News Brief

Sociologists have identified something called the “milling effect,” in which people who may need to act in what may be in an emergency do—the mill around and talk to each other first.

“Is this for real? I can’t leave my desk. Was this drill planned? That bell has got to stop.”

“I am not evacuating…are you?” “Oh. You are?” “When do you think you’ll go?”

Then there is the family kind of milling. “What was that noise? Do you think it was anything? Should we call the police?”

In her blog, Well, Tara Parker-Pope talks about a useful new book on disaster preparedness—and why doing those fire drills is important.

Luck favors the prepared mind, after all.

New York Times

“Much of what we know about surviving disasters comes from people who have been through them. Their stories are collected in a fascinating and useful new book, “The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — and Why” (Crown), by Amanda Ripley, a journalist who has covered floods, fires and plane crashes for Time magazine.

“There are people walking around who have been through disasters and emergencies and have learned really interesting things,” Ms. Ripley said. “I’m always amazed by their stories, but that’s not part of our national conversation about emergency preparedness and homeland security.”

“In addition to talking to survivors, Ms. Ripley also delves into the science of disaster preparedness and survival. One of the main lessons is that panic, denial and fear may be inevitable during a disaster, but your brain will perform best in a stressful situation if you have already put it through a few rehearsals.

“That’s why the fire drill is so important. You need to make the walk down the stairs to the exit so that your brain can store the physical memory of the experience.

“Your brain works by pattern recognition, and when it’s in an extremely frightening situation it sorts through a database for a script,” Ms. Ripley said. “It’s important to get into the stairs and actually go down them. Your brain relies on that memory and responds to it much more quickly and fully than words.”

Source: New York Times, Well Blog by Tara Parker-Pope, August 4, 2008