Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff of all
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamp and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's put ourselves in in a situation here. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, we're in the podcast chamber right now, it's you,
Speaker 1: it's me, it's no man in the all the complex
Speaker 1: equipment that records the sounds that come out of our mouth.
Speaker 1: And then there's a window covered up by curtain. Now
Speaker 1: imagine suddenly the curtain blows out and and we're also
Speaker 1: suddenly we're being sucked out the window as if this
Speaker 1: is a pressurized aircraft cabin. I don't know why that
Speaker 1: would happen, but let's assume there's like a you know,
Speaker 1: a sharknado on the other side. Is King Kong on
Speaker 1: the other side of this way though, King Kong and
Speaker 1: a sharknado most likely? Okay, yeah, all right, got it
Speaker 1: in my head. Go on, Okay, So how do we react?
Speaker 1: How do we react to look to set sudden interruption
Speaker 1: of normal life? Normalcy is quite literally going out the window,
Speaker 1: and suddenly life has become this just complete struggle for
Speaker 1: survival and every second counts. Okay, well, I think we
Speaker 1: have three options here. One is that you could just
Speaker 1: shriek and freak out right and not really do yourself
Speaker 1: any sort of service here, always a good option, Okay.
Speaker 1: The second thing is you could just stare, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of into oblivion as King Kong takes you into
Speaker 1: his clutches and stuffs you into his mouth. Just stare
Speaker 1: and not do anything. Okay, Well, at least I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna look foolish. Okay. The third thing is you can
Speaker 1: try to save yourself. You could try to flee from
Speaker 1: the situation in some way as you're getting sucked out,
Speaker 1: maybe you hold onto something that the window casing, and
Speaker 1: you try to crawl back into the room and then
Speaker 1: escape through the emergency exits. And what's interesting is when
Speaker 1: you when you think of these three possibilities. Yes, and
Speaker 1: when we can all put we all certainly will go
Speaker 1: through these scenarios in our own head. Maybe not the
Speaker 1: King Sharknado combination one, but we we inevitably think about
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do in disaster strikes, and we
Speaker 1: imagine ourselves typically going through that to survivalist instinct we
Speaker 1: imagine ourselves doing the thing that logically would need to
Speaker 1: be done to survive. But does it shake out that way?
Speaker 1: I mean it does in the movies. Well, all of
Speaker 1: us think, of course, we would hold onto the window
Speaker 1: frame and we would somehow escape the clutches of King
Speaker 1: Kong and Sharknado. But this is according to Esther ingliss Arkel,
Speaker 1: she's writing for I oh nine. She says about seventy
Speaker 1: percent of people in a disaster exhibit this sort of
Speaker 1: unusual Ladi da behavior, just staring into a blivion ten
Speaker 1: to fent, freak out in another ten to fent, react
Speaker 1: to the situation accordingly, efficiently, and orderly, and they do
Speaker 1: the thing they're supposed to do so, in other words,
Speaker 1: they get the hell out of dodge. And that is
Speaker 1: crazy because you just you we're programmed, especially by movies
Speaker 1: and disaster movies, to to to not see things breaking
Speaker 1: down along along the percentage lines like that. The image
Speaker 1: that always comes back to me is the original Blob movie,
Speaker 1: The Blob Steve McQueen. There's a scene where the Blob
Speaker 1: has made its way. You know, it's rather grown at
Speaker 1: this point. You know, the blob right big jelly creature
Speaker 1: that dissolves people, makes its way into a movie theater,
Speaker 1: crowded movie theater, and then all hell breaks loose and
Speaker 1: there's this wonderful scene of everyone just rushing out of
Speaker 1: that movie theater. And then there's a fabulous scene after that,
Speaker 1: the blob oozing out of the theater doors and the
Speaker 1: crowd just running in front of it like everybody knows
Speaker 1: what's up. It's all right, there's a there's a blob.
Speaker 1: We're all going to freak out, We're all gonna run,
Speaker 1: and you can you can view that freaking out and
Speaker 1: running as you know that as either just completely freaking
Speaker 1: out and making a run for or doing the logical thing.
