Posted on 12/29/2010 9:24:51 PM PST by ChocChipCookie
Human bodies don't normally fly through the air, but last year that's exactly what I witnessed while waiting for a red light to turn green.
I was sitting in my Tahoe at an intersection not far from home when I heard the loud rumble of a truck engine. I couldn't quite believe my eyes when a green pick-up veered around me, raced into the intersection and plowed into a white sedan. While my mind was registering this violent accident, I saw a scarecrow fly through the air. I took a few deep breaths, tried to remember the details of how the accident happened and waited to give my eyewitness account to the police who appeared on the scene within minutes.
My mind re-played the scene, always with that scarecrow flying out of the truck and into the adjacent field. It wasn't until a half hour later, when I saw EMTs trying to revive a young man did I realize that what I had actually seen was his body at the moment it was ejected from the front seat. Even now, when I remember the accident, I don't see a human. Instead, the image of a scarecrow is imprinted in my brain because humans don't fly through the air!
Normalcy Bias defined
This is an example of Normalcy Bias, a survival mechanism our brains are equipped with that can place us in grave danger when we're faced with something traumatic. Simply put, it causes our brains to insist that all is okay. Everything will return to normal. For most of us who have never faced true peril, Normalcy Bias tells us that nothing bad will ever happen. "This is America!," some people insist when I tell them about the possibility of a deeper Depression or hyperinflation. Incredibly, the most obvious warning signs are ignored.
This explains why so many Jews continued living in Germany, even after they were forced to wear identifying yellow stars and discriminatory laws were passed against Jewish people. Life had been so good for so long that, surely, things would get better. Jews who could have easily afforded to move out of the country stayed, and perished.
Oncoming hurricanes and similar disasters elicit similar reactions. We simply expect life to go on as it always has, and our brains are wired to accept that and nothing else. A driver attempts to cross a flooded river. Thousands of New Orleans residents faced with Hurricane Katrina refuse to leave the city, and city officials don't even make an attempt to evacuate them. One survivor from 9/11 tells of going blind as she saw dozens of human bodies hitting the ground outside the Twin Towers. Our brains can accommodate billions of bits of information each day, but apparently, there are some things too terrible to comprehend.
Those of us who believe in preparedness, whether beginners or veterans, know the frustration of trying to convince loved ones that the future is not at all secure, but the Normalcy Bias isn't something we can debate. It's not based on logic or rational thought. It's the brain, doing its best to help its human owner deal with terrifying events and possibilities, as well as with escalating situations whose logical, final outcomes can't be accepted.
Here's another example from just last month...
If you had told me two months ago that American citizens would meekly line up to walk through powerful x-ray machines that would strip them bare before low-level TSA employees, I would have said, "Never!" If you had told me that, as an option, they would stand with arms raised while their crotches were groped and would allow their pre-schoolers to be similarly molested, I would have laughed. Yet, that is exactly what is happening, and we hear of similar searches planned for train stations, hotels, and more.
The water is heating up and most of the frogs are oblivious.
"Life will get back to normal."
"There's nothing wrong with this!"
Each week brings another repressive ruling, and still, most American citizens insist there is no reason for concern. New legislators will make everything right again. This is just temporary.
Whatever comes next will, again, be excused and accepted. Darn that Normalcy Bias!
Eleven Tips for Banishing Normalcy Bias
Here's the bottom line. We don't have the luxury of looking at a catastrophe before us and saying over and over again, "I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe this." If our families can't rely on us when all hell is breaking loose, then who can they depend on? Law enforcement and first responders are quickly overwhelmed, and your family is hardly at the top of their list. Normalcy Bias can place those we love most in grave danger.
Here are eleven ways we can begin to condition our minds to accept the unacceptable.
1. Be willing to go through the painful process of acknowledging the uncertainty of our future. I compare it with the Kubler-Ross grief process: denial (Normalcy Bias rearing its ugly head!), anger (at politicians, circumstances, family members), bargaining ("If I can just buy enough precious metals, we'll be okay."), depression (our children aren't facing the same, sunny future that we did, America is changing before our eyes), and finally, acceptance (I can't do everything, but I can be proactive and do what I can.)
2. Face facts, don't hide from them. Confront financial difficulties, acknowledge your limits. Only when you face reality can you prepare for it.
3. Trust your instincts. Headlines change on a dime. Take in a much bigger picture than a single, optimistic headline or the words of a politician seeking re-election. Trust your own five senses and what your gut is telling you.
4. Start where you are with what you have.
5. Fight feeling overwhelmed with lists and organization. Focus on what you will do today, this week, this month. Little by little it will all come together.
6. Reach out to others. Start your own SurvivalMom meet-up group. Spend time on preparedness and survival forums, as long as they don't feed your fears. If there was ever a time for people to come together, this is it.
7. It's better to over-prepare than to be under-prepared. Normalcy Bias assures us that everything will be okay. A few extra bottles of water is all you really need. Those ten cans of tuna will be plenty! Go ahead and stock up more than you think you'll need. Make plans for scenarios that may be a bit far out but still within the realm of possibility.
8. Make plans. Have an evacuation plan, and prepare for it. Have a hunker-down plan, and prepare for it. Decide ahead of time how you will face the most likely crises and communicate those plans with those who need-to-know. Write down your plans! Panic and stress have a way of erasing the logical parts of our brains!
9. Be ready to act quickly and decisively. It's better to take action too soon than too late.
10. Take time off. Forget you ever heard of the word, 'preparedness'. Go shopping and blow a few bucks on something completely unnecessary. Go out to lunch. Play with the kids. Spend an hour on the phone gossiping with your best friend. Give yourself a mental break! Your family needs you to be strong. You need to take care of yourself, body, soul, and spirit.
11. Get physically fit. There is a huge connection between physical and mental fitness. Start with some sort of exercise and start today.
Normalcy Bias, although deeply ingrained in the human brain, doesn't have to control our futures or place us in harm's way. The first step in being prepared is becoming educated. Knowing about this bias, what it can do, and how it can be controlled will help you become a survivor and not a victim.
Having strong urges to smash the crap out of this unit and give the brain a rest.
Thanks for this observation. Apparently some of my relatives in Austria thought that all was well despite Angschluss. They didn’t make it. This is one Jew whose antennae are up 24/7. I’d rather be a canary in the mine than a dead Jew in an oven.
Re the “scarecrow” effect. I saw a woman get hit by a car as she crossed in the middle of a 4 lane street at night. When she landed with a thud, I thought she was dead and called the police to report that accident and that I thought she was dead because of the loud impact of her hitting the ground.
The firehouse was about a block away and the police/ambulance arrived in a matter of a minute or two. I wandered over to tell the police what I had scene, but stopped next to young woman at the scene. I remarked to her that I thought the victim was dead but I couldn’t see her body, to which she she said, “I’m not dead.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather. Apparently her backpack shielded her from serious injury.
I said “I’m glad you’re not”. She said, “So am I”.
The rest of the night was a lot easier on the mind knowing that this woman had survived in good condition. I never did talk to the police as the woman had already told them that she was wrong to cross the street the way she had.
Lessons learned: Never cross a dark. busy street except at the crosswalk. Miracles do happen.
“Life will get back to normal.”
“There’s nothing wrong with this!”
Cue Kevin Bacon in “Animal House”
Excellent article. There’s much to think about and this is about common sense and instinct. I’m still on step one and within that step, I’m stuck at anger (rage is the appropriate name) but I also realize I need to get better prepared.
Thanks for the post
I’m right there with you mm. Been on FR less...still on a daily basis but not for long periods. Shut it down for a bit.
See #10 above.
Preparedness/Survival ping!
That is why people have to be trained to go into combat and why people who live hard lives are more likely to survive a crisis.
Thanks for posting this.
It is disquieting how many still ignore the warnings. How many continue to trust the talking heads on the boob tube instead of their own instincts. How many refuse to even admit to the possibility.
