When all else fails, running in place screaming like a chicken is better than nothing.
I have thought about this opposite reaction that has been known to occur under stress or danger as well, and wondered how it fit into my OP. As an old saying, attributed to various sources like Samuel Johnson and Mark Twain, goes: “Nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of being hanged”.
I had this ‘time slowing down’ effect happen once for me when I was in a traffic accident. Two lane, 55mph road in northern Michigan. An oncoming car swerved into my lane. I swerved to avoid it, swerved back to get onto the road, overcorrected, skidded into the ditch on the other side, and the car flipped. As I swerved back onto the road I had this running commentary in my head, “wow, close call, but we’re fine. Uh oh, I’m skidding out of control-- good thing there’s no other oncoming traffic. Hopefully we can skid to a stop and still save the trip. Whoops, we’re going into the ditch and flipping. Woah, the windshield is disintegrating-- looks like the trip is ruined, but hopefully we walk away” all happening in slow motion, like a movie.
Maybe there’s a co-evolution thing going on, since we’re a social species. As @jjakucyk pointed out, it may be advantageous for many of a group to ‘freak out’ and panic during danger, but maybe there will usually be at least one individual in the group for whom the opposite happens-- they get very focused, time slows down and they are able to respond to the group’s distress in a more constructive way. The ‘hero’ of the situation. That person may change depending on the time and the situation-- sometimes you’re the hero of the moment, sometimes you’re the one panicking and freaking out.
You don’t have to outrun the danger.
You just have to outrun Thag or Jorg or any of the rest of your tribe who happens to be there.
One of the benefits of a society is having someone else get eaten.
Yep, poor ol’ Thag…couldn’t outrun that Stegosaurus.
I recently read in a book - I think by Hannah Fry, where some scientists actually tested this phenomena. (No, it isn’t real.)
Yes, “freeze” is the third F. “Flight, fight, or freeze.”
For some reason “freeze” doesn’t get referred to as much, in spite of valiant efforts by researchers such as Mr Larson to publicize its advantages.
https://ifunny.co/picture/ss-when-the-monster-came-lola-like-the-peppered-moth-BYRYG6Gu9
Looks like this thread is beginning to devolve into Gary Larson references 
I did start it, though, and y’know what? I don’t mind a bit.
For one, evolution has no foresight; it can only select for variations that exist. So it’s always possible that the answer to such questions is “because useful mutations in that direction never happened to occur”. Evolution is also prone to getting stuck in “local minima”, where any small change will make things for an organism worse so it never evolves potentially superior features that would require a larger change to reach.
It should also be noted that the “freeze response” appears to be built in. So it’s less “why did early humans evolve like that”, and more “why did early vertebrates evolve like that”.
Less “cushy”, more “untrained”. One of the purposes of training people for emergencies or combat is to give them default emergency responses other than “freeze”, “run” or “flail around”. That doesn’t mean they won’t panic, it just means they’ll “panic” by, say, pointing their gun at the threat and opening fire or dropping flat, as they have been trained.
Humans rely on trained/learned responses a lot; intelligence is very powerful, but also a lot slower than reflexes. I suspect that one reason for the “flail about” style of panic is that the brain has tried to access some metaphorical “what to do in this emergency” file and found nothing but gibberish since that particular situation hasn’t been encountered before.
I think this is a good summary. Not every condition is evolutionary, intended to make us better. Asthma, for instance, is a condition that you’d think would weed out it’s sufferers. Thak’s asthmatic brethren, in a strict Darwinian model, should have been sufficiently eliminated that asthma would be rare. Yet we are not. (wheeze)
There hasn’t been that much time; asthma has been becoming more common because modern conditions are more prone to induce it. And evolution is slow in humans thanks to our long generation time.
I’ve always thought that panic is the downside to the complexity of our brains. When looking at the way a brain in essence “moves” the idea of panic, it has checkpoints:
- Start, the nervous system receives threat signal, moves up
- Amygdala begins to run through it’s core functions (autonomic functions kick up, this is the start of fight or flight with tensed muscles and such other responses)
- From here on, Autonomic nervous system (the “instinct nerves” for this purpose) keeps running
- Signal travels through hypothalamus for regulation, processing, and connection to memory (have a swam before? Which muscles do I move in water? Put resources there. Is this worth freaking out over? Am I scared or angry?)
