A few months ago I mentioned hearing about the book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — and Why by Amanda Ripley. I finally got a chance to read it and have made the following notes that might help writers figure out how their characters might act if they find themselves in a crisis:
What Prince discovered in Halifax was that our diaster personalities can be quite different from the ones we expect to meet. But that doesn’t mean they are unknowable. It just means we haven’t been looking in the right places. (p. x)
As Huntet S. Thompason said, ‘Call on God, but row away from the rocks. (p. xviii)
…we need to know our oldest personality, the one that takes over in a crisis and even makes fleeting apperarances in our daily lives. It is at the core of who we are. (p. xvii)
Real life doesn’t usually follow a linear arc… (xix)
My breath became effortless. My mind no longer wandered. Suddenly I wasn’t there anymore. I was just watching….The sounds were far away, and I was just hovering. I had no emotions. (p. 4)
We have a tendency to believe that everything is OK because, well, it almost always has been before. Psychologiest call this tendency ‘normalcy bias.’ The human brain works by identifying patterns. It uses information from the past to understand what is happening in the present and to anticiplate the future. This strategy works elegantly in most situations. But we inevitably see patterns when 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 tun out to be innocuous. If we behave otherswise, we ris social embarrassment by overreacting. So. we err on the side of underreacting.” (p. 9)
…everyone… can manufacture self-esteem through training and experience…. soldiers and police officers will tell you; that cofidence comes from doing…. the brain functions much better when it is familiar with a problem. We feel more in control because we are more in control. (p. 92-93)
I started to say, ‘Ok there is option one, option two. Decide. Act.’ I didn’t say, ‘Oh the boat is sinking.’ I didn’t even think of the wider perspective… I just saw my own little world. (p. 173)
Our brains search, under extreme stress, for an appropriate survival response and choose the wrong one. (p. 175)
Animals injected with adrenealine are more likely to freeze. (175)
Heroism, much as we revere it, is rather incomprehnsible. Isn’t it exactly the kind of behavior that should get naturally selected for extinction? (p. 180)
…heroes feel a nonnegotiable duty to help others when they can (p. 190)
I was pretty sure I was going to die…. But that was OK. I had internal calm. (p. 192)
A sense of empathy, combined with an identity as someone who helps and takes risks, may predispose one for heroism. (p.196)
Basically, you’re doing it for yourself… because you wouldn’t want to not do it and face the consequence internally…. he was afraid of disappointing himself. His determination at the crash site grew out of confidence — and insecurity…. Confidence because he knew he had the strength and skill to try to swim to those passengers… He didn’t jump into the river to be a hero, he did it to avoid being a coward. (p. 197)
… can come across as a man carefully guarding a large store of anger. (p. 215)
skill is my ability to do something autormatically, at the subconscious level. I don’t have to think about it. It is preprogrammed. How do I get that? I do that by repetition, by practicing the right thing. Ihe only way you can learn it — on a response level — is to program it (p. 246)