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
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