The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why
by Amanda Ripley
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Book Summary Information
Author: Amanda RipleyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-06-16
ISBN: 0307352900
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780307352903
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why
Book Review: Human responses to disaster--and how we can do better
Summary: 4 Stars
The author, Amanda Ripley, reports her reflections on how people respond to disaster--and how they can improve that response. Throughout the book, she refers to a variety of disasters and notes how people responded--whether well or not so well. Her approach (Page ix): "I started to research the stories of survivors from. . .disasters. The overlaps were startling. People in shipwrecks, plane crashes, and floodwaters all seemed to undergo a miraculous metamorphosis. They performed better in some ways and much worse in others. I wanted to know why." She concludes that people can prepared for how they might respond in disasters, and then she tries to provide examples as to how this can happen.
Her study leads her to see that there are three phases in every kind of disaster: denial, deliberation, and, finally, the decisive moment. In the process, she also speaks about panic, although she says that rather than panicking, most people (Page xvii) "tend to shut down entirely in disaster. . . ." To understand humans' responses to disaster, she integrates knowledge of the brain's operation into her analysis.
Denial? She uses examples from 9/11 at the World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina to illustrate aspects of denial. For deliberation? One case study looks at a supper club fire in Beverly Hills. Finally, the decision point. Again, a series of examples are cited to illustrate.
The conclusion speaks to the value of thinking about how one might respond to a disaster. One simple example: a security official in the World Trade Center. He lived through the car bomb blast in the early 1990s. Having thought about how people responded to the near-disaster, he began to prepare for the next disaster (which, of course, was 9/11). He worked with employees of the firm for which he worked to get people to know exactly what they had to do at the moment of crisis. When the plane hit the tower, the people with whom he had worked already knew what to do, and there was minimum chaos and minimum injury. A powerful example. . .
A volume that reads well and gets one to thinking about how we might respond were there a disaster. A useful addition to the literature, aimed at a more general readership.
Summary of The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why
Discover how human beings react to danger-and what makes the difference between life and deathToday, nine out of ten Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow, some of us will have to make split-second choices to save ourselves and our families. How will we react? What will it feel like? Will we be heroes or victims?
In her quest to answer these questions, award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley traces human responses to some of recent history's epic disasters, from the explosion of the Mont Blanc munitions ship in 1917-one of the biggest explosions before the invention of the atomic bomb-to the journeys of the 15,000 people who found their way out of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. To understand the science behind the stories, Ripley turns to leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists, and other disaster experts. She even has her own brain examined by military researchers and experiences, through realistic simulations, what it might be like to survive a plane crash into the ocean or to escape a raging fire.
Ripley comes back with precious wisdom about the surprising humanity of crowds, the elegance of the brain's fear circuits, and the stunning inadequacy of many of our evolutionary responses. Most unexpectedly, she discovers the brain's ability to do much, much better-with just a little help.
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