The Art of Manliness - From Plane Crashes to Terrorist Attacks — Who Survives, and Why

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.040 you're on an airplane that crash lands smoke fills the cabin and you only got seconds to react

00:00:16.860 how would you respond would you immediately take action or freeze in place while you might think

00:00:22.980 you know how a scene like this would play out from watching movies the reality of what occurs

00:00:26.620 in the aftermath of a disaster is quite a bit different and that knowledge gap could prove

00:00:31.380 deadly my guest amanda ripley spent years researching how humans actually respond in

00:00:36.520 emergencies interviewing their survivors as well as leading researchers in her book the unthinkable

00:00:42.260 who survives when disaster strikes and why she uncovers the myths and realities of survival

00:00:47.620 psychology and explores the individual and structural factors that shape people's outcomes

00:00:52.080 and unexpected crises today amanda explains why the biggest threat during an emergency isn't panic 0.96

00:00:57.680 but passivity and how to overcome the tendency to be overly complacent and compliant we discuss why

00:01:02.980 you might actually want to read the airplane safety card what we can learn from the surprising calm that

00:01:07.480 prevailed in the world trade center towers on 9-11 how to improve your risk assessment what influences

00:01:13.040 if you'll act heroically in an emergency and much more this episode will give you plenty to think about

00:01:17.920 it could even make the difference in how you respond if you're ever faced with the unthinkable

00:01:21.820 after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash disaster

00:01:25.900 all right amanda ripley welcome to the show thanks for having me brett good to be here

00:01:44.560 so back in 2008 you put out a book called the unthinkable and it's all about the psychology

00:01:51.860 and sociology of disasters and survivals how humans behave in a disaster situation

00:01:59.460 what was the original spark behind the book the unthinkable well way back for the original version of the book

00:02:05.360 i had been covering disaster after disaster after disaster for time magazine at the time

00:02:11.340 from 9-11 in manhattan to hurricanes katrina and rita in new orleans to european heat wave that

00:02:18.700 it's easy to forget killed 50 000 people in europe one summer um so it just seemed like we were doing

00:02:25.740 a lot of stories about loss and grief and blame but there was one kind of story that we didn't do as

00:02:32.840 much which was what can we learn from the survivors of these things like what did actually feel like

00:02:39.160 physically mentally even socially to survive a disaster and what i had noticed interviewing

00:02:46.340 survivors is that every single one had things they wish they had known things that they wanted

00:02:51.360 the rest of us to know so that's what led me to write the book and then you recently came out with

00:02:55.960 an updated version why updated nearly 20 years later well it's funny it wasn't my idea i wish i could

00:03:01.780 say it was but basically during the pandemic the publisher noticed an uptick in sales and they reached

00:03:09.340 out to me to say hey this book could probably use an update i mean it's actually kind of astounding how

00:03:16.720 much had changed since 2008 i mean you know that was before smartphones social media uh before like the

00:03:24.400 level political polarization we have before so many things that have changed since then and of course

00:03:30.880 the pandemic itself being a massive global disaster made it feel like yeah we we gotta update this thing

00:03:37.860 before you began researching and writing this book way way back how did you think people typically

00:03:44.180 responded in disasters and emergency situations it's a good question i mean i think i thought it was

00:03:51.420 like in the movies you know i mean i thought like that people would kind of panic and freak out and you

00:03:59.140 know just behave terribly and it was really it was really the interviews with probably starting with the

00:04:07.040 survivors of the world trade center after 9-11 who piqued my curiosity because they said actually it was

00:04:14.200 like really quiet and calm in the stairwells and people were moving really slowly so it wasn't

00:04:21.420 the kind of mayhem that i had expected and that was kind of one of the first things where i was like

00:04:26.160 huh there's more here that i don't understand yeah and something you the argument you make in the book

00:04:31.620 is that our erroneous understanding of how humans behave in disasters i think people have that typical

00:04:36.800 idea that you had like oh but there's a disaster everyone just freaks out um but that erroneous

00:04:41.880 understanding actually contributes to us not being prepared for them yeah it's much more insidious than it

00:04:49.700 seems like probably one of the biggest threats to our civilization is the low expectations that

00:05:02.640 the people in charge have for us and that we have for each other in disaster so it sounds dramatic the

00:05:10.420 way i'm saying it but again and again and again in my reporting i saw examples of people in positions of

00:05:16.800 authority assuming that the public was going to panic and freak out and so then not sharing facts

00:05:24.280 with them and not helping them make informed decisions because of that distrust for the public

00:05:30.160 which of course then runs both ways right the public distrusts authority figures and that distrust

00:05:36.980 is a major feature of the updated version of the book because it's gotten so much worse

00:05:43.460 since the book first came out and it's unto itself a significant threat yeah a point you make is that

00:05:50.580 because people in authority mistrust the public that oh these are a bunch of just crazy people who just

00:05:56.300 they've lost their minds we can't trust them instead of dealing with the people problem dealing with

00:06:01.320 the humans what they typically resort to is well how can we use technology or how can we manipulate

00:06:06.980 the environment to get people to do what we want for them disasters are technology issue not a human

00:06:13.240 issue exactly and i think that's i mean we see that a lot right in education and other fields where we

00:06:18.220 think if we can just invest enough gear then we can save ourselves and and it really wildly

00:06:25.160 underestimates i and i speak for myself i wildly underestimated the human factor as you say you know

00:06:31.140 it's we have a lot of incredible tools now to help us get out of harm's way the thing we are not doing

00:06:39.680 is incorporating psychology into how to use those tools because it doesn't matter how good your

00:06:45.640 forecasting is or how incredible your vaccines are if people don't trust you and you don't trust them

00:06:52.340 yes i know we'll talk about special forces guys today because that's some of the people you talk to

00:06:56.580 in researching this book but i know they have a maxim that's it's humans over hardware so when

00:07:02.840 they're planning a mission they don't worry about the tool so much those can come in handy but you got

00:07:08.140 to think about the human element first yeah and that's one of the interesting things is that you'll see

00:07:12.840 a lot of the research and reporting in the book comes from two categories which are military research

00:07:20.200 u.s military research but also other places and then also plane crash analyses and and the reason

00:07:26.480 for that is that those are two areas in which researchers have really been investing in

00:07:32.580 trying to understand human psychology under duress and in other places there's much less of that so even

00:07:39.220 though plane crashes are not likely to happen we can learn a lot about human behavior under duress

00:07:44.860 because you know psychologists and sociologists have looked really closely at these disasters

00:07:51.620 so you organize the book along what you call the survival arc it's this process that we all go

00:07:57.020 through whenever we encounter a disaster the three parts of the arc are denial deliberation and decisive

00:08:03.440 action let's talk about denial first you mentioned you talked to survivors of the world trade

