EFR 829: The Science of Disaster, the 3 Ways Humans REACT to Fear & How to Master Any Crisis with Amanda Ripley

00:01 - Chase (Host) The following is an Operation Podcast production. Can we truly prepare for disaster and, if so, what is the best way to become disaster-proof?

00:10 - Amanda (Guest) Well, this is funny because when the original book came out 16 years ago, I had a different answer. How do people and groups behave at the worst of times, and what can we learn from that in order to do better? The arc of human behavior across all of the things we've talked about is the same three stages denial, followed by deliberation, and then the decisive moment, which is where everything that has happened in those first two stages plays out and you either take action or not. It's an action that's either wise in retrospect or not right, and a lot of that depends on what's happened in the first two phases. So it reminds you that all the time, your brain is censoring, filtering, syncing input for you, and at times of extreme duress things can go really haywire.

01:00 You're trying, with the training, right is always to keep. You know this from your military experience. You're trying to keep things in that green zone where it's helpful to you and you don't deteriorate. So the next crisis we face as a country or as a civilization, the first question should be who's been through this before and what do they know? For me, that's really been very helpful. I'm Amanda Ripley, a journalist and the author of the Unthinkable Welcome to Ever Forward Radio.

01:25 - Chase (Host) So this brand new study recently came out that may explain why some of us are aging faster than we should, resulting in impaired metabolic, liver and heart health. This condition is now called cellular fragility syndrome and it's caused by a deficiency in a nutrient called C15. It's been 75 years since the last nutritional deficiency syndrome was discovered. But leave it to Fatty 15, today's sponsor. Leave it to Everford Radio and the due diligence we do here on the team to bring you the latest cutting edge science to bring your wellness to the next level.

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02:51 I have some really amazing new science and studies that I'm going to share with you down on the show notes. So don't just take my word for it. Check out these human clinical studies and, once the science and the literature blows you away, do yourself a favor. Head to fatty15.com. Slash everforward. Pick you up some C15. Get on the 90-day trial and get ready to feel and look your best. F-a-t-t-y 1-5.com slash everforward Code everforward to save an additional 15% off of their 90-day starter kit. Starter kit, what's up friends? Welcome back to the show. If you're new, hello welcome.

03:36 My name is Chase tuning. I am a certified health coach. I'm an army veteran, wellness entrepreneur and just overall curious guy about how I can feel my best, look my best, perform my best, be in it for the health span, the lifespan, trying to learn all the ways in which I can move forward daily and keep living a life ever forward. As I say, if you're returning, glad to have you back, whether you're new or returning. If you have not yet done so, tap that button please, right here, right now. Take three seconds, go to your podcast platform of choice, tap, follow, subscribe.

04:10 It does amazing things. It supports the show in big, big ways. More importantly, it helps us reach more people to help them live a life ever forward, and it makes sure that you are never going to miss another amazing episode, just like the one I have today with Amanda Ripley. I had the pleasure of sitting down with her on some recent travels. I flew out to DC because what she has devoted her life to was not only very new and exciting a topic I have not yet covered on the show it was just incredible to see somebody that is so passionate about what they do and how it helps them move forward in life. I had to sit down with her and unpack this mystery of why disaster is so intriguing.

04:47 Amanda is a New York Times bestselling author, a Washington Post contributing columnist and co-founder of Good Conflict, a media and training company that helps people reimagine conflict. She has written three award-winning nonfiction books about three very different subjects high conflict, the smartest kids in the world, and what we're going to be diving into today the unthinkable who survives when disaster strikes and why. This book and our conversation is really an expedition into the science of disaster, diving deep into the obvious you know of natural disasters, but also into the pandemic and the role of social media and distrust in disaster response. You ever wondered why some people in a disaster freeze, why some run away and why some even run towards the disaster. Well, she has the explanation and the reasons might actually surprise you. Like I said, I sat down with Amanda in person. If you would like to check out the video, I have it linked for you down in the show notes. As always, you can find it at everforwardradiocom or head over to YouTube. Just search Ever Forward Radio, subscribe to the channel there and you can watch me and Amanda break this down for you in person.

05:54 And you know, speaking of traveling, I got to put you guys on one of my favorite new mile high wellness hacks. When I travel, especially across time zones, I'm always even more especially mindful of my caffeine consumption, trying to not mess up my circadian rhythm and, ideally, adjust as soon as possible to my new time zone. So from LA to DC, that's many, many miles and you know three hours difference. So on the plane, you know it's usually pretty chilly on the plane and I didn't have my hoodie so I needed something to warm me up. So I got some lemon wedges from the flight attendant, a cup of hot water and mixed in my favorite new little supplement manuka honey.

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08:09 All right, let's jump into the episode. The first thing that stood out to me was the science of disaster. I've never heard science and disaster kind of put together like that. Is there a science to disaster and what is?

08:22 - Amanda (Guest) it, I know. Isn't it the best when you discover there's a science to something that you never knew. Right Like that that exists.

08:27 - Chase (Host) It's great for podcasts too, the science of anything we love. We love it Right, all of a sudden it gets much more interesting.

08:33 - Amanda (Guest) Science of food, science, of paint, anything, really anything.

08:36 - Chase (Host) Our last episode was talking about the science of generosity.

