Since September, my class has been composed of 10 aspiring pilots. Although I’m mostly there to teach English, the vocabulary, material and context is supposed to assist their progression: a survival course, ground school, and flight training. So I’ve been learning a lot about meteorology and trying to adapt the sometimes incredibly dense language in flight manuals to something appropriate and accessible for students with intermediate English. It’s surprisingly fun, although I feel like Marge Simpson giving piano lessons: “I just have to stay one lesson ahead of the kids!” According to a colleague, once I’ve finished teaching the whole curriculum, including Principles of Flight, Navigation, Aircraft Ops, and some other stuff I forget now, I’ll be able to pass the theory part of a private pilot licence test, no problem. Unfortunately, it would also cost something like £10,000 to get the licence, so I won’t be flying anytime soon.
I’ve also become the ‘survival expert’ in the staffroom, although that’s only because no one else has taught it before. I’m certainly no Bear Grylls – I couldn’t even watch him eating this, let alone imagine doing it myself. Then again, who knows how I’d react in a real survival situation? I watched the ‘I Am Alive’ documentary, about the 1972 plane crash in the Andes, and, probably like everyone, asked myself – ‘What would I do in that situation?’ Would I be unable to face the thought of eating people I had known – my friends – or, in the face of death, would I see them as sources of protein? Or perhaps I’d snap, go all gung ho, and eat everything.
Cannibananalism. Image source: somewhere on the internet
Well, perhaps not. This kind of tangential, displacement thinking is apparently a common example of the ‘pre-threat’ mentality. To quote from the survival manual my students are studying: “The most common types of behaviour seen during this period are denial and under-activity. People will not accept that a disastrous event will happen despite all evidence to the contrary. One classic example is The Herald of Free Enterprise which put to sea on the evening of 6th March 1987 with her bow doors open. She capsized with the resultant loss of 188 lives. The threat of such an incident had been present for some time.”
There’s a balance to be struck, of course. I can’t spend all my time thinking of all the things that could possibly happen in my life. Although I think of the people I feel responsible towards – although I sometimes feel as if thoughts of possible futures are a besieging army to be fought off – there are some scenarios which are unthinkable – literally. If I tried to think about them, I’d go mad, and quickly lose any ability to think or function at all. Still, the ‘unthinkable’ happens all the time. The question in survival is, if a threat manifests as impact, what is the reaction?
“10 – 20% of people will remain relatively calm during the incident.”
“About 75% of people will simply be stunned and bewildered. Their reasoning will be significantly impaired and logical thinking is difficult. They will behave in a reflexive, almost mechanical manner. Their field of attention becomes very restricted and they frequently describe a condition of ‘tunnel vision’ (more correctly ‘perceptual narrowing’). The sense of the passage of time also alters, producing a limbo effect.”
“10 – 15% of people will show high levels of inappropriate behaviour such as uncontrolled weeping, confusion, screaming and paralysing anxiety (cognitive paralysis) or they continue with inappropriate routine tasks apparently oblivious to the danger around them.”
‘Inappropriate’ behaviour in this case means that the actions being taken are in no way helpful to, and may in fact hinder, survival. I think it’s an interesting word to use – it strikes me as curiously English in a stiff upper-lip sort of way. The ‘fight or flee’ reaction is one of the most fundamental reactions – it is hard-wired into us, and it no doubt allowed our respective ancestors to survive countless times through the millennia. Today, it is ‘inappropriate’ and redundant – our higher reasoning should allow us to transcend our primal natures, otherwise it’s a jolly poor show, just not cricket, what? Hmm.
The purpose of survival training is to produce automatic responses to a variety of scenarios, in order to reduce reaction times and remove the necessity for controlled thought. It works, too. There’s no doubt that Captain Chesley Sullenberger is a remarkable man; but it was, at least in part, rigorous training which allowed him and everyone involved in The Miracle on the Hudson in February 2009 to react with such calm control.
After the ‘impact’ phase comes the ‘recoil’ period. “The recoil period typically begins with confusion and there is group and social fragmentation. It is now that survivors begin to realise what has happened to them and to appreciate the extent of the damage, injury and possibly death which surrounds them. The recoil period is characterised by a gradual return of awareness, reasoning ability, recall and emotional expression (e.g. fear, resentment and especially anger). Adults will often show a child-like dependency, a need to be with others and a compulsive need to talk: to talk, to describe, to try to explain their experience.”
Again, I think I detect a suspicion of ‘sharing feelings’ that many English would identify with.
The final stage of disaster survival is the period of post-trauma. “During this period various disorders may occur such as: experiencing the event through recurrent dreams, intrusive recollections (sudden flashbacks) and feeling as if the event was actually reoccurring; feelings of detachment from others and a constriction of emotional responses; decrease in interest in job and significant activities; exaggerated startle response; sleep disturbance; guilt about surviving if others have died; memory impairment, difficulty in concentration and intensification of the symptoms by events which resemble or symbolise the original traumatic event.”
Surviving the impact of disaster is only the first step. Whatever the reason for survival – training and preparation, or just dumb luck – there will be repercussions sometime in the future.
“Victims have also committed suicide immediately after being rescued, some even in hospitals. Indeed, one of the two survivors of the Anglo Saxon attempted suicide shortly after his rescue. Furthermore, victims have actually asked rescue workers and hospital staff to aid them in their suicide attempt.
“So let’s be very clear – the ability to die through psychological factors alone is very real. Dying is simple, dying is natural.”
The quotes are taken from ‘The Psychology of Survival: Why People Still Die When They Shouldn’t’, written by Dr J Leach of The Centre for Study of Human Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo; the paper appears in the Survival Manual produced for training pilots.
✪
Trying to teach this kind of material to a bunch of confident trainee pilots presents some challenges. They seem incredibly young to me, and no matter how much they can rationally accept that disasters can occur at any time, they also firmly believe in their ability to deal with and adapt to any situation. Really, they believe they are immortal; in their secret hearts, perhaps they believe that they will live forever. It’s a good feeling to have, I think; and it is arguably one of the things which allows them to take risks which I would hesitate over, and achieve things I never could. (On the other hand, perhaps that feeling is also one of the reasons that old politicians have always been able to send the young into war.) I sometimes wish I could be that confident again. Sometimes.
These students of mine will soon start their survival training; they will be drilled endlessly in the procedures that might save their lives, or allow them to save the lives of those they will be responsible for. It seems to me, though, that there is a certain amount of statistical estimation going on. There must be. Not every variable of every situation can be taken into account. Even if they could be, trained responses cannot cover every situation; having too many different possible responses would negate the purpose of the training, which is to reduce the need to make conscious choices and decisions. So, it could be imagined that there are (presumably more unlikely) situations where the trained responses that will come automatically might be exactly the wrong action to take.
✪
What have I learned this year? In the course of writing this post, I seem to have forgotten. Perhaps something like this: I want to be prepared for the future, and there are things I can do and think about to try to be prepared – things which might mean the difference between life and death for someone I love. Or, less dramatically, the difference between an opportunity taken or missed. Still, no amount of thinking will prepare me for every eventuality, and over-thinking has the potential to lead me astray, and make me do something that is exactly the wrong thing to do. Because, in life, the unthinkable – the unimaginable – the statistically unlikely – probably does happen more often than it really should.
unquiet fabrications and offerings 
Pingback: hitting a brick wall « unquiet fabrications and offerings