Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [91]
How did he know? Before he put the men on the treadmill, Morgan had given them a common psychological test measuring their anxiety levels. Generally speaking, anxiety comes in two flavors: the first is “state anxiety,” which describes how a person reacts to stressful situations, like a big exam or a traffic jam. The other kind is “trait anxiety,” which refers to a person’s general tendency to see things as stressful to begin with. Trait anxiety, in other words, is your resting level of anxiety on any given day.
As it turns out, people with higher trait anxiety are more likely to rip out their air supply, Morgan found. Luckily, most people who become scuba divers or firefighters have low trait anxiety to begin with. But not all of them. After running the same tests on scuba divers, Morgan found he could predict who would panic with 83 percent accuracy. Essentially, he found that certain people are slightly more likely to lose touch with their reality when under physical stress. Their brains, overwhelmed by the situation, sort through their database of responses—and choose the wrong one. They may not cause a stampede or a mass panic, but they will likely put themselves, at least, in sudden and intense jeopardy. They have overreacted, in the purest form of panic.
Panic may be the most frightening kind of disaster reaction, at least in the popular imagination. But the more I learned about it, the less diabolical it seemed to be. Panic is a tragedy—but one of errors, not malice. It can of course be catastrophic. But it is one of the more preventable human mistakes in the disaster portfolio. If mass gathering places are designed with physics in mind, then the prerequisites to panic should never develop. People will not feel potentially trapped, helpless, and alone. They will just feel crowded. Then, if something goes terribly wrong, they will be much more likely, as we will see next, to default to a far more common disaster response—which is to say, they will do nothing at all.
7
Paralysis
Playing Dead in French Class
THE NOISE STARTED about halfway through intermediate French on April 16, 2007. An insistent, popping sound. The students stopped their conversation. “It’s probably construction,” one said. Then the banging got louder. A moan came from the classroom next door. The teacher, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, had long gray hair and was known for her generous smile. But now she stiffened and said, “That’s not what I think it is, is it?”
With that, Clay Violand, a junior in her class at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, stood up. He felt certain of what needed to happen, but he suddenly could not remember his teacher’s name. It was strange, but it didn’t slow him down. “You,” he said, “put that desk against the door.” Couture-Nowak did exactly as he said. Then Violand turned toward the window. He knew he had to get out.
Violand saw the gun first. As he turned, he saw the semiautomatic weapon appear in the doorway. The shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, a rage-filled, silent young man, who would kill thirty-two people and himself that day, making it the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. History, strode into the room. He easily shoved the desk aside. Seeing this, Violand automatically changed course. “I wanted to go to the window; it was only two stories. But as soon as I saw the gun come in, I just froze.”
Then Violand, an international studies major with a music minor, crumpled onto the floor underneath his desk. He didn’t curl up into a ball or cover his head; he lay down on his side, in a relatively vulnerable position, with his arm slightly, unnaturally