08:39 - Amanda (Guest) Oh, I like that. Yeah, we used when I worked at Time Magazine. We used to like automatically put something on the cover If we could say the science of, like the science of curiosity, wow.

08:49 - Chase (Host) That's useful information and it was so great.

08:52 - Amanda (Guest) So, yeah, I what happened was I was covering a series of disasters, sort of at first by chance for Time Magazine and then because it was became like my thing and it was like my beat, which is a little depressing, but I was-.

09:07 - Chase (Host) Disaster or science? Sorry, disasters, yeah, exactly.

09:10 - Amanda (Guest) And then so I was covering, you know, 9-11 and different terrorist attacks and hurricanes, and then I found out about this conference that happens every year at the University of Colorado, boulder, at this hazards research center, and so I went to that. It's every July and I went to that and, lo and behold, there's this whole field of study where people do nothing but study the science of disasters, and, in particular, the piece of it that I just thought was captivating was the science of human behavior in disasters, right, like how do people and groups behave at the worst of times and what can we learn from that in order to do better?

09:50 - Chase (Host) The human response to disaster. I feel like you could go a lot of different ways Natural disasters, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, all the way to the kind of the other end of the spectrum. You know, you mentioned 9-11,. You know, an attack on all the way to the other end of the spectrum you mentioned 9-11, an attack on the home front kind of thing. But then in between there we all experience very unique, individual, personal disasters.

10:13 And the level to which disaster really rings true for somebody, I think, is well, it's up to you. So is there a difference, scientifically speaking, in my personal response to a personal disaster? Something in my life blows up versus oh my God. This other is individual and, in fact, most research is very siloed.

10:33 - Amanda (Guest) So it'll be like there's a whole bunch of people who do nothing but study plane crash behavior, right, and then there's a whole bunch of people who do nothing but study fire behavior, and in fact the behavior is the same. So I actually think there's more similarity than there is differences. So the arc of human behavior across all of the things we've talked about is the same three stages Denial, like a really profound period of disbelief, followed by deliberation, which is a very social moment where people will try to look at cues from one another, discuss, even have a meeting, sometimes in the World Trade Center that happened, and then the decisive moment, which is where everything that has happened in those first two stages plays out and you either take action or not. It's an action that's either wise in retrospect or not right, and a lot of that depends on what's happened in the first two phases. So while there are definitely differences between, you know, getting diagnosed with cancer or getting in a plane crash, I actually don't think they're as different in the experience of the internal person Physiologically.

11:57 Yeah, physiologically, emotionally, even socially, when there's more than one person involved.

12:02 - Chase (Host) So then, is it comforting or helpful to know that the human experience during disaster, even the human response, is so predictable, so that we better know how to navigate certain disasters or really kind of know what human needs are.

12:19 - Amanda (Guest) It was comforting to me.

12:20 I mean basically all my books I've realized now I don't know why it took me this long, but I'm always like running up against some just bleak reality of life on earth and in my reporting and then I decide there has to be another way of looking at this and then I follow people who have been through hell and back to find out, you know, what do they wish they'd known, what do they want the rest of us to know?

12:51 And I think for me it's been really comforting is a good word to know that okay, there's a lot we can't predict in this world, right, especially in a disaster. But we know that most people are going to go through those three phases, even highly trained people. It's just they move through them faster and and usually more effectively. But it depends on the context. So you know, I was talking to a, an ER physician, who was very effective in crises in the hospital, but when he was in a hotel room and the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night, he just went right back to bed because he didn't really have a reference point of experience or training.

13:25 Yeah, that doesn't fit my model Exactly right, like your brain is like a library right and you've got a bunch of books on the shelf and if it doesn't fit you know you'll find some way to make it fit, even if it shouldn't. So he ended up. Luckily the alarms continued. He got up later. He had to escape this burning hotel. But it's sort of context dependent, unless you have a lot of training and experience.

13:49 - Chase (Host) Yeah, In your work you talk about these things called human fear circuits.

13:58 - Amanda (Guest) What are they? Can we override them or even rewrite them? Yeah, so we know that fear is I mean, you know the research on stress, right. So when you have a little bit of stress or fear, that actually makes you better, right, it makes you like faster, more alert, more responsive, energized. It makes you stronger, literally temporarily, we know from cortisol and stress hormones. But then there's this inflection point where it makes you worse.

14:22 So, too much fear you start to notice eye-hand deterioration, you start to get tunnel vision right, which we hear a lot from police officers involved in shootings.

14:31 They get very fixated on the weapon or the threat, or even their own weapon. You can even lose hearing, which is wild. Like you, you know, they fire their gun and their ears don't ring afterwards with no ear protection, which is like wild right. So it reminds you that all the time your brain is censoring, filtering, syncing input for you and at times of extreme duress things can go really haywire because your brain doesn't know what to do and doesn't have a lot of training with this. So you're trying, with the training right is's always to keep you know this from your military experience you're trying to keep things in that green zone where it's helpful to you and you don't deteriorate Um, which again, is easier said than done, but we definitely, to answer your question, can get better at it, with even some pretty basic awareness training, like knowing where the stairs are, knowing how many rows between you and the exit on an airplane, that kind of thing.

