There's an article about panic by Bruce Tognazzini, user interface expert and former designer at Apple Computer, that may be of interest. His focus is mostly on technology failures (he uses examples from airplane flight and scuba diving), but the discussion has implications for dealing with other survival situations.

Panic! How it Works and What to Do About It

<http://www.asktog.com/columns/066Panic!.html>

One of the key points seems to be that when you get into trouble, it's really important to have a system that allows you to keep thing simple. He cites a statistic that might be controversial - perhaps the pilots here could comment. He states that twin-engine aircraft have FOUR times the fatality rate of single-engine aircraft. When a single-engine plane has problems, the pilot "has a clear realization that we’ve ended the flying portion of our trip," whereas the twin-engine pilot has a lot more opportunities for panic to induce bad decision-making. Furthermore, no one believes that this statistic applies in their own case.

There's a saying that pilots have about twin engine planes- when one fails, the other can get you to the scene of the crash. I don't fatalities are as much as 4 times as high as single engine planes, but it is certainly higher. But it's not just the opportunities for panic, and the increased skill needed to continue flying with one engine out. Twin engines are also used much more as travelling planes, so there's more pressure to make the trip in bad conditions. Recurrency training is the answer, and what a lot of insurance companies are insisting on.

I live near a tiny airport where someone apparently gives flying lessons. While I'm working outdoors, I will hear the engine of the silver single-engine plane above me suddenly quit. I can almost hear him telling his student: "Okay, NOW what are you going to do?"

For many years, it has been a "hobby" of mine to figure out what would be the best thing to do before it happens: If I do something dumb like stop on the railroad tracks & the barrier comes down, would it be better to back up or go forward? If some maniac with a knife tried to get into my car at a red light... If I walked into the local mini-mart with my head down, right into an armed robbery. Etc.

When I first noticed that I was doing this, I asked my sister if she every did that. She just looked at me like I had grown ears on the top of my head, and said, "NO! Why would I want to do that?"

So far, I've never run screaming from the scene. I usually do what needs to be done, then fall apart afterward, which still seems kind of whimpy...

On TV, I saw a woman who had stopped her car at the RR crossing, & then was rear-ended and knocked into and grabbed by the passing freight train. What on earth SHOULD you do in a case like that, anyway???

Sue

The "single vs. twin" statistic is about as volatile a question in aviation forums as guns and knives are here <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

As has been pointed out, twins are often flown commercially which means they are flown more hours, in worse weather, than recreational singles. Sometimes, a twin enables you to get into a more dangerous situation - because they tend to fly at higher altitudes, they can get you over obstacles like mountains, but with two engines, you've doubled the chances of an engine quitting, in a place where you need both engines to maintain a safe altitude.

Also, the incidents where a twin-engine pilot shuts down one engine and continues safely to his destination aren't regarded as accidents and so never feature in the statistics.

So arguing that the additional engine causes pilots to panic is a very simplistic analysis of a complex situation.

Anytime you're stopped, for any reason, you should be in the habit of checking your rear view mirror (if possible) so you can see if the car behind you is not stopping.

Keep your foot on the brake all the time you're stopped; if you see a car approaching from the rear, pump the brakes to alert him to the fact that you're not moving.

And if possible (especially at a RR X-ing) try to stop far enough back so that a rear-end collision won't push you into the path of the train. (I was taught that, when stopping behind another car at a red light, you should always be able to see the road between you and the car in front, for that very reason.)

I have, on one occasion, been forced to run a yellow light after I'd stopped, because I was convinced the car behind me was not going to be able to stop in time. I figured it was either move forward into the intersection or stay there and get rear-ended. If the light had been red, I probably would have taken the hit, but as it was yellow, I took what I perceived to be the better chance. I don't think I would have been able to react in time if I hadn't been anticipating the driver behind me not stopping.

I'm also one of those annoying drivers who slow down if I think the car behind me is too close. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Not a bad article, but the digs against Bush are B.S.

Glock-A-Roo:

Actually, the article gives Bush the benefit of the doubt. They could have said that he knew the attacks were coming and therefore was not surprised.

Learn your politics as the world over leaders kill their own or focus on certain groups to muster the populace.

The Jewish people were a focus group for the Nazis, the Palistinians are a focus group for the Jewish people, and you can not believe that other world leaders would do the same?

Not everything is as it seems, so accept the panic theory as the other alternative is really hedious.

