Ripley ascribes this to normalcy bias-the belief that, in essence, since we look for patterns to understand our live, and a disaster is not part of our usual pattern, “this can’t be happening to me-things like this happen to other people.” This is buttressed by peer pressure-we “risk social embarrassment by overreacting. People ignore the problem or delay addressing it in any way with strategies such as laughter, or collecting their wholly unnecessary belongings. Ripley begins with “Denial.” Using numerous examples, including September 11th, she shows how rather than panicking as you see in the movies, the usual immediate response to a disaster is neither panic nor freezing, but cool lethargy. She divides all responses into three sequential broad reactions, what she calls “the survival arc”: “Denial,” “Deliberation,” and “The Decisive Moment,” and arranges her book accordingly (though noting that the dividing lines between stages are not always crisp). These range from the Halifax explosion of 1917 through the modern day. The author, Amanda Ripley, examines the responses of individuals (and groups, as collections of individuals) through the prism of numerous modern disasters, both natural and man-made. And we do not and will not solicit you we neither need nor accept money. If you subscribe will get a notification of all new writings by email. In these days of massive censorship, this is wise, even if you normally consume The Worthy House on some other platform. You can subscribe to writings published in The Worthy House. All of these accord with common sense, but the book goes into the whys and wherefores in an interesting and informative manner. Second, and related, “Above all, it is essential to take the initiative-to remember that you and your neighbors must save yourselves.” Third, maximizing your self-confidence and perceiving yourself as the captain of your fate, if you can, hugely increase your chances of survival.

First, by default, ignore anything those in charge say during a disaster, especially any instructions they give you. You can boil down the survival advice in this book to three principles.

Few are easy to change-but any bit helps, I suppose. Some are merely extremely difficult to change and in practice immutable for the individual, such as culture and education. Many of these are innate and wholly unchangeable, such as sex, intelligence and ability to absorb stress, each of which is a critical factor in survival.

And while the book accomplishes the goal of self-help for the attentive reader, even more it shows that who lives and who dies mostly results from characteristics of the individual. But the promised self-improvement isn’t better organization, inner peace or higher task efficiency rather it is increased odds of living through a disaster. The Unthinkable is basically a self-improvement manual.

The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley