4 ms·

‘Run, Hide, Fight’ Is Not How Our Brains Work

18 points by aaronbrethorst 11y ago

Radle 11y ago
Run, Hide, Fight, is true in stress situations. In normal situations the human mind is a lot more complex. But in stress situations, it's actually a good description of a humans capabilities.
- an_account 11y ago
  Did you read the article?
jdietrich 11y ago
We don't instruct people on how to leave a burning building, we conduct fire drills. Skills can only be applied under stress if they are ingrained through repetitive practice, like a martial artist performing kata. If we want people to react well in extreme situations, it's not enough to simply tell them what to do; we must give them practical experience to replace their instincts with better instincts. Israel provides this sort of training for their citizens. The question we have to ask is whether such training would be appropriate for our societies.
- HarryHirsch 11y ago
  You and the NY Times article are offering up the same thing to defend against active shooters: take personal responsibility for your safety. But why is it that of all the nations in the civilized world only in the US do the nutjobs go on armed rampages? Why is the origin of nutcases shooting with firearms taken as a given? In the article their existence is taken as an accepted fact; it just talks about how to protect oneself from them. How about reducing the incidence of people running amok with guns, either by restricting guns or reducing whatever precipitates the killing spree? I'm frankly sick of "personal responsibility", it's usually a sign of someone else failing to do their job.
  - blfr 11y ago
    It's not just the US. There has been a very spectacular attack recently in Paris.
    - HarryHirsch 11y ago
      Even with Breivik and the Bataclan attack the US still tops the charts: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/22/barack-obama/barack-obama-correct-mass-killings-dont-happen-oth/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/...
      - cgriswald 11y ago
        The article you linked reached a much different conclusion than your comment suggests. Per the article, the United States "tops the charts" only in number of deaths by mass shooting. In terms of death per capita (a slightly more meaningful, but still largely meaningless metric) the US falls from the number one spot to the number 4 spot among the 11 countries studied. But the primary flaw with studies relating mass shootings is that they almost always start with the assumption that guns are the root cause. A more appropriate metric is deaths per capita for mass killings. It is a tautology that were guns are more readily available, mass killers will more often choose to use guns; but the implication that because guns are available there will be more mass killings is demonstrably false. Mass killers have already chosen to kill. In the absence of easily available guns, they most often seem to use arson.
        HarryHirsch 11y ago
        The article hints that the US dropping to # 4 when using deaths per capita is a statistical artifact caused by large incidents in small nations. There's a blog posting somewhere (also discussed here sometime back) that goes into more detail. Are you intentionally dishonest or just plain stupid? Then again, it doesn't matter, you should know better.
        11y ago
- beagle3 11y ago
  Israel is not really a good yardstick for anything, though: Fire/bomb/attack drills are practiced by children starting at first grade, and go all the way through school. Most 18 year olds go into the army, and get (at least) basic training in weapons, hand to hand combat, first aid, "operating and taking orders under stress" -- both boys and girls. The entire country conducts a large scale drill of some sort approximately once a year. It's very hard to tell if any of them is useful or useless, if they stand alone or only together, and essentially how effective they are. I don't know what you regard as "our societies", but when I was working in the city of london, there was a fire drill every month (and one month, every wednesday - I don't remember why). I couldn't find anyone who knew the history, but the prevailing thought among the people I inquired with was that this goes back either to world war 2 or the great fire of london (1666).
  - recuter 11y ago
