The author is an award-winning writer working on homeland security issues for Time Magazine. She offers a compelling look at instinct and disaster response as she explores the psychology of fear and how it can save or destroy us. Surprisingly, she reports, mass panic is rare, and an understanding of the dynamics of crowds can help prevent a stampede, while a well-trained crew can get passengers quickly but calmly off a crashed plane. Using interviews with survivors of hotel fires, hostage situations, plane crashes and, 9/11, Ripley takes readers through the three stages of reaction to calamity: disbelief, deliberation and action. The average person slows down, spending valuable minutes to gather belongings and check in with others. The human tendency to stay in groups can make evacuation take much longer than experts estimate. Official policy based on inaccurate assumptions can also put people in danger; even after 9/11, Ripley says, the requirement for evacuation drills on office buildings is inadequate. Besides the information value, this is a most interesting book and an “easy read.”
Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes-and Why, Crown Publishers, New York, New York, 2008 (223 pages)
Recommended by Sid Heal in Episodes 1 & 2