Speaker 1: Pushkin. Trust is at the center of so many cautionary tales.
Speaker 1: I've told you about the people who trusted a man
Speaker 1: in uniform and allowed him to steal from the city coffers,
Speaker 1: and the woman who drove into the desert because she
Speaker 1: trusted the sat now ahead of her instincts. Then there
Speaker 1: was the celebrity author who trusted photographs of fairies as
Speaker 1: proof of their existence. We've had people who trusted in
Speaker 1: technology when they shouldn't, and those who didn't trust it
Speaker 1: when they should and that's before we get to the doctors,
Speaker 1: business leaders, and scammers who abuse the trust put in them.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by questions of trust, and given that you're
Speaker 1: a loyal listener to cautionary tales, I'm guessing you're quite
Speaker 1: interested in them too, And that's why I've invited Rachel
Speaker 1: Botsman to join me for a special edition of Cautionary Questions.
Speaker 1: Rachel is the author of the new audiobook How to
Speaker 1: Trust and Be Trusted, So do better to answer your
Speaker 1: trust questions. Maybe you'd like to know why we naturally
Speaker 1: trust some people but recoil from others. Maybe you're curious
Speaker 1: about why so many people are taken in by particular
Speaker 1: historical figures, there might be an episode of cautionary tales
Speaker 1: that makes you tear your hair out at the gullibility
Speaker 1: of those involved. Are we right to be suspicious? Whenever
Speaker 1: a politician says trust me? Can being too distrustful be
Speaker 1: as dangerous as being too trusting? Whatever your query, you
Speaker 1: can trust Rachel to have the answers, So send them
Speaker 1: two tales at pushkin dot FM. That's t a l
Speaker 1: e s at Pushkin dot FM. Fifty eight year old
Speaker 1: Jean Marshall Brown were sitting in the cabin of a
Speaker 1: Pan American seven four seven. She ran a travel company
Speaker 1: in La Mesa, California. She was leading a group of
Speaker 1: retired holidaymakers on a twelve day cruise of the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: The trip hadn't got off to the best of starts.
Speaker 1: That had to divert to the next island over from
Speaker 1: where their cruise ship was waiting. But now at last
Speaker 1: they were taxiing down the runway, ready for the final
Speaker 1: short leg of their journey. When what on earth was that?
Speaker 1: Whatever just happened, some passengers near Jean when killed. Over
Speaker 1: the next few minutes, the ruptured cabin of the pan
Speaker 1: and plane will be consumed by explosions, smoke and fire,
Speaker 1: and as Jean sits in her seat, the thought pops
Speaker 1: into her head.
Speaker 2: This is the way it feels to die in an
Speaker 2: airplane crash.
Speaker 1: This is the second of our two part series on
Speaker 1: the Tenerif Air disaster of nineteen seventy seven, when two
Speaker 1: jumbo jets collided on the runway. It remains the deadliest
Speaker 1: accident in aviation history. In the previous episode, we asked
Speaker 1: why the captain of one of those airliners operated by
Speaker 1: KLM mistakenly believed had been cleared to take off when
Speaker 1: the runway was still blocked by the taxiing pan Am.
Speaker 1: We heard how everyone on that KLM plane died in
Speaker 1: an instant fireball as it clipped the top of the
Speaker 1: pan Am then scudded down the runway. But on the
Speaker 1: PanAm plane, a lot of people survived the impact, people
Speaker 1: like Jean Marshall Brown. In this episode, like the previous one,
Speaker 1: will explore a quirk of the human brain. This time
Speaker 1: we'll look at how the brain works in the moments
Speaker 1: after disaster strikes suddenly and unexpectedly. How would you react?
Speaker 1: It may not be how you'd hope. Jean sat in
Speaker 1: her seat. Time passed was hard to say how long.