15:37 - Chase (Host) Hey guys, quick break from my conversation with Amanda to bring your attention to something that, honestly, I can't go without. This has been something that's been part of my daily wellness practice for about three years, and that is urolithin A. Now you can get it from a few different sources and in fact, I recently learned that this is a postbiotic that a lot of us can make. But, due to poor diet, poor nutrient absorption, poor gut health, the vast majority of humans, in fact, are deficient in urolithin A and we don't make enough of it. We can get it from our diet, but we would have to consume insane amounts of primarily pomegranate or even things like walnut oil these nut oils pomegranate, or even things like walnut oil, these nut oils. And I recently had this amazing Persian dish. My wife is Persian and her mom made for us this dish called fesenjoon, which, lo and behold, is packed with pomegranates and walnut oil. So it got me thinking. That's probably why I see so many Middle Eastern, particularly Persian, people just looking so good. My wife's grandmother is pushing 90 years old and, honestly, if you told me she was 20 years younger, I would believe you, and that's because she's been having a diet packed with urolithin A for decades. So she didn't have Timeline Nutrition, she didn't have their product, mito Pure, but you can. So, unless you're going to switch over to a Persian cuisine, which I might even recommend anyway, it is just so good.

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18:07 If you'd like to learn more, head to TimelineNutritioncom. Slash EverForward. Snag you up some Mito Pure and, at checkout, for 10% off your first order, go ahead and throw down code EVERFORWARD Again. That's TimelineNutritioncom. Slash EVERFORWARD Code EVERFORWARD to save 10% off of MitoPure Also. I just want to highlight it's like I subconsciously knew we were going to talk about it we're in the green zone right now.

18:35 You're wearing green, I'm in green, I just thought. Green all around.

18:40 - Amanda (Guest) This is perfect. I love it. There's green light. I love it. This is wild. We're in the green zone right now.

18:44 - Chase (Host) So that makes me think is disaster, then just a matter of perspective.

18:49 - Amanda (Guest) Huh, say more.

18:50 - Chase (Host) So really a matter of trained or untrained? Someone that is facing an intruder in their home or their workplace to someone who hasn't had little to zero training on how to handle that situation or what to do, how to protect themselves? I'm just talking defense, not offense, versus someone who maybe you know was in the military, was a cop or taking self-defense or something like that. Is there a difference in just a matter of perspective?

19:20 - Amanda (Guest) It's definitely there's trained and untrained. But then within that right, there's some flip sides, right? So you might have experience with, or training in, a particular kind of life or death experience, and then when you experience something akin to that out in the world, you may have trauma from that experience, right? So even though you've had that training, you've also got the trauma. So sometimes it works to your advantage and sometimes it doesn't. Let me give you an example. So Manuel Chea was a survivor of the World Trade Center on 9-11. And when I interviewed him, one of the things that struck me was how quickly, as soon as the first plane hit the tower, he got up, went to the stairs and evacuated. That, like pretty much never happened in the rest of the towers and untrained civilian.

20:09 Yeah, untrained disaster response Exactly Um so I couldn't?

20:13 - Chase (Host) he's like no one plane in my building, enough for me?

20:15 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, and most people didn't even know what it was right, they didn't know it was a, they just knew the whole tower just rocked. It just shifted in a way it doesn't normally, but they didn't know it was a plane. It took a long time to figure all of that out right, so most people waited on average six minutes before beginning to evacuate the World Trade Center.

20:33 - Chase (Host) Now, is that normal? So yes, like the normal average human response time, is that about six minutes?

20:39 - Amanda (Guest) Well, it depends. I know that's an annoying answer, but there were a couple of factors that were unusual. Well, not that unusual, but in skyscrapers the advice was to shelter in place, and that often is still the case. So the Port Authority, which ran the World Trade Center, came over the intercom in many of these places and said to stay, don't go anywhere. That turned out to be very bad advice, right? Not everybody heard that, not everybody followed that, but there were different things that slowed people down extra.

21:09 But in general the rule we can all count on is that people will take longer to evacuate than you expect. So even once they got into the stairwells, people took about a minute per floor to evacuate, which was twice as long as safety engineers had predicted. And remember those towers were half full. So imagine if they'd been full, full, right. So because it was an election day in New York and different things, they were not full. So that was a huge shock for for engineers and safety experts, because that changes the whole calculus, right? I mean, if you're on the 30th floor, that's 30 minutes, you know, and you're not. We tend to not think vertically, right, we think horizontally, like if I were that same distance at the end of a building with no exits how far could I run?

22:00 - Chase (Host) How far, yeah, I would be thinking how many floors down do I need to go?

22:03 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, so that's why getting in the stairwell and going down and this leads back to Manuel so basically he had been in a house fire as a little kid, and so he knew that things can go bad really quickly.

22:17 - Chase (Host) So he immediately had that past experience.

22:20 - Amanda (Guest) step in and he had also figured out where the stairs were, which was super important, and many, many people in the trade center did not know where the stairwells were. They didn't know that they were complicated, Like there was like a transfer hallway for some of them. Anyway, because he had that knowledge and that experience, that was very helpful for him. But you could imagine it going the other way right, Depending on his own personality and experiences and and and everything that had happened since. So it's a little tricky.