    No, we are not. My instinct during a stabbing attack I witnessed was to run towards the danger. But I'm not sure what that has to do with the fire drills you mention, those are a vestigial leftover from wars-of-attrition scenarios. In my opinion not freezing up (or unfreezing faster) is a matter of experience and can't be replicated with country wide training. Sounds about as useful as duck-and-cover videos from the cold war era. Also, living this way is not desirable in and of itself and "your societies" are not in proximity to war zones. Just control your firearms.
- kiba 11y ago
  No it's not. The manpower wasted on active shooter drills are not worth the time spent versus relative risk of an active shooter incident, which are incredibly rare.
kev009 11y ago
Autonomic conditioning. Have a simple playbook in your mind of simple movement responses.. perhaps side steps, while to decide what to do next and which direction to go. The goal being to get moving automatically without "thinking", and then restart the higher order thinking as fast as possible.
aftbit 11y ago
I'm tired of the media (NYT in particular) acting like mass shootings are actually a significant danger in the USA today. Going back to 2010, there have been 182 fatalities[1] in the United States due to mass shootings. In the same amount of time, there have been about 158 fatalities due to being struck by lightning.[2] In 2013 alone, there were 611,105 fatalities due to heart disease and 56,979 due to influenza and pneumonia.[3] The stats are a bit out of date, but from 2005-2009, ~3,500 people drowned (in "non-boating accidents") each year.[4] If you're worried about yourself or a loved one dying, don't worry about dying in a mass shooting. It's about as likely as being struck by lightning. [1]: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m... [2]: http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/fatalities.shtml http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/fatalities.shtml [3]: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm [4]: http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/wa...
- pacala 11y ago
  You are technically correct. However: * Fatalities due to being struck by lightning are largely avoidable by educating oneself on how to behave around a lightning storm. http://hikingdude.com/hiking-lightning.php http://hikingdude.com/hiking-lightning.php * Fatalities due to illnesses occur mostly in old people, after the child bearing years. It's much easier to cope with the death of a parent than it is with the death of a child. For young people that don't engage in reckless behavior, you have not refuted that mass shooting are unfortunately a comparatively large risk.
  - aftbit 11y ago
    I didn't do quite as much research for this one, but here's CDC's "leading causes of death" table for 2013.[1] #1 for 25-34: unintentional injury with 16,209 deaths. #2 for 25-34: suicide, 6,348 deaths (but if you don't engage in risky behavior, you wouldn't commit suicide, right?) #3 for 25-34, homicide, 4,236 deaths - the vast majority of these are _not_ in mass-shooting incidents, of course. #4 is cancer (3,673 deaths) and #5 is heart disease (3,258 deaths). By the way, for felony homicides, the majority (69.1%) are perpetrated against a single victim[2]. [1] (PDF warning): http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_death_by_age_group_2013-a.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_deat... [2]: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-4 https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/...
maniacalrobot 11y ago
In the uk, the police have been using a similar message but with a very different outcome. Run, hide, tell is the procedure that the police want the public react in. The idea being is that a coordinated response from the police is much better than having members of the public attempting to deal with the situation themselves. Obviously the circumstances are different to the USA as the vast majority of the public don't have access to weapons, and would not have the means to fight back. But I do believe this approach is far less terrorising than asking members of the public to always be prepared to fight http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35140754 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35140754