00:08:08.960 center attacks and the thing that surprised you was just like how slow people were and then survivors

00:08:15.840 describing how people kind of acted like nothing was wrong initially so tell us more about that like

00:08:23.320 what was the typical response of someone like they felt the building kind of rock and shake they heard a

00:08:27.600 loud explosion what did people do because i would think oh man get out of there as soon as possible that

00:08:32.800 didn't happen right no so there is a kind of immediate return to normalcy so your brain tries to fit what's

00:08:41.280 happening into everything that's happened before which makes total sense and works 99 of the time

00:08:45.840 right and if you haven't been in a disaster like that or trained for it in a realistic way then your

00:08:52.140 brain will try to just put it away and carry on so in this case you know i talk about elia zedeno who

00:09:00.700 was a survivor from the world trade center and she said you know the building just rocked i mean in a way

00:09:08.080 it had never before when that first plane hit and she remembers grabbing onto her desk at her cubicle

00:09:13.420 to port authority and lifting her feet up off the ground and yelling what is going on because it 1.00

00:09:18.740 really felt like it was going to fall over so it was not a normal or subtle experience but yet she said

00:09:25.680 later everything in her body wanted someone to yell back nothing it's fine and kind of return to

00:09:34.040 normalcy and so she felt herself not wanting to evacuate but luckily in her case somebody yelled

00:09:41.680 back get out of the building which is a great example of how like assertive commands can break

00:09:48.100 through that initial denial but even then she found herself sort of walking in circles looking for

00:09:53.440 things to take with her which is very normal we see this on plane crashes as well like people want to 0.90

00:09:58.700 you know they're delaying they're delaying the evacuation for different reasons including let me just

00:10:03.480 note that in the world trade center in certain parts of that complex people heard official

00:10:10.000 commands to stay in place which was the protocol for skyscraper disasters so literally they're being

00:10:16.240 told not to evacuate in some cases in other cases we just procrastinate leaving even when there's smoke

00:10:22.840 filling the ceiling and there are good reasons for this but it can be really dangerous so it's something

00:10:27.480 to kind of expect and notice i yeah i can notice it in myself now i'll notice that i'm kind of not

00:10:34.560 reacting and that i'm hoping it goes away and i'll try to push through that phase yeah that was one of

00:10:40.080 the biggest takeaways from the book and i think about it all the time that normalcy bias like we all have

00:10:45.380 it i have to remind myself if something crazy happens in my day-to-day life like a disaster an emergency

00:10:51.240 i have to remind myself my initial reaction is gonna be like oh yeah this is i'll try to figure out a

00:10:56.620 way like how everything is normal i'll try to convince myself that everything's okay yeah when

00:11:00.720 it's not and i think about this a lot my wife and i think about this a lot and we get on an airplane

00:11:05.220 because you talk about one of the things they found in airplane crashes whenever there's an accident

00:11:09.640 and people are able to get out well that's another myth that people have about airplane crashes

00:11:14.220 most of them are actually pretty survivable except for the we always see the really catastrophic ones

00:11:18.560 but a lot of ones you have a chance to get out before the plane goes up in flames but one thing

00:11:24.660 that happens is people just kind of sit there even though the plane's on fire and they're just acting

00:11:29.900 like nothing's going on yeah it was a real mystery for a while when there were more plane crashes

00:11:36.560 happening like in the 70s and researchers and forensics teams would find people just sitting in their seats

00:11:42.920 you know they just died from the smoke but they were on the ground they just had to get out of the

00:11:47.680 plane and they hadn't gotten out fast enough but before we talk about that let me go back to your

00:11:52.460 other point which is that actually most serious plane accidents are survivable which is fairly

00:11:59.540 shocking right and but the statistics are very clear that of all passengers involved in serious

00:12:04.760 accidents between 1983 and 2017 i think it is 59 percent survived 59 percent survived and serious is

00:12:14.040 defined there by the national transportation safety board as accidents involving fire severe injury and

00:12:19.740 substantial aircraft damage so you know that is serious and yet 59 percent of people survive but

00:12:26.220 survival depends often on the behavior of the passengers and so that's what these researchers have learned

00:12:33.740 from these different plane crashes is that people will especially if they've been trained to become

00:12:40.300 passive victims which i think we probably have by the time you get on an airplane right if you make it

00:12:45.800 through tsa and everything else you're kind of beaten down and you're not in charge and you know that

00:12:51.020 right and so that influences our behavior and so when something goes wrong it's very easy to kind of fall into

00:12:57.320 this strange sort of lethargy which researchers call negative panic interestingly so it's not that we

00:13:04.000 start you know punching each other out and and i mean that can happen but it's very rare much more likely is

00:13:10.580 we just don't move okay what else is going on psychologically so there's the normalcy bias

00:13:16.020 there's this negative panic anything else going on that causes that sort of just we're not doing

00:13:21.340 anything taking action whenever we see a disaster happen yeah this is an interesting one because the

00:13:27.900 research on this is that like pretty much every mammal that's ever been tested freezes if it faces what

00:13:36.280 it perceives to be a serious threat and doesn't know how to get out right so they feel trapped

00:13:43.600 and they're frightened so the animal research on this kind of coincides with the human research which is

00:13:51.100 that we do kind of shut down under an extreme threat especially when we feel trapped and

00:13:59.020 there could be good evolutionary reasons for that right like you know you always hear that old like

00:14:05.080 playing dead that you know if you're being attacked by a predator and the predator thinks you're dead

00:14:10.200 then you're less appealing it's hard to sort out right what is causing what here and what is adaptive

00:14:16.920 and what is not except that we know in many modern catastrophes where you need to evacuate out of a

00:14:24.060 city or a plane or whatever it is that response doesn't serve you well typically so how do you overcome

00:14:32.880 those biases of inaction whenever you encounter a disaster there are at least two good answers to

00:14:41.120 that and probably many more but the first is assertive commands really help so if you are in a situation

00:14:49.360 where you know something is not right and you are very uh kind of clear sometimes yelling to other

00:14:57.580 people that they need to get out they will often kind of snap out of it and move people often become

00:15:03.800 really compliant in disasters because evolutionarily it's in our interest to stick with the group

00:15:10.240 and so leadership can be really effective and kind of piercing that lethargy um the other thing and of

00:15:17.520 course you know you're counting on the leader to know what they're doing right because you could be

00:15:20.720 led poorly in the wrong direction but this is how they now train flight attendants is if there is an

00:15:28.840 emergency evacuation they really do scream at you and i did go through some training with them they

00:15:33.460 scream at you to not take your bags to unbuckle your seatbelt to get off the plane and it does kind 0.60

00:15:39.120 of focus the mind so that is the good news the other thing that really helps is any kind of training or

