The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why
Staff Reviews
The Unthinkable….who survives when disaster strikes – and why.
This book is a nice combination of disaster stories and statistics about why some people survive while others don’t. This book is chalked full of tips on how to make your life safer in a disaster and practical things to do to help yourself prepare or as the military puts it, the “Eight P’s”: proper prior planning and preparation prevents piss-poor performance. There are exercises that can help you prepare for a crisis that will give you an advantage and last but not least know some simple tips like: get to know your neighbors - they will be your first responder, lower your anxiety level, lose weight, calculate your risk and train your brain.
This is one of my favorite passages in the book – and a good example of information you will learn by reading this book:
If the leading causes of death in the USA are: 1. Heart disease, 2. Cancer and 3. Then do you start each day with 20 minutes of meditation? Do you work out for at least 30 minutes a day? When you swim in the ocean are you more terrified of getting sunburned than you are of getting bit by a shark?
Description
Discover how human beings react to danger–and what makes the difference between life and death
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?
In her quest to answer these questions, award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley traces human responses to some of recent 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 the journeys of the 15,000 people who found their way out of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. To understand the science behind the stories, Ripley turns to leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists, and other disaster experts. She even has her own brain examined by military researchers and experiences, 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.
Praise for The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why
“Fascinating and useful.”—The New York Times
“A must read. We need books like this to help us understand the world in which we live.”—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness
“Engrossing and lucid . . . facing the truth about the human capacity for risk and disaster turns out to be a lot less scary than staying in the dark.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“The Unthinkable isn’t merely a book about disaster; it’s a book about survival—maybe yours.”—Gavin de Becker, author of The Gift of Fear
“Ripley is a voyeur on a mission. . . . Her conviction: We’d all stand a better chance of surviving a disaster if we understood what happens to our little gray cells when things get ugly. . . . Spiced with surprising factoids, this book might save your life one day.”—Bloomberg News
“This is a book with a purpose, meant to change things.”—Rob Hardy, The Commercial Dispatch
“These tales leave your viscera enflamed because they compel two questions: ‘What would it feel like to go through that?’ and ‘Would I do the right thing and survive?’ This is an irresistible book.”—Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Determined
“The Unthinkable is the most magnificent account of a survivor’s mind that I have ever read. It has helped me know and accept some of my reactions during my seventy-two-day ordeal in the Andes. I can now understand how fear motivated me, and how denial also played a part. This book will help those who’ve never faced disaster to understand their own behavior and be prepared should their luck run out one day.”—Nando Parrado, author of Miracle in the Andes
“The Unthinkable reveals why, under the same circumstances, some people caught up in a disaster survive and others do not. In her well-crafted prose, Amanda Ripley shows us all how to prepare to meet danger and increase our chances of surviving the unthinkable.”—Bruce Henderson, author of Down to the Sea and True North
“When a disaster occurs we invariably learn the ‘what’ of the event—how many died, how many survived. Amanda Ripley’s riveting The Unthinkable provides genuine insight into the ‘why’ behind the numbers. This remarkable book will not only change your life, it could very well save it.”—Gregg Olsen, author of The Deep Dark: Disaster and Redemption in America’s Richest Silver Mine
“Ever fantasize about what you would do in a disaster? How would you survive? How would you behave? After interviewing survivors of the World Trade Center attack, Amanda Ripley sifted through amazing tales of survivors from other disasters and mined various sociological, psychological, and neurological studies. Her insights are absolutely fascinating, and they could come in handy one day.”—Walter Isaacson, author of Elon Musk