Speaker 1: But either way, it doesn't line up with these percentage
Speaker 1: points that we're looking at, because seventy of them would
Speaker 1: be just setting there being are we supposed to? This
Speaker 1: is being the movies over? Should I sit there? Hey? Hey,
Speaker 1: you do you know if the movie is over, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get a refund on this. And meanwhile, you do
Speaker 1: just just get your flesh dissolved off of you by
Speaker 1: a monster. All right, Well, let me give you a
Speaker 1: real life example of that. That's example, well one that
Speaker 1: actually happened for real, the not on a film. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's one of the best known examples of this sort
Speaker 1: of emergency situation in which people gravitate towards what is
Speaker 1: called a normalcy bias. And we'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: in a moment, but in this scenario, we're talking about
Speaker 1: two planes that collided on a runway in the Canary
Speaker 1: Islands nine and one of the survivors, Paul Heck, he
Speaker 1: grabbed his unresponsive wife who just sat there, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of saying what what's going on? And what they
Speaker 1: did is they got, of course the hell out of
Speaker 1: dodge and on the way is they are passing other passengers,
Speaker 1: they're noticing people who are just sitting there, staring straight ahead,
Speaker 1: not doing anything. They're uninjured people. And what happened is
Speaker 1: that they only had sixty seconds to leave that plane
Speaker 1: before it was engulfed in flames. And it was a huge,
Speaker 1: huge fatality for that flight. A lot of people did
Speaker 1: not get out of it. It and so a lot
Speaker 1: of emergency management personnel look at that case is why
Speaker 1: why do those people who are uninjured sit on that
Speaker 1: plane and do nothing? Is this um because they were unprepared?
Speaker 1: Is this some sort of instinct in humans or is
Speaker 1: there something else going on here? And that's what we're
Speaker 1: really going to try to get at the heart of today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a normal cy bias is what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It's a bias towards thinking everything's okay, minimizing with the
Speaker 1: actual risk, and thinking must not be that big of
Speaker 1: a deal. We've all had this, uh, certainly as you
Speaker 1: just observe your environment around us. I mean there are
Speaker 1: times where you freak out and you say, oh, the
Speaker 1: shady person on the street, I better up to no good.
Speaker 1: But then a little reason creeps in and you're like, well, there,
Speaker 1: it's probably okay. I'm going to air on the side
Speaker 1: of just assuming everything is completely normal. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: we really sometimes underestimate things, and we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: why we do that, but I wanted to say that
Speaker 1: According to a National Institute of Standards and Technology study,
Speaker 1: which was drawn from the interviews with nearly nine dred
Speaker 1: survive verse of nine eleven, they said that the people
Speaker 1: who made it out of the World Trade Center waited
Speaker 1: an average of six minutes before leaving their desks. So
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here is this idea that you
Speaker 1: are looking at the odds, You're plane the odds because really,
Speaker 1: on a day to day basis, we don't have really
Speaker 1: that many, um real dangers in front of us, and
Speaker 1: we have imagined dangers that we do with all the time.
Speaker 1: So it's like a matter of sort of suessing those out. Well. Like,
Speaker 1: I think about this every time I board a plane,
Speaker 1: because on one hand, I have every disaster movie I've
Speaker 1: ever seen, you know, plane rex happening all the time,
Speaker 1: and those because the story of someone getting on an
Speaker 1: airplane is generally only interesting if there's a creature on
Speaker 1: the wing of the plane where it crashes into a mountain.
Speaker 1: Then people have to eat each other. I mean, you
Speaker 1: need to drum. But then I start breaking it down
Speaker 1: and I think, I think of I think of football,
Speaker 1: which I almost never do, but I think, how many
Speaker 1: times have I ever heard on the news, Oh, an
Speaker 1: entire football team was lost in a plane crash today,
Speaker 1: or they can't have this football game because half the
Speaker 1: team went down. Um. You know cases like this that
Speaker 1: remind me that, hey, these are people that fly around
Speaker 1: all the time, Um, why do I not hear of them?
Speaker 1: Parash it? Yeah, I mean that takes an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of mental energy in the first place for some of
Speaker 1: us to board that plane and convince ourselves that it's
Speaker 1: a good idea to get into this this metal hole
Speaker 1: that's just flinging itself through time and space, and and
Speaker 1: that it's going to all turn out okay. Right. In
Speaker 1: my theory about the seats, I think the reason that
Speaker 1: the seats are so uncomfortable and seemed to be designed
Speaker 1: to to to make you uncomfortable is so that you
Speaker 1: end up focusing on the immediate discomfort of having to
Speaker 1: cram yourself into that small space and deal with all
Speaker 1: these people around you, rather than the actual uh potential
Speaker 1: of crashing into a mountain. Right. So you have a
Speaker 1: couple of different elements going on there. You have all
Speaker 1: this this uh, the stories that you've told yourself that
Speaker 1: allows you to get on the plane in the first place.
