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Bed that saved me from the Taliban
- Simulacra 8y agoWow what an amazing story of survival.
- arbuge 8y agoIf you really do not have the time to read the whole article, it's worth reading at least the last 4 paragraphs.
- jnbiche 8y agoIt's well worth reading. Read to the end; he includes his perspectives on life in the summary.
- fb03 8y agoIt's nice when something is so well written that it almost literally transports you to that moment. I was agitated to know what would happen next as the narrative unfolded. Can recommend.
- NKosmatos 8y agoSame here, that would make a great movie.
- krn 8y agoIt reminded me of "10 minutes"[1], the Best European Short Film of 2002. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za8-THNtk-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za8-THNtk-M
- Pigo 8y agoThe story just kept going. I thought it would be over after the initial hiding under the bed and the men leaving his room, but it was only the beginning. It's amazing this man is still alive.
- sjroot 8y agoIncredible, to be hiding under one of two beds in his hotel room, and having the other bed being searched and shot at by the Taliban. > Don't concentrate only on work, stressful and bad things in your life. Concentrate instead on creating good moments and being around good people, because life is so beautiful.
- elliekelly 8y agoAnd to have the bad guy quite literally sitting on top of you. I cannot imagine the mental fortitude it takes to maintain your composure to keep perfectly still and silent in that situation.
- sjroot 8y agoRight! I did think it was interesting that he said this adrenaline rush made it difficult to keep from laughing. It seems completely inappropriate, but makes sense at the same time. "Really, this is happening to me right now?"
- beaconstudios 8y agoLaughing can be a nervous or awkward reaction as well as the usual. I don't know if this is universal but I and others sometimes get a compulsion to laugh when told bad news.
- m3kw9 8y agoOther things that could have killed him was a cough or a sneeze
- krustyburger 8y agoOr even his stomach growling.
- m3kw9 8y agoIf he still has an appetite.
- rags2riches 8y agoI wonder if his ability to focus on analysis and solutions made the whole experience less traumatic.
- democracy 8y agoJust FYI, Taliban was the creation of Pakistani military intelligence to fight Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 80's and funded by the CIA.
- tome 8y ago... and therefore it's the Soviets who are responsible for the resulting horrific crimes? Or did you have a different point?
- democracy 8y agoDo we need to have a point behind each fact? is there a point behind each Wikipedia article?
- tome 8y agoGenerally yes, there tends to be an ulterior motive behind the statement of tangentially related facts on discussions of news stories. But in any case, thanks to your information I've concluded that it's the Soviets who are responsible for the crimes of the Taliban.
- democracy 8y agoGenerally we expect people to downvote comments which are wrong, not the ones they disagree with - but who am I kidding?
- tome 8y agoOr comments with minimal relevance, non-sequiturs, etc..
- rfrey 8y agoNobody disagrees with your Wikipedia article.
- somebadguy 8y ago
- 0xcafecafe 8y agoAmazing read. Happy that he made it out. Loved the closing comment as well (I wonder why everyone of us can't live like this without going through a NDE, I myself am a guilty party): >You know, sitting on the beach in Greece with friends I've heard people complaining that because we had a financial crisis they miss some of the comforts they used to have. I am like, "Come on! Enjoy your life and health. You are eating sardines and drinking Ouzo by the beach. We are free, we have good friends around and we laugh - this is what people are supposed to do." >Don't concentrate only on work, stressful and bad things in your life. Concentrate instead on creating good moments and being around good people, because life is so beautiful.
- russdill 8y agoA lot of people that go through and NDE come out the other side with crippling PTSD.
- retSava 8y agoOne can hope for his best. Those sounds can't be pleasant to carry with you (people being executed I mean).
- miles 8y agoIf we’re taking about actual Near Death Experiences (NDE), the research shows an interesting pattern: Near-death experiences: clinical implications http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0101-60832007000700015&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0101-60832007000700015&... > “Compared to non-experiencers, NDErs report greatly increased concern for others, decreased fear of death, and increased belief in an afterlife, increased religious interest and feeling, and lessened desire for material success and approval of others (Flynn, 1982).” Even for those who did not have a NDE, > “Compared to persons who had come close to death but not had NDEs, experiencers place significantly lower value on social status, professional and material success, and fame (Greyson, 1983a), and find death less threatening (Greyson, 1992).”