Perhaps it is because it is such a downer topic. Maybe it is because they fear that it is already too late.
I listened to the warnings. I did my setups (an ongoing affair that is now part of my lifestyle).
I may not be zombie-proof, but but I’m damned close.
“Normalcy bias” is a survival mechanism designed to take your attention over from whatever it’s doing, and make it focus on what is presented. It should last no more than a few seconds. You should then resume activity to safely consider the message you were just given logically.
Peripheral vision (something else that should not be ignored) can present many “false positives” that should be studied just long enough to ignore with confidence, or act on. I was driving along when I could swear I saw USS Enterprise, NCC-1701, taking off at about a 45 degree angle. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and I almost slammed on the breaks.
My conscious mind told me there was a better explanation, and to not do anything stupid while driving. I took a conscious two-second look, and saw a twin-turboprop Beechcraft 200 King Air with wingtip tanks taking off and banking sharply, providing me with a view I didn’t normally experience. I also verified there was a small airfield off to the left, behind some hangars.
Also, in some high-stress situations, the subconscious brain will discard certain sensory input it considers unnecessary to handle the crisis at hand, freeing up more “computing resources” for the real problem.
I was moving through an intersection on a green light when the pickup waiting to make a left turn going in the opposite direction decided it was safe to cut me off rather than wait another second for me to go by. I didn’t lean on the horn, and I never considered braking. Instead, I cranked on a hard-right turn, and my field of vision went white.
All that existed was the steering wheel in my hand, and the sensation of a hard-right turn in the seat of my pants. A small voice told me my GMC could not maintain that much right bank for long, so I should prepare for a left turn. It also told me that to prevent fishtailing all over the road, the rate and extent of the left roll should be half that of what I just did. With that done, I was told to center the wheel and proceed normally.
I looked around, and everything was normal. The @sshole who cut me off was nowhere to be seen, but at least he hadn’t wrecked. I’m sure I must have crossed his field of view (assuming he had his eyes open) within a few feet of his front end. He probably continued on, totally oblivious.
I still wasn’t oblivious. I tried to recall what just happened ten seconds before, but my video memory was still just a white field of view. Today, I can still only remember the white screen, the steering wheel, and the sense of rate of roll in the seat of my pants.
A doctor confirmed that in some stressful situations, the amygdlia, which controls instincts, can override some sense and brain functions to either let an instinct kick in, or lighten the processing load of the conscious mind. Conscious repetitious training, as in some martial arts, is a way of adding new instinctive skills to your brain by hard work to “program” it.
This is also a way of managing the “fight or flight” response into something more practical, such as “cover, evaluate, then fight, or flee”. We are no longer apes living in trees with the luxury of only two instinctive actions.
Thanks for posting! I’d love to see you be able to do a FULL show covering all of this & more on Beck. Great job last time, but way too short ;)
it wasn’t a scarecrow it was the great Flydini working out the bugs in his new act.
“Normalcy bias” or denial was standard for many in Russia as it morphed into the Soviet Union, as well.
It soon got to the point that there weren’t many options for time off, as in point 10. Cryptic black humor was one of the releases. Under Stalin, when acquaintances would ask how things were going, one of the few answers that might not result in being ratted on to the secret police for treason was, “Normálno.”
Lord, have mercy!
Ping
There are far too many today who refuse to know anything beyond their little cushy life and will never remove their rose colored glasses even when they become cracked.
Excellent point, and if you could distill it down a little bit, it would make a great bumper sticker!
This explains why so many Jews continued living in Germany, even after they were forced to wear identifying yellow stars and discriminatory laws were passed against Jewish people. Life had been so good for so long that, surely, things would get better. Jews who could have easily afforded to move out of the country stayed, and perished.
You think of this when you watch some of those programs on the rise of the National Socialists in Germany, knowing how the story turns out.
It’s hard to understand why they didn’t see the signs and take action.
Then you look around at what is going on today…
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