panic

> Richard Bell, singularly amazing, wrote:
I have poorly used "panic". Most people will say that they panicked in
situations where they didn't really. Maybe I should have used "terror",
"fear", or some other expression.

[Tomb] Perhaps just "high stress".

High stress removes from the decision process any option that requires an
action that is not already a habit.

[Tomb] I tihnk this is true _in_general_. It reflects why soldiers train
to do Immediate Action drills. A trained response will keep you alive.
HOWEVER, in elite units, you learn (and are selected for) (among other thigns)
an ability to keep your head and think even in a tough situation. Similarly,
you tend to get promoted because you keep your cool and think. This means that
NCOs and better troops tend to do more "thinking" and less "reacting". This is
necessary because even simple drills like IAs and more complex ones like
Section Attacks are limited. There are some combat situations where more
thinking is required to keep
you alive. People think Spec Ops forces are tough - they aren't
pushovers, but this isn't their main trait. They are professional, collected,
and think on their feet and keep stress if not at bay, then at least under
control.

British soldiers were trained to form up in lines and drilled until (in the
Napoleanic wars) they could fire a withering three volleys a minute. They
never broke,

[Tomb] Hmmm. My history is off, but I'm sure the English fled the
occasional field during those wars.

they stood there and died, firing three rounds a minute. Panic, as generally
used, only happens when nothing that you do well applies to the situation,
leaving you with the wetware equivalent of a nil dereferencing error.

[Tomb] I'll agree that when you are out of your element or your training
does not cover a situation, it is easier to let stress get the better of
you and opt for the fight/flight reaction. Similarly, in those
situations, sometimes your training clamps down and all you do is follow your
training until you die or the situation abates. That's darn good training. I
think many of the USMCs battles around the Chosin reservoir are an example of
training prevailing long after the situation has gone right out of whack.

My personal experience along those lines occurred, while crossing the street,
when a driver decided to turn right, at the point when I was even with his
hood ornament (he was looking left for coming traffic). Faced with no rational
options, I attacked the vehicle with my fists (it made sense at the time).

[Tomb] How many dice damage? Did you penetrate the armour? :)

On the other hand, if you have rational options, panic inducing situations
drastically improve your performance. An Air Canada pilot that was flying a
wide bodied jet, only to have it become a very bad glider (due to loading
insufficient fuel), managed to bring it down on an abandoned airstrip. No
other pilot has managed to duplicate this feat in the simulator [Because it
was the pilot's own fault that the plane had insufficient fuel, Air Canada
wrote absolutely stunning references before firing him]. I think it was in
Sioux City that an aircraft actually made it to the ground, with no hydraulics
and only the having the throttle to control the aircraft, two thirds of the
passengers and crew survived the breakup of the aircraft, as it
cart-wheeled off the runway.  This has also never been duplicated in the
simulator.

[Tomb] Don't blame insufficiencies in simulator modelling and a lot of
luck entirely on this stress-enhancment thing. We still can't totally
analyze these situations (we have finite amounts of data) and our simulators
still aren't perfect so the fact we can't duplicate them isn't a sign that
something superhuman was done....

So long as you have something useful to do, panic inducing situations give you
the marvelous clarity of thought needed to get the job done.

[Tomb] I will take a couple of counterpoints.
Your odds of surviving many situations like combat increase if you can
suppress (as much as feasible) the stress and THINK while you fight. When I
wore a uniform, I never got shot at. But I have in paintball plenty of times,
and the times I died were usually when I went
on autopilot of shoot-cover-shoot. When I thought and fought smart, I
usually won out over other players using sudden movement, advantageous
terrain, flanking, and shock assaults. But these take a certain level of
clarity to time and execute. Also knowing when to withdraw takes a fairly
rational assessment, but is key to not losing men needlessly and
going into blind function-by-training mode often loses all sight of this
type of concern. Often the consequences are grim. Also, I think different
folks have different adrenal systems. I know many people get exciteable and
can't shoot when the stress is on (see US law enforcement shooting stats).
This is because their adrenaline is spiking up, their heart rate is up and
breathing is fast and uneven, and they are afraid they're gonna die (plus
often surprised). But, if you can put aside the mortal danger (just don't
think about it), then you can keep your heart rate and breathing sane, and
shoot better and think while you fight. I've never ever been in mortal terror
of my life, even doing
life-and-death (often stooopid) things (not bragging, just an odd
characteristic I don't seem to share with most folks I know). That has meant
that I've probably done some things no sane person would have done, but I've
also survived even the dumb ones because I was only somewhat tense, very
focused in a calculating way, but not panicked or
over-stressed.
And I'm lucky... my adrenaline system runs quite different than
most - I never get "adrenal rushes", I just get a slight amplification
of my efficacy. I never get the shakes before or during stressful events that
are happening, only after when the (noradrenaline? Opposite of
addrenaline) pumps into my system to calm things. Then I get whole-body
shivers. It's unpleasant, but it is strictly physiological. It's my body
"coming down". Frankly, since I never have panicked AFAIK, I'm quite
happy paying this relatively benign after-effect's price, given that the
other alternative is the "panic" effect you describe.