Speaker 1: You have distraction, and then when a real emergency happens,
Speaker 1: you have something called milling, which is part of that
Speaker 1: playing the odds process, right, because milling is this idea
Speaker 1: that people will check in with one another before taking action, saying,
Speaker 1: is this really a dangerous situation? Are we okay? Did
Speaker 1: you did you hear something is that. Does that the
Speaker 1: engine sound weird to you? Did you see that creature
Speaker 1: on the wing of the plane, because I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that's real. Uh. And what's interesting about this this million
Speaker 1: is that we're not On one hand, it is, yes,
Speaker 1: an attempt to get the best information. You don't want
Speaker 1: to jump to conclusions, and you you want to make
Speaker 1: sure you get the best possible information from a few
Speaker 1: different people. But on the other hand, you also want
Speaker 1: to get specific information. You you keep you want to
Speaker 1: keep asking the question, do you get the answer that
Speaker 1: feels right, the answer that feeds more comforting. You want
Speaker 1: somebody to tell you, Oh, it's no big deal. Engines
Speaker 1: make that kind of noise. The creatures live on the
Speaker 1: wing of the plane. It's just how it works. Here's
Speaker 1: a kind of a rote example. But if you've ever
Speaker 1: been um in an area where there was a tornado warning,
Speaker 1: have you ever called someone up and said, Hey, what's
Speaker 1: the weather like over there? Or I mean, have you
Speaker 1: ever called up a you know, a friend or a
Speaker 1: family member and said, I like, tornado is coming my way.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm terrified of tornadoes, So I if I have
Speaker 1: any reason to believe they're in the area. Then I well,
Speaker 1: I head to the basement if there's a basement, and
Speaker 1: if not, I guess I just freeze up and wait
Speaker 1: for death. So but you batten down the hatches, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, not to go look out the window because
Speaker 1: it could blast in on me and kill me. Well,
Speaker 1: from that National Institute of Standards and Technology study, another
Speaker 1: finding was that on none elevidently, seventy of survivors spoke
Speaker 1: with other people before trying to leave. The study shows
Speaker 1: so again it's this Milling idea that sometimes it's not
Speaker 1: just sitting there in disbelief in doing nothing. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just trying to collect data, even in the face of
Speaker 1: really significant data in front of you, saying this is
Speaker 1: an extraordinary situation. You should do something about it. Now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we're social animals, you know, so it makes
Speaker 1: sense that we would reach out for these answers. Um
Speaker 1: And you see this all the time with with other
Speaker 1: threats to less concrete threats where people end up just
Speaker 1: going and go online and to find out let me
Speaker 1: feed this fear or let me put out put out
Speaker 1: the fires of this fear with enough you know, links
Speaker 1: from this website or another. Well, I think that's the
Speaker 1: curse of knowledge, right, We all the time are getting
Speaker 1: sorts of messages, warning messages, especially here in the United States.
Speaker 1: Other countries make fun of us for this, But you
Speaker 1: could have a pillow and on that pillow there's going
Speaker 1: to be some sort of warning on there that says,
Speaker 1: you know, please don't suffocate yourself. Just because of all
Speaker 1: the legal battles we have here in the States. Um
Speaker 1: So at some point those messages just we they recede
Speaker 1: into the background because there are so many of them
Speaker 1: to filter through. And again, there are so many real
Speaker 1: threats versus perceived threats that the mind does want to
Speaker 1: do a little bit of milling to figure out what's what. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: is this is this? Is this a toy that is
Speaker 1: actually inappropriate for my child that will actually kill him?
Speaker 1: Or is this just one of those situations where it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of legal mambo jumbo because you could conceivably
Speaker 1: strangle yourself with a toy horse Probably not gonna happen,
Speaker 1: But lithium ion batteries keep them away from kids. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's my p s A for this podcast, because we
Speaker 1: get out juice stuff on them. No, no, it's it's horrible,
Speaker 1: for they're tiny, you know, the size of quarter, and
Speaker 1: it can do horrible that Actually children can die from
Speaker 1: ingesting them to keep them away half. Indeed, all right,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, and when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about survival psychology in this idea
Speaker 1: of psychogenic death. All right, we're back. So is there
Speaker 1: a positive spin here to those just milling about? There
Speaker 1: is and and And to understand the positive you have
Speaker 1: to remind yourself again, Seventy people of the people are
Speaker 1: just setting there, are going, hey, is there something weird?
Speaker 1: Is there's something wrong? Ten percent are in action mode,
Speaker 1: no what to do? That's ten, and the other ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen percent are freaking the heck out. One positive
Speaker 1: is that all of those calm people who don't know
Speaker 1: what's up and are just asking and milling uh and
Speaker 1: and and have that normalusly bias fully engaged, they have
Speaker 1: a calming effect on the freakouts. That's true. And some
Speaker 1: people would argue that it makes it easier for that
Speaker 1: ten to to actually exit even faster, because well, if
Speaker 1: nobody's clogging the stairwells or other exit strategies, then you
Speaker 1: can zip through there pretty quickly. Yeah. But then that
Speaker 1: that's the downside as well, is that those ten percent
Speaker 1: who realize what needs to happen, we need to get
Speaker 1: off of this plane before we're all consumed by fire,
Speaker 1: they could actually have their progress um um impeded by
Speaker 1: the individuals who are just setting there asking what's up.
