15/07/2017 BBC - Future - What not to do in a disaster

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Survival is less about heroic actions than avoiding mindless mistakes.

By Zaria Gorvett
12 July 2017

Ill never forget the sound. The sound of metal crunching, says George Larson, a passenger on
Indian Airlines Flight 440 from Chennai (Madras) to New Delhi in 1973. It was 22:30 pitch
black outside. A storm was raging, and the plane was flying low.

The rear end slammed into the ground first. Larson was thrown from his seat. Meanwhile, the
plane kept moving. Electric cables sparked and fellow passengers screamed as the fuselage
began to split in half.

The next thing Larson knew he was awake, lying on his back on some wreckage. He tried to
move his legs, but he was stuck. Soon there was an explosion as the heat ignited fuel tanks by
the wings.

As debris rained down all around him, Larson realised hed have to save himself. With one last
breath it seared my lungs, the air was so hot he pushed off the wreckage and rolled down
onto the ground. Then he clawed his way to safety. Of 65 passengers and crew on board, Larson
was one of just 17 survivors.

Larson was actually extraordinarily lucky. A few minutes earlier, he had done something ill-
advised. He was sitting on the back row, chatting to the flight attendant next to him. Though the

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seat belt signs were on, he undid his. No rhyme, no reason, I just did, he says. The majority of
people who unbuckle before a plane crash dont survive.

However, after the crash, Larson also had the quick thinking and grit to claw himself to safety
before the fire spread.

Those not wearing a seatbelt are nearly four times more likely to die in the event of a plane crash (Credit:
Alamy)

Surprisingly, plenty of other people in deadly scenarios dont act fast enough to save their own
lives. From arguing over small change while a ship sinks into stormy water, to standing idly on the
beach as a tsunami approaches, psychologists have known for years that people make self-
destructive decisions under pressure. Though news reports tend to focus on miraculous survival,
if people escape with their lives its often despite their actions not because of them.

Survival training isnt so much about training people what to do youre mostly training them not
to do certain things that they would normally think to do, says John Leach, a psychologist at the
University of Portsmouth who survived the Kings Cross fire disaster in 1987. He estimates that
in a crisis, 80-90% of people respond inappropriately.

Footage of the Japanese earthquake in 2011 showed people risking their lives while rushing to
save bottles of alcohol from smashing in a supermarket. And when a plane caught fire at an
airport in Denver earlier this year, evacuating passengers lingered by the plane to watch the
flames and take selfies.

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During the 2011 earthquake in Japan, people ran to save bottles of alcohol from smashing in supermarkets
while their lives were in danger (Credit: Getty Images)

Intelligence doesnt come into it the brain fog that descends in emergency situations is
reassuringly even-handed. Back in 2001, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge was kayaking
in the rough seas off the Isle of Wight when he capsized.

Though he had a mobile phone on board, he clung helplessly to the upside-down boat for more
than 20 minutes before he remembered. When he finally retrieved it, first he called his sister in
Cambridge then his father who was more than 5,000km (3,436 miles) away in Dubai. He was
eventually rescued when his clear-headed relatives alerted the Coast Guard.

So, if faced with a life-threatening scenario, what behaviours should you do your best to avoid?

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When a plane crash-landed in Dubai last year, passengers stopped to collect their bags though the plane was
on fire (Credit: Getty Images)

1. FREEZING

When we think of disaster, we tend to think of mass hysteria. In the movies at least, people run
away with their arms flailing. But the reality is the most natural human response in the face of
danger is to simply do nothing.

During the recent stabbing at London Bridge, an off-duty police officer who tackled the attackers
reportedly described members of the public nearby as standing like deers [sic] in the
headlights.

The reaction is so universal, psychologists now talk of the fight-flight-freeze response.

Though it looks passive from the outside, when were paralysed with fear the brain is actively
putting on the brakes. As adrenaline surges through the body and our muscles tense, the primitive
little brain at the base of our necks sends a signal to keep us rooted to the spot.

Its the same mechanism across the animal kingdom, from rats to rabbits, where its a last-ditch
attempt to stop a predator from spotting us. But in a disaster, fighting this hangover from our days
out on the savannah is vital to survival.

In 2015, Michael Bond wrote an in-depth article for BBC Future on why people freeze. Read
more here.

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The great fire at Kings Cross Underground station in 1987 killed 31 people (Credit: Getty Images)

2. INABILITY TO THINK

The first clues that our brains tend to go into meltdown under stress came from an alarming
discovery.