- russdill 8y ago
- mhb 8y agoI think a good tactic might have been to deploy the bedsheet rope in order to make it look as if he had climbed down to the floor below.
- Insanity 8y agoReading it, I actually had the same idea. But still, the possible would exist that there's someone in the room who didn't dare climb down in the end.
- mhb 8y agoYes. But then it seems like a mistake to have put the mattress against the door since that strongly suggests that someone is in the room.
- jsgo 8y agoOr could be perceived as a diversion to allow the person enough time to get down their makeshift rope.
- runjake 8y agoHe did this to physically shield himself from random shrapnel. His purpose in opening the balcony door was to give the impression that somebody may have egressed. This is taught in tradecraft courses, and this mention along with others in the article suggests to me that he's been through some tradecraft and/or SERE-type trainings -- probably oriented towards journalists.
- ip26 8y agoMaybe journalists, or maybe pilots. Planes & airports have long been a high profile target.
- runjake 8y agoErr pilots, I meant. I got some wires cross in my head when typing that out. I attended one such tradecraft class and was remembering that virtually all my classmates were journalists headed into theater (Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan).
- baybal2 8y agoA good read. To people from better off part of the world, luxury hotels in third-world countries are, almost as a rule, a magnet for trouble: petty crimes, robberies, encounters with mafia, and, as was in that case, an armed assault.
- yesplorer 8y agoThis isn't true at all. Luxury hotels, most especially managed or chain brands are some of the safest places in third-world countries. The odds of buglary, petty crimes and those vices you listed happening is close to zero. This is the reason why they are attractive to expats and high-end clients. They have the best security and are usually located in prime areas making them less susceptible to some of those claims you made. And they also have a brand to protect. Except they are very expensive relative to the cost of living of those countries but their target market is foreigners, short-stay expats and government delegations so they still get patronized.
- rdl 8y agoYeah, you have two choices -- either a high-end international-clientele hotel which also has security, or something relatively anonymous. The other two quadrants (high profile international hotel with no security, or a low-profile guesthouse with a lot of western guests and lots of local information about it) are how to get killed most efficiently. Big hard property means you'll probably be safe from petty crime, but you might be collateral damage during a large terrorist attack. However, most places can repel the smaller attacks. Smaller/anonymous property means you won't be collateral damage from anyone else, but it will be a whole lot easier for someone to learn "rich American/European is staying in this guesthouse" and then do a trivial attack. You have to be consistent with this, using local vehicles, probably not going out much, etc. Depends on the situation which is better (the external situation as well as who you are as a target). A big factor is that K&R/institutional policies/etc. do not permit the low profile approach. If you're living in a low profile place but then taking a big armored truck to/from meetings with the government at hardened sites, you're probably going to have a bad time, too. I'd personally feel weird being in Afghanistan or Iraq without a weapon (and possibly security detail) today, despite it being "safer" than when I was there, and having illegal weapons being itself an actual risk now. I solve this by just not going. Most of the third world isn't actual-warzone and you're not as likely to face a huge terrorist attack on the biggest target. The Kenyan mall/etc. attacks are outliers. I'd generally go for the hardened strategy myself, as I don't want to have to go through the trouble of blending in, especially on a longer basis. (In a high threat environment I'd probably go for my own secured compound somewhere, just so I wouldn't be collateral damage, but that requires you be able to hold/secure the compound, which puts a pretty high minimum scale to be economic. I lived in a villa in Baghdad with Kurdish security, and then in Afghanistan I stayed at a guest house with a 2:1 rifle to guest ratio, but yeah.)
