I have woken up in my hotel room to a fire alarm with smoke in the air and calmly gotten dressed (it was cold outside) and walked down the steps like it was not a big deal. Others panicked and ran outside in their pajamas and half froze to death.
But a final exam? I’ll get so nervous that I will get sick.
No, you can’t know for sure, but that’s the purpose of training.
My only relevant experience in is hand to hand combat, but in a panic situation people tend to do the first thing that occurs to them. The point of training is to raise the possibility that the first thing that occurs is something they have trained to do, that makes sense to do in general situations of that sort.
That’s why you train over and over until you can do it in your sleep, or under the stress of the adrenaline dump that the panic situation has triggered.
When he is coming at you with a knife, it’s too late to decide what to do. You have to be trained to the point where “run like hell if you can/dodge to the side and stomp kick the knee/distraction strike high/trap the hand/break the arm” comes automatically.
“Do not fear the man who has practiced a thousand techniques. Fear the man who has practiced one technique a thousand times.” Because that guy has a chance to pull it off even when he is pissing himself in terror, because he is not subject to that split-second of indecision while he decides what to do.
Regards,
Shodan
I have faced life and death situations several times in my life. My responses in all of those cases were consistent, so I am going to go with yes I know how I will respond.
Now it is possible that something could come up that is so out of my realm I would freeze (aliens landing comes to mind), but a man with a gun, no. Been there got that t-shirt.
No (unless you’ve already been in that situation before).
My anecdote: at a previous job, I went through OSHA training, part of which was first aid/emergency response. We spent a day in the classroom talking about securing the scene, appointing an incident commander, triaging victims, etc. Everyone felt pretty confident.
The next day the instructor tells us to run into a warehouse, assess the scene and follow our training from the previous day. If we failed at any point, he’d blow the whistle and we’d start back at the beginning. So we run in, and it was like a haunted house - a few “bodies” on the ground with “blood” everywhere, a hysterical person running around trying to grab us, equipment leaking fuel, total chaos. And we all froze. The whistle blows, we try again, and make it marginally farther. It took at least 10 tries to do what we’d learned the day before.
So obviously, this points out the difference between classroom training and “live” training, and the need for repetition to the point that you don’t have to think about it. But in reference to the OP, it also highlights that no, you don’t know how you’ll react until you’re in the situation, no matter what kind of training you’ve had. The more training and the closer it was to reality certainly increases the odds. But there are always differences in training vs. a live situation, and you simply can’t know for sure.
I can, but only because I have been in situations that were life or death. It is one of my pet peeves that people always assume they will be calm and rational, when most people are not.
Anyone cannot enter into a panic state at any time. Maybe this is true for some people, but it isn’t for me. Sure, I could start to feel panicky, but I know how to stop feeling panicky and focus on evaluating the situation and taking the action that seems best at the time. I have complete confidence in my ability to not panic and that confidence has made it true.
Of course I am fallible–I might choose what seems to be the best action and be wrong. But I will never fail because of panic, because as far as I am concerned panic is for weak people who give in to it to abdicate responsibility or has a physiological cause, like lack of oxygen.
I have also elected not to have any irrational fears or phobias. I’m sure people that have them believe they are not a choice, but maybe that belief is exactly what permits their existence. I could be wrong, but this works for me and who wants to be panicky or phobic?
I’m surprised how overwhelming the response was “no.” If a family member – i.e., spouse or child - were in immediate danger, wouldn’t you know for sure you’d intervene?
Intervene how? Jump in the water to rescue them even though you don’t know how to swim? Or call for help or grab something that floats before jumping in? Some interventions just make things worse.
That’s the point, you have to do something that makes sense, not just flail around like a fool. Plus, you ought to know how to swim and do CPR. Your loved ones’ lives could depend on it.
Or maybe lack of oxygen could screw up your response.
While I agree there are some people considerably less likely to panic than average, you don’t always get to pick and choose when you face a life or death emergency. You could be exhausted, sick, injured, or otherwise debilitated.
Age and experience also factor into it. I sort of expect young children to panic (when they don’t it’s a bonus). People who have lived sheltered lives. It’s not always a matter of being “weak”.
Intervention for the sake of intervention isn’t always the best answer. If a building is on fire the people inside might be better served by you running up and down the block screaming FIRE! FIRE! to get attention and help than by you trying to run inside a burning building and perform a rescue without proper training, equipment, or backup.
No, you won’t know for sure. There are a thousand examples of people not intervening, not because they’re bad people or don’t care about their loved ones, but because that isn’t the way they jumped when it went down.
For a fairly low-stakes example, the recent baseball thing where both parents ducked a stray ball and their little boy caught it above his sister’s head. I promise you, they didn’t think they’d let their daughter get hit with a baseball.
If there is insufficient oxygen, then my response isn’t the problem. I can’t magic in fresh air if there is none to be had.
If I am injured, sick, etc. then it is even more important not to panic, so I still wouldn’t. I’d rather just die calmly than panic and then die.
Whether you are weak because you are a toddler or because you’ve been sheltered, you are still weak. Young children who panic do not have confidence in themselves or their leader. If you inspire confidence through your confident and effective actions and do not pander to their hysteria, there is some hope they will not grow up to be panicky weaklings.
:smack:
Right… because toddlers are so very, very rational…
Look, I can’t stop you from thinking those less perfect than you are weak and lesser beings, but on the other hand, you can’t stop me from disliking your smug and superior attitude about the whole thing.
I’m not perfect and of course no one would like this attitude.
But I don’t like having to pick up the pieces and take the reins while adults embrace their weaknesses and dissolve into panic or when they coddle and encourage panic in children. Panic is infectious and people ought to feel some sort of pressure to keep it to themselves and carry on or get into therapy and try to alter their behavior. Panic harms people and should be fought with all you have.
It’s funny about training, which is obviously very important. While in the Navy I was never in a firefight, but I was onboard a submarine for an at-sea collision, which could have easily been a life-and-death situation. Some of what we did in response we had trained for, and some of it was pretty novel, but as a group with everyone nearby I found it easy to behave calmly and appropriately.
A year after I left the Navy I was traveling in Honduras, and late one night walking back to my lodgings from a bar I was attacked by three teenagers trying to mug me. I never had trained for this, but I had gone over similar scenarios in my action-hero-fantasy-mind ever since I was a little kid. I don’t know if this actually helped, but I reacted forcefully (once it was clear they were unarmed) and successfully defended myself in a running fight for the roughly 1 kilometer back to the home of the family I was staying with.
Mulling this over further, maybe this belief is why some people are so anxious for seemingly no reason. If I thought the pilot of the airplane could have a panic attack any time, flying would seem pretty dangerous. Being near someone with a gun would be scary: they could panic and start blindly shooting. Being in a crowd would mean panic would strike someone and mayhem and injury could ensue.
As I am not prone to panic, I feel safe, both from my own panic and the potential panic of others. I will not be entering an unexpected panic state over nothing ever and neither will most people.
If it is a life or death situation that they have extensively trained for then maybe, otherwise no chance in hell.
On the upside, a certain percentage of people will perform better than you might other expect in such situations.
Do you not think it possible to design a scenario - however improbable - that would escalate beyond your limit to control panic so abruptly and completely that it could overwhelm your discipline?
AnaMen, I’m not being snarky but are you speaking from personal experience of life-or-death situations? Panic isn’t always a case of running around and screaming. Some people panic by their brain freezing up and being unable to make decisions about what they should do in response to an emergency.
It’s possible to will yourself to stand your ground when you feel like running. But you can’t readily will yourself to think of a good idea on how to handle a emergency. Especially if you only have a few seconds to think of the idea.