00:15:44.820 even just situational awareness so if you've counted the number of rows between you and the closest

00:15:50.020 emergency exit in advance you know which i just do i'm waiting for the plane to take off because

00:15:55.080 of nothing else to do then that's kind of like in your brain and it might help you when you can't see

00:15:59.800 which is how so most plane crashes you end up on the ground but you have to get off really quickly and

00:16:05.020 smoke fills the plane really fast so you can't really see your hand in front of your face so knowing how

00:16:11.000 many rows and whether you should go forward or back is is really helpful and even better is having

00:16:16.640 some muscle memory for evacuating let's say you work in a skyscraper if you haven't taken the stairs

00:16:21.640 you should do that at least try to take uh you know five or ten sets of stairs so you have the muscle

00:16:27.300 memory for doing that okay some things you can do um assertive command so if you see something

00:16:32.980 happening you see people kind of just milling about like start yelling at them it's for their good and

00:16:38.180 you're good because you know if they don't get out of the way you can't get out either and then also

00:16:42.660 practice but if you can't practice just like have a plan when you sit down i do that on the plane too

00:16:48.360 when i get on it's kind of morbid but i always i i look at the card and then i always look for the

00:16:53.460 exits and then i i kind of i mean i kind of go through a situation like what am i going to do

00:16:58.480 if there's an accident and i don't know how much it does but it helps me at least think about it

00:17:04.040 so that if that does happen i'll have something to do like i have an action plan right right so

00:17:09.740 you're not just become you don't just become a passive recipient of the disaster i think that's

00:17:16.000 right and i think even looking at the card is kind of interesting right my husband does that too and he

00:17:20.560 i think it it always like makes people around him kind of wonder what's going on you know because no

00:17:25.460 one looks at the card the safety briefing card but they are kind of interesting and it is funny how

00:17:30.820 different they are one from the next depending on the airline and some of them are really clear and

00:17:35.760 effective and some of them are hilarious and some of them are confusing but i do recommend that and

00:17:40.300 there is actually research that shows that people who have done that and or paid attention during the

00:17:45.180 safety briefing do have a better chance of survival because it's just kind of like you have something

00:17:49.520 to work with yeah i like to look at the card just not only for preparation but the illustrations are

00:17:54.400 often funny yeah there's this one they had like this baby that looked like bobby hill from

00:18:00.540 king of the hill with like the inflatable thing yes yeah some of them are really classic so that's

00:18:06.960 that's good fun okay so besides this normalcy bias that causes us to not take action when a disaster

00:18:14.040 strikes another thing that contributes to us not taking action is we miscalculate the risk involved

00:18:21.000 in the situation and you talk about how that played out during hurricane katrina so what went on there

00:18:26.260 yeah i mean in general we don't look at risk as you know a sort of rational assessment we that's not

00:18:38.180 how humans are wired right so we we actually use an emotion that is called dread which i think is you know

00:18:45.380 well named and we sense how much dread we feel for any given risk and that dread equation is based on a

00:18:53.880 bunch of different factors if you break it down in the research and some of those factors are

00:18:58.480 how unfair the threat feels like it you know if it feels like particularly unfair for some terrible

00:19:06.400 thing to happen like a plane to drop out of the sky like just there's nothing you can do that's very

00:19:11.200 scary that's a lot of dread there or if it feels like a at scale right with a bus crash is scarier to

00:19:17.340 us than an individual car crash right even if you had 20 of them so scale matters the familiarity

00:19:23.100 matters our experiences in the past matter how much pain and suffering we think would be involved

00:19:29.580 matter that's why you know cancer seems to feel like more dreadful than maybe a heart attack so it's

00:19:36.900 worth just noticing the different variables that go into that i don't think we should expect that we

00:19:41.960 would be you know totally rational but it's worth noticing that and noticing if you want to dial down

00:19:50.440 the dread factor for a given risk that you just want to get more comfortable with breaking it into

00:19:55.600 those pieces can be helpful and seeing if you can lower any one of those variables as opposed to just

00:20:00.520 kind of gutting it out yeah i think that was interesting because that dread idea explains like why

00:20:05.740 we don't find driving in a car scary like we know that's a that's a good risk to take but airplanes

00:20:12.960 like oh man even though the research shows to show that you're more likely to die driving in a car than

00:20:19.240 flying in an airplane right and we see this happen after you know major disasters like after 9-11 and

00:20:25.000 during the pandemic a lot of people choose to drive instead of flying places because it feels so much

00:20:31.120 less dreadful yeah because when you're driving you have control like i'm i'm driving my car when

00:20:36.240 you're in a plane like i have no i'm in this tin can and i can't do anything right yeah exactly so

00:20:41.460 control is another important piece of it right like how much control do i have and then like the scale

00:20:46.620 destruction in an airplane crash just seems bigger than a car crash because you see what a plane crash

00:20:52.360 looks like on tv it's like oh my gosh it leaves a big giant hole in the ground and there's fire

00:20:56.020 everywhere a car crash your car just looks smashed up right that's it right yeah right and so we can

00:21:02.780 make a lot of mistakes that way right i mean and you know i always try to remind myself and my family

00:21:07.200 that driving to the airport is the scariest part of the trip like from a risk perspective and just

00:21:12.380 trying to remind ourselves of that so that we're a little more awake and vigilant but it's hard to do

00:21:17.960 i mean and we do make a ton of mistakes around i mean we know from the research that after 9-11

00:21:22.480 because driving felt safer and many people made that exchange about 2 302 additional americans

00:21:31.760 were likely killed because they drove instead of flying somewhere and that's a study by three

00:21:37.720 cornell university professors so you know again understandable but that's a good example of how

00:21:43.880 our risk perception doesn't always lead us to to safety well going back to hurricane katrina you

00:21:50.740 highlight that there's a lot of people who even though they got the warnings to evacuate and there

00:21:56.640 was actually like yeah you got to get out it was like a an order like you got to get out of here

00:22:00.520 they decided to stay put why did those individuals decide to stay put and how did a miscalculation of

00:22:07.600 risk contribute to that yeah so it's interesting i mean one of the frustrating things about disasters is

00:22:12.660 that the really good research doesn't come out until like years later when the news cycle has

00:22:17.540 totally moved on but we now know uh that age was the most important risk factor for katrina in

00:22:26.540 particular people older people i mean obviously other things mattered poverty mattered race mattered but

00:22:32.200 age mattered most older people did not evacuate and there were lots of reasons for that or they were

00:22:37.680 less likely to evacuate i should say lots of reasons for that but one reason is that they'd experienced a lot

00:22:44.500 of really bad hurricanes before so they assumed that this wouldn't be worse and they were right

00:22:51.340 which is important like they were not wrong hurricane katrina was not the strongest storm that the gulf

