The Unthinkable Quotes

“The human brain works by identifying patterns. It uses information from the past to understand what is happening in the present and to anticipate the future. This strategy works elegantly in most situations. But we inevitably see patterns where they don’t exist. In other words, we are slow to recognize exceptions. There is also the peer-pressure factor. All of us have been in situations that looked ominous, and they almost always turn out to be innocuous. If we behave otherwise, we risk social embarrassment by overreacting. So we err on the side of underreacting.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“The Unthinkable is not a book about disaster recovery; it’s about what happens in the midst—before the po­lice and firefighters arrive, before reporters show up in their rain slickers, before a structure is imposed on the loss. This is a book about the survival arc we all must travel to get from danger to safety.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“These days, we tend to think of disasters as acts of God and government. Regular people only feature into the equation as victims, which is a shame. Because reg­ular people are the most important people at a disaster scene, every time.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“But first, before anyone else, regular people were on the scene, saving one another. They did incredible things, these regular people. They lifted rubble off sur­vivors with car jacks. They used garden hoses to force air into voids where people were trapped. In fact, as in most disasters, the vast majority of rescues were done by ordinary folks.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“In a series of experiments, safety officials ran regular people through mock evacuations from planes. The trials weren't nearly as stressful as real evacuations, of course, but it didn't matter. People, especially women, hesitated for a surprisingly long time before jumping onto the slide. That pause slowed the evacuation for everyone. But there was a way to get people to move faster. If a flight attendant stood at the exit and screamed at people to jump, the pause all but disappeared, the researchers found. In fact, if flight attendants did not aggressively direct the evacuation, they might as well have not been there at all. A study by the Cranfield University Aviation Safety Centre found that people moved just as slowly for polite and calm flight attendants as they did when there were no flight attendants present.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“Our disaster personalities are more complex and ancient than we think. But they are also more mal­leable.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“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.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“A sense of empathy, combined with an identity as someone who helps and takes risks, may predispose one for heroism.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“In river rescues, members of the Kansas City Fire Department rescue squad yell profanity-laced threats at victims before they get to them. If they don't, the victim will grab on to them and push them under the water in a mad scramble to stay afloat. "We try to get their attention. And we don't always use the prettiest language," says Larry Young, a captain in the rescue division. "I hope I don't offend you by saying this. But if I approach Mrs. Suburban Housewife and say, 'When I get to you, do not fucking touch me! I will leave you if you touch me!' she tends to listen.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“Why do we procrastinate leaving? The denial phase is a humbling one. It takes a while to come to terms with our miserable luck. Rowley puts it this way: 'Fires only happen to other people.' We have a tendency to believe that everything is OK because, well, it almost always has been before.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“Dread = Uncontrollability + Unfamiliarity + Imaginability + Suffering + Scale of Destruction + Unfairness”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“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?”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“Emergency plans had been designed to meet the needs of emergency officials, not regular people.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“Whether they are at an airline or at a command center, experts will err on the side of excluding the public, as we have seen. If they can avoid enrolling regular people in their emergency plans, they will. Life is easier that way, until something goes wrong.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“Narrative is the beginning of recovery.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why

“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.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“Sometimes it’s hard to get people to do worst-case planning because the worst case is so bad. People just throw up their hands.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“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.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“Carnegie dreamed up the Hero Fund himself. For all his ruthlessness as a businessman, he had a soft spot for civility. He disdained football as a sport for savages, so he donated a lake to Princeton University to give athletes another outlet. He was a pacifist and railed against the traditional definition of heroes as warriors. “The false heroes of barbarous man are those who can only boast of the destruction of their fellows,” he wrote. “The true heroes of civilization are those alone who save or greatly serve them.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“Suffering accumulates, like debt.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“researchers now refer to as the “political determinants of health.” In Ohio and Florida, the excess-death rate was 43 percent higher for Republican voters than for Democrats from May to December 2021,”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“(In the United States, you are almost twice as likely to kill yourself as you are to be killed by someone else during your lifetime.)”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“this, trust has never been more endangered. If I had to predict the future, I’d say that more people will die of distrust than from disasters in the next fifty years—”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“But even in other, more overtly dire situations, crowds don’t tolerate irrational panic behavior. Most of the time, people remain consistently orderly—and kind, much kinder than they would have been on a normal day.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“These days, we tend to think of disasters as acts of God and government. Regular people only feature into the equation as victims, which is a shame. Because regular people are the most important people at a disaster scene, every time.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“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.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“Stress hormones are like hallucinogenic drugs. Almost no one gets through an ordeal like this without experiencing some kind of altered reality. In one study of shootings of civilians by police officers, 94 percent of officers experienced at least one distortion, according to criminologist David Klinger’s interviews with the officers involved. But very few knew what to expect beforehand. So their distortions distracted and even embarrassed some of them.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

“The Unthinkable is not a book about disaster recovery; it’s about what happens in the midst—before the police and firefighters arrive, before reporters show up in their rain slickers, before a structure is imposed on the loss. This is a book about the survival arc we all must travel to get from danger to safety.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why