Bountyhunter <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

IMHO Tog is making a common mistake when he quotes the American Psychiatric Association DSM: Panic Disorder (what Tog quotes) has little or nothing to do with panic in the sense we use the term here on this forum. Here when we say "panic", we really mean "fear gone out of control". I don't want to hijack this thread by rambling on about Panic Attacks.. but they aren't anything like the panic that some people experience in threat/trauma situations.

There is a common factor which explains why some people panic and some cope relatively calmly to threat/trauma: EXPOSURE. With repeated survived exposure to the situation(s) or similar situation(s), physiological reactivity goes down and clear/focused thinking improves. We achieve this by experience, by training, by practice/rehearsal (even by planning and practicing in your imagination)... all forms of exposure.

I went to his "about Bruce" page and I can see nothing to suggest he has any professional psychiatric training at all nor does he appear to be a professional pilot. He appears to be some sort of software designer. I'm not sure how this makes his insights any more valid than any other amateur. I tend to read stuff like this with a large grain of salt.

Regards, Vince

I agree. While there are lots of people who are very highly qualified (on paper) who are extremely ignorant, if not complete nutcases; and there are people with no qualifications who are highly intelligent and self-educated; I would tend to be very suspicious of someone who comes out with "scientific opinions" who obviously doesn't have any scientific research to back up his claims.

Was Bush "panicking" when he sat and waited before getting up and leaving the class when 9/11 happened? Or was he sitting there quietly collecting his thoughts and planning his response? Noboby but Mr. Bush can say for sure.

I read the Flying magazine "Aftermath" column about the female pilot who crashed into a backyard barbeque in Phoenix (I'm assuming it was the same crash); the official NTSB report was that the door had popped open and the pilot (who knew better, as she had handled an identical occurrence without incident some months previously when flying with an instructor) apparently trimmed up the plane, undid her seat belt, and reached across to try to close the door. If so, this was an example of extremely poor judgement, but clearly not panic.

I believe that, like any crank, he's trying to prove a point and is gaily selecting facts that he thinks will support his argument. Contrast this with Laurence Gonzales's book "Deep Survival" which IMO, although not a scientific research paper, at least approaches the subject fairly and open-mindedly.

I just wanted to add one more thought about being stopped in a vehicle:

My step-dad is a retired fire chief, and has always been VERY safety concious. One of the things that he has always stressed is....when you are stopped in a turning lane, keep your tires lined up in the position to move you FORWARD in the event that you are hit from behind as opposed to sitting there with your wheel cut hard to the left....at which a hit from behind can push you right into oncoming traffic.

Harley

Michael;

Thanks for posting this, btw. I hope we didn't scare you off by criticizing the content of the article - IMO, all these postings are welcome, even if we disagree with the contents of the link, because it always gets people thinking. (There's only so much you can say about the relative merits of Bic lighters versus oxy-acetylene torches, after all <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> )

The article does make some common-sense points, although I personally believe that most of the examples he gives are not examples of panic at all. (Bad judgement can be caused by many things besides panic - hypoxia, hypothermia, impatience, alcohol- or drug-impairment, time pressure, and "failure to understand the gravity of the situation" spring to mind.)

Poor human factors engineering (HFE) design can cause errors, but not necessarily through panic. (For some very interesting, and very scary, examples of HFE failure, see the book "Set Phasers on Stun", by Steven Casey, if you can find a copy.)

Reverting to ingrained habits in a crisis is not, IMO, an example of "panic".

If you are aware of a HFE "gotcha", there may not be much you can do about it except be aware of it and be prepared to compensate. (The fact that the brake pedal and accelerator are side by side and operated with almost identical actions is a design that's been around for so long, it would be far more dangerous to try to change it, for example. But most people just 'know' whether they're pressing on the accelerator or the brake.)

The main thrust of the article seems to be a call for incorporating HFE into software design, which is a good thing, IMO. But his definition of 'panic' seems to be "whatever I want it to mean". Which is unfortunate.

Uh, yeah... whatever you say.

Back on non-tinfoil topic: the author implies quite strongly that John Kerry would be a better president than Bush because Kerry had been under fire and therefore would have the skills to act better under pressure. Kerry's Vietnam exploits and 20+ year Senate career are enough to refute this claim.

More specifically, however, day-to-day coverage of the Kerry campaign by Time and Newsweek (revealed only after the election) showed Kerry as a nail-biting ninny who was notorious AMONG HIS OWN STAFF for not being able to make decisions in a timely and strong manner. His personnel described over & over how they wanted to pull their hair out as Kerry polled & focus-grouped every micro-level decision, unable to move forward under the power of his own convictions.