00:22:57.840 coast had experienced it's just we had changed the shape of the gulf coast like we had dense vertical

00:23:04.180 cities we'd removed a lot of the buffer that used to protect us from those storms from the coastline

00:23:09.680 so the storm was not more dangerous but it was we were more vulnerable because of the way we've

00:23:16.060 developed these cities so yeah in that case their risk analysis made sense and some and other you know

00:23:21.020 in many cases maybe they didn't have a way out in some cases in other cases they just you know didn't

00:23:26.240 want to sit in a car with six other people and a dog for 12 hours like they'd had bad evacuation

00:23:31.320 experiences which also is very salient right in the mind and the memory so they had different reasons

00:23:36.940 but age was a a real clear risk factor there so what do we do about our poor ability to calculate

00:23:44.120 risk how do we overcome that well this is where i think we need to do a better job helping each other

00:23:51.080 at this point you know we have a lot of data that could help us really rank the risk based on where we

00:23:58.720 live and how we live and what's important to us so it's a little frustrating to me that still i don't

00:24:04.280 see certainly the federal government has not done a great job of helping us with this there are some

00:24:09.620 siloed examples of you know some flood maps and different things that can help you but there's

00:24:14.160 not like one place you can go and plug in your information and know okay here's what i should be

00:24:20.700 most worried about here's what's most dangerous but least likely here's what's most likely and just

00:24:25.760 kind of help you sort out that risk if you want that help and there are lots of reasons for that but one

00:24:30.900 of the reasons is that typically the work in this area is very siloed so it's like there's people who

00:24:36.660 study floods and then there's people who study earthquakes and they're in separate worlds and so

00:24:41.920 even though really they should all be talking to each other and again the public should be part of that

00:24:47.480 conversation it's sometimes hard to find but there are some resources out there and i include some in

00:24:52.680 the book but it's not as easy to find as i think it should be because you can't just rely on your

00:24:57.920 intuition particularly when we live in such a densely populated interdependent world you just

00:25:03.780 can't go with your gut i wonder whenever i think about risk and thinking like how to calculate better

00:25:09.860 i often wonder if i start like studying probability be like nasim talib we've had on the podcast and you

00:25:14.960 interviewed him for your book like should i study like statistics would that make me better i mean did

00:25:20.500 you go down that rabbit hole like i'm going to learn probability so i can yeah be better at risk analysis

00:25:25.980 it sort of depends on your personality like my dad's some like computer scientist a mathematician

00:25:30.680 like people like that like they can for certain things they can do that you know and just really

00:25:36.080 go with the data but even they have huge blind spots like things that they don't that they're more

00:25:40.800 frightened of or less frightened of so i think it's i think it's tricky i will say interviewing people

00:25:45.820 who study risk analysis did help me a little with that because you just start to notice like i would

00:25:51.580 just ask every single one of them like given what you know what do you worry most about and the answers

00:25:57.260 were often aligned you know with their actual risk so you know what is most dangerous for most people

00:26:04.100 well it's pretty clear you know it's like car accident stroke heart attack cancer or suicide

00:26:12.140 like those are the things you know and then what about like quote-unquote natural hazards floods

00:26:17.080 are a huge huge problem extreme weather extreme storms so those are the things and they're not

00:26:23.940 always the same things that haunt us the same things that occupy our imagination but those are

00:26:29.220 the things that they tend to worry about most and i will say those interviews left me much more

00:26:33.600 anxious about driving regular driving in a car than i was before so i'm not sure it's great but i'm

00:26:39.880 more aware of that threat whether that's translated into you know a better behavior i don't know because

00:26:46.080 if you're more nervous about something that can lead to worse performance we're gonna take a quick

00:26:50.520 break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show so that's the denial part of this

00:26:58.280 survival arc so we have a tendency whenever we see a disaster or part of a disaster to resort to a

00:27:04.860 normalcy bias we're just like oh everything's fine i want everything to be fine we act like everything's

00:27:09.220 fine we're bad at miscalculating risks so that can also lead to an action let's move to the

00:27:14.700 deliberation phase of the survival arc and you start the section talking about the fear response we

00:27:21.060 kind of talked about a little bit earlier how you know all mammals have this fear response what's going

00:27:27.020 on physiologically in our body in our brain when we experience the fear response yeah so for that part

00:27:34.760 of the book i kind of tried to do a slow motion analysis of a shooting hostage taking event at an

00:27:43.840 embassy because i was able to talk to people on both sides of it like the hostage takers and the

00:27:51.080 hostages because it happened a while ago and kind of help piece together what they experienced because

00:27:56.660 you know it turns out the experience is very similar even though you're on opposite sides of that fight i

00:28:02.020 mean the human fear response is very primal so the first thing that happened in this case is that

00:28:08.520 one of the diplomats who was taken hostage she's at this party you know and it's a fancy event and

00:28:12.920 all of a sudden he hears gunshots and so when he detects that sound even before he realizes what's

00:28:20.100 happening a signal travels to his brain and the signal reaches his brainstem and passes on this

00:28:25.960 information to his amygdala which we've probably all heard about at this point which is sort of

00:28:30.140 central to managing threats and the amygdala then sets off a bunch of changes throughout your body

00:28:36.020 like you kind of transform into survival mode without any conscious decision making and there

00:28:43.240 are pros and cons to everything that happens next so you get certain superpowers and you lose certain

00:28:49.080 powers so you probably don't feel fear at this point he doesn't remember feeling afraid yet but your body is

00:28:55.980 subconsciously responding to this threat and that means the chemistry of your blood literally changes so

00:29:02.200 that it's able to coagulate more easily if need be your blood vessels constrict so you'll bleed less if

00:29:07.160 you get hurt your blood pressure your heart rate shoot up you get a bunch of hormones like a cocktail of

00:29:13.280 of hormones particularly cortisol and adrenaline that surge through your system and give your gross

00:29:19.360 motor muscles a sort of boost so that's important but again for every gift your brain gives you

00:29:25.900 in danger it takes one away you know you have limited resources so yes your muscles become

00:29:33.380 taught and ready and your body is creating its own natural painkillers but you lose the ability to reason

00:29:40.060 and perceive your surroundings so you just cannot think cortisol interferes with the part of the brain

00:29:46.640 that handles complex thinking and by complex i mean basically any thinking so we suddenly have trouble

00:29:51.980 solving problems like how to put on a life jacket or unbuckle a seat belt often survivors would tell

00:29:57.980 me about losing certain they lose peripheral vision that's almost guaranteed but sometimes they lose all

00:30:04.140 vision like they go temporarily blind or they lose their sense of hearing so it's it's a really mixed bag

00:30:11.280 but all these things are happening without your control but it's a it's a way to keep you alive