Speaker 1: The fire caused by the impact grew stronger. Smoke started
Speaker 1: to fill the cabin, but Jean still didn't move. She
Speaker 1: just sat and watched. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening
Speaker 1: to cautionary tales Hanam. Captain Victor gre Rubs and First
Speaker 1: Officer Robert Bragg have had a frustrating afternoon. They've flown
Speaker 1: through the night from New York to the Canary Islands,
Speaker 1: but just before they could land on Grand Canaria, a
Speaker 1: bomb threat closed the airport. They've had to divert to
Speaker 1: the tiny airport on the nearby island of Tenerif. When
Speaker 1: they get there, they discover lots of other planes have
Speaker 1: been diverted before them, including another seven four seven the
Speaker 1: KLM ITS captain has let his passengers disembark to kill
Speaker 1: time in the terminal, which is now rammed to capacity.
Speaker 1: Grubbs has to tell his passengers to stay on their plane.
Speaker 1: He feels bad about that most have been on board
Speaker 1: since California. He decides to invite everyone for a tour
Speaker 1: of the cockpit and repeats the same apologetic story.
Speaker 3: I asked if we could circle in the air until
Speaker 3: they were ready, but they insisted we land here.
Speaker 1: They've been hanging around for a couple of hours when
Speaker 1: word came through the Grand Canaria's airport is open. The
Speaker 1: KLM captain has chosen this moment to start taking on
Speaker 1: more fuel, and his plane is blocking their way to
Speaker 1: the runway. Could they squeeze past? Captain Grubbs sends Robert
Speaker 1: Bragg and the flight engineer to pace out the distance
Speaker 1: to come back with bad news. The tarmac is just
Speaker 1: a few feet too narrow. That have to put one
Speaker 1: set of wheels on the grass. But the ground is
Speaker 1: soft and the plane weighs over three hundred tons. They
Speaker 1: can't risk getting stuck. Grubs is annoyed. Another delay and
Speaker 1: now thick fog is rolling in. Are they going to
Speaker 1: be able to take off at all? He calls the
Speaker 1: KLM captain.
Speaker 3: How much longer are you going to be without refueling?
Speaker 1: About twenty minutes comes the reply. At last, the fuel
Speaker 1: trucks depart and the KLM starts to taxi down the runway.
Speaker 1: Grubs is told to follow them and take the third
Speaker 1: exit to the left. It's so foggy they take it slowly,
Speaker 1: Just three miles an hour looking at an airport map
Speaker 1: and peering through the window. Was that an exit?
Speaker 3: There?
Speaker 1: On the radio, grubs Brag and the flight engineer hear
Speaker 1: the KLM plane talking to the control tower. Sounds like
Speaker 1: they've already reached the end of the runway and turned around.
Speaker 2: We're now at takeoff.
Speaker 1: Now at takeoff, you better not try to take off yet.
Speaker 1: First off, as a Brag reaches for the radio.
Speaker 3: And we're still texting down the runway. The clipper once
Speaker 3: seven three six, Roger paba out for one seven three six,
Speaker 3: report the runway clear. Okay, we'll report when we're clear.
Speaker 1: So the controller now knows that they're still on the runway.
Speaker 1: But the message from the KLM plane has made the
Speaker 1: mood in the cockpit uneasy. Where is that exit?
Speaker 2: Let's get the hell out of here.
Speaker 1: Says grubs Brag, and the flight engineer grumble about the
Speaker 1: KLM captain. He sounds like he's in a hurry now
Speaker 1: after he held them up to refuel. The bastard, says one.
Speaker 1: The prick agrees the other, and now grub says he
Speaker 1: is through the murk. Captain Grubbs has seen headlights on
Speaker 1: the runway ahead for a moment, he seems to assume
Speaker 1: the KLM plane must be stationary, waiting at the end
Speaker 1: of the runway to be cleared to take off. Perhaps
Speaker 1: they've missed their exit and got almost to the end
Speaker 1: of the runway themselves. Hold on those headlights, getting closer
Speaker 1: they are. That KLM plane is moving. It's moving quickly.
Speaker 1: It's heading straight for them.