Of all the detractions aimed at Bush, indecisiveness is not among them. Like I said, the author's digs against Bush are B.S.

Have our rules changed?
"Politics, religion and philosophy can be stimulating to discuss and debate, but this is not the place to do it. Please stick to the topics of survival equipment and techniques. "

Point taken, though by your quotation, this entire thread is off topic. Take your pick.

Re: Reverting to ingrained habits in a crisis is not, IMO, an example of "panic".

On soapbox –

IMO, panic results when there is an absence of reason involved. Now I’m no psychologist, and even though I know lack of reason in most situations won’t result in panic, in my way of thinking, panic is a first-response, without-thought avoidance of some threatening condition . . . as close to an “ingrained habit” as it gets.

I’ve spent a lot of time around horses, for example, as many on this site have. Fight or flight is ingrained – d-e-e-p-l-y ingrained. Specially the flight part. That survival instinct results in thoughtless reactions, like running through fences, etc. Are we, the supreme beings of the planet, somehow exempt from such mindless reaction? I don’t think so. We don’t do what comes to mind in a real panic situation, we do what mindlessly results as an ingrained response.

How do we protect ourselves, save ourselves, avoid panic? Training, role playing, practicing, thinking through ahead of time. I may someday die on the street from a shot from my own gun, but ever since I got a license to carry a concealed weapon, I’ve role-played ALOT in my own mind about the consequences of making a bad decision. Since I am panic-averse and don’t want to go down that way, I try hard to decide ahead of time how to both stay alive and remain a free man through it all. Maybe I don’t trust those natural instincts, but when it comes to putting my life on the line I want to have thought about it ahead of time.

The same applies to our treks through the non-concrete jungle. We can all gain peace of mind in practicing our survival skills. KNOWING we can read a compass, KNOWING we can find or make shelter and KNOWING we can start a fire comes from KNOWING ourselves and KNOWING ahead of time how we will respond to potential danger. Training and practice will go a long way in saving our patoots. Otherwise, we’ll probably be safer just staying at home on the couch.

Off soapbox –

What is a soapbox, anyway?

Over and out.

I might be wrong about that one, I admit. I suppose it depends to a certain extent on how one defines "panic". As has been pointed out, the word is used differently, depending on whether you're speaking about ordinary "panic" or "panic disorder" which, I believe, is a very different beast.

I tend to think of panic as referring to a situation where you have ample time to come up with the right answer, if only you could get your brain to settle down and do its job properly. The driver who jammed his foot down on the accelerator when he finds the car careening towards a crowd of people, thinking he's pressing on the brake, is not necessarily - IMO - "panicking". He's doing the right thing - pressing on the brake as hard as he can. He's simply too pressed for time to carefully and methodically think through all his options. Perhaps, even as the car slams into the crowd of people, his hand is already reaching for the ignition to shut off the engine, or the handbrake to try and stop the car. In that case, I would submit, he is not panicking, but thinking very clearly. ("Brakes not working; how else do I stop the car?")

A better example, perhaps, might be an Airbus that crashed in the French Alps. The pilots who died in that crash probably never did figure out what went wrong - it probably never occurred to them in their worst nightmares that an engineer would be stupid enough to have a single programmable display that could be put into either of two modes. In one mode, you set the glide angle of 3.0 degrees, which is the normal approach angle for an ILS instrument landing; in the other, it set the descent rate in hundreds of feet per minute. The pilots set what they believed to be an approach angle of 3.0 degrees, and the next minute they were suddenly descending toward the mountains at 3000 feet per minute (50 feet per second or more than 34 mph). There were, as I understand it, only two visual clues in the entire cabin display to indicate what they had done wrong; one was a red light that wasn't lit, and the other was a decimal point that wasn't there. I doubt very much that the flight crew would have been "panicking" at that point, as I understand the word. They may not have been thinking as calmly and clearly as usual, but I'll bet in the 90 or so seconds they had to live, they processed thousands of hours of training and experience, and tried anything and everything they could think of to halt the descent.

I agree that reverting to a lifetime of training in a crisis can lead to panic, and sometimes panic can lead to this automatic response; but I don't think the two necessarily go hand in hand.