Speaker 1: There's saying is there's something wrong, is there's something on
Speaker 1: the matter, and they're saying, no, you need to get
Speaker 1: out of my way, or and you need to run
Speaker 1: for it too, because we have to survive. The ideal
Speaker 1: situation is that that ten percent would actually get people
Speaker 1: sort of you know, a fire under the artist and say, okay,
Speaker 1: I see that person in action, I will now follow suit.
Speaker 1: And we have seen this over and over again in
Speaker 1: other emergency scenarios, particularly in UM being the world trade
Speaker 1: centers and not eleven attacks. So UM I wanted to
Speaker 1: just shift a little bit and go into survival psychology
Speaker 1: and highlight someone named John Leech. He's a survivor psychologist,
Speaker 1: and he says that we need to reframe the question
Speaker 1: of survival and quit sort of looking at these examples
Speaker 1: of the survivor or not just as they're innately courageous
Speaker 1: and they have this robust will to live. But rather
Speaker 1: we should be looking at the people who do not
Speaker 1: make it and asking the question, why do people die
Speaker 1: when they don't need to. Yeah, particularly gets into this
Speaker 1: idea of psychogenic death, which is a really snazzy term,
Speaker 1: and it refers to a biological process that takes place
Speaker 1: as in natural death, but it's triggered at a premature
Speaker 1: stage in the person's life, when they're under all this script.
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of this idea of al right,
Speaker 1: plane crashes and you have some people who have that
Speaker 1: strong will to survive, they're a survivor type, they're gonna
Speaker 1: make it. But then there are people who just shut down.
Speaker 1: They die within the first first one or one to
Speaker 1: three days. And and why is that. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: not like they had a grievous injuries, they just shut down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's got all sorts of examples that he points to.
Speaker 1: He talks about light aircraft crash and Sierra Nevada, and
Speaker 1: he says that of the three people on board, one
Speaker 1: passenger was trapped in the wreckage, so obviously that person
Speaker 1: couldn't do anything. Another person had no more than superficial bruising.
Speaker 1: But then you have the pilot who had injuries to
Speaker 1: his arm, ankle and ribs. And it was actually the
Speaker 1: pilot who left the scene and for eleven days he
Speaker 1: walked and he hiked through the snow covered mountains before
Speaker 1: reaching a road and getting help. Now, after that eleven days,
Speaker 1: both the person who had just the superficial wounds and
Speaker 1: the person of course who was trapped in the wreckage
Speaker 1: they died. But the question was why did the person
Speaker 1: with just the minimal wounds perish when he had acts
Speaker 1: us to water in food and shelter and could have
Speaker 1: made a fire. So does it come down to this like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're just prepackaged with courage and know how. Uh No,
Speaker 1: According to Leach, it all has to do with the
Speaker 1: way that you're processing that information and in some cases
Speaker 1: your past experiences. Yeah. And he makes a strong argument
Speaker 1: too that it's it's you know, we tend to think
Speaker 1: of you know, stress comes our way, threat comes our way,
Speaker 1: and it's fight or flight, right, Am I gonna punch
Speaker 1: it in the face or turntail and run? And he's
Speaker 1: arguing that it's really more than this situation of fight,
Speaker 1: flight or freeze? Am I going to punch it in
Speaker 1: the face. Am I going to run away from it?