Speaker 2: Look at him. God, damn, that's some of the bitches coming.
Speaker 3: Get off, Get off, Get off.
Speaker 1: Grubs and Brag both yank their controls hard to the left.
Speaker 1: Grubs slams the throttle open. It's clear to them both
Speaker 1: that the KLM plane won't be able to stop. All
Speaker 1: they can do is try to get their own plane
Speaker 1: off the runway. It responds to their controls, but agonizingly slowly.
Speaker 1: It weighs over three hundred tons after all. It starts
Speaker 1: a lumbering turn towards the edge of the runway. Its
Speaker 1: speed inches up to nineteen miles an hour. The first
Speaker 1: set of wheels, just under the nose drops off the
Speaker 1: runway and onto the grass. Brag glances out of the
Speaker 1: window to his right. The KLM plane is right upon them.
Speaker 1: It's beginning to lift but not high enough. He sees
Speaker 1: the red rotating beacon on its undercarriage.
Speaker 3: It's the only time in my life I have ever
Speaker 3: saw something happening that I could not believe was happening.
Speaker 1: Instinctively, Brag and Grubs close their eyes and duck. The
Speaker 1: moment of impact feels surprisingly gentle, a bump and some shaking.
Speaker 3: It was a very slight impact for a slight noise
Speaker 3: like that was about it. It was so minor it
Speaker 3: was unbelievable until I outen my eyes.
Speaker 1: The first thing Bragg sees is the cockpit windows are gone.
Speaker 1: The next thing he sees is a fire on the
Speaker 1: wing to his right.
Speaker 2: He reaches up to.
Speaker 1: Pull the levers that will cut off the flow of
Speaker 1: fuel to the engines. The levers should be right above
Speaker 1: him on the ceiling, but his hands are grasping at air.
Speaker 1: He looks up. The levers aren't there, nor is the ceiling.
Speaker 1: Picture A seven four seven. That hump on the top
Speaker 1: of the fuselage near the nose, the cockpits at the
Speaker 1: front of that hump. Behind it on this plane was
Speaker 1: the first class lounge. When Bragg looks behind him, the
Speaker 1: lounge is gone, sheared away completely.
Speaker 3: I could see all away the tail of the airplane,
Speaker 3: just like someone had taken a big knife and slice
Speaker 3: their tire top of the cabin of the airplane off.
Speaker 1: Captain Grubbs is first to get out of his seat.
Speaker 1: He turns to look back at where the lounge used
Speaker 1: to be. It had twenty eight passengers in it. One
Speaker 1: a woman is lying on what's left of the floor.
Speaker 1: Grubs walks over towards her, but before he can get there,
Speaker 1: the floor collapses under him. First off, as a brag
Speaker 1: gets out of his seat. There's now only about a
Speaker 1: foot of floor left behind him in the cockpit. How's
Speaker 1: he going to get out of the plane? There is
Speaker 1: one direct way out. It's thirty eight feet down to
Speaker 1: the ground. He grabs hold of the captain's seat to
Speaker 1: steady himself and jumps. Three hundred and ninety six people
Speaker 1: were on board that PanAm flight seventy one made it out,
Speaker 1: though some later died from their injuries. At the moment
Speaker 1: of impact, the plane was angled across the runway, the
Speaker 1: result of the pilot's attempted left turn. The KLM plane lifted,
Speaker 1: but not high enough. An engine and landing gear ripped
Speaker 1: through parts of the PanAm cabin. The passengers sitting directly
Speaker 1: in their path, such as those in the first class lounge,
Speaker 1: never stood a chance. But what about those in other
Speaker 1: seats who weren't in the way of the engine or
Speaker 1: the landing gear. Could more of them have made it
Speaker 1: out alive? Why didn't they? We'll explore how the mind
Speaker 1: responds to a sudden crisis after the break. One night
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen tens, the Harvard physiologist Walter Bradford
Speaker 1: Cannon woke up with a flash of inspiration. Canon was
Speaker 1: writing a book about how emotions affect the functioning of
Speaker 1: animal's bodies. It was a new field of inquiry, and
Speaker 1: he'd stumbled across it by accident. When using the newly
Speaker 1: discovered technique of X rays to study how digestion works,
Speaker 1: Canon experimented on cats. It'd feed them some food mixed
Speaker 1: with bismuth salts, which show up on X rays. Then
Speaker 1: he'd tie them down and watch on the fluoroscopic screen
Speaker 1: as the food traveled down the esophagus into the stomach.
Speaker 1: The cats, not surprisingly, sometimes took exception to being restrained.
Speaker 1: They'd cry out and struggle to get free. Canon noticed
Speaker 1: something intes whenever a cat got distressed.
Speaker 3: The movements in the stomach entirely disappeared. I continued stroking
Speaker 3: the cat reassuringly. She became quiet and began to purr.
Speaker 3: As soon as this happened, the movements commenced again in
Speaker 3: the stomach.
Speaker 1: Canon was intrigued. The cat's body seemed to be saying,
Speaker 1: in effect, I can't afford to waste energy on digesting
Speaker 1: food right now. I've got more important things to worry about.
Speaker 1: What else changed about how an animal's body functions when
Speaker 1: it gets upset, Canon found a whole range of common responses.
Speaker 1: The pulse quickens, there's a spike in blood, sugar, more
Speaker 1: secretion from the adrenal glands. The book Canon was writing
Speaker 1: is called bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage.
Speaker 1: It became a classic due in part to the sudden
Speaker 1: inspiration that woke him up in the night. A clever
Speaker 1: form of words to tie together the physiological changes he'd discovered.
Speaker 3: The idea flashed through my mind that they could be
Speaker 3: nicely integrated if conceived as bodily preparations for supreme effort
Speaker 3: in flight or in fighting.
Speaker 1: Fight or flight. It's a great phrase still in common use.
Speaker 1: More than a century later. In terms of evolution, it
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. That's what animals typically have to do
Speaker 1: when they're in mortal peril, either fight back or run away.
Speaker 1: We humans, too, experience that fight or flight suite of
Speaker 1: bodily changes in moments of sudden stress, but our first
Speaker 1: response is often not to fight or flee. Cannon's alliteration
Speaker 1: was incomplete, as we'll hear he missed out the most
Speaker 1: common f of all. In the cabin of pan Am
Speaker 1: flight one seven three six, the passengers haven't heard that
Speaker 1: ominous radio message from the KLM plane we're now at takeoff.
Speaker 1: Most of them haven't been looking out of a right
Speaker 1: hand window to see the headlights approaching through the fog.
Speaker 1: As far as they're concerned, this is just a routine
Speaker 1: taxi down the runway before a routine flight, a yawning, chatting, reading,
Speaker 1: slipping off their shoes, arranging their bags under their seats. When,
Speaker 1: as in the cockpit, the initial noise doesn't convey the
Speaker 1: severity of what's just happened, Survivors later liken it to
Speaker 1: a snapping twig, a swarm of bees passing overhead, or
Speaker 1: a length of adhesive tape being ripped off. One woman
Speaker 1: assumes that the shuddering thump must mean that the pilot
Speaker 1: has veered off the edge of the runway in the fog,
Speaker 1: how annoyingly careless of him. No doubt, they'll have to
Speaker 1: queue up now for the emergency exits. She calmly leans
Speaker 1: forward and reaches under the seat for her handbag, puts
Speaker 1: the strap over her shoulder, gets up and looks around.
Speaker 1: Only then does she see the carnage, blood and bodies everywhere.
Speaker 1: Some people are dead, Some have been hurt by flying
Speaker 1: bits of metal or the overhead luggage bins collapsing on
Speaker 1: top of them. Still others are unscathed, just confused about
Speaker 1: what's happened. They've been talk of a bomb scare at
Speaker 1: the airport. Was it a bomb? It's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: your world being torn apart like that. It's hard to
Speaker 1: guess how you'd react. We all hope we'd react like
Speaker 1: passenger Jack Rideout, a thirty three year old entrepreneur sitting
Speaker 1: in first class. The first thing ride Out does is
Speaker 1: blurt out a call to action, seemingly as much to
Speaker 1: himself as anyone. This is it, says ride Out. He
Speaker 1: unclips his seat belt, and gets up. He sees his
Speaker 1: girlfriend next to him, struggling to get her belt undone.
Speaker 1: He helps her up, and the two find their footing
Speaker 1: in the aisle amid the fallen contents of the overhead
Speaker 1: luggage bins. Rideout looks to the right. He sees the
Speaker 1: fire starting on the wing. He looks to the left,
Speaker 1: he sees a hole ripped in the fuselage. He notices
Speaker 1: that the plane seems to be tilting to the left.
Speaker 1: That's the way to get out, then further from the fire,
Speaker 1: closer to the ground. Those engines are gonna blow.
Speaker 2: We've got to get out of here.
Speaker 1: The hole in the fuselage is where the emergency exit
Speaker 1: door used to be. The door has gone, so is
Speaker 1: the door frame, so is the inflatable shoot that should
Speaker 1: activate when the door is opened. All that's left is
Speaker 1: a gaping hole framed by jagged metal, and a twenty
Speaker 1: foot drop to the tarmac below. The girlfriend gets to
Speaker 1: the hole, looks down and hesitates. This is no time
Speaker 1: to hesitate. Ride Out shouts her out, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: jump himself. He turns back into the cabin, telling others
Speaker 1: what to do.
Speaker 2: This way, come with me.
Speaker 1: He sees a flight attendant struggling to inflate a rubber raft.
Speaker 1: That's a good idea, it'll give people something to land on.
Speaker 1: He goes to help her, but by now the fires
Speaker 1: starting to spread, Oxygen canisters and fire extinguishers are exploding
Speaker 1: in the heat. A fragment of metal shoots across the
Speaker 1: cabin and hits the attendant in the head, killing her.
Speaker 1: Ride Out finishes in fating the raft and hurls it
Speaker 1: through the jagged hole. He looks around for anyone else
Speaker 1: to help out of the plane. There's an older woman
Speaker 1: seemingly unconscious. He picks her up, but realizes that she's
Speaker 1: dead already. Ride Out puts the body down and decides
Speaker 1: it's time to jump to safety himself. He lands on
Speaker 1: the rubber raft. We'd all like to hope that in
Speaker 1: a sudden crisis, we'd react like Jack Rideout, selfless, strong,
Speaker 1: and above all, self possessed. Ride Out quickly appraised his
Speaker 1: new situation, the need to get out. The fire on
Speaker 1: the right, the hole on the left. That's the fight
Speaker 1: or flight response, working as nature intended, a laser like
Speaker 1: focus on the essential facts, quick and decisive action. But
Speaker 1: more often things go quite differently. Our brains don't work
Speaker 1: as we'd like to hope they would take Warren Hopkins,
Speaker 1: fifty three years old, a meat wholesaler from Illinois, and
Speaker 1: his wife, Caroline. They're also sitting in first class. In
Speaker 1: the moments after the impact, Hopkins reacted just as quickly
Speaker 1: as Jack ride out. He touched his wife on the
Speaker 1: arm and said, let's go. He unbuckled his seat belt,
Speaker 1: picked his way across the debris in the aisle, and
Speaker 1: launched himself through the jagged hole in the fuselage. Only
Speaker 1: when he'd landed did he remember that he'd forgotten to
Speaker 1: check that his wife was with him. She wasn't because
Speaker 1: Caroline had forgotten something else, how to unbuckle a seat belt.
Speaker 1: How strange she found herself, thinking, I must have unbuckled
Speaker 1: airplane seat belts a hundred times, and I can't remember
Speaker 1: how to do it. She later said she thought she
Speaker 1: might have been trying to press a button like you
Speaker 1: would in a car. Eventually, she remembered how airline seat
Speaker 1: buckles unclasp and made her way to the jagged hole.
Speaker 1: She looked down and felt vertiginous. She reached out to
Speaker 1: hold something and gashed her hand. She jumped and landed
Speaker 1: awkwardly on her shoulder. Warren dragged her away. She managed
Speaker 1: to get up and saw that a wound in his
Speaker 1: head was gushing blood over his formal white dress shirt.
Speaker 1: Warren hadn't realized that's part of fight or flight. There's
Speaker 1: no time to feel pain. Caroline slipped off her floral
Speaker 1: patterned underskirt and wrapped it around Warren's head wound. She
Speaker 1: noticed the gash on her hand and wrapped it in
Speaker 1: a handkerchief. Warren and Caroline Hopkins later worked with the
Speaker 1: author John Ziamec to gather recollections from fellow survivors for
Speaker 1: his book Collision on tenor Reef. Their stories of leaps, burns,
Speaker 1: and broken bones, but their stories about other passengers too,
Speaker 1: passengers who weren't making any attempt at all to get
Speaker 1: themselves free. One survivor recalled.
Speaker 2: They just didn't move. I believe at least another one
Speaker 2: hundred could have been saved, but they were sitting there,
Speaker 2: just transfixed.
Speaker 1: Another said it.
Speaker 2: Was like catching a deer in your headlights.
Speaker 1: Eight decades earlier, when the Harvard physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon
Speaker 1: coined the phrase fight or flight, he missed out what
Speaker 1: may be the most important f of all. Most people
Speaker 1: on that plane didn't fight or try to flee like
Speaker 1: Jack ride Out or Warren Hopkins. Instead, they froze. Cautionary
Speaker 1: tales will be back after the break. John Leech is
Speaker 1: a cognitive psychologist who studies human survival. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, he published a paper Why People Freeze in
Speaker 1: an emergency. Leach studied survivor accounts of eleven disasters on airplanes,
Speaker 1: oil rigs, and ships. One person who got off a
Speaker 1: sinking ferry recalled how they hadn't been able to understand
Speaker 1: why others weren't trying to help themselves. They just sat
Speaker 1: there being swamped by the water when it came in.
Speaker 1: Leach came to the startling conclusion that freezing wasn't just common,
Speaker 1: it was the most common response to disaster. It happened
Speaker 1: to about seventy five percent of people in the cases
Speaker 1: he studied. The classic response to danger, wrote Leech, should
Speaker 1: be restated as fight, flight or freeze. We hope we'd
Speaker 1: react like Jack Rideout. We're more likely to be deer
Speaker 1: in headlights. But what's going on when people freeze? There
Speaker 1: are two possibilities hard to tell apart from the outside,
Speaker 1: but quite different. Physiologists reserve the term freezing for something
Speaker 1: that happens before the fight or flight response. The same
Speaker 1: bodily changes are going on the surge of adrenaline for
Speaker 1: thumping heart. We're primed for action, but not acting yet.
Speaker 1: It's as if the body has slammed on both the
Speaker 1: accelerator and the break at the same time. In the
Speaker 1: animal world, this can make perfect sense. You've seen a predator,
Speaker 1: you're not sure if the predator has seen you. You
Speaker 1: stay very, very still and hope the predator goes away.
Speaker 1: If it comes for you, the break comes off and
Speaker 1: you fight or you flee. The other freezing scenario happens
Speaker 1: after fight or flight are no longer options. You're trapped.
Speaker 1: The predator has got you. In this situation, you'll sometimes
Speaker 1: see animals stop struggling and play dead. This too has
Speaker 1: evolutionary logic. Predators don't want to eat meat that might
Speaker 1: have been dead for a while. It could poison them.
Speaker 1: Play dead and they might lose interest. It's a last
Speaker 1: desperate roll of the dice. Physiologists call this state tonic immobility,
Speaker 1: and it seems to happen to humans too. Were some
Speaker 1: PanAm passengers experiencing tonic immobility. We can't ask the ones
Speaker 1: who died, but it seems likely. One survivor recalls hearing
Speaker 1: an elderly woman turn to her husband and say, I
Speaker 1: think this is it. The same words as Jack ride out,
Speaker 1: but a different meaning. The task of getting out is
Speaker 1: realistically beyond us. Perhaps it was, but we can ask
Speaker 1: the passengers who froze initially before the breaks came off
Speaker 1: and fight or flight kicked in. Remember Jean Marshall Brown,
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 2: The way it feels to die in an airplane crash.
Speaker 1: She found herself thinking before she sat and watched the
Speaker 1: cabin fill with smoke around her, and then another thought
Speaker 1: popped into Jean's head.
Speaker 2: We can get out of here.
Speaker 1: That thought unfroze her. Jean turned to the couple sitting
Speaker 1: next to her, who were also deer in headlights. Unfasten
Speaker 1: your seatbelts, she told them, We've got to get out.
Speaker 1: They clambered out of the broken fuselage and onto the wing.
Speaker 1: We can't know for sure how long Jeane was frozen,
Speaker 1: but she thinks they were the last ones out. If
Speaker 1: she had stayed frozen for another few seconds, the fire
Speaker 1: would have been too intense to survive. It already was
Speaker 1: for the couple she had roused. They jumped from the
Speaker 1: wing but died from their burns. Jeane spent two months
Speaker 1: in hospital and lived. What can snap you out of
Speaker 1: a frieze? Jean Marshall Brown's story suggests there are two things,
Speaker 1: a thought popping into your head or someone else showing
Speaker 1: you the way. Jean's story was mirrored elsewhere on the airplane.
Speaker 1: David Alexander was twenty nine years old, an amateur photographer.
Speaker 1: He later wrote a book about his experience called Never
Speaker 1: Wait for the Fire Truck. Just like Jeane, David Alexander
Speaker 1: remembers the first thought to cross his mind, I Am
Speaker 1: going to die. Then along came another thought, No, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Alexander doesn't remember what he did next. Not forming memories
Speaker 1: is another common feature of the fight or flight response,
Speaker 1: but a couple sitting near him later told him what
Speaker 1: he did and how it made them realize what they
Speaker 1: too had to do. They saw him climb up onto
Speaker 1: the back of his seat and clamber his way out
Speaker 1: of a hole in the ceiling. They got up from
Speaker 1: their seats and followed his route out of the plane.
Speaker 1: The psychologist John Leech says that when people freeze in
Speaker 1: an emergency, it's because their memory contains no appropriate response
Speaker 1: for their brain to latch onto, and as stress hormones
Speaker 1: flood their brains, they can't come up with one. Their
Speaker 1: thinking is sluggish, their reasoning impaired. If you know there's
Speaker 1: a particular kind of emergency you might encounter, you can
Speaker 1: train for it. Do drills again and again until the
Speaker 1: right response pops straight into your brain. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: For soldiers or pilots see a fire on the wing,
Speaker 1: reach above you for the levers that cut off the
Speaker 1: fuel to the engine, and most of us aren't likely
Speaker 1: ever to be in an airplane crash or a sinking ferry.
Speaker 1: Training again and again for specific emergencies isn't a wise
Speaker 1: use of our time. So what can we do to
Speaker 1: reduce the likelihood that we freeze if disaster strikes. The
Speaker 1: best advice is boringly predictable. Don't ignore the in flight
Speaker 1: safety briefing. But the experience of Jean Marshall Brown and
Speaker 1: David Alexander tells us why we should pay attention, even
Speaker 1: if we've heard it a hundred times before. In a
Speaker 1: sudden disaster, You can't predict which thoughts will flash into
Speaker 1: your mind. I'm going to die, or we can get
Speaker 1: out of here. If you've recently said to yourself, my
Speaker 1: nearest emergency exit is three rows behind, maybe that thought
Speaker 1: will pop into your head. It might be enough to
Speaker 1: save you. Years after the crash, Jack ride Out talked
Speaker 1: to a journalist at the Los Angeles Times. He was,
Speaker 1: of course haunted by flashbacks, but the most disturbing memory
Speaker 1: not when he exclaimed, this is it. Not the flight
Speaker 1: attendant being killed by shrapnel while trying to inflate the
Speaker 1: rubber raft, not shoving his girlfriend through the jagged hole
Speaker 1: in the fuselage. What kept coming back to him, said
Speaker 1: ride Out, was seeing all those people, not harmed, but
Speaker 1: not doing anything, just looking calmly ahead. Hundreds of them.
Speaker 1: He thought they could all have got out. Hundreds an exaggeration, surely,
Speaker 1: but perhaps not by much. Investigators later tried to piece
Speaker 1: together how many people had died in the collision and
Speaker 1: how many survived the impact but died in the fire.
Speaker 1: They did this by seeing if the bodies had soot
Speaker 1: in the trichea, that would indicate they'd still been breathing
Speaker 1: as smoke filled the cabin. Almost half the bodies were
Speaker 1: too badly burned to tell either way of the others.
Speaker 1: They found sixty without soot. They had been killed before
Speaker 1: the fire took hold, but almost twice as many one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen did have soot in the trachea. These
Speaker 1: people had survived the crash, then died in the inferno. Some,
Speaker 1: no doubt, had been knocked unconscious or injured too badly
Speaker 1: to move, but others it seemed simply froze until they burned.
Speaker 1: First Officer Robert Bragg falls thirty eight feet and rolls
Speaker 1: on the grass. He's broken an ankle, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: notice that. Captain Victor Grubbs tumbles through the floor into
Speaker 1: the main first class seating area, then falls through that
Speaker 1: floor too, into the cargo hold. He sees a hole
Speaker 1: ripped in the side of the hold and wriggles towards it.
Speaker 1: He drops onto the tarmac and lies there, burned and bleeding.
Speaker 1: Someone comes towards him. It's one of the flight attendants.
Speaker 1: He looks at her, whatever done to these people? She
Speaker 1: slips a hand under.
Speaker 2: His arm kraw kept him Krahl.
Speaker 1: Grubs drags himself away from the fiery wreckage. He finds
Speaker 1: Robert Bragg. You get to their feet. A passenger approaches them.
Speaker 1: It's Warren Hopkins, wearing one shoe, a blood soaked white
Speaker 1: dress shirt, and his wife's floral patterned underskirt wrapped around
Speaker 1: his head.
Speaker 3: What the hell happened?
Speaker 2: The crazy bastard did it? The klam took off.
Speaker 1: He was supposed to be holding, and.
Speaker 2: He took off.
Speaker 1: They watch as fire and explosions consume what's left at
Speaker 1: the pan Am seven four seven. It makes no sense,
Speaker 1: but they got out by now. For anyone else who
Speaker 1: could have, it's too late. An important source for this
Speaker 1: episode was Collision on tenna reef for How and Why
Speaker 1: of the World's worst aviation disaster by John Ziamec and
Speaker 1: Caroline Hopkins. For a full list of our sources, see
Speaker 1: the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is
Speaker 1: written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced
Speaker 1: by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust. The sound
Speaker 1: design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise.
Speaker 1: Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents
Speaker 1: of Ben Crowe, Melany Gushridge, Stella Harford, Jammas Saunders and
Speaker 1: rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
Speaker 1: the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, Beteal Millard,
Speaker 1: John Schnaz, Eric's handler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales is a production of Pushkin Indus. It's recorded at
Speaker 1: Wardour Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to share, rate and review, tell
Speaker 1: your friends and if you want to hear the show
Speaker 1: ad free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show
Speaker 1: page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm, slash
Speaker 1: plus