00:30:17.340 yeah the tunnel vision that's one thing that happens everything your focus narrows uh sometimes

00:30:22.340 people like they don't hear things they can't even hear loud bangs like guns that are fired right by

00:30:27.040 the ear they don't hear it which is wild because we don't think of hearing as something you can turn

00:30:32.420 off i mean you can't close your ears right but it turns out your brain can if it's motivated so yeah and

00:30:39.520 then complex motor skills go out the like so like i know this is a problem with uh soldiers or law

00:30:45.840 enforcement officers once they get into that sort of uh freeze mode they have a hard time manipulating

00:30:52.860 their gun and things like that and that can cause problems yeah like i talk in the book about a police

00:30:58.340 officer who was um running from someone with a gun and he actually dropped his weapon you know he's no

00:31:03.840 memory of him it's it's just you lose eye hand coordination so there was a study of 115 police officers

00:31:09.580 involved in a serious shooting and 90 reported having some kind of dissociative symptom like

00:31:16.240 numbing or loss of awareness or memory problems sometimes it feels like you're having an out-of-body

00:31:21.860 experience and again there's understandable reasons for that but um it's sort of your brain's

00:31:27.820 last line of defense and it's trying to help you survive but sometimes it it can be a liability

00:31:33.020 is there any variability in demographics and how people respond to highly stressful situations are

00:31:39.000 some people more prone to have the freeze response than others yeah i mean there's some research on this

00:31:47.040 and not a ton but from what we can tell there are some people who are just like weirdly immune

00:31:55.740 it's not that they don't get afraid it's not that their heart rate doesn't go up they still get those

00:31:59.560 things but they're able to recover more quickly and they don't go as far down that path so a little

00:32:07.920 bit of stress we know is good for you wakes you up gets you like going but too much and then you start

00:32:13.680 to get those negative side effects right where you can't think you can't operate so there's kind of

00:32:18.840 this green zone you want to be in that's somewhere in the middle and the military has found that there

00:32:24.580 are certain people especially people who end up in special operator roles who seem to be able to get

00:32:31.940 into that zone even under really extreme situations and there's a lot of like speculation about why and

00:32:39.380 how and but at the end of the day for most of us what we need to know is that relevant experience and

00:32:47.940 training can really help you get into that green zone you don't need to be a you know navy seal but

00:32:55.540 if you have a little bit of experience or training that helps a lot so that you can stay in that zone

00:33:01.140 the other thing that really helps and this is something the military uses sort of law enforcement

00:33:05.660 is practicing when you're not under stress practicing box breathing or different techniques that

00:33:12.980 the only way that we know of to kind of control your automatic fear response is through intentional

00:33:19.860 breathing and so that's something that you know is worth keeping in mind that if you want to kind of

00:33:26.020 find a way in the moment to to like control that fear response it's good to have practiced some form

00:33:33.980 of rhythmic breathing box breathing which you may know it's just you breathe in for four counts you hold for

00:33:38.840 four counts you exhale for four counts hold for four counts and then you just keep repeating it

00:33:43.840 yeah we've talked about box breathing on the podcast before i think it's a really useful tactic to keep 0.72

00:33:48.960 yourself calm whenever you have that initial fear response but how do you practice for disasters

00:33:54.120 because you had the opportunity to like go to oklahoma city where they have the faa like plane crash

00:34:01.240 school where they study plane crashes and you got to do a simulated plane crash how do you do that

00:34:07.100 if you're just a regular person well i always i used to have this dream that they would be like

00:34:11.260 a disaster a national disaster museum where everyone could try those things you know like play with the

00:34:16.900 stuff because there's like really amazing simulations out there oh did you mention this in the book there

00:34:21.580 was like someone who had the idea before you get on the plane like have a little area in the airport

00:34:26.180 where you could practice going down the the yellow slide and putting on the vest for kids for kids

00:34:31.080 actually yeah but they were like no we don't want to do because i'll just freak people out

00:34:34.640 right right which is such a shame because you know people are already scared a lot of people are

00:34:40.460 really scared of flying and they don't always talk about it because there's shame around it but

00:34:44.880 it's a real it's a real fear so so not talking about it doesn't help but i think there could be a lot

00:34:51.260 more creativity in helping people train for this stuff so it's less daunting um you know going down

00:34:57.360 those escape slides from planes are quite steep so like if you've never done it before you know it can

00:35:02.160 really give you pause at the top but i think if you've done it even once in your life like i really

00:35:06.700 think even once gives you that muscle memory and so you just jump but look to answer your question

00:35:13.020 in the meantime until we get the cool museums and the playgrounds at the airports i think it's first

00:35:18.800 thinking about two things what do you feel the most dread about like what are you most afraid of

00:35:24.120 and then second thing can you figure out what your biggest risk is given how you live your life

00:35:28.920 where you live because it's different right depending on different places and then trying

00:35:33.180 to find ways to if you can't train then at least really learn more about those threats so that

00:35:39.920 they're less terrifying a lot of this is kind of exposure therapy right the more you kind of in a

00:35:45.760 contained safe way can expose yourself in small doses to these things by learning about them the less

00:35:52.920 terrifying they might be i mean that doesn't mean you go watch like a horror movie about like you know

00:35:59.140 like a virus destroying everyone and think that's going to help you with a pandemic that's not what

00:36:03.700 i'm saying i'm saying like in sort of immerse yourself in sober like reliable trustworthy research

00:36:10.060 that's different than like in uh hollywood approach to this so i think that's something to think about is

00:36:15.660 like what is the thing you're most afraid of and what is the thing that is most likely to

00:36:20.280 threaten you and and what you hold dear and trying to learn more about what those things have looked

00:36:25.760 like in the past how you can prepare for them and what to do and what are the mistakes you make i mean

00:36:31.040 the good news is the behavior is the same like it's the same mistakes no matter what the threat is it's the

00:36:36.540 delay and the denial those are the things that are going to trip most of us up so just knowing that

00:36:43.860 even if you don't know what the threat's going to be can be helpful so uh yeah if your office does fire

00:36:49.400 drills take them seriously if they don't do fire drills like take the stairs instead of taking

00:36:55.500 the elevator to your office to get out of the office thank you brett for giving us like a

00:36:59.560 practical answer to that question i'm like going on and on and on and there's the answer like yeah

00:37:04.320 do the things that you can do take the drill seriously because your body needs some muscle

00:37:10.700 memory for this stuff and if you've never been in the stairwell if you know even when i'm in a

00:37:15.360 crowded theater or a crowded event um i'm noticing where the exits are and that's helpful so i think

00:37:21.980 taking those opportunities is really important and in the longer term taking every opportunity

00:37:27.820 to build relationship and trust with the people around you because those are going to be the people