A soapbox is a sturdy wooden box that was often readily available and that orators would stand on when addressing a crowd, to make themselves more easily seen and heard. I suspect it was associated more with "unofficial" speakers, such as union leaders, who did not have formal podiums (podia?) from which to speak.

First, I am not a psychologist, nor do I play one on TV. I have seen both Panic occurances and Panic Attacks. And there are no set rules on how they will be displayed by any one person. Some go madly into the flight mode, others simply shut down and are incapable of making any decision (including flight).

The real basis here is the lack of reasoning, cognitive thinking, rational thinking, or whatever you want to call it. When panic (or a panic attack, to a much lesser degree) is onset, the person can no longer rationally look at the situation and make proper decisions. Ingrained training and muscle memory is really of no use because if it not applied properly, it is ineffective as the application or direction is wrong. Take the lost hiker. Once he realizes he is lost, and panics, he may start following what he believes are trail blazes, the trail, or familiar landmarks, all without context of his place, or in what he believes are reference points on his map, without validating those positions or markers. Once in full panic, all training is essentially worthless.

Training pays off in that period of time just prior to panic initiation. This is when the mind has become overly stressed, adreneline has started, and fine motor skills are degrading. Tunnel vision may even occur. Training for those situations that will put you into this position allow for the body to continue to do what is necessary without cognitive thought. The diver out of air or the pilot who looses an engine will immediatly do those actions that he has trained for that will limit the effects of the emergency. This frees he mind to focus on the more abstract (now that I am on spare air (or buddy) how do I get to the surface, now that I am in my best glide configuration where are the best locations to land). Combat will teach the value of training the best.

The author of the paper, while comparing apples to oranges, was somewhat correct in looking at the psychological aspects of panic, and how those mind triggers affect how the user interacts with a web page or program, whether or not they simply back out (flight). Again, somewhat apples to oranges.

Regards,
Bill

Well said, Bill. I think I am safe in saying we all agree we must do our best to avoid panic in the first place. If I can anticipate and prepare for a crisis, I can hopefully avoid the shock and panic that would likely otherwise follow. If I find myself screaming "NOW WHAT DO I DO?", it's probably too late. So . . . if I can say that planning and training adds a degree of confidence that helps avoid the dreaded panic, then planning and training should be added to our tool set to help keep us fully functional in those tough situations.

If I may borrow a story from the Around The Campfire section of the forum . . . This is a great example of being prepared for a situation and thereby having premeditated control over the outcome.

In Muggings in the local park, Reinhardt Woets had heard about "daylight robberies in the local park, placed next to the college where the majority of students travel through to get to and fro the institute". Since (it sounds like) the park was also along his route to campus, Reinhardt "decided that when confronted by a group I would run, just run run run. Furthermore when passing through the park I would stay alert and have an escape route planned." Sure enough, while passing through the park, he too was confronted. He recounts " I sprinted/jumped couple of metres to the left where there was a large grass field which would act as my escape route." His after-the-fact reflections were "So did they want to rob me? I&#8217;m certain they did want to, looking for an easy catch. I planned what I would do when confronted but am still surprised that it was such a quick reaction. It happened instinctively. I doubt that without going through my mind what I would do, it would have turned out the same. It might well have been a rather different situation." Reinhardt goes on to say "The question is that what else can I do to prevent it? I keep a lookout, plan possible escape routes, attempt to travel with more people and stay alert. I&#8217;d love to join a specialised self defence club if I had the time...maybe at university."

Now, I'm not going to speculate on Reinhardt's state of mind when all this went down, but he surmises that had he not thought about this possible encounter and planned ahead the outcome may have been "a rather different situation". But he was prepared to the point, for him at least, " . . . that it was such a quick reaction. It happened instinctively". Again, I don't know if it was truly instinctive or not, but clearly it required little thought on his part. He'd planned ahead and the reaction was there when he needed it. Reinhardt was able to save himself !! No "SAR" required.

Scout,
Really enjoyed reading your post, albeit a little suprised when I stumbled upon it.
When I walked through the park again I tried to go through it as it happened but everything is rather vaque. One thing I still do remember is that afterwards I felt as if I over-reacted. Maybe it wasn't neccesary to sprint/jump of the path for them and jog to out of the immediate area....OTOH I tell myself better to be save than sorry and would they really just have wanted a single pound? Doubt it.

On another note, my brother nearly got mugged again in a different local park. They weren't the same guys as last time. When they reported it to the police they acted uninterested.

Reinhardt