22:49 - Chase (Host) Do you think are the delays in human response to disaster more just, pure that moment physiological response, or is it kind of our nature to want to see what's going on you? Know we can't look away from a train wreck, kind of thing.

23:04 - Amanda (Guest) Right, like curiosity. Yeah, I think it's all the things, and I'm glad you said that because that leads us to the second phase, which is deliberation, right? So the funny thing about disasters everyone I've covered. Funny thing about disasters everyone I've covered, whether they're hurricanes, tsunami, floods, mass shootings, people get weirdly social, like they get they. They want to talk to each other, they want to stay in groups. They will stay in groups, even a great jeopardy to themselves.

23:32 - Chase (Host) Do you think they want to help? Is that because they want to help others, or is it just? I need to know I'm not going through this alone.

23:37 - Amanda (Guest) I think it's evolutionary, like basically there's safety in numbers. So the same is true with chimpanzees, like when they're under threat they will form groups and help each other. So this is a little counterintuitive, right Cause I think at least I always thought from movies and whatever that people would, you know, lose their minds and it would be like every man for himself.

23:58 - Chase (Host) People get trampled yeah, people get trampled. Yeah, push people out of the way. Exactly People in a body of water. You know like pushing others down so that you can get it to the top.

24:06 - Amanda (Guest) Right, and I mean sometimes those antisocial things do happen and we can talk about when that happens, but it's extremely rare and it's kind of like important, because if you think about all emergency planning and Homeland Security and all the kind of work and policy that is done to protect people, often those experts assume that people are going to misbehave, that they're going to be antisocial, that they're going to panic, right, just like you know the movies.

24:36 - Chase (Host) Yeah, you have to kind of plan for worst case scenario. It's a disaster, right?

24:40 - Amanda (Guest) But think about if you're assuming that people are going to be antisocial and in fact, people are very social. Think about what that means, for what you're going to tell them, how honest you're going to be with them, how much you're going to count on them. Right, there's a way in which our assumption that disasters bring out the worst in us actually has killed many, many people, because it leads people in charge to withhold information.

25:08 - Chase (Host) Oh, I see, yeah, because they don't trust the public right.

25:12 - Amanda (Guest) They think we're going to freak out and so they better not tell us about whatever threat. Know whatever threat they're we're facing, they better not be too, you know. That's why a lot of times you'll see these stupid signs that are like, in case of emergency, be calm and await further direction. You know, it's like because there's an assumption in there that I'm going to like just lose my mind and start screaming hysterically, which again is not what happens. My mind it starts screaming hysterically, which again is not what happens. Weirdly, people are typically much nicer in a disaster than they are like at rush hour.

25:45 - Chase (Host) This is so opposite of anything that I've well you know in movies or you know what you kind of see or hear on the news. So then, is this just a radical flipping on its head of what actually happens to the human experience during disasters and what we're being told or shown?

26:01 - Amanda (Guest) Absolutely. It's 100% predictable and infuriating because once you start seeing it, you'll see it over and over again. There was just a Japan Airlines crash this year, early January 2024. And you know pretty scary situation planes on fire.

26:17 - Speaker 3 (Host) So most plane crashes are actually survivable, which is also a shock, but everything depends on what you do when the plane's on the ground and on fire, because you have very little time before that smoke is really toxic exits were safe and they opened safe and they opened safe and they opened safe and they opened safe and they opened safe and they opened safe and they opened safe and they opened safe and they opened safe and they opened safe and they opened during a disaster.

26:52 - Chase (Host) Leave the carry-on. Everybody.

26:54 - Amanda (Guest) Leave the overhead yeah, let alone on one of those slides which I, I got to do some of that training with flight attendants for the book and uh, yeah, you can't do it with, I mean, a rolling suitcase becomes a missile. You know, on a slide it's like quite steep. So anyway, they didn't bring their stuff, they got off, they were safe. Plane blew up, Everyone was okay and afterwards there was like 2000 news stories about the miracle. And then inevitably some, some journalists will claim that it's like cultural, it's like the Japanese way you know to like be quiet and calm and obedient and so insulting. And the same happened in London after the seven, seven transit bombings. There there was this whole like storyline about how see the Brits stiff upper lip, see, it happens every time there's a disaster. New Yorkers remember when that plane landed in.

27:46 - Chase (Host) Sullenberger landed a plane in the Hudson. Oh yeah, the Tom Hanks movie.

27:47 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, exactly yeah, and same people are like New Yorkers, so anyway, no.

27:52 - Chase (Host) Whatever the prevailing narrative is at the time yeah, or the geographical narrative?

28:03 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, it's actually just humans Like humans. If given direct assertive guidance in an emergency will tend to be quite amenable and collegial, like more so than normal, and it's really helpful to understand that.

28:12 - Chase (Host) Is this all kind of what we're just talking about now? Is this, under the crowd dynamics, part of your work?

28:17 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, exactly, yeah, because it comes out in a million ways. I mean it comes out in, you know people, officials not leveling with the public in the pandemic. It comes out in you know, conversations about when to evacuate for a hurricane. You know this fear that people are going to misbehave and do terrible things to each other. That might be true in regular times, like some percentage of people are going to misbehave. Right, I'm not naive, but the research is very clear that in non-regular times, when like shit's hitting the fan, people tend, at least for a while not forever, but for a while people tend to show each other a lot of decency and grace, almost to a fault. So in the 9-11 evacuation of the Trade Center, one of the problems and one of the reasons it was so slow is that each floor as they descended would let in the floor below them into the stairwell?