- Signals relay to “instinct nerves” to reinforce their response and allow split second survival
- At the same time, signals of the hypothalamus travel to the frontal lobes and present you with “We are drowning. The muscles are ready. What do?” and your frontal cortex runs through all the usual (is anyone else panicking? Have I done this before? Is it rational to swim or do I float? Who is around that I can call out to? etc etc)
- While your whole “rational brain” is deciding what to do, your “instinct brain” is going everyone move!!! now!!! do your jobs and start moving!!! which leads to a moment where eventually the Brian has to organize that instinct of “fight or flight” into an actual response
So in all of this moving of the danger signal, all of the processing and remembering and collecting information, your body is doing 2 things that I theorize are “panic”
1: Remembering every single time anything similar happened, and acting the same way it did in that memory (I feel water? Okay start kicking!! I see people? Okay look normal!!) which is a very disjointed set of responses, and often not all that helpful other than keeping you alive an extra two seconds.
2: Trying to override itself (No don’t just kick! Kick this way, in that direction! Move this here and that there!) which leads to brief internal conflict as consciousness-level rationalization meets consciousness-level rapid response processing and your brain has a bit of a jolt shifting between instinctive or learned behavior reactions into a planned, situation specific action.
here’s a look into the ANS, it’s a pretty digestible read if you’re good with the format of academic sources.
Here’s a look into the Amygdala and it’s functions, I cite this mostly to show a decent source on how impactful to behavior and especially memory related behavior this area of the brain is, there’s some images as well and easily some found on just plain Google search that can show you the layout of the ANS and compare it’s sort of “root of activity” to the Amygdala, which are both very close to essentially the “first response” parts of the brain.
This is a look at brain anatomy all together, giving you a good idea of where these signals are traveling to and what part of the brain handles what.
To end this off:
- I’m really no scientist and this is just my personal theory on that “flash panic” state that happens right when you realize you’re in danger, I can’t speak to the actual full science behind “true” fear/anxiety vs panic (as defined by “sudden onset, often irrational terror or fear”) because I really don’t know why our brains fluke like that. Also I think some bits of my own sources do contradict me here and there because this is a pretty on the spot theory, so don’t hate me if i’m totally wrong.
A sidebar on this issue is the phenomenon of panic attacks, which is when we experience full-fledged panic symptoms when there’s no danger at all. While many might be inclined to dismiss panic attacks as an anomaly of mental illness, the reality is that although the vast majority of us will never experience all-out full-fledged panic attacks, many of us will at some points in our lives experience mild versions of it, generally brought on by stress and chronic anxiety. It’s not all that unusual. What’s unusual and requires treatment is when these attacks are overwhelming and become recurrent and frequent, which is characterized as “panic disorder”.
From the Mayo Clinic:
A panic attack is a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when there is no real danger or apparent cause. Panic attacks can be very frightening. When panic attacks occur, you might think you’re losing control, having a heart attack or even dying.
Many people have just one or two panic attacks in their lifetimes, and the problem goes away, perhaps when a stressful situation ends.
True, actually; at least if the threat is a predator (human or otherwise) and not a tsunami. Running in place screaming like a chicken may look like a defensive threat to a lion, or like you’re too crazy to deal with to a human.
From your linked article:
Panic attacks typically include some of these signs or symptoms:
- Sense of impending doom or danger
- Fear of loss of control or death
- Rapid, pounding heart rate
- Sweating
- Trembling or shaking
- Shortness of breath or tightness in your throat
- Chills
- Hot flashes
- Nausea
- Abdominal cramping
- Chest pain
- Headache
- Dizziness, lightheadedness or faintness
- Numbness or tingling sensation
- Feeling of unreality or detachment
That’s what I call ‘just another Tuesday’
Seriously though, OCD runs in my family, and I used to get panic attacks as a teenager that were pretty bad, with many of those symptoms, if not all of them at different times. I eventually helped myself by sort of inadvertently developing my own version of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy before I had ever heard of it, and changing my thinking patterns. Anxiety is still a frequent companion, though I’ve seldom, if ever, gotten full-blown panic attacks any more since then.