- pizza 8y agoWorth mentioning that the Taliban has just conducted another terrible attack this morning > The Wardak attack is turning into the single deadliest attack against the Afghan intelligence in the past 17 yrs. We are hearing now at least 40 dead more than 50 wounded. (some officials still insist not all are NDS officers - includes local upriser militias they were training) https://twitter.com/MujMash/status/1087338155072724992?s=19 https://twitter.com/MujMash/status/1087338155072724992?s=19
- Pica_soO 8y agoAfghanistan the graveyard of empires. They called and America came. None of the politicians seem to grasp what they are fighting is not only a ideology, but also the human condition, driven to a near constant edge of treason and combat.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bflesch 8y agoGreat article. But one detail seems to be wrong: It says "I had to do something, so I went out on to the balcony. I could see the fire on __my left hand side__, it was heavy and I realised that if it reached my room I wasn't going to survive." The provided image circles the balcony on the right hand side of the fire, so it would have been either his right hand side where he saw the fire, the image has been mirrored, or BBC just circled the wrong balcony: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/720x405/p06ynx4y.jpg https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/720x405/p06ynx4y.jpg
- ericboehs 8y agoI saw that too but later in the article it gets explained. > early in the morning the international forces began to fire from a tank into the rooms. They concentrated on room 521, the one next door to me The blackened rooms to his right aren't the fire he was talking about. There must have been another fire out of view of this picture.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- saluki 8y agoor he was on the balcony, facing the building describing the the fire was on his left hand side. Amazing read, amazing he made it out, his training and being calm helped him, luck was a factor as well.
- soyyo 8y agoAccording to his tale, he was almost killed by special forces snipers. I know you could not blame them due to the confusion, but it would have been terrible to survive the attackers just to be killed by the people that were supposed to save you.
- scotty79 8y agoI read this as more of a tale of a man that fell into the insides of a machine and managed to hide in a crack to avoid getting crushed untill the machine stopped its course. This kind of attack and response is like mad contraption fueled by old human stupidity and borderline futuristic deadly powerful technology. As a civilian you are supposed to keep very safe distance from such a powerful tech but someone, somewhere gets inevitably confronted with it mixed with a dash or a lot of human stupidity and most often dies.
- netsharc 8y agoA bit like the Asiana Airlines crash in SF, where 1 out of 3 dead was a passenger who got flung out of the plane, survived, but died after getting run over by a fire truck.
- sctb 8y agoPlease don't post like this on Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- wiradikusuma 8y ago"Parts of the hotel were able to re-open two months after the attack" — what? Curious, what would be the logical explanation for that? I mean, for starters nobody would want to work there, and nobody would want to _stay_ there. Right?
- zdw 8y agoThe hotel still needs to make money, so getting it open as quickly as possible even after a horrific incident is important for the bottom line of the company that runs it. Fix all the damage, put up a plaque or other memorial to the victims, and then move forward. This may seem harsh, but economic interests don't permanently go away when disasters happen.
- probably_wrong 8y agoThere's an old story (that I can't find right now) about a bank employee that falls for a scam that costs the company hundreds of thousands. He goes to his boss and says "I guess you will be expecting my resignation", to which the boss replies "Resign? I just spent thousands of dollars training you!". I would apply the same line of thought here: I don't think this hotel is any more insecure that any other. In fact, I would expect it to have more security than the others from now on. I understand the emotional point - it's pretty much the same point that Chris Rock made about renaming the new Twin Towers the "Never going in there tower". But I can totally see the hotel making a comeback - if Charlie Hebdo is still in business, I don't see why the hotel can't follow the same steps.
- karussell 8y agoAmazing read. (IMO there is a small mistake. They write "I could see the fire on my left hand side" but the fire from the tagged window is on "the right" from inside...)
- brohee 8y agoOr once on the balcony, he turned back to face the facade in order to better watch it...
- nickthemagicman 8y agoI think that was from the tank blasting at the window.
- jackschultz 8y agoWow that was very well written. In an intense situation where after the fact people want to write dramatically, this was the opposite in a great way. We all still feel attached and with a great sense of what happened, the pace it was written, and the events that stood out to him and were told. It's so nice to have something like that rather than an over the top description. Granted, I'm not sure if he wrote that himself or was helped / ghostwritten as is the extremely annoying case in tons of articles, but either way, well done.
- gerbilly 8y ago> >Don't concentrate only on work, stressful and bad things in your life. Concentrate instead on creating good moments and being around good people, because life is so beautiful. I feel this sentence could also save a lot of lives, in a slightly different way.
- zeveb 8y ago> About an hour-and-a-half passed, and although I didn't know it at the time the attackers had by now killed almost everyone in the lobby, the restaurant, and on the first and second floors of the hotel. They had rushed through the third and fourth floors to the fifth floor and I could hear them running around on the rooftop above my head, where they were managing to keep away helicopters belonging to the international forces. Reading that, I can't imagine being stuck in such a situation without weapons. Yeah, a sidearm won't necessarily save one's life, particularly against several attackers, but all it would take is a few people to fight back to subdue the attackers. According to Wikipedia, there were only 'four or five gunmen' and about 200 people in the hotel (42 dead, over 160 rescued): if each person had been capable of resisting, then the attackers simply couldn't have won the day without a significantly larger team, which would have incurred increased cost, opsec risk & operational risk. I can't imagine the terror of being stuck in a hotel room, waiting to die. A weapon might not save my life, but at least it'd give me something to focus on & feel better about.
