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The Unthinkable Rating: 9 on a scale of 10 Review This was a fascinating book to read. Since I went to Louisiana with the US Public Health Service in 2005, I have had an interest in what I would call "disaster medicine and psychology". This is a book about the psychology side of disaster. It seeks to answer why we do what we do and how could we do it better or differently in order to survive better in a disaster. Ms. Ripley has researched disaster and come up with many interesting stories and research to guide all of us on how to "be prepared" for the disaster each of us might face without any warning some day. She is a very good writer. My favorite part of the book was her excellent story telling. She begins the book with a story about a disaster I had never heard of. It was in about 1917, Halifax Labrador, Canada was the place. A ship carrying 2500 tons of explosives suffers a tragic accident trying to leave the very busy harbor headed for the War in Europe. A fire is started on the ship, the crew tries to fight it, but knows they are fighting a losing battle. They abandon ship, and the ship drifts into the port area then detonates. The explosion and fireball could be seen and felt for 60 miles. Halifax was nearly leveled by the explosion. A church vicar was heavily involved caring for the injured as well as many others. This is how she begins this most fascinating discussion of disasters. Her discussion ranges in a systematic fashion through three big psychological actions we find ourselves involved in: denial, deliberation and decision. Each of these general sections is broken down into several chapters, covering topics such as delay, risk, fear, resilience, groupthink, panic, paralysis, and heroism. Each chapter is associated with a specific disaster scenario and a person from the disaster that illustrates the topic under discussion. Other disasters are woven in along with research information. Her story telling and review of research are masterfully intertwined. I especially enjoyed the chapter on resilience. It focused on Special Forces soldiers. I am always intrigued by these folks. In psychological type theory it is known that such people are of one personality temperament 95% of the time. She added a nice piece to this for me, they are also people who do not dissociate very often. This makes perfect sense when you consider that the sensing perceiving temperaments are also the "most present" of all types in the "here and now". They actually are known to thrive in emergencies. I find this to be true in my work also. Many respiratory therapists are sensing perceiving types. They aren't always very organized, but they are nice to have around in a crisis. When everyone else is starting to dissociate these people perk up and come to life in a special way. Of course people who do better in a crisis have remarkable resilience. Their problem tends to be, what do they do when there is no crisis, this creates interesting problems also. I did not feel secondarily traumatized by this book. Something's I read can have a way of getting under your skin sometimes, but the well written stories drew me in comfortably. There was a tragedy or two, but I generally saw them coming. You will enjoy this book. I heartily recommend it. I believe we should all pay more attention to the disasters that may face us someday. Here in Oregon it tends to be plane crashes rarely, windstorms occasionally, ice storms, floods and fire routinely, volcanic activity and the ever present threat of earthquakes and tsunamis quite infrequently. We are not prepared for the big quake that will liquefy the river banks, drop many buildings, crash the bridges, and shift the ground in drastic kinds of ways. Indeed, we will likely be on our own for several days if not a week or two depending on what time of year it might be. Some of the things that can happen to us are "unthinkable". We tend to ignore their possibility and go on. The last big windstorm in the Willamette Valley was December 12, 1995, we all remember the day. We were living in a mobile home parked next to our ancient home we were restoring. Our 1995 Villager van was brand new. I told my wife to park it on the road to the cemetery out in the open away from all the trees. As I drove home, she called me, her voice was a bit small and shaken as she greeted me. She wanted to know where I was. I was about three miles from home and would be there in a few minutes. She said that was good because they were all huddled in our bedroom at the south end of the house. I asked why. She said the wind had snapped off a 60 foot Ponderosa pine tree about 30 feet up, at the north end of the house. The top piece had flipped over and come down through the roof of our daughters bedroom. Somehow the inverted Christmas tree affect seemed unnatural. The driveway, right where we usually parked the van was blocked by a very large branch blown off of an ancient walnut tree. Had the van been parked there it would have been crushed for certain. The winds were still picking up. I got home, changed clothes and decided we should get to work cutting up this tree before the rains came. I went to get a ladder and a chainsaw in a howling gale. I never heard a sound as a piece of construction work picked up from our house and was thrown across the barnyard, I also never heard my wife's screams trying to warn me of the impending danger as she saw it unfold. We made it up on the roof and we made quick work of the tree. We threw down some plastic and nailed it down with small boards. Then we hunkered down for the rest of the storm. Soon the power was out, darkness set in, it got cold, and the rains came as expected. We had fought back against the storm. Still, we were not well prepared. For several years afterwards, when the wind would come up I would feel frightened. It would take me some time to work through my case of post traumatic stress from a storm I was not prepared for. Perhaps a book like this one will help us all prepare for something major. All opinions are those of Curtis Climer, MD Copyright 2011 |
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