Speaker 1: Or am I just gonna stand there and let it
Speaker 1: take me? Yeah, Because he's saying that there's a lot
Speaker 1: to take in when a trauma happens. He's saying there's
Speaker 1: pre impact, impact, recovery, rescue, and post trauma. And he
Speaker 1: said that most people have a certain cognitive load that
Speaker 1: were that that sort of normalized to our day to
Speaker 1: day operations. Right, We've talked about called it to load,
Speaker 1: this idea that you have just finite resources of energy
Speaker 1: for your brain to operate on. And so he's saying
Speaker 1: that if you have this extrnsic condition bringing with it
Speaker 1: all sorts of new data in a new environment, it's
Speaker 1: gonna crash your brain. So what he said is that
Speaker 1: what happens is that in the first three days, particularly
Speaker 1: you're looking at the end of this this situation in
Speaker 1: Sierra Nevada Mountains, um that those first three days were
Speaker 1: really important to the survival of the people who were
Speaker 1: still alive, because that's when the executive functions will fritz out,
Speaker 1: and when that happens, working memory that stops and you
Speaker 1: have you know, at selective attention, disturbed and that becomes
Speaker 1: really important because that selective attention is what allows you
Speaker 1: to really focus on what matters in Maelstrom. Right, if
Speaker 1: you've got you for you're on a plane and smoke
Speaker 1: is rolling in and people are screaming or just sitting there,
Speaker 1: you still have a situation that is new to you,
Speaker 1: and you have to figure out what's important here? Now,
Speaker 1: what's happening when people freeze up? What are we talking
Speaker 1: about here? Um? Now? Leach refers to this as cognitive paralysis,
Speaker 1: So we're talking complete in action. We're talking uh, just
Speaker 1: setting there, uh, not not fighting, not flighting, just just
Speaker 1: shutting down completely. And he does say that you can
Speaker 1: actually recover from this, But what becomes so important is
Speaker 1: that if you if you can't find a way out
Speaker 1: of that, if you can't find some sort of clarity
Speaker 1: in there and get back to your working memory, well
Speaker 1: then it's just gonna usually have cognitive dysfunction, which is
Speaker 1: probably what happened to the survivor in the plane crash
Speaker 1: who for eleven days sat there. Is perhaps after the
Speaker 1: third day that his brain just said, forget it, We're
Speaker 1: gonna shut this down. And that's what's so interesting about
Speaker 1: that idea of psychogenic death that your brain could fold
Speaker 1: up in on itself and say, Okay, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: draw the covers here. Yeah. Yeah, And and we and again,
Speaker 1: we we all think we're going to be the survivor type.
Speaker 1: We all kind of even if we're we have a
Speaker 1: pretty realistic understanding of our skills. Like if I crashed
Speaker 1: in a plane in the mountain, I'd have to realize, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm probably not going to fashion a bow and arrow
Speaker 1: and hunt a grizzly bear or anything like that. But
Speaker 1: I like to think that I'll at least have, you know,
Speaker 1: the clarity of mind enough to to sort of look
Speaker 1: around and realize what my options are. But maybe that's
Speaker 1: not gonna be the kicks. Maybe I'm going to freak
Speaker 1: the heck out, or I'm just gonna freeze. So the
Speaker 1: thing that makes the difference here is really the ability
Speaker 1: to call up patterns again, that selective memory, or not
Speaker 1: just the working memory, but that selective attention and in
Speaker 1: some ways training yourself for for the emergency at hand.
Speaker 1: And when you look at Paul Heck and that example
Speaker 1: of the two planes colliding, it turns out that he
Speaker 1: as a child was involved in a theater fire, and
Speaker 1: since then he had always made sure to check exits
Speaker 1: no matter where he was. In fact, when he boarded
Speaker 1: the plane with his wife, he pointed out to his wife, Hey, look,
Speaker 1: these are the emergency exits. And so the idea is
Speaker 1: that when the plane crash occurred, he wasn't as um
Speaker 1: reliant on trying to piece together new information. In fact,
Speaker 1: he could go to that blueprint that he already had
Speaker 1: stored in his brain and act quickly. So in some ways,
Speaker 1: you can look at the survivors and say, Okay, it
Speaker 1: may be that they're prepared to some extent, or they've
Speaker 1: had some sort of life experience that has told them
Speaker 1: that they should be more aware of their environment and
Speaker 1: ready to act on it, and are subconsciously storing away
Speaker 1: information that could help them. That's interesting. Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: idea of sort of a domestic animal versus a wild
Speaker 1: animal suddenly put in a situation of extreme danger. One
Speaker 1: has never had to really deal with threats and is
Speaker 1: completely overwhelmed by the predator in smits. The other has
Speaker 1: always lived in the raw and therefore is more prepared
Speaker 1: to act appropriately in the face of danger. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: when I was reading about Paul hex account. I thought
Speaker 1: this sounds like my dad, and my dad was actually
Speaker 1: in special ops in Vietnam, and so in some ways
Speaker 1: he has had a lot of the survival training. But
Speaker 1: this is a guy my dad who every time he
Speaker 1: goes into a hotel will go and look at the
Speaker 1: map of the hotel that's pasted on the back of
Speaker 1: the door in the hotel room, look at the emergency exits,
Speaker 1: and then he will leave the room and count the
Speaker 1: number of doors it takes to get the emergency exit.
Speaker 1: So he has that information in his mind. And you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't train my brother and I to do the
Speaker 1: same thing, but in a way, we subconsciously saw how
Speaker 1: he was behaving. And both my brother and I, when
Speaker 1: we enter a room, most likely we are going to
Speaker 1: take the seat that is facing the door so we
Speaker 1: can have a bead on the door to exit. And
Speaker 1: it's weird way. We've talked about this before, so there
Speaker 1: may be something to that. Okay, So in the face
Speaker 1: of appropriate training and or real life experience, you're you're
Speaker 1: likely to be in a better position to act appropriately
Speaker 1: in the face of the threat. Right. It's no guarantee,
Speaker 1: but it helps, right, Yeah, case in point. If I
Speaker 1: may draw another example from science fiction. Um in the
Speaker 1: movie Aliens, the mission there into the colony, it went bad,
Speaker 1: and what happened. You had Private Hudson freaked out. He
Speaker 1: was definitely in that ten of the freak out, We're
Speaker 1: all gonna die game over. You had Lieutenant Gorman. He
Speaker 1: was definitely in that se though, where he was just
Speaker 1: he you know, he froze up, froze up, just was
Speaker 1: was asking questions and was of no use. But then
Speaker 1: you had meanwhile, you had Hicks and Ripley. They acted
Speaker 1: responsibly and they made it to the end of the movie.
Speaker 1: There you go. So all right, now you know we're
Speaker 1: focusing on the survivors, which is what we weren't cointd.
Speaker 1: We're gonna focus more on and in order to do that,
Speaker 1: you really have to look at animals in this reflexive
Speaker 1: ability to go into tonic immobility or fantatosis, which is
Speaker 1: something that we talked about last week. Yeah, Like the
Speaker 1: basic idea here is you have a bunch of ducks.
Speaker 1: The foxes move in attack the ducks, and what do
Speaker 1: the ducks do a number of the ducks they just
Speaker 1: freeze up. They play dead if you will. But it's
Speaker 1: not a conscious act of playing dead. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's just it kicks in. It's a it's involuntary. They're
Speaker 1: just they're they're just laying there acting dead for all
Speaker 1: intents and purposes. The foxes are mouthing them, dragging them
Speaker 1: off to store their bodies for later, and and this
Speaker 1: allows them the possibility to escape later on, though it's
Speaker 1: not a very high possibility, but apparently they stand a
Speaker 1: better chance playing dead and escaping than you know, standing
Speaker 1: up and fighting against the foxes. Right, And that's that
Speaker 1: example of more of what is a pre meditative response,
Speaker 1: at least we think in nature, But there are other
Speaker 1: examples that seem to be reflexive. And when I think
Speaker 1: about that, I think about the great white, which can
Speaker 1: enter that tonic immobility state and basically take the vital
Speaker 1: signs down to the studs, whereas something like the fox
Speaker 1: or an opossum still has its metabolic rate at its
Speaker 1: normal rate and doesn't off it. Yeah, and you also
Speaker 1: see it in a number of farm animals to where
Speaker 1: actual um, you know, vet's in an animal husbandry where
Speaker 1: it's useful to exploit this because you know that if
Speaker 1: you kind of handle the animal the right way, it's
Speaker 1: gonna freeze up, and it's going to be very calm
Speaker 1: and still, and it's essentially give up and submit to
Speaker 1: your handling. So in this sense, could humans that could
Speaker 1: they be entering into what would be a sort of
Speaker 1: reflective state of of tonic immobility. And in order to
Speaker 1: answer this question about whether or not that's exists in animals,
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at a study called Biological Evidence from
Speaker 1: Victims of Traumatic Stress and this was actually published in
Speaker 1: Biological Psychology by Alien and Vulcan. You have the Brazilian
Speaker 1: study from two thousand eleven, and uh, it's it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: They looked at thirty three trauma survivors, fifteen women, including
Speaker 1: eighteen with the diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder. Now
Speaker 1: what happened to this is they were they were all
Speaker 1: asked to describe the ordeals that they went through in detail,
Speaker 1: and then that you know that they took these accounts
Speaker 1: and they transcribed them into basically sixty second audio narrative,
Speaker 1: which is in a male voice presented in a second
Speaker 1: person presentense form, so kind of like role playing. You're
Speaker 1: walking down the street, there's a shadow that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: all right, So each participants account is been played back
Speaker 1: for them over headphones while they stand on a platform
Speaker 1: that records body sway. Their heart rates also monitored during
Speaker 1: this and afterwards, they asked questions about how they felt
Speaker 1: as they listened to this, to this recording, to this, uh, this,
Speaker 1: this transcribed account of their incident. And what's interested with
Speaker 1: the participants who reported a strong sense of being paralyzed, frozen,
Speaker 1: unable to move her scream, they tended to show less
Speaker 1: body sway, higher heart rate, and less heart rate veriability. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this was true across both PTSD and non PTSD patients,
Speaker 1: but it was the PTSD patients who were more likely
Speaker 1: to report feelings of paralysis while listening to these recordings
Speaker 1: of their ordeals. And so the idea is that those
Speaker 1: who suffered a trauma, in particular rape victims, may have
Speaker 1: reflexively entered into a state of tonic immobility, hinting that
Speaker 1: this kind of frozen state that we see in animals
Speaker 1: happens in humans when we're faced with a life or
Speaker 1: death situation. Yeah, that's some some tough stuff to think about.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's really really some kind of dark
Speaker 1: material to process. It really is, and I think that
Speaker 1: it gives us a much more nuanced look at how
Speaker 1: we're react in these situations, because a lot of us say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm the wolf in this situation and you're the sheep
Speaker 1: or the sheep dog. And it's not that black and white, um,
Speaker 1: as we know any The ways in which our brain
Speaker 1: operate depend on the context, that path depends on past experience, UM.
