Can a person know for sure how'd they react in a life-or-death situation?

[AnaMen]

@DrDeth

I was shot at once. Always thought I’d handle it well. First shot I just stood there, with my thumb up my butt, going “Is that a shot? is someone shooting at me?” . duh. Next round I hit cover in a blind panic. Next round I was going “Hey wait, I am well armed, this guy seems to be a real bad shot, why arent I shooting back?” It took a while for the rational brain to kick in. (Turns out it was a crazy guy who actually shot to miss, I was in little real danger, and I am glad i didnt return fire)

My Dad was a WWII combat veteran, with scads of ribbons, in for the whole damn war, and he said that is common, and it’s why the “new guy” often “gets it” while the veteran can survive combat after combat.

So, no- the first time you get shot at, etc- you will not react in a rational manner.

Huh? That’s your take-away??

The “new guy” who reacts poorly probably dies, so the veterans are the ones who don’t freak out. It’s a self-weeding process.

What would have been the rational thing to do in your situation? You took cover and did not return fire. It sounds like that’s what you should have done even in retrospect.

[Spiderman]

@AnaMen

What would have been the rational thing to do in your situation? You took cover and did not return fire. It sounds like that’s what you should have done even in retrospect.

The rational thing to do would have been to immediately take cover, not “stand there, with a thumb up [his] butt”. Had the gunman been shooting to kill, he may have been hit by the second shot while he still had that ‘deer in headlights’ look. Once he recovered from the panic (standing there) he did the right thing, took cover, analyzed the situation & acted (or non-acted in this case).

[Buck_Godot]

@filmore

I’ve dropped a knife once or twice since then and my reaction is now to get out of the way. So somehow that bit of experience means that I won’t instinctively try to catch a knife, but I’m not sure if that means I won’t try to catch other dangerous objects. Perhaps my brain knows not to catch a knife, but I’m not sure what would happen if pane of glass was falling.

Interestingly I’ve noticed that I seem to have picked this up even without having previously suffered an accident. If I drop a plate or cup, I’ll insteinctively reach out and try to catch it (and ususally fail because I’m a huge klutz) but if I drop a knife I instinctively move my body away from the falling object. This is entirely at the reflex level so I must somehow be aware at a subconscious level whether what I dropped could hurt me. In my case at least it seems, fortunately to extend to other dangerous objects besides knives (such as hot objects etc.) so you might be ok.

In terms of panic under stress, my anecdote was that I was once woken up by a burgler who had entered my room. Once he noticed I was awake he ran away and I immediately chased after him. It was only after I had run out of the room and up the stairs that I realized that that was I was doing was incredibly stupid, since I was unarmed and didn’t know if he had any accomplices. I think it was just an instinctive reaction to his fleeing that made me give chase.

[DrDeth]

@Spiderman

The rational thing to do would have been to immediately take cover, not “stand there, with a thumb up [his] butt”. Had the gunman been shooting to kill, he may have been hit by the second shot while he still had that ‘deer in headlights’ look. Once he recovered from the panic (standing there) he did the right thing, took cover, analyzed the situation & acted (or non-acted in this case).

Right.

[GusNSpot]

If I was silly enough to walk down an ally in a bad part of a bad town , tired, texting with my wife about something important, I could maybe be jumped & it be a total surprise when the first blow, stab, shot happened.

I am not that silly.

Same with flying.
One time long ago, under 500 hrs flt time total, I fell asleep for about 4-5 seconds while hand flying a C-180.*

Things had gotten real bad and the noise woke me up. The most plain scared I have ever been while piloting.

Never happened again. No other loss of concentration/attention up to now.

*skipping all the reasons I was that tired and etc., etc… I never ever went to sleep or lost awareness ever again as a pilot even though I have been in worse condition several times.

I’m not as sure asAnaMen about my abilities but I agree with much of what he/she says because of my personal experiences.

I have not had to use or experience all the things I have thought about seriously and made plans for what to do but so far so good.

[Atomic_Alex]

Haven’t read this entire thread yet but it reminds me of a conversation I once had with a Vietnam veteran where he stated that it isn’t a simple matter of one person being courageous and another a coward but dependent on other circumstances and timing as well, as he said sometimes a man who had a reputation for dodging trouble would unexpectedly leap into action without fear or hesitation while another man would simply flat out refuse to move despite acting courageously in much more dangerous circumstances just the day before.

So its more complicated than brave/not brave and no, I don’t think anyone can know how they will act in an extreme circumstance, even if they are cool, calm and collected in 99 emergencies, the 100th event might be the one where they panic.