Radle 11y ago

Run, Hide, Fight, is true in stress situations. In normal situations the human mind is a lot more complex. But in stress situations, it's actually a good description of a humans capabilities.

an_account 11y ago
Did you read the article?

jdietrich 11y ago

We don't instruct people on how to leave a burning building, we conduct fire drills. Skills can only be applied under stress if they are ingrained through repetitive practice, like a martial artist performing kata. If we want people to react well in extreme situations, it's not enough to simply tell them what to do; we must give them practical experience to replace their instincts with better instincts. Israel provides this sort of training for their citizens. The question we have to ask is whether such training would be appropriate for our societies.

HarryHirsch 11y ago
You and the NY Times article are offering up the same thing to defend against active shooters: take personal responsibility for your safety. But why is it that of all the nations in the civilized world only in the US do the nutjobs go on armed rampages? Why is the origin of nutcases shooting with firearms taken as a given? In the article their existence is taken as an accepted fact; it just talks about how to protect oneself from them. How about reducing the incidence of people running amok with guns, either by restricting guns or reducing whatever precipitates the killing spree? I'm frankly sick of "personal responsibility", it's usually a sign of someone else failing to do their job.
- blfr 11y ago
  It's not just the US. There has been a very spectacular attack recently in Paris.
  - HarryHirsch 11y ago
    Even with Breivik and the Bataclan attack the US still tops the charts: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/22/barack-obama/barack-obama-correct-mass-killings-dont-happen-oth/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/...
    - cgriswald 11y ago
      The article you linked reached a much different conclusion than your comment suggests. Per the article, the United States "tops the charts" only in number of deaths by mass shooting. In terms of death per capita (a slightly more meaningful, but still largely meaningless metric) the US falls from the number one spot to the number 4 spot among the 11 countries studied. But the primary flaw with studies relating mass shootings is that they almost always start with the assumption that guns are the root cause. A more appropriate metric is deaths per capita for mass killings. It is a tautology that were guns are more readily available, mass killers will more often choose to use guns; but the implication that because guns are available there will be more mass killings is demonstrably false. Mass killers have already chosen to kill. In the absence of easily available guns, they most often seem to use arson.
      - HarryHirsch 11y ago
        The article hints that the US dropping to # 4 when using deaths per capita is a statistical artifact caused by large incidents in small nations. There's a blog posting somewhere (also discussed here sometime back) that goes into more detail. Are you intentionally dishonest or just plain stupid? Then again, it doesn't matter, you should know better.
        11y ago
beagle3 11y ago
Israel is not really a good yardstick for anything, though: Fire/bomb/attack drills are practiced by children starting at first grade, and go all the way through school. Most 18 year olds go into the army, and get (at least) basic training in weapons, hand to hand combat, first aid, "operating and taking orders under stress" -- both boys and girls. The entire country conducts a large scale drill of some sort approximately once a year. It's very hard to tell if any of them is useful or useless, if they stand alone or only together, and essentially how effective they are. I don't know what you regard as "our societies", but when I was working in the city of london, there was a fire drill every month (and one month, every wednesday - I don't remember why). I couldn't find anyone who knew the history, but the prevailing thought among the people I inquired with was that this goes back either to world war 2 or the great fire of london (1666).
- recuter 11y ago
  No, we are not. My instinct during a stabbing attack I witnessed was to run towards the danger. But I'm not sure what that has to do with the fire drills you mention, those are a vestigial leftover from wars-of-attrition scenarios. In my opinion not freezing up (or unfreezing faster) is a matter of experience and can't be replicated with country wide training. Sounds about as useful as duck-and-cover videos from the cold war era. Also, living this way is not desirable in and of itself and "your societies" are not in proximity to war zones. Just control your firearms.
kiba 11y ago
No it's not. The manpower wasted on active shooter drills are not worth the time spent versus relative risk of an active shooter incident, which are incredibly rare.

kev009 11y ago

Autonomic conditioning. Have a simple playbook in your mind of simple movement responses.. perhaps side steps, while to decide what to do next and which direction to go. The goal being to get moving automatically without "thinking", and then restart the higher order thinking as fast as possible.

aftbit 11y ago

I'm tired of the media (NYT in particular) acting like mass shootings are actually a significant danger in the USA today. Going back to 2010, there have been 182 fatalities[1] in the United States due to mass shootings. In the same amount of time, there have been about 158 fatalities due to being struck by lightning.[2] In 2013 alone, there were 611,105 fatalities due to heart disease and 56,979 due to influenza and pneumonia.[3] The stats are a bit out of date, but from 2005-2009, ~3,500 people drowned (in "non-boating accidents") each year.[4] If you're worried about yourself or a loved one dying, don't worry about dying in a mass shooting. It's about as likely as being struck by lightning. [1]: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m... [2]: http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/fatalities.shtml http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/fatalities.shtml [3]: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm [4]: http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/wa...

pacala 11y ago
You are technically correct. However: * Fatalities due to being struck by lightning are largely avoidable by educating oneself on how to behave around a lightning storm. http://hikingdude.com/hiking-lightning.php http://hikingdude.com/hiking-lightning.php * Fatalities due to illnesses occur mostly in old people, after the child bearing years. It's much easier to cope with the death of a parent than it is with the death of a child. For young people that don't engage in reckless behavior, you have not refuted that mass shooting are unfortunately a comparatively large risk.
- aftbit 11y ago
  I didn't do quite as much research for this one, but here's CDC's "leading causes of death" table for 2013.[1] #1 for 25-34: unintentional injury with 16,209 deaths. #2 for 25-34: suicide, 6,348 deaths (but if you don't engage in risky behavior, you wouldn't commit suicide, right?) #3 for 25-34, homicide, 4,236 deaths - the vast majority of these are _not_ in mass-shooting incidents, of course. #4 is cancer (3,673 deaths) and #5 is heart disease (3,258 deaths). By the way, for felony homicides, the majority (69.1%) are perpetrated against a single victim[2]. [1] (PDF warning): http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_death_by_age_group_2013-a.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_deat... [2]: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-4 https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/...

maniacalrobot 11y ago

In the uk, the police have been using a similar message but with a very different outcome. Run, hide, tell is the procedure that the police want the public react in. The idea being is that a coordinated response from the police is much better than having members of the public attempting to deal with the situation themselves. Obviously the circumstances are different to the USA as the vast majority of the public don't have access to weapons, and would not have the means to fight back. But I do believe this approach is far less terrorising than asking members of the public to always be prepared to fight http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35140754 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35140754