http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1053663-1,00.html

An interesting article describing the human factors in surviving disasters.

And in a "PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER.-friendly" publication too, to boot.

Counting rows, knowing where the exits and stairwells are - all of these are at least as important as any safety measure that can be imposed from above.

"We tend to assume that plane crashes--and most other catastrophes--are binary: you live or you die, and you have very little choice in the matter. But in all serious U.S. plane accidents from 1983 to 2000, just over half the passengers lived..."

Get off the plane, run like hell, and curse Homeland Security that you don't have a knife or a way to make fire.

Sue

Does anyone get gazes from the airplane staff personnel like you've got three heads when asking to be seated as far to the rear as possible?

the tail usually brakes off, i have heard that the best place to sit is between the wings next to a door. It's the strongest structual point of the aircraft, but you'r also sitting between fueltanks....

and next to an escape route. Indeed the tail breaks off. On crash photos you will notice how it is mostly in one piece. When the siht hits the fan ill be right in the back beyond the last chairs - with the stewardess's hehe <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

A friend of mine always opts to sit in the tail if he can. He refers to it as the "escape pod".

Sue

I don't know what the statiscal chances are, if any study has been done...

A friend of mine was in the Air Gabon plane which crashed near the shore last year. He was seated in the front half of the plane ; he survived, with a bunch of others.
But all the people seated in the tail half of the plane died, drowned. (AFAIK)

I guess it depends of the circumstances of the crash (ground/sea, fire/no fire, etc...).

(I'm no expert. The only time I ever crashed when flying, was a 3m drop with my powered hang glider, just before landing ....)

From what I've heard, in the event of a forced landing or impact, the safest place to be is above the wings, since that is the strongest part of the aircraft. Plus at least one set of emergency rows is located near there, so you're within a few rows of the exit.

But if the plane blows up or breaks up in air, sometimes it's best to be in the tail section, which escapes the worst of the disaster. There's usually an emergency exit somewhere in the back too, so you're a couple rows from escape as well.

And if someone tries to hijack the plane (the operative here is "tries"), well God help that poor because he's gonna get his kicked by the passengers...

The same goes to anyone who tries to say Hi to his friend Jack.

My cousin always sits in the back of the plane. Like he says, you never hear of a plane hitting a mountain tail first. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
gino

Excellent article. Thanks for the link.

I have been in only one emergency situation in my life, fortunately, and I can testify that my mind did react in a very strange way.

My father died of a coronary March 13, 1993, during that freak snowstorm. He was 62 and built very strong. Never any indication of trouble. I was shovelling and he came out to help. Shortly afterward, he said he didn't feel well and went inside. My dad ALWAYS felt fine. Never sick. Me, I always have a headache.

Anyway, my mom opened the front door soon afterward and screamed for me. I instinctively knew what happened. And I also developed a split personality.

I ran inside and did what I could, CPR and all that, but it was a lost cause. Part of me knew he was already dead, but you have to try anyway.

And all the while I was there, part of my mind was in full disbelief, saying this couldn't be happening. Time seemed to slow down, almost to a standstill. It was a very spooky feeling. Also, even though I knew I was moving very quickly, it felt like I was stuck in molasses, and moving very slowly.

I have tried very hard to forget that day. It was the worst in my life. But it is seared into my brain.

On the other hand, the happiest day of my life, the day I got married, Dec. 28, 1991, I barely remember. I wasn't in control then, either. I had to dress properly, hit my marks, say my lines, and that was it. But my memories of that are foggy at best.

The human mind and memory is a very strange thing.

-- Craig

I had read many times, about that felling.
But I did not really know what that means (or even believed it ..) until
I once experienced this feeling myself.

