I just saw an interesting new article called Another Night to Remember about the Costa Concordia cruise ship sinking. Some lessons here I take away:

Some people will behave well, some badly.

Individuals can make a huge difference.

Stay alert, stay on top of what is happening.

If things don't seem right, they probably aren't right, no matter what you are being told.

Try to stay in shape. Even a small extra bit of physical fitness can make a huge difference, for people of any age. Don't neglect upper body strength.

Check out exits, where safety gear is located, etc, as soon as you board.

You are absolutely right.

If you're traveling with a spouse or children, make sure that they also know where the emergency exits are. "Hey kids, first one to tell me how many emergency exits there are gets a quarter."

Yes, except my lower body is the part that needs more of my attention. As I get older, I'm getting more into calisthenics, stretching, and body weight exercises outdoors and in my home gym. I have a gym membership, but I go only about one day per year. With cardio, I have found it's important for me to pick activities I enjoy. For example, I'm not so much into running nowadays, but I do jump rope just about everyday.

Thank you for the article. I am afraid it reinforces my lifelong aversion to crowds. I'll take my chances in the wilderness, alone or in a small group.

lifelong aversion to crowds there's a phobia for that, I've got it too whatever it is. When peeps say cruise I think of sailboats, I'm looking for one now, big enough for two over a week, but small enough to be sailed solo offshore. ...and cheap, did I mention cheap

Yes, I totally agree with that view. I've never sailed on a big cruse ship, don't ever plan to either. However, I think many of the things in that article are applicable to other situations.

Like it or not, I do sometimes find myself in analagous situations. I do for example fly on big commercial airplanes from time to time. Every single one of the take away lessons I listed in the OP apply to that situation as well.

For example: Some people will behave well, some badly.
I've been told that aircraft cabin crew are now trained to forcefully take charge of emergency situations. Shouting "EVERYONE LISTEN! YOU...OPEN THAT EXIT WINDOW! NOW!" or something like that. Experience has shown that people panic (or remain passive) because they don't know what to do. Having someone....anyone...forcefully taking charge and directing things helps a lot. If the person taking charge has some symbol of authority, such as a wearing uniform, that is even better.

Another example: Check out exits, where safety gear is located, etc, as soon as you board.
When I board an airliner, train, bus, whatever, I always try to remember to mentally note where the exits are, and how to operate them.

>I have found it's important for me to pick activities I enjoy. For >example, I'm not so much into running nowadays,

i hate running so try and walk hills instead. by accident discovered an alternative yesterday when had to rush wearing steel toecaps. it's like running through treacle! ankle weights will give a walk the benefits a sprint.

qjs

the original post made me think of one thing.

there is a common theme that has happened across a variety of emergency situations lately. People in the disaster zone are told "not to worry" and that "things are not serious".

When the first airplane hot the World Trade Center on 9/11, people in the second tower began evacuating too. But they soon received instructions over the building intercom to remain calm and go back to their offices. I know someone who refused to obey those instructions ... which is why they lived.

During the problems at the nuclear powerplant in Japan after the tsunami, the news updates to the local public were wrong and/or deliberately manipulated to reduce the level of public concern. Actual radiation leaks were far higher than anyone was being told.

And the Concordia cruise boat is also an example where people were told to calm down and not to evacuate immediately after the ship hit rocks.

We live in an information age.
Ironically, all too often this information is being manipulated during real disasters to minimize the "public impact" of major problems, and to reduce the perception that authorities have no idea of the real situation.

Pete2

During my last CPR class, I was reminded that often a crowd will form around the person, yet no one will call 911, with each person thinking that "someone else" will or has.
So it's important to point to someone and say "YOU! Call 911!" in a stern, forceful voice to one specific person to snap them out of the stupids and into being useful.

Do you think there's an unwritten rule of sacrificing a few for the greater common good?

I think there is an unwritten rule that in any situation no matter what, the authorities will try and put the best spin possible on it. Even if that means giving people really bad advice that gets a bunch of people killed that did not otherwise need to die.

There is also an unwritten rule that the authorities virtually always mislead , misrepresent, or outright lie to the public about what is going on in emergencies. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes not.

There is also the control freak thing going on that is very common in official circles. If they do not know what to do, they will tell the public to do something anyway because they do not want it to appear like they are as clueless as they really are in many cases.

Taken in its totality, it means you just cannot trust anything you are told by officialdom in emergencies. There is no way to know if they are giving you good advice or really awful advice, or whether the information they are putting out is true, false, or some combination thereof. This seems far less true in some areas than others.

I think you are making some rather extreme, blanket statements.
This is clearly not always true. It does happen sometimes, but often not. Remember the big hurricane that was expected to hit the east coast, with predictions of major flooding? After the fact, a lot of people were complaining that the authorities were over-reacting. Many people thought the authorities put the worst spin possible on it.

