The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

by Amanda Ripley

Since 9/11 the U.S. government has sent over $23 billion to states and cities in the name of homeland security. Almost none of that money has gone toward intelligently enrolling regular people like you and me in the cause. Why don’t we tell people what to do when the nation is on Orange Alert against a terrorist attack—instead of just telling them to be afraid?

David Hirshleifer and Tyler Shumway, were curious about what effect the weather has on stock trades. So they gathered weather data for twenty-six international cities from 1982 to 1997. Then they compared stock returns for each city on each day. What they found is remarkable: sunshine strongly correlated with daily stock returns—in ways that couldn’t easily be explained by any other factors. If it was sunny in the morning, stocks were more likely to go up.

When it comes to financial risk, Taleb, the mathematical trader, refuses to read the newspaper or watch TV news. He doesn’t want to tempt his brain with buy-sell sound bites. Likewise, Slovic avoids short-term investments; he invests broadly and then walks away. Similarly, when it comes to disaster risk, there’s little to be gained by watching TV news segments:

Check out this quote.

In general, TV makes us worry about the wrong things. Your brain is better at filtering out media hype when it is reading. Words have less emotional salience than images. So it’s much healthier to read the newspaper than watch TV.

If you ask heroes why they did what they did, they invariably say they had no choice. How could they watch a man drown? Or starve? Or burn to death? Heroes are universally uncomfortable with the label. They attribute their actions to the situation, rather than their own profile. “I am just a guy who happened to be somewhere and do something,” says Olian.

Rescuers tended to have had healthier and closer relationships with their parents. They were also more likely to have had friends of different religions and classes. Their most important quality seemed to be empathy.

“Why did you do this? What made you risk your life? Why?” As usual, we seek out heroes with a religious fervor, and then we act incredulous when we find them. Finally Roslan turned to them in exasperation and said, “Why are you asking me why I did this? You mean there’s another way to behave?”

the best way to get the brain to perform under extreme stress is to repeatedly run it through rehearsals beforehand. Or as the military puts it, the “Eight P’s”: “Proper prior planning and preparation prevents piss-poor performance.”

Self-sufficiency was a religion for Rescorla. He once told a friend that every man should be able to be sent outside naked with nothing on him. By the end of the day, the man should be clothed and fed. By the end of the week, he should own a horse. And by the end of the year, he should have a business and a savings account.

If regular people got as panic-stricken in a crisis as most of us think they do, Flight 93 would have almost certainly destroyed the White House or the U.S. Capitol. “It’s highly ironic,” says Flynn, “that our elected representatives were protected on 9/11 by everyday people.”