29:15 Oh no, after you that kind of thing, and that's really nice and polite, but actually it just bottlenecked. Yeah, and the people who have the farthest to go now are like taking even longer to get out because they're letting everyone else go in front of them fearful.

29:29 - Chase (Host) You know a lot of us get afraid whenever a disaster is coming or is happening. But do you think fear happens because our knowledge of situation grows, or is there something more biochemical happening despite our level of awareness to that threat?

29:49 - Amanda (Guest) Oh, that's interesting, Right, because it totally depends on the story in your head, right? Like you can be not afraid at all when you should be afraid, right?

29:55 - Chase (Host) Yeah, you know I in a case in point, I'm myself and a lot of other. I think you know first responders and military can relate and just day to day very stressful situations, not a full blown disaster. You know I have one very I have my own personal response and other people around me are freaking their shit.

30:11 - Amanda (Guest) Right.

30:11 - Chase (Host) And it's just like you know, we kind of have a different narrative in our head or our exposure to, in response to fear and that threat escalation potential, Totally. So I feel like is that the case or is that just my kind of experience?

30:22 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, there's definitely a spectrum. You're right. Yeah, there's a spectrum of reactivity and responsiveness to fear. So if you look at particularly people who make it through special forces selection, the research on that is totally fascinating because it does show that, um, I actually be curious here where you think of this. So there's definitely a small percentage of people who just remain eerily calm, right, and you've probably seen this, and it's hard to predict who. That. It's not always who you think it's going to be right. Like, sometimes it's like people who seem calm normally are not calm in a life or death situation. But there was this really interesting research that was done where, um, a psychologist tried to predict who was going to be really eerily calm and get through that selection process and it turned out that you could. You could predict it with like 90% accuracy.

31:15 - Chase (Host) No way yeah 90%.

31:17 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, and you know how you predicted it. How? By asking just a couple of questions before the people went in through the selection gauntlet.

31:23 - Chase (Host) What were the questions? The?

31:24 - Amanda (Guest) questions are basically about do you disassociate, like, have you, in the past week or so, had a moment where you sort of saw yourself from a distance? Now, this is really complicated, right.

31:38 - Chase (Host) Non-psychedelic use aside. Exactly right yeah, naturally by choice.

31:42 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, and this is complicated because and it almost makes me nervous to talk about because dissociation can be really dangerous and a sign of deep trauma that needs to be dealt with right.

31:55 - Chase (Host) Yeah, it could really be frozen. Yeah, fight, flight, fear, freeze kind of thing, yeah, and it could be like.

31:59 - Amanda (Guest) often it'll happen to people who've been, you know, molested as kids. It's a, it's a coping mechanism that's understandable, All right In the moment to kind of see your. It's almost like you're looking down on yourself. You're out of body, right, Um. So that is one thing. But then it does seem like there are these small number of people who do that to a much lower level all the time, and when you test their saliva, the level of cortisol dissipates really quickly for them. No way, yeah. So they're literally chemically different.

32:32 - Chase (Host) Now is that by choice, Like someone who chooses, I'm consciously separating myself from this stressful situation, and then that triggers the biochemical response.

32:41 - Amanda (Guest) I don't think so.

32:41 - Chase (Host) Where it's just kind of innate.

32:43 - Amanda (Guest) It's either an innate and or learned adaptation from, like your whole life right, so it's probably a combination. Usually it's both right, so it's probably a combination. And it's not easy to control. The only bridge and you know this between the involuntary fear response and your conscious choice is the breath. So that's all we've got, really. It's the only thing you can disrupt, the only way to talk to your nervous system on like without drugs or other things, right? So that's why you know they call it different things, but tactical breathing or combat breathing that is the same as what you do in yoga or other things.

33:26 - Chase (Host) We call it a tactical pause, exactly.

33:28 - Amanda (Guest) Right, and that's why it's so important to train for that, and that's something I think everybody should do all the time.

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34:59 - Amanda (Guest) You know, I was teaching him box breathing, where you breathe in for four hold for four hold for four right.

35:05 - Chase (Host) Great mom right, that's great. All right, I love it. He's probably like oh my God really.

35:09 - Amanda (Guest) But uh, just get that to an automatic place so that anytime you feel that stress response, you do that without thinking and then that will get you back into that green zone. Right, but um, but everybody could do that and should do that.

35:23 - Chase (Host) I think I wonder then have you seen this, or what do you think about? Is the opposite true? Or can we kind of reverse engineer that? Can we look at somebody, can we measure cortisol in various states, in a facet state, in a stressful state and kind of, based on those results, go, hey, you are going to be better suited for a proper response in disaster. Really.

35:42 - Amanda (Guest) We could, yeah, and interestingly, that researcher that I mentioned, he told the military I think it was the army, I'm trying to remember if it was the rangers or what it was but he said Go army. Yeah, he said, look, you know, you can maybe skip this whole like brutal selection process, which is quite dangerous, you know, and just do this like short, multiple choice question and they were like no, thank you.