During a seminar (understand "fun week-end") in Spain with most of the employees of our small company, we had the pleasure to visit a farm, rising fighting bulls ( for the arena). And we were given a demonstration, not with a bull but a calf ...
three or four co-workers went into the arena, along with a bullfighter and made a few passes, waving a red "muleta" in front of the animal.
One of our big bosses (I guess it was to show the upper management also could be courageous...) decided to have a go at the "muleta".
I was safely standing behind a wall, just on the side of the arena, taking pictures.
I immediately saw the guy was not at ease : he was slow to move, did not do what the bullfighter told him (i.e. he hold the muleta in front of him, instead of on the side) etc..
And sure enough, the calf went straight on, pushed him down and procedeed to trample him and to stab him with its horns.
I was looking at all this and was petrified behind my low wall, just thinking "but someone has to help him ...." and after what seemed a long time the bullfighter and other farm's hands went into the arena.
At that time I thought nobody had reacted before at least a full minute or more.
A co-worker recorded the incident with his video camera.
When I looked at the video, I mesured the time between the moment our boss went down and the moment the bullfighter was diverting the calf :much less than 10 seconds !

I still wonder at my sense of passing time at the moment : "my" time was about 10 times slower than reality ... <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />


P.S.: our boss was quite seriously injured, a horn having driven into his skull (just a bit ; not enough to prevent him to still be our boss.... h?las <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />.....)

It must be related to shock. Your brain processes what your eyes see, but deliberately slowly. Your mind can't handle the feedback at realtime, so your brain slows the feedback down. I believe it is the brain's way of protecting the mind from more severe and lasting damage.

-- Craig

Do you think the brain is slowing it down or maybe speeding it up? Like recording at 33 1/3, & playing back at 78 (for those of you who know what that means)?

I wonder if the brain is processing information so rapidly under the affects of adrenaline (etc), that everything else seems slow by comparison?

Sue

exactly what I was about to ask....
To get slow motion film, you have to film at higher speed ...
Is it the same effect with the brain ? Processing info faster so you could act faster ...if you could act at all ...
<img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

I read in a recent article that while our technology has evolved, our brains have not. We still have Neanderthal brains. So my vote is for slower processing under stress. And yes, being 44, I know all about 33-1/3 and 78 LP speeds!

-- Craig

Information processing is faster, up to a point, during the "alarm" and the early "resistance" phases of the Stress Response. During the later phases (exhaustion and recovery) it is dramatically slowed. During the "time standing still" phenomenon (which is reported in the Alarm-Resistance phase) there is a pituitary release of ACTH, to the adrenal glands which pour out adrenalin. Small vessels constrict, diverting blood from extremities to heart (which speeds up), lungs, major muscles. There is an almost instantaneous increase in liver output of glucose for the brain, and the brain changes the "mode" of thinking. This mode change is from conceptual-abstract thinking, to very focal practical thinking (survival thinking). It is accompanied by reports of "time standing still". Hearing is thought to become more acute, and pupil dilation makes vision more sensitive.
..after a while (which varies from person to person) the body moves into the resistance-recovery stages in which cortical processing is dramatically slowed.

So, everyone is right.. and wrong. There is speeding up.. there is slowing down.. of thought processing. Just depends on when you're measuring.

I have read that the reason everything is in slow motion is that the brain doesn't know what's important and what's not, so it goes into overdrive and starts processing everything. The conscious mind interprets this as "everything went into slow motion".

Don't know if that's true but it seems reasonable.

I was on an airliner several years ago when the oxygen masks deployed. The interesting thing was that, despite all the times I had sat through (and paid attention to) the flight attendant safety briefings, neither I nor anyone else made any move to don an oxygen mask until some time had passed (it seemed like several minutes but I guess it was really much shorter time). Only after there was a garbled (totally unintelligible) announcement over the PA system did I reach up and "pull the mask toward me" as I had been instructed to do about a hundred times in the past. And most of the passengers around me didn't put their masks on until I did; everyone, it seemed, was waiting for somebody else to go first, or from some sort of "official" announcement that yes, this was the real thing and not some malfunction.

And the bizarre thing was that, even while I was thinking about whether or not to put the mask on, I knew that I was being silly and should just reach up and do it.