Prepared: A Manual for Surviving Worst-Case Scenarios

The chapter opens with a discussion of the concept of “mindset” and the difficulties in thoroughly defining what it is and how to optimize it for survival. In this context, the right mindset is defined as resilience, or the “ability to withstand the initial shock when catastrophe strikes, and then having the wherewithal to respond in a timely and constructive manner” (14).

The difficulty of achieving this state is the real issue at hand, and the components of mindset are broken down into two parts, the nervous system and the autonomic system.

Glover provides an overview of the different components of the human nervous system. The somatic system is the aspects of the nervous system that can be consciously controlled, like movement, gait, and position of the body. The autonomic system controls involuntary functions, like heart rate, digestion, and respiration. The autonomic system vigorously activates in stressful situations, and this activation is not conscious and cannot be fully controlled.

The autonomic system itself is composed of two major parts: the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system activates heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration rate, pumping hormones into the body as a reaction to stress. If the crisis resolves or does not appear, the parasympathetic system then clears out the hormones and “takes over to wind down the overall stress response” (17). The 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech University is used as an example of unconscious nervous system responses to stress. One of the survivors described freezing as soon as the gunman entered his classroom, feeling unable to move and falling to the floor, “playing dead” while the gunman left and then returned to check for survivors. This shows how the sympathetic nervous system reacts when completely overwhelmed, engaging in “tonic immobility [or] thanatosis” (23) This freeze response is involuntary but can be contextualized as a “system reboot” instead of truly “playing dead” in the manner of a prey animal. This “system reboot” is illustrated by the Yerkes-Dodson law, a psychological phenomenon in which stress, while helpful in optimizing performance in reasonable quantities, causes impaired performance after too high arousal. Everyone’s threshold for arousal is different, but the second part of the resilient mindset helps to raise the threshold.

Experience and exposure constitute the second part of a resilient mindset. The author provides an example of a time when he froze under stress in combat and made less than optimal decisions while escaping from said stress. Glover indicates that his failure to react appropriately was a direct result of never being trained for that exact scenario. He emphasizes the importance of being exposed to the exact stressful situations one hopes to survive. The Virginia Tech shooting is raised once more as an example. The shooter was rushed by Matthew LaPorte, an ROTC cadet with firearm experience. He lost his life but distracted the shooter long enough to allow others to escape. Another victim, Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, was experienced in responding to trauma. He barricaded the door with his own body and directed his students to escape from a second-story window, saving their lives. Librescu also died but saved 15 lives in the process. Both LaPorte and Librescu had direct experience that correlated with the mass shooting event and therefore were able to act when others, without their experience, could not.

To this end, Glover encourages the idea of embracing discomfort as a way to build resilience. Being able to not only endure discomfort but also lean into it, using it as a test to “persevere in the face of stress, and come out the other side prepared for worse” (38), is presented as a concrete method for building resilience. Exposure and experience will reliably raise the threshold for arousal, allowing an individual to act confidently and quickly in a wider range of crisis scenarios.

Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of the different social and infrastructure services to which United States citizens are accustomed, like electricity, plumbing, fire and police services, as well as sophisticated communication systems like phone networks. As a thought experiment, the author presents the idea of all those systems suddenly stopping, and the reader is encouraged to think about how they would protect themselves and their loved ones without those systems in place.

Planning is emphasized as a way to mitigate the stress of system failure by creating alternatives before they are necessary.

Glover presents the military concept of “course of action development.” This is an exercise in engaging with every possible way that a situation could go wrong and what the next steps would be in each scenario. Preparation for the specific types of disasters an individual is most likely to experience is presented as the best method of narrowing down the intimidating range of preparedness options. For instance, a trucker would be best served by getting defensive driving training and having a good first aid kit. A person who lives in a seismic area like Japan or California should train for catastrophic earthquakes and prepare for subsequent grid failures.

The acronym PACE is used to detail a “redundancy preplanning system” (48). PACE stands for primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency. This progression of planning can also be described as “the backup plan to the backup plan to the backup plan” (49).

Using the example of a serious house fire in a suburban home, Glover explains the principles of PACE. The primary route of escape would be the front door. If that is blocked or dangerous to access, then the survivors move to the alternate route of escape, the back door. If the back door is also inaccessible, then contingency preparations come into play. Contingency plans often require more planning, like getting a fire ladder and a glass breaker ahead of time and figuring out which windows would be best for escape on each floor of the house. Emergency is the final step and always means that suboptimal options have to be considered. The emergency solution in this example is the closest window by any means possible. This is only utilized if all else fails, but planning the PACE steps for particular events and training for them allows an individual to quickly move through the steps in the face of an actual disaster.

Glover identifies “arrogance and willful ignorance” as the enemies of survival planning (55). Believing that bad things cannot happen or deciding not to think about bad situations is harmful and will lead to foolish plans made too late to be effective. The tragedy of the Titanic is used as an example of arrogance. The catastrophic iceberg crash was exacerbated by high speed, lax weather and ocean surveillance measures, no meaningful evacuation plans, no emergency response plan, and very little training. This led to lifeboats being lowered with empty seats and many passengers locked in the lower levels so that the first-class passengers could escape.

As a countermeasure against ignorance, the author encourages practicing casual, ad-hoc survival planning. Deciding on PACE plans for every room an individual finds themselves in is a good way to start and could potentially save lives.