The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why | Amanda Ripley

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why | Amanda Ripley | Quite An Insight into survivability

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The Unthinkable: W...

	The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why Amanda Ripley Crown, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 37 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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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Empowering

For me, as a New Yorker who used to work at The World Trade Center, this book was a heart pounder and a tear jerker.
It was also very empowering.
I now understand some of the behaviors I've seen and understand my own.
I know I can survive. It's not just luck.
I can better my chances and that of my family.
For your own sake, read this book.

Quite An Insight into survivability

I heard the author on Coast to Coast am radio show and decided to get her book. I bought the CDs. This kept me riveted and gave me alot to think about. As a nurse, we PRACTICE for emergencies and think about what could happen if the patient worsens. That way we ACT instead of having to decide. I highly recommend this book/CD

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A toolkit for survivors

Quite the primer on surviving disasters. Excellant material for everyone who wants to improve the odds on surviving life threatening situations.
Should be required reading for security professionals, and anyone who has anything to do with emeregency response planning & procedures.

this book is not a fear, anxiety spin, it has common sense information that everyone needs to know about being a survivor.

Choppy, but useful

The book is valuable in concept, but it is presented in a very choppy and disconnected manner. It is filled with stories which illustrate the various points but they are more like a reporter's scattered notes compiled together than a linear flow of thinking.

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Wanting more wanting less

Praise the author for knowing that statistics can kill even the most avid reader or responder. The subject has been well researched, but Ripley avoids such a pitfall. There are times the book feels padded and there are times the subject cries out for more help from the philosophers. A section relating to how Freud or Jung and gang might approach the problems would also have been welcome. The conclusions are we may never know how we would react in any given disaster or accident, but the reader may get some little indication on his/hers/ own ability to survive even the reading of duller books full of statistics. Having read from page one to the end I
was left feeling like I had eaten Chinese food, i.e. satisfied at first, but wanting more. Susan

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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