Again, while this does happen sometimes, saying "virtually always...." is simply not true. I think mistakes happen frequently, but deliberate misrepresentation is not so common.

No, I disagree. What it means is that you need to stay as well informed as possible. Try to learn about and understand potential threats, be it hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, or whatever. Recongnize that officialdom doesn't always have complete information. To be useful and timely, warning decisions often need to be made based on very incomplete data.

I think you need to onsider the information you are recieving from official sources, but evaluate it relative to what you can see around you, and any other knowledge you have of the situation. I find it useful to think first about worst case scenarios, then work backwards from that.

And always try to have a "Plan B", in case YOUR initial assessment is wrong.

You may be right about the statements not always being the case. The point may be should have been that official sources just cannot be trusted to provide you either with accurate information or good advice.

That does not mean they will never give out accurate information or good advice, only that it can never really be trusted to be either.

However, just to make a point. The nitwit in charge of the NATO riot in Chicago that is about to happen recently suggested people should bring their children down to the lake front for a picnic during the riot.

This is while the city as part of its security precautions for the event is shutting down the museums along the lake front and the entire harbor.

That sounds like "denial". People in emergencies often have an almost wilful inability to understand how bad things are. For them, the situation is unprecedented; even if it has happened before, it hasn't happened to them. Big disasters are so rare they are not the first explanation you should reach for. People also tend to freeze rather than panic, which may be related: if you don't know what's going to happen, any action you take may make things worse. Since you are still alive, where you are now is relatively safe, so why move?

9/11 was pretty much unprecedented anywhere. They did not expect the towers to collapse just because they'd been hit by a 'plane. People in the second tower had no reason to expect a second aeroplane. Evacuations are dangerous; people get injured during them.

It's still not clear to me what happened there; what exactly the captain and crew knew when. However, I gather the ship is made of compartments, and being holed in one or two of them does not mean it will sink. If the ship isn't sinking, then it is probably the safest place for the passengers (because evacuation is dangerous), even with water pouring in over the generators and power lost. As it happened, three compartments were holed and the ship did sink, but that may not have been apparent to the captain until later.

I'm not sure how that's relevant. How were "a few" sacrificed in the given situations.

Generally I prefer REDACTED to conspiracy. I don't think the people giving advice to return to desks/cabins were trying to sacrifice anyone. They were giving the best advice they could. It happened to be wrong.

That, for me, is the take-away. The people in authority may be ill-informed or suffering from denial or other cognitive disorders. They may be following a play-book that is not appropriate to this exact situation.

During 9/11, many people were told to go back to their offices. Order was maintained. I'm sure a "few" who went back to their offices died as a result. Maintaining order for the greater common good was the intent, whether or not order was actually maintained.

Further, you mentioned that "evacuations are dangerous". If you were in charge of an evacuation, you would have that knowledge in your head. Whether it's a subconscious decision or not, you may decide that it's better to maintain order and endanger a few people, rather than have everybody evacuate at once, cause chaos, and endanger EVERYBODY. Sacrifice a few for the greater common good. It's uncomfortable to fathom, but it's a real possibility, not a conspiracy and not evil either.

I think it is very difficult to determine the intentions and motivations of the "authorities" involved in these situations. It occurs to me that whoever got on the horn and told everyone to return after the first plane hit probably remained inside the WTC and very likely may have perished. Remember that the "authorities" pull their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us; They are basically trying to perform their duties properly, and like all humans, sometimes they get it right and sometimes they make decisions that, in hindsight, are "less than optimum."

People who didn't evacuate will have died, but that doesn't make them sacrifices unless someone intended that they die. That seems unlikely to me.

It's the numbers I don't get. If we need to evacuate 5000 people, are you suggesting it would go smoother if we told a few (eg, 100?) to stay in their office so the rest could get out quicker? Regardless of morality, I don't think that works. I doubt the evacuation would go smoother unless you told the majority to stay behind. In other words, the opposite of what you say.

Ordering a complete evacuation will probably harm a few people who get hurt in the rush, but that can be worth the risk if the threat is real. When the authorities did not order evacuation, because they did not think the threat was real, I think they accidentally endangered the majority to save that minority.

The intent of the evacuation manager is to maintain an orderly evacuation, not to kill a few people. It's a big difference from a moral standpoint, but the result is the same.

Here's the prisoner's dilemma. By having an orderly evacuation, a healthy athlete in a delayed group may die, when he could have survived if he had ran out sooner while running over people. However, if everybody decides to run over people, then everybody is in more danger. In that case, the strongest and luckiest people survive first. All or most people must cooperate in order for the evacuation to be orderly and safe for the common good. Unfortunately, there is some chance the people who feel strong or lucky will not cooperate.