Even in situations of maximal fight-or-flight terror, as hostages on a plane or soldiers in a trench can attest, it’s easy for attention to wander. Charles Kapar, a USAID official who survived the hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner in 1984, told a reporter shortly after the incident that even as his life hung in the balance, he tuned out, overcome by boredom. “This fellow [that is, the hijacker] was destroying everything and we were just sitting there. I almost fell asleep I was so bored.”[25]
