The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

by Amanda Ripley

As it turns out, about 30 percent of white males see very little risk in most threats. They create much of the gender and race gap all on their own. So then Slovic began to study these white men. They had a few subtle things in common. “They liked the world of status, hierarchy, and power,” says Slovic. They believed in technology. They were more likely than any other group to disagree with the statement that people should be treated more equally. Usually, they were white men, but not always. The more important factor was how they viewed the world and their place in it. If a white male felt discriminated against or marginalized by society, then he would likely switch sides, joining women and minorities in their worry.

Resilience is a precious skill. People who have it tend to also have three underlying advantages: a belief that they can influence life events; a tendency to find meaningful purpose in life’s turmoil; and a conviction that they can learn from both positive and negative experiences. These beliefs act as a sort of buffer, cushioning the blow of any given disaster. Dangers seem more manageable to these people, and they perform better as a result. “Trauma, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder,”

The more important point is that everyone, regardless of IQ, can manufacture self-esteem through training and experience. That is what soldiers and police officers will tell you; that confidence comes from doing.

Generally speaking, anxiety comes in two flavors: the first is “state anxiety,” which describes how a person reacts to stressful situations, like a big exam or a traffic jam. The other kind is “trait anxiety,” which refers to a person’s general tendency to see things as stressful to begin with. Trait anxiety, in other words, is your resting level of anxiety on any given day. As it turns out, people with higher trait anxiety are more likely to rip out their air supply, Morgan found.

If mass gathering places are designed with physics in mind, then the prerequisites to panic should never develop. People will not feel potentially trapped, helpless, and alone.

So it makes sense that if we can reduce our own fear and adrenaline, even a little bit, we might be able to override paralysis when we need to.

The National Transportation Safety Board has found that passengers who read the safety information card are less likely to get hurt in an emergency.

After preparation, the next best hope is leadership.

Paralysis seems to happen on the steepest slope of the survival arc—when almost all hope is lost, when escape seems impossible, and when the situation is unfamiliar to the extreme.

He went to Vietnam because he was scared not to go. “For that reason, I had to do it. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering if I could’ve done it. Could I rise to the situation, whatever it was? I didn’t know if I could survive, how I’d feel about killing people. I had a lot of questions.”

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.”