36:04 - Chase (Host) And run a cortisol test.

36:05 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, and run a cortisol test, that yep. But they said I mean there's a kind of you know value around meritocracy and giving everyone a chance and proving you know so and and it's not a hundred percent accurate, right, so you know, to be fair, it did seem like maybe that's not the way to go, but it does feel like it would be helpful data.

36:27 - Chase (Host) Very, but also, you know, kind of getting a little sidebar here. I feel like that would kind of take away from the potential of people being able to rise to the occasion and especially in special forces selection or any kind of you know-knit unit that has to be created. I mean there's certain level of predictors and even tests that you can administer to filter down probability of who's going to make it, who's not. But I mean you talk to any special forces operator seal, at the end of the day it's because we all went through the same stuff right, you'd be losing that.

36:59 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, and it doesn't matter.

37:00 - Chase (Host) Yeah if your cortisol is higher in your spit versus mine, like, I know what you're capable of because we've proven it to each other.

37:06 - Amanda (Guest) Right, so that you're saying that actual gauntlet, that experience is part of the training, like that's part of the bonding, the connection, the trust, uh, the pride, you know a sense of identity and um, so belonging.

37:19 Yeah, those things are super powerful I mean, just as powerful as cortisol, right? So, um. So yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't necessarily change the process for the military, but it's really interesting to think about, um, and I know for myself. You know, there are some situations where I'm really good, like I can push through that denial phase really fast, and other situations where I'm terrible, you know, like the pandemic. I was in full blown denial about that thing for a long time in the beginning, like I just kept thinking this is going to, this is fine, this is going to be over, like I just did not. And and throughout the whole thing I would find myself either underreacting or overreacting you know, to your point or to you, I can't talk to the.

37:57 - Chase (Host) excuse me to your point earlier. Do you think that's because a lot of what we were told was, you know, hey, keep calm, you know, we were kind of fed this level of like downplaying the situation, in my opinion. So do you feel like? Maybe, however, your interpretation of the pandemic was the information you were getting was influencing your level of downplaying.

38:15 - Amanda (Guest) For sure, and I mean there there's a lot that I write about in this updated version of the book, about what went wrong with the communication, but the consistent thread is the same thing we talked about where the public was underestimated again and again and again. So lots of examples of that and lots of counterexamples times where people in charge did trust the public and did level with the public, but it was so chaotic and inconsistent that it was really hard right to know whom to trust. So then you end up relying on your like your intuition, which is kind of worthless in a situation that you've never been in before, right Um?

38:50 - Chase (Host) and your research, or maybe personal experience. What, in what way, were we most underestimated as the U S population during the pandemic?

39:00 - Amanda (Guest) Hmm, so it uh pandemic. So it did vary by state.

39:03 So some states did a lot better and I think I remember there being a kind of almost like a mockery of people who were disobeying some of the mandates like a kind of disrespect Like I remember early on when there were kids at spring break right at the beaches Remember that and they'd be like on CNN and be like look at this, you know. And it's like not understanding human behavior to think that that's helpful, right, it's like people who really work in disaster communication and I talk about Dennis Mileti, who was my like go-to source for years, who had spent his career studying how to communicate and warn the public. What they tell you is you have got to listen to people, like ask them why they're going to spring break, ask them what their assumptions are, ask them what they need, and it's different messages To use as data points, not fatigue right.

40:01 Right, so that you can then shape and target your message, because there's different messages for different people, right, but it doesn't mean that they're selfish or mean or clueless or idiots. So all that kind of thing is super unhelpful and got very mixed up in our own political polarization, right. So Trump said one thing, teachers union said the opposite, and then you just get into this crazy back and forth where you know neither side is really adapting based on the evidence.

40:29 - Chase (Host) Can we truly prepare for disaster and, if so, what is the best way to become disaster proof?

40:36 - Amanda (Guest) Well, this is funny because when the book original book came out 16 years ago, I had a different answer. Because back then, while a lot of Americans lived in places at risk of disasters, most of us hadn't experienced them, and I didn't think most of us would Since then.

40:53 - Chase (Host) Which most people won't right.

40:54 - Amanda (Guest) Well, it depends on how you define it, right? So since then, 90% of US counties have had a federally declared disaster, so 90% of the population goes along with that. 90% of US counties have had a federally declared disaster, so 90% of the population goes along with that. 90% of Americans have lived in or near a disaster in since, from 2011 to now, right?

41:11 - Chase (Host) That's pretty astounding.

41:13 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, because the frequency and cost of disasters has like skyrocketed. So there's an increase in disasters, particularly floods, hurricanes, fires, heat waves, those are kind of the big ones, and then of course the pandemic right. So that is a disaster, it's a biological disaster, it's slower and I mean it just goes on and on in ways that those other disasters don't, but it very much the same phases of human behavior respond.

41:42 - Chase (Host) Yeah, that was a three year disaster.

