You're trading zinc futures in an office when a thunderous roar fills your ears and the building lurches to the left. What do you do? If you're like some 1,000 survivors of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre, you stop to shut down your computer. Or you freeze.
Denial sets in when disaster strikes, as Time magazine reporter Amanda Ripley shows in her disquieting book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why.
Ripley is a voyeur on a mission. She talks to people who've lived through floods, airplane crashes and shooting sprees. Then she gets them to explain how they reacted. Her conviction: We'd all stand a better chance of surviving a disaster if we understood what happens to our grey cells when things get ugly.
Ripley's book is structured around three phases that survivors go through – denial, deliberation and the "decisive moment," that split second after they've considered their options and now must act.
This book might save your life one day. Just don't read it on a trans-Atlantic flight.
The Unthinkable. Available on special order. Dh140.