Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [93]
These days, Gallup works at the State University of New York in Albany, where he does research and teaches evolutionary psychology. I visited him there in the spring of 2007, two days after the Virginia Tech shootings. He wore a black T-shirt, jeans, and white sneakers. He set up an old slide projector to show me a picture of one of his early immobilized chickens and one of his son with an immobilized cow. Slide after slide, of a paralyzed gecko, a rabbit, a Mississippi Gulf Coast blue crab, flashed by on the screen.
Here is what we know about an animal in paralysis: the heart rate drops, as does body temperature; respiration goes up; and the body becomes numb to pain. The eyes tend to close intermittently, but when they are open, they stare ahead in an unfocused gaze. The pupils are dilated. Sometimes the body shakes with occasional, Parkinsonian-like tremors. But all the while, the brain is consciously taking in all kinds of information about what is happening around it.
In his writings, Scottish missionary David Livingstone described what it is like to be paralyzed: on a hunting trip in South Africa in the mid-1800s, he had fired at a lion about thirty yards away and hit him. As he was reloading, the lion lunged at him, clamping his shoulder in his jaw and knocking him to the ground:
Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier dog does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat. It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though quite conscious of all that was happening.
The other hunters drew the lion away, and it soon collapsed from its injuries. Livingstone was left with a broken bone and eleven neat teeth wounds on his upper arm.
It might seem like a bad idea to go limp and calm while a lion is mauling you like a chew toy. To an observer, paralysis can look a lot like a failure—as if the paralyzed animal has simply gone into shock or given up. But that would give the victim too little credit. After decades of study, Gallup has come to have enormous respect for the paralysis strategy.
Animals that go into paralysis have a better chance of surviving certain kinds of attacks. But why? Why would surrender lead to survival? Wouldn’t it tend to lead to certain death? Well, the explanation, as with all of our fear reactions, goes back to evolutionary adaptation. A lion is more likely to survive to pass on its genes if it avoids eating sick or rotten prey. Many predators lose interest in prey that is not struggling. No fight, no appetite. It’s an ancient way of avoiding food poisoning. And, in turn, prey animals have evolved to try to exploit this opening—by simulating death or illness when they are trapped. It’s not a sure thing; many animals will still get killed this way. But when there are no other options for escape, it’s a reasonable strategy. Paralysis, like heroism, may be more adaptive than it seems.
The Disaster Default
After Cho left the Virginia Tech classroom, Violand noticed that his whole body felt numb, as if all his limbs had fallen asleep. This feeling likely came from the natural painkiller that his body produced as part of the paralysis reaction. But Violand had no way to know this. So he figured he must have been shot. “I didn’t know how it felt to get shot. I remember saying to myself, ‘Man, this isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.’” But he kept trying to move and eventually found that he could break through the numbness. “I kind of wiggled around, and I thought, ‘OK, I guess I didn’t get shot.’”
The classroom was quiet except for some muffled crying. Someone muttered, “It’s OK. It’s going to be OK. They will be here soon.” But Violand wasn’t confident of a rescue. He lifted his head off the ground just enough to