41:43 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, and there was denial there was deliberation and the you know and then back and it's like, yeah. So in that sense, because about half of Americans know someone who died in the pandemic from COVID and because approximately 1.3 to 1.4 million additional people died between 2020 and 2023 in the US, beyond what we would expect in normal times, it was clearly a disaster and in that sense, we are all disaster survivors, depending on how you want to define it, and we have some experience with that struggle to figure out where is true north, who do I trust, how long do I deliberate, when am I in denial and when am I not right? And so, in that sense, we all have a lot of experience and you know, unfortunately, some of that's going to get worse. But there's good news, which is also you remember how I said the number and cost of disasters has skyrocketed. It's up like five fold over the past 50 years. It's crazy if you look at the chart I have a chart in the book.

42:46 that's like insane. Different reasons. A lot of it's because we've moved to places that are just more dangerous, like cities on the coast, basically, and the way we've developed those places has made it much easier for fire and floods to spread.

43:02 - Chase (Host) So when you say disaster, you're predominantly talking about natural disasters.

43:04 - Amanda (Guest) Well, that's a controversial phrase, believe it or not. Like is it natural? Because you could have, like Hurricane Katrina there had been worst hurricanes before that that killed very few people. It's not just the storm, and, like Mother Nature, it's like how we are developing and building around it. Another analogy would be earthquakes. Right, you can have an earthquake that hits in Turkey and kills thousands and thousands of people.

43:31 - Chase (Host) We just had one, we just did yeah, exactly.

43:33 - Amanda (Guest) So we had some terrible ones there, and then you can have the exact same earthquake from like a strength magnitude point of view that occurs in Los Angeles and kills no one. And that's entirely because of building codes, right? So because there are building codes in place, not perfect, but better than the buildings can withstand that shot.

43:52 - Chase (Host) I sat with one and when I first moved to LA, I was in a high rise, a brand new high rise building downtown LA and we experienced I think it was like a seven point something like high six low seven very significant and sitting in my living room and the whole building just doing this.

44:10 - Amanda (Guest) How tall was the building?

44:11 - Chase (Host) I was on the 14th floor. The building was like 30 some, so it was just to see it and to go through. I mean, I can only imagine not being in a building that was not structurally engineered to support literally being on ball bearings and being able to, you know, to move and sway like that I mean, it was still a pretty gnarly experience.

44:28 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah.

44:29 - Chase (Host) But on top of that, you know, just being someone who was not prepared, didn't you know if you're new to the city new to the area. What could happen, also being in a building that wasn't prepared for that? Yeah, the same experience, put it somewhere else, is going to be drastically different, yeah.

44:41 - Amanda (Guest) So, chase, did you know what was happening as like? Do you remember what your thought process? Yeah.

44:45 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I was like okay. You knew what it was yeah, my wife and dog were freaking their shit running around going crazy. Uh, even kind of looking out and seeing people you know respond in different ways. Um, yeah, I, I, definitely I go back to my military training, definitely Now. I've been out for like 10, 11, 12 years now.

45:02 It's becoming more and more apparent how kind of I don't want to say like disaster proof, but just training in catastrophe has prepared me for the real world, because it's just so much more accepting of what is happening and immediately going to okay, what can I do Right, and not getting stuck in the oh my God, I can't believe this is happening. It is what it is. What can I do Right? Yeah.

45:24 - Amanda (Guest) Right. That came up again and again and when I interviewed different survivors, like people and this is just anecdotal, but people who had had military training seem to be able to get there quicker, like to get to. Okay, I need a checklist in my head. I'm going to do X, y, z and spend lose less time.

45:39 - Chase (Host) Let's put it that way, right exactly, which can literally save your life, yeah, for sure. Yeah, kind of getting towards the end here. I want to be mindful of your time. Is there a way, is there a best way to prepare for a disaster? And then also, on the other side of it, what is the best way to transition out of, especially in that kind of fear state, out of a disaster state?

45:59 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, so in this version of the book, I included an appendix that walks you through steps you can take right now, and some of that is looking at your own strengths and weaknesses right, which are gonna be different for different people, but assessing how well do you know your neighbors, because, like it or not-.

46:17 - Chase (Host) I never would have thought about that, wow.

46:19 - Amanda (Guest) Those are the people who are gonna save you in a disaster, and vice versa. It's your neighbors, your coworkers and strangers on the train, always Because first responders can't get there in time, unfortunately, right. So, over and over again, it's regular people who save the most lives in every disaster, and so the book is really their story, like the story of regular people under extreme duress, and they will do incredibly creative, generous, brave things. But it helps, right, if they have some prior relationship and also knowledge about the threats and risks wherever you live.

46:56 So for you, obviously, earthquakes, big one right. For most people it's going to be flood, lightning, fire, heat wave. Those are the things that are most likely. We know the odds of another equally deadly pandemic happening in 50 years and the next 50 years are about 50-50. So, unfortunately, pandemic.

47:16 - Chase (Host) Cool, I'll get two in one lifetime Cool, all right.

47:19 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, so the more like for me the emergency for that is like rebuilding trust. We have got to have more trust not just in institutions and the media, but like in each other.

47:31 - Chase (Host) That's a great little reinforcement to this. Again, another military kind of mindset philosophy that stuck with me is you know, if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready.

47:40 - Speaker 3 (Host) Oh yeah, I like that, and that means a lot of different things.

