EVEYRONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK!!
This is an amazing book, well written and honest, but most of all the information contained in it is invaluable to anyone caught in a disaster. The author uses a wide variety of examples to detail how people don't seem to behave in the ways media is so convinced they should portray them.
A lot of it comes down to people denying there's something wrong for way too long, not taking decisive steps once they admit there's a serious problem, and all around not knowing what to do because your brain basically short-circuits thinking capabilities during an event. The answer to this problem is practice, so that when the time comes, you don't have to think, you already have been taught what to do. Take running fire drills seriously, pay attention to the airline safety video/read the safety pamphlet, take an evasive driving course, practice shooting your gun repeatedly, research evacuation routes before you need them, walk up the stairs when first going to your hotel room, etc. This is all advice you've been given before and stuff any adult technically knows, but so few people actually follow it. I believe the power of this book is that it drives home the importance of these lessons.
- " In 1990, the national hurricane center could predict the path of a hurricane only about 24 hours in advance, now it can do so 72 hours beforehand. That forecasting ability gives politicians and the public precious time to push through the denial phase and decide whether and how to evacuate. . . These warnings . . . will only help us if we can trust them."
- " As I write this, trust has never been more endangered. If I had to predict the future, I'd say more people will die from distrust than disasters in the next 50 year, unless we make major changes, individually and collectively. . . In many way, the pandemic was like a dressed rehearsal for climate change. Both require that countries respond collectively in a coordinated way at an unprecedented scale."
- "During the covid-19 pandemic, we were inundated with nonsense data. Too many news outlets routinely published the number of new cases or deaths without telling us how that number compared with the week or month before. . . It was maddeningly difficult to get a sense of relative risk."
- " 'This my the the largest public information mess I've ever witnessed, he said quietly. 'It just breaks my heart. We know how to do emergency planning than anyone on earth and it's NOT there!' " A quote from an extremely talented public information specialist about the US's covid response.
- "Way back on January 28, 2020, before anyone in America had even been diagnosed with covid-19, President Trump's security advisor tried to get him to see what was coming. 'This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.' Robert C. O'Brian said according to a later interview with journalist Bob Woodward. It was early enough to make a massive difference in the response. O'Brian was trying to nudge Trump out of denial. And it seemed to work on some level, just over a week later, when there was still time to prepare the public for what was to come, Trump called Woodward and said the virus seemed to be unusually contagious. . . . But publicly Trump was saying the exact opposite. . . Again and again, he downplayed the threat in all kinds of ways, contradicting his own public health authorities and sometimes even himself."
- "Almost every survey ever done on risk perception finds that women worry more about almost everything, from pollution to handguns. On a superficial level, this makes sense. Women are smaller, on average, and traditionally more responsible for caring for others. Maybe they need to worry more. But when risk expert, Paul Slovic, tried to explain the gender gap this way, he ran into problems. The stereotype didn't quite fit. For example, black men worried just as much as white and black women generally did. So Slovic tried other variables. Are women and minorities less educated and therefore more irrational in their risk assessments? Well, no. When Slovic controlled for education the sex and race differences persisted. In fact, when he asked scientists who study risk perception for a living to rank hazards, women scientists still tended to worry more than their male counterparts. Maybe women and minorities just have less faith in government and authorities. Do they worry more because they don't trust other people? But, there again, when the researchers controlled for such attitudes, it didn't fully explain the worry gap. Eventually, Slovic realized he was obsessing over the wrong people. Men were the ones throwing off the curve, not women or minorities, and not all men, but a small subgroup. As it turned out, about 30% of white males saw very little risk in most threats. they created most of the gender and race gap all on their own. So Slovic began to study these men. They had a few subtitle things in common. They liked the world of status, hierarchy, and power, says Slovic. They believed in technology. They were more likely than any other group to disagree with the statement that 'people should be treated more equally'." I just want to point out how this information applies to how people approached covid and arguments about fighting bears and so on.
- "After 9/11, . . . among survivors who were in or near the world trade center during the attacks. Those with a high sense of self-worth rebounded relatively easily. They even had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva."
- "A strong leader can make decisions fast, which is what you need in a crisis. Hierarchy is more efficient than democracy." This is in relation to chimpanzee behavior, but is completely applicable to humans' heard behavior too. I also want to point out the manufactured crisis' we see in right-wing media and the rise of overbearing, obnoxious politicians popular on the far right too.
- "There were important differences: rescuers tended to have healthier and closer relationships with their parents, they are also more likely to have friends with different religions and classes, their most important quality seemed to be empathy. It is tricky to say where empathy comes from, but Olander believes the rescuers learned egalitarianism and justice from their parents. When they were disciplined as children, rescuers were more likely to have been reasoned with, non-rescuers were more likely to have been whipped."
- ". . . and interviewed them about why they did what the did. As with the WW2 rescuers, he found a range of explanations, but a full 78% cited the 'moral values and norms' they had learned from their parents and the wider community. Many talked about how they had been taught at some point in their lives that people are supposed to care for one another."
