Thanks to other here, I went and read the book by Laurence Gonzales, “Deep Survival; Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why”last night.
Lots of good quotes by him, and from historical figures, about why not to try and make Nature/Reality conform to your plan/expectations.
Don’t have time for examples right now, but maybe some other people can share a favorite quote from this book?
Here Gonzalez quotes “Charles Perrow … a sociologist known for studying industrial accidents, such as those that occur ar nuclear power plants, airlines, and shipping.
In “Normal Accidents” he wrote that,
“We construct an expected world because we can’t handle the complexity of the present one,
and then process the information that fits the expected world,
and find reasons to exclude the information that might contradict it.”…
Here is an excerpt of Gonzales’ story of Juliane Koepcke, age 17, who as one of only 12 survivors of a mid-air mishap and subsequent crash, found herself falling out of a disintegrating airplane and into the Peruvian jungle She was wearing her white Catholic confirmation dress and white high heels at the time, and it was Christmas Eve:
‘’Miraculously, she suffered only cuts and a broken collarbone from the crash. Later, she reported feeling “a hefty concussion.” Then she was falling toward the jungle.
As she recalled, “I remember thinking that the jungle trees below looked just like califlowers.” To someone who knows about survival, that statement is telling. She wasn’t screaming; she wasn’t in a panic. She was in wonder at the world in which she found herself. She was taking it all in, touching her new reality. Checking out her environment while falling. Amazing cool.
Amazing and also characteristic of a true survivor….
A dozen other passengers survived the midair disintegration of Juliane’s plane, and their attitude, and hence their behavior and fate, were quite different from hers.
Juliane awoke alone on the floor of the jungle, still strapped into her seat…The next day, she deduced that even the helicopters and airplanes she could hear wouldn’t be able to see her through the jungle canopy. She’d have to get herself out. It was another important moment: She didn’t spend time bemoaning her fate. She looked to herself, took responsiblity, made a plan.’‘
(continued..)
Again, from Gonzales:
“…Juliane had had no survival training. She didn’t know where she was or which way she ought to go, but her father had told her that if she went downhill, she’d find water. He’d said that rivers usually led to civilization. And while that strategy can just as easily lead into a swamp, at least she had a plan that she believed in. She had a task.
Meanwhile, the ohters who had lived through the fall decided to await rescue, which is not necessarily a bad idea either. But expecting someone else to take responsibility for your well-being can be fatal….
Juliane had nothing except a few peices of candy and some small cakes. She had no survival equipment, no tools, no compass or map - none of the things I’d been taught to use in survival school. But she very deliberately set up a probram for herself. She set off, resting through the heat of the day and traveling during the cooler periods. She walked for eleven days….
Eventually she came to a hut along the banks of the river she’d been following….It was Juliane’s good fortune that three hunters turned up the next day and delivered her to a local doctor. But, as Louis Pasteur said, “Luck favors the prepared mind.”
Tough and clearheaded, this teenage girl, who had lost her shoes (not to mention her mother) on the first day, saved herself; the other survivors took the same eleven days to sit down and die.
The forces that put them there were beyond their control. But the course fo events for those who found themselves alive on the ground were the result of deep and personal individual reactions to a new environment.
The knottiest mystery of survival is how one unequipped, ill-prepared seventeen-year-old girl gets out alive and a dozen adults in similar circumstances, better equipped, do not. But the deeper I’ve gone into the study of survival, the more sense such outcomes make. Making fire, building shelter, finding food, signaling, navigation - none of that mattered to Juliane’s survival. Althought we cannot know what the others who survived the fall were thinking and deciding, it’s possible that they knew they were supposed to stay put and await rescue. They were rule followers,a nd it killed them.”
(continued..)
from Gonzoles:
“In thinking for herself, Jiliane wasn’t even particluarly brave. Survival is not about bravery and heroics. Heroes can be perfect heroes and wind up dead. By definition, survivors must live. Juliane was afraid most of the time… Survivors aren’t fearless. They use fear: they turn it into anger and focus…..Conversley, searchers are always amazed to find peole who have died while in possession of everything they need to survive…
What saved Juliane was an inner resource, a state of mind. She certainly didnt’ have any physical equipment. But she’d been prepared mentally, somehow. A lifetime of experience shapes us to meet or be crushed by such challenges…”
When I leafed through the book, that particular story made me decide to buy it and pass it on.
This is not from the book, but I’ll bet Gonzales would have included it had he been writing after Katrina.
The September 16 episode of This American Life featured an interview with the unsinkable Louann Mims, a 78-year-0ld retired nurse from New Orleans. Imagine eight days floating on your mattress, clad only in your bra, waiting for rescue, envisioning how you are going to redecorate your ruined house when the water recedes. I love this lady. She thinks like a survivor. If we have to weather a pandemic, one powerful way of keeping ourselves going will be envisioning a future and a hope that stretch beyond hardshop and loss.
To hear the interview (please do!), access the complete archives, then scroll down to “This Is Not My Beautiful House” (episode 297), and then advance to Act Five, about 47 minutes into the program.
This quote jumped out at me about most everyone on FluWikie:
“… some creatures are amazingly adaptable. At the beginning of summer, I used to have hundreds of crows circling my house at dawn, barking noisily. Then one morning they were all gone. They’d been threatened by the West Nile virus. They went away for months. Now they’re back. ‘Crows are survivors’.”
Feeling like a crow?
This is a great book full of amazing insights. Be sure to put this on your reading list.
This quote jumped out at me … making me think of most everyone on FluWikie:
“… some creatures are amazingly adaptable. At the beginning of summer, I used to have hundreds of crows circling my house at dawn, barking noisily. Then one morning they were all gone. They’d been threatened by the West Nile virus. They went away for months. Now they’re back. ‘Crows are survivors’.”
Feeling like a crow?
This is a great book full of amazing insights. Be sure to put this on your reading list.