorded up to that point. There was an Anglican priest there who helped the victims, he helped organize search and rescue efforts. And later, as one might imagine, this experience stayed with him for a long time.

In fact he seemed so curious about this experience- why people did what they did, and perhaps more interestingly, why they didn't do what they didn't do. He later moved to New York City to earn a PhD in Sociology. His dissertation - entitled "Catastrophe and Social Change", was influenced by the experience three years earlier, and seemed to be the first systematic analysis of human behavior in a disaster. And his work has been the basis of much work on crisis behavior since then.

She goes on to say how we all seem to assume how we might behave in a crisis like this, or even a personal crisis, like a car accident. I haven't been an EMT too long, and although I've been to some accidents that had flipped cars and people with internal injuries, I haven't seen carnage on the road. But of the ones I have seen, even a fender-bender can be pretty traumatizing for some people.

In the introduction there's a section Ripley calls "The Things Survivors Wish You Knew". She got in touch with the World Trade Center Survivors Network - those who made it out of the buildings on Sept 11th, 2001. She interviewed some of them and she learned a few things from this connection: Nothing beats physical preparation! You can be told about what to do... but although actually physically going through the motions may be inconvenient, and may interrupt our day, etc, etc... doing the things we'd need to do in an emergency is worth it's weight in gold! And she says here that writing a book on disasters seemed to reduce her anxiety, not increase it. "The truth, it turns out, is usually better than the nightmare."

She goes on to address our governments reaction to the events of that fateful day - they put some good policies into place - policies that seemed to help the policy-makers more than anyone. The average person may know there is a "code Orange" day... but the average person doesn't know how to act any different on a code orange day than a code green day. The average person- who will be the ones mostly affected by some terrorist act - doesn't know what to DO in an emergency... and DOING seems to be the key thing in an event like this.

She goes on to say that the odds of us being killed by a disaster are VERY slim... but the odds of us being affected by a disaster is pretty likely! So... more reason for us to know what we might go through psychologically and physiologically. "We need to get to know our oldest personality, the one that takes over in a crisis and even makes fleeting appearances in our daily lives." We can train ourselves in how to react and what to do so we are not incapacitated mentally in a time when our family and/or friends may need us.

The Survival Arc...

"In every kind of disaster, we start in about the same place and travel through three phases"... Denial... Deliberation... Decisive Moment... and people often end up going through these not so much in sequence, but more jumping back and forth, into and out of these three phases as the effects of the event unfold.

Denial This initial shock can take the form of delay- which can be fatal! Look at what is happening now in terms of sovereign debt- "nothing is going to happen!" Our economy can't collapse, etc. And yet in 2008 we were weeks if not days from an economic melt-down. Who knows how bad the effects would have been, but they would not have been "business as usual" for most of us I think.

In the following chapter she talks about a woman who survived the 1993 garage bombing of the World Trade Center, and the 2001 attacks. And in her interview with this woman, a few things came out - she was VERY slow to accept the attack on September 11th. She wanted her world to be back to normal! And not only that, but she wanted nothing more than to STAY where she was... sort of a "if I act like nothing is wrong, then nothing really is wrong!" idea. She seemed to just NOT pay attention to some of the events - like smoke on the floor.

Another example of denial is laughter... people can just start laughing- incredulous of the events unfolding! It's SO NOT REAL! Or people just go silent. "We have a tendency to believe that everything is OK because, well, it almost always has been before. Psychologists call this tendency 'normalcy bias'." We use information from the past to make sense of what might be happening now. And some instances, some people "dissociate", they reject one reality for another. It's like they forget it's not happening... it's more like it's not happening at all! This is the psychological form of sticking one's head in the sand. Reality is too unreal! so... I make my own.

Deliberation We know something is wrong, but we aren't sure what. "The first thing to understand is that nothing is normal. We think and perceive differently. We become superheroes with learning disabilities." Here's where the fear response comes in - she asks... why do some people get out of a burning building while others don't?

One thing people do often is mill around - some looking for someone to lead them, some just in a mental fog. Another common action is start to gather things - "Let's see, what will I take with me." In some cases, some of the objects around them take on extraordinary meaning... and thus become "important" and need to be taken. The lady from the above example, when she finally knew things were VERY wrong, when she finally GOT it... she went back to her desk to take the mystery novel she'd been reading. then she looked for more things to take. Not uncommon evidently.

Decisive Moment Here "we've accepted that there is danger; we've deliberated our options. Now we take action." Well, some people panic.. but some- in the same disaster- can freeze- and this can be deadly. But some go into "mission mode"... they move with deliberation and mission. She says later in the book she will show how we can do this - train ourselves not only to NOT panic or freeze, but to be as clear headed as possible to act with decisiveness.

Characteristics of crowds in a disaster - they can become extremely docile and quiet. What do we do... and how do we do it? And this seems to be one of the biggest problems with post Sept 11 policies... the policy makers may have good plans, but the average person does not know what to do, and more importantly, why they are supposed to do it!

I'm actually not that far into the book, but there's a lot of examples and anecdotes so it makes for a very interesting read! So.. there's more to come.

Stay tuned!