"The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — and Why"
by Amanda Ripley
Crown, 266 pp., $24.95
Governments and corporations could save thousands of lives if they trusted ordinary people with vital information about disasters. That's the theme Amanda Ripley emphasizes in her new book, "The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — and Why."
This is about making it through — and helping others through — fire, plane crash, hurricane, earthquake or terrorist attack. It's also a critique of public policies that keep survival preparation in the hands of officials and shut out the ordinary citizens who do most of the lifesaving in a disaster.
As Ripley points out, the U.S. government has granted more than $18 billion to states and cities to upgrade homeland security since Sept. 11. But almost none has been used to teach ordinary people how to survive an attack. For example, she asks, "Why don't we tell people what to do when the nation is on Orange Alert against a terrorist attack — instead of just telling them to be afraid?"
The book is packed with first-person accounts of survival from the attacks on the World Trade Center, from Hurricane Katrina, from airline crashes and other large and small disasters. From hours of interviews with survivors and disaster experts, Ripley defines what she calls the "arc of survival," the stages of brain-freeze and recovery that victims undergo.
The common first stage is denial; a kind of protective coating seems to descend on the psyche, shutting out the awful truth. This is the fatal mind-set that kept victims of Sept. 11 sitting at their desks in the World Trade Center, checking e-mails and making phone calls instead of heading for the stairwells.
Ripley describes the second stage as deliberation — "We know something is terribly wrong but we don't know what to do about it."
In the third stage, which the author describes as the decisive moment, individuals may become the victims of panic or paralysis, or act quickly to save their own and others' lives. Ripley describes moments when understanding this sequence and being ready for it — practicing escape routes, for example — has saved lives in the most awful situations.
Too often, public and private authorities are so anxious to keep customers or constituents from worrying about their safety that they avoid explaining in detail what steps to follow when the worst happens. Or they assume that only officialdom can be trusted to react properly. A glaring example is that of the London subway terrorist attacks, in which passengers had no way to let train drivers know there'd been an explosion; train doors could be opened only by transit authorities, from the outside; and first-aid kits were kept in the offices of safety officials, rather than on the trains.
Coping with terrorism demands even more initiative from regular people than do other hazardous situations, Ripley argues. Yet the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) keeps no record of how many people have received training in its volunteer programs. DHS maintains a somewhat insipid Web site (www.ready.gov) with such helpful hints as "During a nuclear incident it is important to avoid radioactive material if possible."
As a longtime staff writer for Time magazine, Ripley evidences a reporter's need to know everything about a story before writing it. In "The Unthinkable," she digs into the biological and social evolutions that cause us to make smart or terrible decisions under stress. She also suggests how we can train our brains and those of others to choose survival.
See Also
