Sideways News

The stories of Haiti’s earthquake survivors hauled from the rubble and wreckage of collapsed buildings more than a week after the quake demonstrate mankind’s capacity for survival.

What is it that enables humans to survive situations that bring into question the laws of our physiology? Survival is 90% psychological. It’s not necessarily about fitness levels or the strength of our bodies. It’s our mind that matters.

Amanda Ripley, writing about survival technique in Time Magazine, cites repeated rehearsals as key to surviving a disaster situation. (Take note: fire drills and emergency procedure presentations on airplanes aren’t a waste of time.)

The best example of this is the workers in the Morgan Stanley office in the World Trade Centre. On 11th September 2001, they were one of very few offices that had practised an emergency drill enough times to evacuate successfully.

"Knowing where to go was the most important thing. Because your brain - at least mine - just shut down. When that happens, you need to know what to do next," Bill McMahon, a Morgan Stanley executive told Time Magazine.

"One thing you don't ever want to do is to have to think in a disaster."

Passengers on the MV Estonia, which sank in the Baltic sea in 1994 (the worst sea disaster of modern times) describe a similar brain shut-down.

In a disaster, writes Ripley, crowds become quiet, panic is rare and people often fall into a stupor. What breaks people out of this shock is often thinking about loved ones. The will to survive for something or someone breaks the apathy of fear.

“At some point, they had felt an overwhelming urge to stop moving,” writes Ripley, describing the passengers of the stricken M.V Estonia. “They only snapped out of the stupor, they said, by thinking of their loved ones, especially their children--a common thread in the stories of survivors of all kinds of disasters.”

Companionship is also key to survival.  Survivors of a plane crash in 2008 - where nine passengers were stranded in the frozen forests of southern Chile - made it because they had each other. They shared what resources they had, encouraged each other and spoke to each other.

"They survived helping each other, sharing the few things and food they carried," a spokesperson for the passengers told the Telegraph.

Terry Waite, held hostage in Lebanon for four years - alone, in darkness and chained to the wall - speaks of a sense of hope, of an inner life that sustained him.

“When you're in a situation like that things narrow down to being very simple,” he told ABC News.

“And I could say, in the face of my captors, ‘You have the power to break my body, and you've tried; the power to bend my mind, and you've tried; but my soul is not yours to possess.’ In other words, whatever you do, even if you kill me, you will never totally destroy me. And that very simple affirmation was enough to enable me to maintain hope.  And if you can maintain hope, you can survive many things."

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