47:42 - Chase (Host) You know whether it's having a go bag or first aid kit or just you know an evacuation plan. But I think it's important to note what you just said. You know part of that staying ready so you don't have to get ready is it's outside of your home. It's outside of just the actual practical things you can grab or use. It's who can you rely on, who can you communicate with, and what is that relationship? What does that communication need to be?

48:05 - Amanda (Guest) Right, and do you know who's elderly in your neighbor, who needs help, who has a generator, who's an ER nurse, you know like those are kind of like assets that you want to know about. And so I mean the bottom line if you take nothing else from this for people who are listening is the the health of a community after a disaster has much more to do with the health of a community before a disaster than it does with the actual disaster. So how can you, in your own world, help make your community stronger, right, Whether it's, you know, at your church or with your soccer team or your neighbors at a block party. All of those things really really matter, not just to the response but to the recovery.

48:46 - Chase (Host) Cool, my next dinner event at the house I'm going to give everybody hey, here's your go bag, here's your community evacuation plan.

48:54 - Amanda (Guest) Crank phone charger. Those are my favorite. Those are my favorite.

48:56 - Chase (Host) I want to ask one more question, because I think it's so pertinent still today and I know it's probably a new addition to your work before we wrap up here, and that's the role of social media. The role of social media in distrust and disaster response. What do you mean by that?

49:10 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, so when I wrote the book, social media was really not a thing. So that was one of the many things that really needed to get updated. And I think one of the challenges with the way we've designed social media platforms not all of them, but many of them, right Is that they have, um, deteriorated trust in a lot of ways, right. So that trust, if that's kind of like the water that we need in a disaster right, you want to make sure that you're building algorithms to enforce that right, to sort of boost that trust.

49:43 - Chase (Host) But who's going to do that? Well, that doesn't sell, that's not sexy, that doesn't get clicks.

49:47 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, I mean. But if you think about it, there are some online like climates that are actually pretty pro-social, right, like if you need to like fix your toilet flapper, oh my God, there's like 4 million people who are happy to help you in a free video and give you advice in the comments. Absolutely.

50:03 Right, yeah, true, very true, and so there is like different ways that you can set norms and create a culture of healthy conflict, and that's like my last book is about conflict, so I'm kind of like fixated on that. But it's very related to this trust piece. You could right now flip a switch and have an algorithm on X or YouTube that boosts content, that builds trust and is like pro-social. I mean that all exists, it's just a choice not to, and I actually think maybe I'm naive that we will get there, that people are going to burn out on this, and it's just like they've burned out on the way traditional journalism is done and they're actively avoiding it, unfortunately. Right, my business. So you have to change what we're offering people, and so I think offering people something that actually builds up their connection and their sense of belonging is way more powerful.

50:53 - Chase (Host) My last question before my last question is in studying fear and disaster, did this make you a more fearful person or do you feel like your ability to respond to disaster and manage fear has become more resilient?

51:07 - Amanda (Guest) You know, I'll tell you, what made me more fearful was covering disasters the way media normally covers them, just doing it over and over again, having to listen to story after story of tragedy and heartbreak and then write stories about blame and you know who's at fault, and those are all important stories. But it felt like not enough, right, like there has to be more. And so then going out and talking to people who have been through disasters or who study disasters made me a lot less scared. Actually, it made me much more hopeful about other people in disasters.

51:39 - Chase (Host) Why do you think that is?

51:40 - Amanda (Guest) I think, because the reality is often not as bad or it's different bad right Than what we expect.

51:47 - Chase (Host) We suffer far more in our imagination than in reality.

51:50 - Amanda (Guest) Yeah, and the biggest problem is that people in charge don't trust us and we don't trust them right. So that is where things get really ugly. But the behavior on the ground, especially if you have a little bit of awareness and knowledge about the risks you face in the places you live in, can actually be amazing, like very different from normal life.

52:11 - Chase (Host) Having more knowledge about disasters and understanding how to navigate them absolutely, I think, is going to help me know how to move forward in those situations. So my last question for you is ever forward those two words. What do they mean to you?

52:25 - Amanda (Guest) For me, ever forward means learning from people who have been through hell and back again in all different contexts, over and, over and over again. So the next crisis we face as a country or as a civilization, the first question should be who's been through this before and what do they know? For me, that's really been very helpful.

52:44 - Chase (Host) I love that answer. That's so good.

52:45 - Amanda (Guest) Oh good.

52:45 - Chase (Host) Well, where can my audience go to connect with you, learn more about your work and the upcoming book?

52:49 - Amanda (Guest) You know I'm on Instagram at Amanda Ripley, ripley writer. Let me say that again. I'm on Instagram at Ripley writer and I'm also at Amanda Ripleycom. Um, and you can find some resources and cool tools for dealing with conflict and rebuilding trust at thegoodconflictcom.

53:04 - Chase (Host) Great. Well, I'm going to go start building my battle bunker and become a prepper and all the things Excellent, and get my crank radio. Yes, amanda, this was so good. Thank you so much for your time.

53:12 - Amanda (Guest) Thank you, chase, good to be here.

53:14 - Chase (Host) Man I would love to have I got to come back and dive deeper. This was so much fun. Yeah, if you get a chance, it spawns like a whole lot of new questions and stuff that's so good For more information on everything you just heard, make sure to check this episode show notes or head to everforwardradio.com