Article – What Not to Do in a Disaster

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Surprisingly, plenty of other people in deadly scenarios don’t act fast enough to save their own lives. From arguing over small change while a ship sinks into stormy water, to standing idly on the beach as a tsunami approaches, psychologists have known for years that people make self-destructive decisions under pressure. Though news reports tend to focus on miraculous survival, if people escape with their lives it’s often despite their actions – not because of them.

An article that says what we’ve known all along – normalcy bias and the ‘this can’t really be happening’ mindset will work against you in a crisis.

Decisiveness, preplanning, equanamity, and a dose of luck make the difference between being embraced and being embalmed. Interesting article and worth a read.

6 thoughts on “Article – What Not to Do in a Disaster”

  1. A very interesting article, well worth the time to read. One thing I’ve found that really helps to mitigate the hormonal fight/flight response in an emergency is to stop for a few seconds, take a deep breath, let it out slowly and consciously think about the situation and quickly review your options. I call this the “engaging brain before putting the body in gear” act.

  2. I was thinking about this sort of thing the other day while thinking about how being an almost daily cyclist has trained me to make quick decisions- is that car going to stop- do I need to hit the brakes or shift my position- and to trust and follow through on those spilt second judgement calls.

  3. A related and also fascinating topic is crowd dynamics. The behavior of a large group of humans in a public setting is surprisingly predictable–and can often result in unnecessary injuries or casualties in an emergency situation.

    • Crowds and rip tides,almost always move perpendicular to the flow and get out of the center toward the exit

  4. CZ, even trained soldiers can fall victim to the normalcy bias. After a period of time on tour when things are quiet soldiers get can complacent and take a few seconds to react to things going south. It happened to me on a couple of tours, that delay you have, before training kicks in. I can only imagine how bad it could be for an untrained civilian to see, understand and react to a dangerous situation. Keeping an alert mind set on a daily basis is difficult to maintain, but as Col Cooper said always maintain condition two for a situational awareness. TTFN

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