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The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why | 
 enlarge | Author: Amanda Ripley
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $12.47
You Save: $12.48 (50%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 1606
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 0307352897
Dewey Decimal Number: 155.935
EAN: 9780307352897
ASIN: 0307352897
Publication Date: June 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
It lurks in the corner of our imagination, almost beyond our ability to see it: the possibility that a tear in the fabric of life could open up without warning, upending a house, a skyscraper, or a civilization.
Today, nine out of ten Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow, some of us will have to make split-second choices to save ourselves and our families. How will we react? What will it feel like? Will we be heroes or victims? Will our upbringing, our gender, our personality–anything we’ve ever learned, thought, or dreamed of–ultimately matter?
Amanda Ripley, an award-winning journalist for Time magazine who has covered some of the most devastating disasters of our age, set out to discover what lies beyond fear and speculation. In this magnificent work of investigative journalism, Ripley retraces the human response to some of history’s epic disasters, from the explosion of the Mont Blanc munitions ship in 1917–one of the biggest explosions before the invention of the atomic bomb–to a plane crash in England in 1985 that mystified investigators for years, to the journeys of the 15,000 people who found their way out of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Then, to understand the science behind the stories, Ripley turns to leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists, and other disaster experts, formal and informal, from a Holocaust survivor who studies heroism to a master gunfighter who learned to overcome the effects of extreme fear.
Finally, Ripley steps into the dark corners of her own imagination, having her brain examined by military researchers and experiencing through realistic simulations what it might be like to survive a plane crash into the ocean or to escape a raging fire.
Ripley comes back with precious wisdom about the surprising humanity of crowds, the elegance of the brain’s fear circuits, and the stunning inadequacy of many of our evolutionary responses. Most unexpectedly, she discovers the brain’s ability to do much, much better, with just a little help.
The Unthinkable escorts us into the bleakest regions of our nightmares, flicks on a flashlight, and takes a steady look around. Then it leads us home, smarter and stronger than we were before.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 The Unthinkable addressed October 12, 2008
Part of a creating and supporting a survival mind set is the individual capacity to accurately perceive and assess potential problems before they become problematic. This book reaches into this realm of accurate assessments and dismantles the process--through real examples.
There is as much misconception about survival as in any pursuit man chases along pristine academic lines. This book, while intelligently done, avoids sterile academic presentations, explanations, and best-guessing when problem solving in a life-threatening arena.
I believe we learn best by doing and through first hand experiences, and this is where this book delivers. Many of us want to know what it will take for us to survive doom. Most of us will not be able to prepare for disasters through surviving disaster, but that doesn't mean we cannot prepare.
Reading this book will allow you to experience disaster and learn what you need without needing to endure all of the danger and suffering. As close to acquiring first hand experience, reading and assimilating this book just may be your first needed step toward being truly prepared for the realities of surviving disaster.
Unthinkable? I certainly hope not. October 7, 2008
Bad stuff happens. What you do when it does could be a matter of life or death. "The Unthinkable" sits on my bookshelf alongside Gavin DeBecker's The Gift of Fear: And Other Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence. The takeaway from both of these invaluable books is not to be paranoid or fearful, but to be prepared. To get your mind right before something happens, whether it's a minor traffic accident or a major disaster. If you've already contemplated what might happen and what you might do when it does, you're ahead of the game--and ahead of the rest of the people around you.
Other reviewers have commented (complained?) that it's somehow not "comprehensive" enough, but it doesn't need to be. The idea is not to show every disaster and how to survive it, but to delve into several major disasters and show how ordinary people survived them, whether by their own actions or, in one notable case, inaction.
I can't help but think of an out-of-town business trip I took a few years ago. At 1am, the fire alarm went off and strobe lights in my room started flashing. I got up, looked into the hallway, and saw...nothing. Eventually I saw other curious guests looking out of their rooms. I put some clothes on and wandered outside, where I stood around with the other guests until hotel staff told us it was safe to go back inside. My boss said something about kids playing a prank. Fifteen minutes after I got back into bed, the alarm went off again. I put a pillow over my head and went back to sleep. If there had been an actual fire, well, perhaps I wouldn't be here to write this. Now that I have a son I will no longer mess around with this kind of thing. As they say, better safe than sorry.