During the Gulf War in the early 1990s, Israel was bracing itself for attack from Iraq. Following the
extensive use of poison gas by the Iraqi army in the 80s, the Israeli government prepared for the
worst. Gas masks and auto-injectors carrying the antidote to nerve gas were distributed to the
entire population. Israeli families were instructed to select a sealed safe room in their homes. On
the sounding of an alarm, the public should retreat there then put on their gas mask.

Between 19 and 21 January, there were 23 attacks. In all, more than 11,000kg (nearly 13 tonnes)
of high explosives were dropped on the densely-populated city of Tel Aviv.

Though no chemical weapons were used, more than a thousand people were injured. But not in
the way you might think. A closer look at the hospital admissions revealed that just 234 (22%) of
the casualties had been directly harmed by an explosion. The vast majority more than 800
people had occurred in the absence of any danger. They had occurred during one of several
false alarms.

This included 11 cases of death, seven of which were caused by putting on a gas mask and then
forgetting to open the filter. Hundreds of people had injected the antidote to the nerve gas though
they hadnt been exposed. Another 40 (mostly sprains and fractures) had occurred while the
victim was rushing to the sealed room.

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What was going on?

Even at the best of times, our brains are disconcertingly slow while disasters are rapid. As part
of the certification process, aeroplane manufacturers are required to show that the entire plane
can be evacuated in just 90 seconds, since studies have shown that the risk of the cabin being
consumed by fire sharply increases after this time. Meanwhile, most of us are still fumbling with
our seatbelts.

After the World Trade Center attacks, those on the upper floors waited five minutes on average before they
evacuated (Credit: Getty Images)

It all comes down to the way we make decisions. Take chess. A typical chess masters vocabulary
includes around 50,000 moves if the knight is on square x, do y so the first few moves of a
game can be over in mere seconds. But as the game progresses, the more possible positions
there are for the pieces on the board. For example, after four moves apiece, there are more than
288 billion combinations.

After a while, players can no longer rely on pre-programmed strategies and must think up their
own instead. Then the games slow down a lot. While the first few moves may take seconds, a
typical game of pro chess (around 40 moves) takes more than an hour and a half.

This is because actively inventing a new strategy is reliant on working memory, which is
responsible for temporarily holding information while we make decisions. The brain has a very
limited capacity for processing new information, says Sarita Robinson, a psychologist at the
University of Central Lancashire.

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In a disaster, the speed at which we think through our options goes from bad to worse. The brains
first port of call is to flood with the feel good hormone dopamine. This may seem counter-
intuitive, but though its usually associated with reward pathways, dopamine also plays a crucial
role in preparing the body to face danger. It triggers the release of more hormones, including
adrenaline and the stress chemical cortisol. And this is where it gets messy.

This cocktail of hormones shuts down the prefrontal cortex, which sits behind the forehead and is
responsible for higher functions such as working memory. Just when we need our wits the most,
we become forgetful and prone to making bad decisions.

Like in chess, the speed of decision making in a crisis is limited by working memory (Credit: Getty Images)

3. TUNNEL VISION

In a crisis, its reassuring to think that wed respond by creatively thinking our way around the
problem. But you guessed it, its the opposite. A typical response to disaster is so-called
perseveration attempting to solve a problem in a single way, again and again and again,
regardless of the results. This happens so often, its informed the design of seatbelts in light
aircraft.

Because people are used to looking for their seatbelts around their hips, in an emergency thats
the only place they look. Previous designs used to involve a buckle higher up, but in the panic of
a crash-landing, people just couldnt handle it. Other incidents have shown that in a crisis, pilots
tend to become obsessed with one item of equipment or response.

Intriguingly, this tunnel vision is also seen in those who have permanently damaged their
prefrontal cortex, suggesting that the brains stress response switching off this region might be to
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blame for inflexible thinking in moments of crisis.

4. STAYING STUCK IN ROUTINE

Which leads us to the next big stumbling block. The number of people who have been killed
going back to get their wallet from their house, or checking if theyve left the oven on says
James Goff, a specialist in disaster and emergency management at the University of Hawaii. After
years of working with the public to increase awareness of tsunamis in high risk areas, hes seen
his fair share of unbelievable reactions to a crisis.

On the face of it, risking your life for your wallet seems like madness or sheer stupidity. But its
extremely common so common that survival psychologists have a word for it: stereotypical
behaviour. In animals, the term refers to repetitive and apparently useless routines, such as
pacing back and forth in a zoo.

In humans, it refers to the disconcerting phenomenon of continuing with everyday routines, even
when, for instance, your home is on fire. When you leave your house you grab your wallet you
dont even think about it. Its automatic, says Goff.