00:37:33.980 that you're with those are the people who will save you or you'll need to save it's the people you

00:37:38.420 work with the people you live with in your neighborhood the strangers on the bus the people in your

00:37:43.380 community it's not going to be first responders because they just can't get there in time so

00:37:47.340 knowing that as i think has helped me also invest a little more in the place where i live and in those

00:37:54.940 community gatherings because i see them as a short and long-term investment let's start with this one

00:38:00.460 i always think about this incident that you talked about in the book the beverly hills supper club fire

00:38:05.560 now for those who aren't familiar with supper clubs this is like a thing in the midwest

00:38:10.240 where it's basically like a private dinner club for middle class people is what i've i've gathered

00:38:17.380 there's one that was kind of a little fancier called the beverly hills supper club big fire there

00:38:22.360 and use this to explore the sociology of disaster like how do we behave in groups whenever there's

00:38:28.860 disaster so what can the beverly hills supper club fire tell us about groupthink and disasters

00:38:35.060 yeah so this is a good example of how people behave when they're in a crowded place and not expecting

00:38:42.920 anything bad to happen so you're just not again your brain is going to try to fit everything that's

00:38:47.660 happening into what's happened before and it was studied pretty carefully by some sociologists so it's

00:38:53.580 a really useful example but on the night of may 28th 1977 this beverly hills supper club which was

00:39:01.100 just south of cincinnati um a very you know kind of regal place filled with ballrooms and fountains

00:39:08.140 and gardens um and it was hosting many different events you know there was a wedding there was a you

00:39:14.480 know big dinner happening all different things happening in this place all of which were sort of

00:39:20.240 you know the opposite of a disaster and that's important because again your brain doesn't see it

00:39:25.420 coming but this fire it's an electrical fire had started in one room and it really tore through

00:39:31.940 the whole complex very quickly and at the time there were almost 3 000 people packed into the club

00:39:39.360 because i think it was memorial day weekend so it was really crowded there were like there was a dog

00:39:44.940 owners club on one in one room having a banquet in the crystal room and then doctors group were

00:39:51.640 together in the viennese room all these different groups there was like 400 people for an awards

00:39:56.840 banquet and then most of the remainder of the guests most of the guests were in the cabaret room which

00:40:02.200 was a ballroom and most of the people who died would die in that room in all the fire killed 167

00:40:08.880 people and so it became this mystery like what had happened here what could have gone differently so this

00:40:16.020 wouldn't happen again and became very closely studied by safety engineers to try to understand

00:40:22.060 how did this happen and there were some really hopeful lessons one that really stands out to me is that

00:40:28.420 the waiters and waitresses went to incredible lengths to get people out on average i talk about a bus

00:40:35.980 boy who really put himself at risk over and over again going back into the smoke to pull people out

00:40:41.860 cooks bus boys all these people men and women and that's partly because when your role is to be helpful

00:40:50.920 and be the host in a situation and then a disaster happens you tend to still obey according to that

00:40:57.740 role so if your role though is to be a guest at a banquet you're in a more passive position and you

00:41:04.940 also continue to play that role in the disaster so it's kind of interesting to see how that continues

00:41:11.620 now there was also denial there were people who are just not reacting but many of those employees

00:41:16.780 just behaved magnificently above and beyond what you would expect the problems included the fact

00:41:22.660 there were just not enough exits in the club and they were really hard to find and that was true of

00:41:26.740 the world trade center that's true of a lot of places like these places aren't really designed for

00:41:29.820 humans often like they're just kind of like mazes and so you know it it created in addition to

00:41:37.060 denial right it created dangerous delay so these sociologists norris johnson and william feinberg who

00:41:43.980 were professors at the university of cincinnati nearby they got really curious about what happened

00:41:49.740 here and they just you know dug into the research and found that an estimated 60 percent of the

00:41:56.640 employees had tried to help in some way but only 17 percent of the guests had helped so again your role

00:42:03.460 at the time really really matters and you talked about when guests did help they had a social role

00:42:12.060 as a helper like they're either a doctor or a nurse or an emt if they were that in their daily life then

00:42:19.640 they were like they were more prone to be a helper but if they weren't they weren't going to do anything

00:42:23.280 yeah like remember i said there were those doctors dining at the club they started administering cpr

00:42:28.760 and dressing wounds and nurses did the same thing there was even a hospital administrator there who

00:42:33.840 you know began organizing doctors and nurses so the kind of overarching lesson from the beverly hills

00:42:39.580 supper club fire is how well most people performed you know they thought they were going to find

00:42:46.300 pushing and chaos and selfish behavior but actually it was really orderly almost to a fault like people

00:42:53.640 were staying in line not pushing you know queuing up to get out and helping each other particularly

00:42:59.760 when they were in that role going into the event so it was not what they expected and it was one of the

00:43:05.880 big kind of eye-opening moments where we started questioning the hollywood stereotype about how people

00:43:14.200 behave in fact if anything the problems with the world trade center evacuation included the fact that people went

00:43:20.800 too slowly we tend to get very polite to strangers in these situations because we're scared and we need

00:43:27.440 each other yeah so i mean maybe the lesson there is if you are in a disaster scenario you have to

00:43:32.780 remind yourself i will probably default to my social role in this situation and that might not be the best

00:43:38.900 thing to do right right yeah like if you're an official role or in a helper type job for your day job

00:43:44.980 you may default to stepping up and taking action but if you're a guest somewhere you know a customer

00:43:50.640 know that you are apt to be passive and compliant and you may need to make an extra effort to snap

00:43:58.280 yourself out of just being passive another way your social role in a situation can affect your behavior

00:44:03.580 and i think about this all the time let's say you're you're in a restaurant or in a grocery store

00:44:08.700 and there's an active shooter situation the closest exit might be through the kitchen or through the

00:44:16.820 back of the grocery store but because you're in customer mode you're thinking i can only go through

00:44:21.820 the front door i can't go through the employee exit but then you have to remember that in an emergency

00:44:28.240 social roles are off the table i mean you can break social norms you got to get to the nearest exit

00:44:34.060 whether you're an employee or not right the sort of rule bound folks in the room are going to have to

00:44:39.800 like overcome that and and it's even true in a very small ways like you know just a few months ago i was

00:44:45.560 walking around washington dc where i live in dupont circle which is a you know pretty safe like affluent

00:44:51.480 neighborhood and it was like on a tuesday afternoon and just sunny day nothing big going on and i was

00:44:57.120 just walking down the street and i heard a gunshot at pretty close range and i looked around i couldn't

00:45:02.060 figure out where i was coming from but what was weird is everyone around me just kept walking and like

00:45:07.960 people were sipping their coffee and people were chatting and people were on their phones and it was

00:45:11.980 like it hadn't happened and then you know i remember i'm like okay just because no one else