An amazing, eye-opening book. Read it and get your mind right before you need it. And if you never need it, consider yourself among the fortunate majority. At the very least, you'll have been entertained.
 Good but don't go hunting with the author September 28, 2008
This book is quite good, particularly if you'd like to evaluate yourself and understand how well you might do in a life-threatening emergency.
One criteria, which is used to predict how well those being tested for admission into our military's Special Forces will do, is especially intriguing. You're asked if you've experienced three symptoms:
1. Things seem to move in slow motion.
2. Things seemed unreal, as if in a dream.
3. You had a feeling of separation from what was happening, as if you were watching a movie or a play.
Answering "Yes" to all three means you're LESS likely to make it through the grueling Special Forces training. In a tight situation you'll probably freeze or panic. That's not good when bullets are flying.
At first, I was disappointed. I'd answered yes to all three, but based on experience, I think I handle a crisis well. Then I noticed that the questions are preceded by "thinking back over last few days...." Oh, that makes an enormous difference. I never have those feelings in day-to-day life. In fact, it's been years since I had one, They only come in life-threatening experiences, such as while mountain climbing and in a car accident that left both cars totaled.
It turns out that's OK. Experienced Special Forces operatives have precisely those experiences in tight situations. Kept within limits, they help us focus on the danger at hand and shut out distractions. But if you have them in daily life, your brain is likely to be overwhelmed in a real emergency. Instead of seeing only what you need to see, you see nothing. Instead of seeing things in slow motion, you freeze. Instead of separating slightly from events, you tune them out entirely.
In one case, I was in a precarious spot on a cliff face when the friend I was with slipped and fell. If both of us were to live, I had to pass through the three stages the author discusses. Denial was gone in a flash. We were roped together, so if I didn't act quickly, I'd snatched off the rockface after him. Deliberate took less than a second. The rock was too bare to provide a handhold, so my only hope was to grab the rope and exert as much drag as possible before it snapped taunt. If that meant my hands were ripped to shreds, then so be it. Decide was more like acting and meant grabbing the coiled rope and letting the last twenty feet burn through my hands. After I'd arrested his fall, I remember looking at my bare hands, expecting to see flesh ripped to the bone. They were merely a bit red from the friction.
My only complain comes from her blog, linked from TheUnthinkable dot com. There she makes remarks about gun control that are silly beyond belief. She's certainly no Sarah Palin, riding snow machines through a frozen wilderness and hunting moose without a flicker of fear. And lack of confidence and knowledge about weapons doesn't speak well of her in a crunch, since two traits of those who do well in danger is that they're confident of their abilities and prepare well. "What if her reporting of studies of people under stress is equally flawed?," I asked myself. Probably not, I eventually concluded. She's clueless about anything connected with guns because she works for Time magazine, where that sort of ignorance is the norm. But she probably got the other studies right.
In short, the book's well worth reading. Just don't ask the author to go hunting with you. She might not panic, but I'm not sure she knows which end of a rifle to point toward the target.
Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II
BUY IT NOW! Seriously, if this subject even interests you, buy this! September 26, 2008
I just finished reading this and cannot wait till I read it again! This is full of not just well written stories, but backed by hours of research and science! It also points you in the right direction of further research with a great breakdown in the back of the book of where the book got it research from by chapter! If emergency management / homeland security even interests you, buy this! Also, if you are in the slightest curious on human response in disasters, buy this book! If you want to better prepare yourself or family and friends for emeregencies, buy this book! Well, buy it and read it is what I truly mean!
Sobering, but also Empowering September 26, 2008
Through study of the latest scientific information regarding human behavior during the stress of disastrous incidents, the author describes how our perceptions and cognitive processes are distorted under these conditions, leading to behaviors that may once have been evolutionarily appropriate but in the modern age are maladaptive and threaten our survival. The book takes us through gripping accounts of individuals who survived 9/11, plane crashes, tsunamis, house fires, terrorist hostage incidents, shootings, etc., illustrating these concepts in action.
The message is that through preparation and training we can create reflexive muscle memory and response patterns that will kick in to override our natural tendencies to tunnel vision, freezing up, or panic when a crisis hits. These are the same techniques used by the police and military.
One of the first and best preparation steps one could take would be to read this book. Recommended!
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