Speaker 1: And so you know, you're not maybe always going to
Speaker 1: be the wolf or the sheep dog in a situation. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think one of the big overall take homes from
Speaker 1: all of this is just a more realistic understanding of
Speaker 1: how humans um react to threat, react to stress, and
Speaker 1: and what we can do, uh, you know, in in
Speaker 1: a reasonable sense to prepare for bad times. And of
Speaker 1: course it all takes a little bit of preparation or
Speaker 1: a lot, depending on the situation, and then just kind
Speaker 1: of calming the mind, because otherwise you're gonna be Chess
Speaker 1: Tannembomb in the Royal Tannembombs, taking your family through an
Speaker 1: endless fire, drill your entire life, trying to prepare and
Speaker 1: not living actually in the moment. But the fire drill
Speaker 1: is a great example, you know, and they stress you know,
Speaker 1: have have an emergency plan for your household. It doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean you're going through the fire drill every night,
Speaker 1: but but having like a general idea like, hey, if
Speaker 1: there's something weird, like if you know, if something happens
Speaker 1: to the house, where's where's the point where we meet up?
Speaker 1: You know, if there's if if if the smoke detector
Speaker 1: goes off, you know, what do we do? What what
Speaker 1: is the what is the appropriate response? And you maybe
Speaker 1: even rehearse that to a certain extent. Of course, the
Speaker 1: closest thing that comes to mind with that, outside of
Speaker 1: just you know, workplace fire drill, school fire drill settings,
Speaker 1: is that when I was I think junior high, that
Speaker 1: was when I had that definitely fear of being abducted
Speaker 1: by aliens, and I would run the escape scenario over
Speaker 1: my head that if I if they come into my room,
Speaker 1: how am I going to escape? How close am eight
Speaker 1: of the door? Uh? And and how close am eight
Speaker 1: of the window? You, sir, probably would have avoided being
Speaker 1: abducted by an alien improbed, I hope. So, But then
Speaker 1: again that's the trap we all fall into right. We
Speaker 1: think we're gonna we're gonna be the one to run
Speaker 1: away from the alien, but are just gonna lay there
Speaker 1: and take it. Well, you know, we have talked about
Speaker 1: the whole body paralysis that happens when people think that
Speaker 1: they're getting alien or abducted by aliens. Um, I will
Speaker 1: tell you one thing. The next time our office building
Speaker 1: has a fire drill, I will not, as I usually do,
Speaker 1: skip out twenty minutes early and go get a sandwich
Speaker 1: and avoid the whole ordeal. I am going to line
Speaker 1: up with everybody and go down those endless flights of
Speaker 1: stairs again and again. I'm not gonna do that. I'm
Speaker 1: going to go for the sandwich. Alright. It is far
Speaker 1: more effective. And really that puts me, I think in
Speaker 1: the tent ten to fifteen percent of people who say, oh,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a fire drill, I'm gonna be proactive
Speaker 1: about this and not be here for it. And then
Speaker 1: the other ten of fifteen percent that freak out and
Speaker 1: they just start ripping off their clothes and running around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you never see that during the fire drills here. But
Speaker 1: but he doesn't remind me of the there was no
Speaker 1: no I have not been again, I'm always getting the
Speaker 1: sandwich st you miss out, my friend. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: reminds me of that episode of the Office where I
Speaker 1: think there was it was a fire drill situation where
Speaker 1: everyone just goes completely baddy and you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: they're knocking stuff over there, running around like crazy and
Speaker 1: uh and again that was probably uh, that was probably
Speaker 1: an exaggeration as well, because they're they're putting something that
Speaker 1: would have been tend to fifteen percent of people freaking
Speaker 1: out and extrapolating it to everyone. Well, the question is
Speaker 1: if media began to you know, report it in that
Speaker 1: way via our stories that we tell, you know, film
Speaker 1: books of this sevent normalcy bias, would we begin to
Speaker 1: change or be hevi we're more aware of this. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I just watched the new trailer for the
Speaker 1: new Godzilla movie and and it would be interest I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're not gonna do it, but what if this
Speaker 1: new Godzilla movie showed a realistic interpretation in which seventy
Speaker 1: of the people just sat there and we're like, hey,
Speaker 1: did you hit? Is there a giant lizard outside? Did you?
