Moron is Me, Moron is You

Dennis's grand tour of New England colleges seems to have inspired the creative writing juices.


I have been reading the book "The Unthinkable, Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - And Why", by Amanda Ripley.   It's a good read and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in increasing their understanding of how people react during a disaster.   There is a lot of great information here, and many instructive examples, but I will try to give a very quick summary - just enough to whet your appetite.

There are 3 stages in peoples reaction to a disaster - Denial, Deliberation, and the Decisive Moment.  Good examples of all 3 stages are given along with some keen insight into how these responses have evolved as protective mechanisms.  Not everyone makes it through the entire process.  Some get stuck in various stages and never form an effective response to the event.  Others might quickly progress through the stages and then formulate and execute an irrational and ineffective plan.  Understanding the process can help us to increase our effectiveness.
Denial is the initial and natural response to a disaster.  Some people get stuck in this stage and fail to progress beyond it.  This may be manifested as unrational delay in reacting to the situation, such as calling many friends or loved ones to "size up" the situation and never actually taking action.  Alternately it may be an unjustified confidence that the event is not as severe as thought, such as trying to ride out a hurricane on a barrier island.  These strategies can have fatal consequences.

After Denial comes, hopefully, Deliberation, but only to the extent that you can control your Fear.   Once you recognize the reality of the situation, it is very possible to be paralyzed by fear and the story might end right there.  In fact, it is common for people to be "paralyzed" in a crisis and thus fail to react.  Fear stimulates what Carl Sagan called the "Reptilian brain" and de-emphasizes the rational brain.   This is what makes us all Morons in a disaster and inspired the title of this article.  Physical and emotional memory and instincts turn out to be much more important here than intellectual knowledge.  An excellent example is the behavior that people exhibited in the Twin Towers on 9/11.   Some groups who had complete intellectual knowledge of how to escape down the fire exits, but who had only drilled by walking to the stairway doors did not in fact evacuate and did not survive the event.  They did not have sufficient physical or emotional memory to overcome the paralyzing effect of their Reptilian brain.  The Morgan Stanley group in Tower 1 had conducted numerous drills which included actually walking down the stairs and exiting the building.  These physical experiences, as well as a capable leader, enabled these people to evacuate and many lives were saved that day.
This really hit home to me.  Our family fire drills consist of us talking about feeling the door for heat, and crawling out through the smoke, and exiting through the windows as Plan B.   This book has shown me that this "rational discussion" of what to do in an emergency is not effective.   My entire family needs to actually perform these actions repeatedly if we are to rely upon them in a real emergency.  I also can apply this to many aspects of ARES.  We must practice the actual things that we need to do in an emergency.   Handling out a sheet of Message Handling instructions will never take the place of practicing sending messages, for example.  I intend to incorporate more practicing into the ARES process, so that we can perform when needed.

A common misconception about a crisis is that many people become hysterical and "lose it".   This is actually much less common in real life than in the movies.   Many people do become paralyzed or immobile, but they usually are docile and polite and are readily susceptible to groupthink or the influence of a dynamic leader.   Thus, if we can have just a few people in a crisis who can process the event and formulate a rational plan,  it is likely that the vast majority of people will politely follow directions and possibly be saved.   On the other hand, a few hysterical individuals can also trigger behavior such as a stampede with the resulting possibility of trampling people to death in a panic.

The main point of the book is especially germane to Hams.   This is the fact that the rational brain shuts down in a true emergency.   Hams tend to be smarter than your average bear and they rely upon knowing things and upon their rational abilities.  When our natural instincts take over during an emergency, that knowledge is not as useful as we would like to think.  Again, the best way to get the brain to perform under extreme stress is to repeatedly rehearse the desired behavior.  This is boring and hams sometimes feel like they don't need to do this because they already "know" what to do.  The key is that knowing it is not enough.  Thus, our natural tendencies tend to leave us less than optimally prepared when a crisis occurs.

I recommend everyone read this book and think about "What can I practice", so that I can be a survivor instead of a victim.

Dennis, AI8P

The Silence of the Cell Phones

Dennis, AI8P, is our first guest blogger.  His topic is very true, I can remember at the Stow 4th July parade when the cell service was so overloaded that parade workers lost their cell communications and were dependent on the hams for their communications.

I read an interesting account of a family that was on vacation in Hawaii when the Japan earthquake hit.  The gist of the article was the father lamenting how he was always prepared for an emergency at home, but he was totally unprepared on vacation.  When the tsunami warning was issued all the beachfront hotels were evacuated to higher ground.  He was glad to have his own rental vehicle so that he did not have to rely upon the hotel to evacuate them, but many other things did not go very well and he wished he had brought a few supplies with him on vacation.  

I found it particularly fascinating that he really wished he had brought some radios with him because THE CELL PHONES DIDN'T WORK!

You may recall that there was NO damage in Hawaii from the tsunami.  So here is a situation with ZERO DAMAGE and the CELL PHONES STOPPED WORKING.  All that is really required is for a widespread panic and the phones will be jammed and completely useless.  Those who claim that the communications infrastructure is more rugged than ever are correct.  Those who claim that communications capability can be restored more quickly after a disaster than ever before are correct.  But this incident demonstrates clearly how susceptible even an intact system is to overload.  Radio communications are not now and will not at any time in the foreseeable future be obsolete in an emergency.  

The bottom line is we still need to be trained and practiced and ready to help when help is needed.

I also encourage you to widen the horizons of your radio world.  FRS radios and yes, CB radios, are used by lots of people who might have valuable information, or might need information from us.  The ability to scan and communicate on those frequencies can be an advantage in these circumstances.  

Dennis, AI8P

Cricut® Electronic Paper Cutter vs Signalink

One of the problems I discovered using fldigi and digital modes with acoustic coupling is that my wife did not care to hear all that 'noise' coming out of the shack.  One new Cricut® machine later and I have a Signalink soundcard interface on order.    Should give me better performance without all that 'noise' and the wife can now cut 12" wide paper in addition to the current 6"..

To get fldigi set up, I used two computers with their sound cards talking to each other.  For some off the air digital mode experience, Summit County ( Mondays at 7:30 PM on 444.550) and Portage County (Thursdays at 7:30 PM on 146.895) ARES® are trying to have a digital mode segment as part of their weekly nets.  Also, Portage County Amateur Radio Service (PCARS) has been running digital nets the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays from 7;30-9:30 PM on 146.895.

Of possible interest, last week the Portage County ARES was trying EasyPAL as well as fldigi.  EasyPAL allows transferring images.  Claim was that it could send a pdf of a document around twice as fast as text with fldigi.  While I was successful in sending an image between the two computers in the shack, the volume had to be much higher than with fldigi.  It did not appear that acoustical coupling would be acceptable with EasyPAL.  The noise was even bothering me in the shack.  Something to explore a little more after I get my sound card interface installed and working.

EasyPAL might deserve a spot in my EMCOM toolkit along with fldigi


zeke, AB8OU

ps.  The Cricut® machine cost quite a bit more than the Signalink.


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