00:45:18.480 is reacting doesn't mean they're right it's just they don't expect it here you know in this neighborhood

00:45:24.360 it's not your brain is just moved right past it so i again i couldn't figure out where it'd come from

00:45:29.600 but i knew i'd been in there on enough guns that i knew that was a gunshot and so i i just i knew it

00:45:34.840 wasn't coming from the subway so i just went down into the subway to leave the area and it was in fact

00:45:40.440 one driver shot another and anyway what i did not do was start screaming for everyone to run and clear

00:45:46.960 the area like i didn't take it that far maybe i should have maybe i shouldn't have i didn't hear

00:45:51.440 additional shots but you know it's like you're in the moment trying to balance like am i right or am

00:45:57.700 i overreacting here and you just usually don't know until it's too late is the thing you don't know

00:46:02.200 yeah that's another reason people don't take action because they don't want to be the weirdo

00:46:06.700 right it's like overreacting yeah cause you know people to think you're just like hypersensitive or

00:46:12.240 you know and i think the reality is if you're going to be that guy or that woman who does say

00:46:17.740 we get to evacuate for this fire drill even though you all think it's a joke people are going to think

00:46:22.080 you're the weirdo and that's that's probably worth it but there is a little bit of social

00:46:26.340 pressure that that you will face in that situation and so you don't want to you know make permanent

00:46:32.140 mistakes there that put people in more jeopardy but it is worth taking on a little bit of that

00:46:37.000 peer pressure and pushing through we've been talking about how most people in a disaster they're actually

00:46:41.220 very polite they're docile but occasionally panic does happen and you look at the muslim hajj what that 1.00

00:46:49.540 can teach us about panic and why it happens in groups so tell us about that i thought this was

00:46:54.180 really fascinating yeah so it's not that panic never happens and sometimes it's kind of annoying

00:47:00.300 because researchers on this will like constantly downplay and i think that's a mistake because i know

00:47:05.680 that what they're trying to do they're trying to make us less prone to assume there'll be panic but

00:47:10.100 that doesn't mean that it never happened so it's important to talk about when it does happen and why

00:47:16.040 the research on this is basically like yeah panic rarely happens but i think people feel panicky

00:47:23.460 in disasters like that's true when you're afraid you know your heart races your palms sweat your breath

00:47:29.400 is short that feels panicky that's not the same thing as like mobs of people freaking out so it's

00:47:35.800 almost like the word is inadequate to the task but when we're actually looking at okay when do groups of

00:47:41.360 people behave in an antisocial way it's usually when they feel trapped and like they might get out but

00:47:49.420 they might not and they also are in a system that they think is corrupt so there's certain conditions

00:47:55.640 that have to be met like they don't trust the setting and they think they may not get out so

00:48:03.220 there's kind of zero-sum situation but in the hajj so the hajj that you mentioned there's been like

00:48:09.480 series of really really tragic crowd crushes that have happened in the pilgrimages to that happened to

00:48:16.440 the hajj and for a long time some of the people in charge would blame the victims and say that they

00:48:23.500 had misbehaved and this is something you hear a lot after crowd crushes and the research on this

00:48:30.140 is pretty clear that that's that's not what happened that basically usually in crowd crushes

00:48:35.140 and stampedes like that first of all it's just too dense there are too many people in too small a space

00:48:40.280 so the design and management of the crowd is a problem and then what happens is you kind of lose

00:48:45.620 control over your bodily movements because it's so tight and then someone falls down up ahead of you

00:48:51.440 and then that causes other people to sort of surge forward right because they don't know that

00:48:57.300 someone's falling down so it's a lack of communication on top of everything else in the way most people

00:49:02.600 die in crowd crushes is asphyxiation it's not that people are trampling you with all that that happens

00:49:08.500 but it's that you don't get enough air and the compounding force of many rows of people behind you

00:49:14.500 in big crowds it's like a mack truck i mean the pressure on the people in front and if they don't

00:49:21.440 know that people have fallen they just kind of keep moving forward in the direction they were already

00:49:25.360 moving and then that compounds that pressure so this might look like panic and then of course people

00:49:31.080 are struggling to breathe and to get to the top of the pile it might look like panic but it's not like

00:49:37.700 people are punching each other out and misbehaving it's like people are getting really pressed to

00:49:44.160 death and so that's a design and crowd management problem it's not really uh that the people

00:49:50.460 themselves misbehaved and it sounds like they've taken measures to reduce or prevent those type of

00:49:57.880 things happening during the haj right yeah because they've learned it's a physics problem you know like

00:50:02.260 that is a physics problem you need to design and manage the crowd differently and a lot of big crowd

00:50:07.900 events if you look at times square in new york city on new york's eve they are managed really well you

00:50:13.520 want like a square meter around you of space and if you have less than that you can get in trouble

00:50:18.800 so the advice to individuals is look if you're in a really crowded situation try to to slowly gradually

00:50:25.300 move to the edge of the crowd where you have a little less a little lower odds of getting crushed

00:50:30.180 but the best advice is to the organizers of these events right is you really have to be able to

00:50:35.180 communicate with the crowd and keep people from getting into too dense of a scenario and that's

00:50:40.680 what they've gotten much better at at the haj although there are still problems okay so we've

00:50:44.840 talked about the first two parts of the survival arc there's denial people often don't immediately

00:50:50.100 recognize the danger or you know downplay its seriousness they may freeze delay action you know just carry

00:50:57.880 on like nothing's wrong then there's deliberation and that's when people begin to assess what's

00:51:04.120 happening and consider their options and sometimes if people are overwhelmed by stress or if they're

00:51:09.380 unprepared they get stuck in deliberation but but hopefully maybe if you've rehearsed the scenario

00:51:17.000 before you can stay calm and then you can enter into the third part of the survival arc and that's

00:51:22.500 decisive action and one thing you talk about in this part of the book is that some people don't

00:51:29.060 just take action to save themselves but they try to save others and we talked about this a little

00:51:34.440 before that people sometimes help others in an emergency but let's talk more about when people are

00:51:40.080 out and out heroes they may not even be directly involved in the situation that's going on but they may

00:51:45.400 jump in and risk their lives to save someone else what did you learn about that like why would

00:51:51.360 someone who doesn't even know the person who's you know in the freezing cold water drowning why would

00:51:57.780 they jump in and try to save that person yeah i mean the research on this is really like frustrating

00:52:04.080 like there's not it's very hard because one person's hero who jumped in and saved someone else can be

00:52:09.780 another disaster's victim or like fool like if you jump into a really threatening situation and die or make

00:52:16.360 things worse then it's a different storyline so it's really tricky but i did try to find research

00:52:22.640 that is out there and first of all i interviewed a lot of people that other people have called heroes

