Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [131]
For more about how companionship boosts our resilience, even on the cellular level, see Lisa F. Berkman, “The Role of Social Relations in Health Promotion,” Psychosomatic Medicine.
CHAPTER 6: PANIC
Hajj Deaths
Mortality figures were compiled from newspaper clips. Because the media must rely upon imperfect reporting from the Saudi government, the numbers are far from exact.
Ali Hussain and Belquis Sadiq
Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I was not able to locate Ali Hussain, whose wife perished in a hajj stampede. The details of her death are drawn from the following articles: Neil Atkinson, “‘I Was Down for Only Seconds but When I Got Back Up She Had Gone,’” Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Jan. 21, 2006, 5; and Robert Sutcliffe, “Yorkshire Man Relives Horror of Wife’s Death in Hajj Stampede,” Yorkshire Post, Jan. 21, 2006.
The Physics of Crowds
The “undisciplined pilgrims” quote is from Salah Nasrawi, “Dropped Baggage was Catalyst for Stampede That Killed 345 Pilgrims in Hajj Stoning Ritual,” Associated Press, Jan. 13, 2006.
For more on crowd physics, see the excellent website developed by crowd expert G. Keith Still, www.crowddynamics.com, as well as the Physical Review article by Dirk Helbing and colleagues.
Historical Panic (and the Lack Thereof)
For more on Londoners’ reaction to the Blitz, see Mollie Panter-Downes, London War Notes (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971).
The Three Mile Island information comes from Robert Stallings’s article, “Evacuation Behavior at Three Mile Island.”
Quarantelli’s article is “The Nature and Conditions of Panic,” Nov. 1954.
The details of the Manchester crash come from Air Investigations Accident Branch, Incident Report No 8/88.
The survey of passengers involved in serious evacuations comes from the National Transportation Safety Board’s Emergency Evacuation of Commercial Airplanes.
Details of the 1991 crash at Los Angeles International Airport come from the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation and survival factors report.
The research study in which money was used to create a stampede during an aircraft evacuation drill was conducted by Helen Muir and her colleagues at the Cranfield Institute of Technology.
The Panic of One
The story of the mysterious death of Scott Stich is compiled from the autopsy report from the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner, as well as his obituary (“Obituary for Mr. Scott Stich”) and news articles (“Diver Dies”) in the Sun-Sentinel.
For more on predictions of panic behavior in individuals, see W. P. Morgan, J. S. Raglin, and P. J. O’Connor, “Trait Anxiety Predicts Panic Behavior in Beginning Scuba Students.”
CHAPTER 7: PARALYSIS
The Hypnotized Chicken
For more on the history of animal paralysis, see F. A. Volgyesi, Hypnosis of Man and Animals and the work of Gordon G. Gallup and John P. Forsyth.
Livingstone’s Lion
See David Livingstone, Travels and Researches in South Africa.
Sexual Assault Victims
See the forthcoming article by B. Marx (and Forsyth and Gallup) in Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice.
The Sinking of the MV Estonia
The details of this section are drawn from articles, interviews, and the official report of the sinking: Final Report on the Capsizing on 28 September 1994 in the Baltic Sea of the Ro-Ro Passenger Vessel MV Estonia.
Tenerife Crash
Details of this crash come from newspaper accounts of the time, the official investigation report released by the Subsecretaría de Aviación Civil, Spain, and Dan Johnson’s excellent book, Just in Case.
CHAPTER 8: HEROISM
The Body in Extreme Cold
For a good explanation on how the body reacts to cold, see Alan C. Burton, Man in a Cold Environment.
For more on this, check out www.coolantarctica.com, a website about Antarctica put together by a marine biologist named Paul Ward who lived there for a time.
The Oliners
For the Oliners’ investigations into heroism, see The Altruistic Personality