Speaker 1: Is this on the news that's on it's on MSNBC.
Speaker 1: Is it also on Fox News? We should check out
Speaker 1: CNN to to see what CNN is reporting, and it
Speaker 1: would be less traumatics. Yeah, this is They're not gonna
Speaker 1: let us direct Godzilla too. No. No, someone somewhere just
Speaker 1: tip their cigar into nash Ria and said, forget those kids,
Speaker 1: forget him, forget them all right, So there you go,
Speaker 1: look at the world of normalcy bias and psychogenic death.
Speaker 1: Let's call the robot over here and do a quick
Speaker 1: listener mail. Do it all right? This one comes to
Speaker 1: us from Hannah. Hannah writes in and says, good and
Speaker 1: talk Julian Robert. Back in February two thousand twelve, you
Speaker 1: did an episode about rat kings. Uh, and I just
Speaker 1: mentioned rat kings in this episode, so this is uh,
Speaker 1: this is this is good. Just I'm relatively new to
Speaker 1: the podcast and I just listened to that episode. I
Speaker 1: thought you'd be interested to know about something that happened
Speaker 1: in June two thousand thirteen in Germany, hence the greeting
Speaker 1: A squirrel king was found. This was a group of
Speaker 1: baby gray squirrels that had gotten stuck together at the
Speaker 1: tails by tree sap that had gotten into their nest.
Speaker 1: They were successfully separated by veterinarians. One can assume, considering
Speaker 1: the massive population of squirrels in the world, that this
Speaker 1: has happened to other leaders of squirrels who weren't lucky
Speaker 1: enough to be aided by humans. Happy holidays, Hannah in Oakland.
Speaker 1: Well there you go. All right, Um, that's terrifying to
Speaker 1: think of, especially when I look at all of the
Speaker 1: squirrels in my backyard just marauding. Yeah, well, I think
Speaker 1: when I when we covered rat kings, I can't remember
Speaker 1: we mentioned it, but I remember running across mentioned in
Speaker 1: our research of a squirrel king. But it may not
Speaker 1: have made it into the podcast because really, you already
Speaker 1: talking about about rat That's enough cryptozoological mumbo jumbo or
Speaker 1: not to to discuss in one podcast without getting into
Speaker 1: the squirrels. But but the squirrel example brought up here
Speaker 1: is very interesting and maybe a little less frightening, perhaps
Speaker 1: perhaps slightly less. I mean, if if the rat king
Speaker 1: is a portent of death and disease and medieval plague
Speaker 1: striking down your city, what does the squirrel king represent?
Speaker 1: Home values are gonna dip? I don't know, it just
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like it would be near as the Diers.
Speaker 1: I'm still thinking about it. Hey, I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: that before we started podcasting, our video producer, Tyler came
Speaker 1: in here and he filmed us chit chatting, and that's
Speaker 1: when we were actually talking about the squirrel King. So
Speaker 1: if you guys want to excuse me, the rat King. So,
Speaker 1: if you guys want to check that out, make sure
Speaker 1: to go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com
Speaker 1: because no doubt the video is hanging out there. Um.
Speaker 1: I have one quick, super quick email that came through.
Speaker 1: This is from Jennifer and the subject line with sasquatch
Speaker 1: and it's simply said, spirit totem. Only those meant to
Speaker 1: see will see be well. Sounds good to me. I know,
Speaker 1: I loved it. Thank you. Cryptic and delightful and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if that is in jest or not, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. It's pretty great either way. All right,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's go and close it out. Hey,
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, You want
Speaker 1: to check out this video that Julie mentioned of us
Speaker 1: prepping for this episode and just getting comfortable on our chairs.
Speaker 1: You want to listen to all the podcast episodes in
Speaker 1: the past, such as that rat King episode, such as
Speaker 1: the episodes to do with sleep paralysis, all of them.
Speaker 1: They are available at stuff to blow your mind dot com,
Speaker 1: along with our blog post and just about anything we're doing,
Speaker 1: as well as links out to our social media accounts
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Facebook, Tumbler, Google Plus, on YouTube where mind
Speaker 1: Stuff Show go. Check all those things out if you.
Speaker 1: If one of those is your favorite social media side,
Speaker 1: follow us uh and we'll try and share stuff with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you would like to share some of your
Speaker 1: thoughts with us, you can do so. Blow the mind
Speaker 1: at discovery dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it How stuff works dot com?
Speaker 1: Could you Indu? Could you into the pla