00:52:27.660 and if you ask them why they did what they did they invariably say the same thing they say they had no

00:52:33.480 choice which is interesting like they're universally uncomfortable with the label hero they attribute their

00:52:40.280 actions to the situation rather than their own profile so they say like how could i watch a man drown

00:52:46.600 or starve or burn to death so for them the fear of not acting is worse than the fear of acting and both are

00:52:53.440 scary so it's not it's not like they're not scared it's just you know given their training given their

00:52:59.600 background giving their identity like who they think they are in this world they can't live with

00:53:05.320 themselves if they don't try so that's some of what we know is that on average again this research

00:53:13.000 is really thin but from what we can tell a lot of people who are celebrated in the media as heroes

00:53:18.580 from events like this are much more likely to be young single men that could be partly because they

00:53:26.440 don't have families so maybe they have less at risk it could be because men are more likely to work 0.52

00:53:32.840 outside and in situations where these types of things happen that get a lot of media coverage

00:53:37.180 they might be they have an identity that they're someone who's not supposed to just sit quietly by

00:53:42.060 and watch someone else die so there's a lot of possible reasons there including you know there's

00:53:46.960 some fun evolutionary reasons about why why young men would do that because it you know raises their

00:53:53.000 status in the group and that would make sense but it's a lot of speculation right now yeah and it sounds

00:54:00.280 like to the people who have this idea that you know they they couldn't not act like they had to do

00:54:05.000 something uh it sounds like from what you talk about in the book like when they were growing up

00:54:10.580 they they really had a good relationship with their parents and their parents always impressed upon them

00:54:16.540 you know you're a helper like you you're always going to do what you can for others and then they

00:54:21.420 carry that over into heroic situations yeah it could be or like the doctors and nurses right from the

00:54:27.320 beverly hills supper club fire like yeah if you've got the mindset that you're a helper then you're

00:54:31.980 going to carry that with you um so you end the book talking about this guy named rick rescorla i

00:54:37.760 worked at the world trade center and you kind of use him as like this is the guy that we should look at

00:54:43.520 to see how to really prepare ourselves and others for the unthinkable so what can rick tell us or teach

00:54:50.460 about that yeah rick rescorla is a really interesting person who was the head of security for morgan

00:54:57.500 stanley which had a massive presence at the world trade center um and he was a you know former soldier

00:55:05.800 who worked on security and spent many years at morgan stanley he had fought in vietnam earned a bunch of

00:55:13.120 medals and eventually you know settled into this role but he still kind of brought with them that

00:55:19.260 mindset that he had learned in the military he knew that morgan stanley was vulnerable like it

00:55:24.820 occupied 22 floors of tower two that's like a small city basically and after the 1988 bombing of pan-am

00:55:32.540 flight 103 over locker b scotland he got really focused on the threat of a terrorist attack at the

00:55:38.300 trade center and so he brought up one of his buddies to new york city who did counterterrorism work

00:55:44.000 in 1990 and asked him you know where are the vulnerabilities that you see here and his friend

00:55:49.400 saw the trade center's garage and he said oh well this is a no-brainer i would just drive a truck full

00:55:54.920 of explosives into the garage and walk out so rick and his friend wrote this report to the port

00:55:59.960 authority explaining their concerns and trying to get more security in the parking garage not a lot of

00:56:04.960 things happened according to rick nothing happened really the port authority did not respond to my

00:56:10.300 requests for comment but in any event three years later ramzi yusuf drove a truck full of explosives

00:56:15.780 into the underground parking garage of the world trade center and that was the first terrorist attack

00:56:19.460 at the trade center that led to a really disastrous evacuation so while it wasn't very deadly it was

00:56:26.180 truly traumatic for a lot of people because it took many many hours for people to evacuate

00:56:31.180 the stairwells were not well lit and ventilated so now rick had you know real conviction that things

00:56:39.160 needed to change and he didn't trust the port authority which ran the trade center so he did

00:56:43.660 something that almost no one else did which was he trusted the people in the company to save

00:56:50.320 themselves you know morgan stanley was the largest tenant in the world trade center and so he decided

00:56:55.620 they were gonna have to take care of each other and so from then on no visitors were allowed in the

00:56:59.480 office without an escort and he made sure they knew where the stairwell was on their first day so they

00:57:05.040 knew how to get out of there he told his employees not to listen to instructions from the port authority

00:57:10.600 in a real emergency because it had lost all legitimacy for him and most importantly he started running the

00:57:15.880 entire company through frequent surprise fire drills which was remains extremely unusual and he actually had

00:57:23.760 people go down the stairs two by two go down several sets of stairways and he insisted that the highest

00:57:30.580 floors evacuate first and not let the lower floors in front of them which is actually a big problem a lot

00:57:36.880 of evacuations because it takes forever so this is someone who had like advanced understanding of

00:57:41.600 human behavior and also incredible faith in his colleagues in the public basically he knew that if people had

00:57:48.540 the training they can become really expert in getting out of places and helping each other and you know he was

00:57:56.460 right so on the morning of 9 11 he knew that another plane had hit the other tower and he grabbed his

00:58:02.920 walkie-talkie and he started to order an evacuation had already started like the Morgan Stanley employees

00:58:09.080 knew not to wait for someone to tell them to go to safety and already started they knew where the

00:58:14.720 stairwells were which was pretty unusual in the trade center it was kind of confusing for different

00:58:19.140 reasons and then when people started getting scared in the stairwell because another plane hit he started

00:58:24.820 singing songs through his bullhorn which is something he had done to calm his soldiers in Vietnam and he

00:58:31.460 sung songs in the stairwell and there's a picture of him doing that in the book and people remember that

00:58:36.260 and when the tower collapsed only 13 Morgan Stanley employees were inside the other 2,687 were safe which

00:58:45.760 was quite extraordinary and unfortunately Rick and a handful of his security colleagues had gone back in

00:58:52.260 to get some stragglers so they were they were killed that day but it's it's an incredible story of what

00:58:57.920 can happen when you trust regular people to train for bad things to happen and to help each other

00:59:04.200 well Amanda this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book and your

00:59:08.680 work you can check out more about the book and my work at amandaripley.com fantastic well Amanda

00:59:14.500 Ripley thanks for time it's been a pleasure thanks for having me my guest today was Amanda Ripley she's the author of 0.71

00:59:20.020 the book the unthinkable it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find

00:59:24.060 more information about her work at our website amandaripley.com also check out our show notes

00:59:28.460 at aom.is slash disaster we find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:59:32.920 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

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01:00:03.900 remind you to listen to anyone podcast but put what you've heard into action

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The Art of Manliness - July 29, 2025

From Plane Crashes to Terrorist Attacks — Who Survives, and Why

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