In an emergency people tend to act as though nothing is happening (Credit: Getty Images)

When Emirates Flight 521 crash-landed at Dubai International Airport last year, footage emerged
of passengers scrambling around the smoke-filled plane to collect their bags from the overhead
lockers. Fortunately, no passengers were killed as a result (though sadly one firefighter died
tackling the blaze). It wasnt just a one off the same thing happened a year earlier. And again
in 2013.

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So why cant we turn these unconscious reflexes off?

It turns out that in everyday life, our brains are extraordinarily reliant on familiarity. In non-disaster
scenarios, mindlessly fetching our bag when the plane lands is thought to help free up mental
space to focus on stuff weve never encountered before such as navigating an airport in a
foreign city. Were in the present but were looking to the future by routine, says Leach.

New situations are extremely mentally taxing, as we work to build up a new model of the world
around us a fact which may explain why we tend to feel so tired when were abroad or first start
a new job. In an emergency, adjusting to the new situation can be more than our brains can take.
Instead, we tend to just press on as though nothing is happening.

5. DENIAL

At the extremes, this extends to completely ignoring the danger altogether. Invariably over 50% of
the population do it, they go down to the sea to watch the tsunami, says Goff. He has
photographs of people watching the Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day in 2004, taken by a
person who was racing to get to high ground.

According to Robinson, denial usually happens for two reasons; either because they fail to
interpret the situation as dangerous, or because they simply dont want to. The latter is extremely
common in the event of a wildfire, since often evacuating your home means consigning it to ruin.

People tend to wait until they can see the smoke and this often means its too late to leave. So
theyre trapped in a house that is not well prepared for bush fires, or risk being burnt trying to
evacuate, says Andrew Gissing, an expert in emergency risk management at consulting firm Risk
Frontiers.

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During the recent fires in Portugal, many people perished trying to escape at the last minute (Credit: Getty
Images)

For decades, scientists have known that most of us are terrible at calculating risk. When the
stakes are high, our brains tend to rely more on feeling than fact, banishing stressful thoughts
and reassuring ourselves by explaining away the danger. This may explain why cancer patients
wait four months on average before getting their symptoms checked by a doctor, or why after
the 9/11 attacks, people on the upper floors of World Trade Center waited an average of five
minutes before they started to evacuate.

One person who has experienced denial of the realities of a disaster first-hand is Yossi Hasson. In
2004, he and his girlfriend were scuba diving in Thailand when the Boxing Day tsunami struck.
They were underwater, several miles out at sea when it hit suddenly I felt as if I had been
pushed, hard then I couldnt really control anything anymore and later returned to the island.

Though the entire seafront was a panorama of destruction, with rubbish and bodies floating all
around the boat, Yossi found himself asking if they could go back to the hotel to fetch their
luggage. The boat driver was like, guys, your hotel probably doesnt exist'.

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When the Boxing Day tsunami struck in 2004, there were still people on the beach (Credit: Michael Spencer/
Wikimedia Commons)

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO IN A DISASTER

At this point youre probably wondering if we cant rely on our natural instincts, what should we
count on?

For Goff, surviving a natural disaster is about having a plan. If you know what youre doing in
advance and you start early, you can usually get away from a tsunami, he says. But it might be a
bit hairy.

Leach has years of experience training the military to escape an eclectic mix of chilling scenarios,
from hostage crises to helicopters which have crashed into water (top tip: stay in your seat until
the fuselage has flooded and turned upside down, then slip out at the last minute to avoid getting
caught in the still-turning rotor blades). He knows that the best way around the mental fallout is to
replace unhelpful, automatic reactions with ones that could save your life. You have to practise
and practise until the survival technique is the dominant behaviour, he says.

...BUT SOMETIMES LUCK MATTERS MOST

And what of Larson, survivor of Indian Airlines Flight 440? In the end, the biggest peril for this
survivor wasnt the disaster itself, but what happened afterwards. Eventually he was found by
some local villagers who took him to hospital. The fire had been so close by the time he escaped,
it singed off the hair on one half of his head. He emerged with first and second degree burns, a
broken pelvis, a busted arm and damage to his bladder.

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To make sure he didnt have any other internal injuries, his doctors performed exploratory surgery.
Weeks later, he had lost weight and the wound still wasnt healing. On a hunch, Larsons
chiropractor back in the US cut through the stiches and reached in with his forceps. He pulled out
this 30-day old, rolled up gauze that is 12in long. It was a fortunate discovery if it had stayed in,
his prospects would not have been good.

Preparation, acting fast, busting routines and avoiding denial may all be ways to live a bit longer in
worst-case scenarios but as Larsons experiences suggests, sometimes you need a good dose
of luck too.

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