- ddoran 8y agoI strongly recommend "The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why" by Amanda Ripley [1]. It is a terrific look of the character traits and behavior of people who survive life-threatening circumstances and those who don't. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2706211-the-unthinkable https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2706211-the-unthinkable
- toufiqbarhamov 8y agoOne thing that struck me about this story was that he made some good decisions and some bad ones, but as he points out he got really lucky a bunch of times. None of his habits would have mattered if he’d been in the restaurant, if he’d have been in the wrong room, picked the wrong bed to hide under, or hadn’t moved just out of the way of a sniper’s bullet, and if a tank had fired on his room. It’s easy to assume that a given set of habits correlate with survival, and even easier to write a book effectively engaging in survivorship bias. It’s a lot harder to get lucky many times in a row, to have the opportunity to not die. So read the book, keep your back to a wall and an eye on exists, but recognize that none of that would have helped this guy. The two big tings that seemed to have saved this guy is temperament (look at his job for indication she that job followed temperament and and not the other way around) which allowed him to remain calm, and sheer dumb luck.
- dennisgorelik 8y ago> It’s easy to assume that a given set of habits correlate with survival It is a correct assumption. I survived this attack ... by not going to Afghanistan.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jackhammer2022 8y agoI haven't gone through your link yet, but sounds like Survivorship Bias here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- 8y ago
- nebulous1 8y agoAt first I missed the fact that this was a year ago at the very start of the article and just read that it was January 20th. So I briefly thought that it happened yesterday and this badass was already writing articles and posing for photos with the bed. Still pretty badass though.
- kakarot 8y agoIt's insane to me that a sniper opened fire on Vasileiou without any confirmation that he was a target. If he had been killed and word had gotten out, it would have been horrible PR. It's also insane that Vasileiou went from being in immediate danger of burning alive to immediate danger of hypothermia. What a roller coaster. And his training was broad enough to cover the entire spectrum.
- gammateam 8y agoThats why the sniper missed Somebody or training made the sniper question the action
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- simplecomplex 8y agoTurns out 4-5 guys with AK's and some grenades took over an international hotel in central Kabul and killed 40+ people. What's the excuse for the hotel not having any security?
- runjake 8y agoIt's a hotel in Afghanistan, a country presently immersed in turmoil.
- simplecomplex 8y agoIt had already been attacked and was full of international guests. In the capital city. 4-5 guys should not be able to take complete control of the hotel with no heavy weaponry. That means security is deficient or non-existent.
- ricardobeat 8y agoWhat kind of daily security setup can protect against 5 gunmen with AK47s?
- ip26 8y agoYou don't necessarily need to meet them head-on & emerge victorious, just delay them long enough for backup to arrive and/or deter them, again by showing that you will delay them.
- vsl 8y agoArmed and trained security detail/guards.
- thecrazyone 8y agoWhy aren't autonomous or remotely controlled rovers, or turrets ever installed?
- runjake 8y ago"Should not be able to take complete control" Sure, in a normally-functioning country with available leadership and logistical resources. But that is not Afghanistan, at present. That was my whole point.
- ranprieur 8y ago> Each time they would laugh afterwards, like they were just playing around, or like it was a big party or something. Terrorists in TV and movies are never like this. They're always super-serious evil, like Voldemort, like nobody ever is in real life. I wonder how much violence could be prevented if Hollywood didn't give us such a bullshit view of human nature.
- jackgavigan 8y agoThey may have been high. The Taliban is known to have given suicide bombers drugs before sending them to their deaths.
- Sammi 8y agoThey were probably just pleased and proud of themselves because they believe they are fighting on the good side. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
- woolvalley 8y agoIt seems pretty evil to me if you laugh about murdering humans like it's some sort of game.
- archon810 8y agoI was really hoping to see that last photo he's talking about taken by one of his saviors.
- thecrazyone 8y agoMe too, I assumed its the electric blanket one which is right after that paragraph.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]