Is your brain wired to survive a disaster?

By Jo Carlowe

As I stood waiting to check in my luggage, an earsplitting blast exploded behind me; a huge pall of smoke billowed upwards and outwards, turning the air black. Shrapnel, hot and sharp, pebble-dashed everyone.

There was a second or two of stunned stillness, then a man shouted ‘Get down!’ and I crouched behind the check-in desk.

Many people were rooted to the spot and others lost control - one woman ran round and round in circles screaming, each loop taking her no nearer to an exit and no closer to safety. Others stampeded through the glass windows lining the departure lounge, cutting their legs, arms and faces.

Titanic sinking. Faced with an emergency, such as the sinking of the Titanic, most people remain stunned

Disaster control: Faced with an emergency, such as the tragic sinking of the Titanic recaptured here in the 1997 film, most people remain stunned

So, what was it that made us react so differently to that bomb in a Spanish airport? As a new book on the science of survival reveals, how we respond to an emergency depends on how our brains are wired.

In the immediate aftermath, everyone is initially dumbfounded and inert. People then immediately divide into three groups, says Ben Sherwood, author of The Survivors’ Club.

This has been called the 10-80-10 theory of survival: in a disaster, 10 per cent of people pull themselves together quickly; the majority, 80 per cent, remain stunned and bewildered, while 10 per cent simply freak out. What I saw at the airport was a classic scenario.

It’s the 10 per cent who pull themselves together who tend to survive. What differentiates the three groups is the way a specific part of their brain, the pre-frontal cortex, works in an emergency - the good news is that we can all learn to think like survivors.

But the mindset of the other two groups can endanger everyone. In the case of the U.S. Air Boeing 737 that burst into flames as it collided with another plane on the runway in 1991, survivors described how two men hindered the evacuation by fighting (two ‘freakers out’).

A woman next to one emergency exit froze and was unable to leave her seat, let alone release the hatch (one of the ‘stunned and bewildered’ 80 per cent).


During the King’s Cross fire, which killed 31 people in 1987, despite what they were seeing - the crush of people, some in flames - several commuters refused to be swayed from their routine and walked into the disaster.

When a British Airtours plane caught fire at Manchester airport in 1985, killing 55 people, some passengers tried to retrieve luggage.

In disaster after disaster, people behave in ways that not only do not assist their survival, but actually hasten their deaths.

Sherwood’s aim is to explain why this happens. Why, when I was hiding, alert to the possibility of further danger, was the woman in the Spanish airport running in circles?

Sherwood spoke to scientists, doctors and geneticists, as well as the world-renowned survival psychologist Dr John Leach (a veteran of the King’s Cross disaster), to find out - and discovered it’s all down to the prefrontal cortex. 

This is the area of the brain just behind the forehead. It acts as the chief executive, controlling tasks such as working memory, planning and organising, regulating our mood and ensuring we make sound, not impulsive, decisions.

So when a traffic light turns amber, it’s our pre-frontal cortex that helps us to decide whether to stop or go, drawing on information stored in our memory about what to do at traffic lights. However, in survival situations, people are faced with scenarios both novel and threatening and these occur at a speed the brain can’t process.

Instead, the part of our brain that controls fear and emotion - a nut-shaped cluster called the amygdala, just behind the ears - takes over. This rings the alarm bell when we are confronted with danger, telling us to fight or flee.

King's Cross fire of 1997

Defying death: It is the 10 per cent of people who pull themselves together quickly in an emergency, such as the King's Cross fire of 1997, who tend to survive

‘An effective survivor is someone who can shut off the fear alarm and channel the resulting motivation into purposeful action that reduces the danger,’ says Sherwood.

‘In short, you have to be able to throw that switch from “I’m going to die” to “I’m going to survive.”’

The top 10 per cent survive because their brains recover quickly. It’s not that these people don’t suffer initial shock, it’s just that they pull themselves together, over-riding their fear and engaging their pre-frontal cortex.

The out-of-control-bottom tenth can’t wrestle the pre-frontal cortex back into command, and their emotions run riot so it’s no longer rationality that drives their actions, but raw fear.

As for the majority, Sherwood says it’s simply that their brains take longer to recover from the fear mode than the top 10 per cent.

The prefrontal cortex is no longer in the driving seat, so when they try to think what to do next, they can’t remember or find the information they need.

‘The plane wing is on fire,’ says Sherwood. ‘Your brain searches for what you are supposed to do, but the search comes up empty. It tries again and again in an endless loop.’

Under pressure, the brain may simply give up - it’s rather like a policeman in the centre of a traffic island becoming overwrought and just going AWOL, leaving the cars and pedestrians at a standstill.

As a result, people freeze, as I saw at the airport. In fact, this makes evolutionary sense, says Leach. If a lion wants to get us, it’s better to go into a trance - so we are harder to detect - like the 80 per cent, than to run like the crazy 10 per cent. Modern life is so recent that we have not evolved to adapt to it.

But what of the people in the burning plane who wasted time trying to retrieve their luggage?

This time, instead of the brain drawing a blank, it came up with the next best match, says Dr Leach. 

So when asked to retrieve information on how to escape from a burning cabin, it responds with: ‘Ahem, I’ve never faced that before. But I do have experience of what to do when I normally leave a plane. First, I get my hand luggage.’

It looks crazy, given that smoke is starting to overwhelm you, but in the absence of being told otherwise, you rely on the familiar, even though it is inappropriate - which is why the King’s Cross commuters continued to walk towards danger.

‘The prefrontal cortex should inhibit inappropriate behaviour, but it doesn’t,’ says Dr Leach.

So how can we force the decision-making part of our brain to do its job under duress? How can we all become like the top 10 per cent?

Sherwood says it’s a case of boosting situational and self-awareness.

The British Airtours plane which caught fire at Manchester airport in 1985

Routine trap: When a British Airtours plane caught fire at Manchester airport in 1985, killing 55 people, some passengers tried to retrieve luggage

Situational awareness means paying attention to your surroundings - you must become the sort of person who, on a plane, checks your life-jacket is under your seat and counts how many rows it is to the emergency exit.

Simply by rehearsing this in your head, you make it less likely that you will flounder under pressure.

So, if the plane starts filling with smoke and you can’t see a thing, instead of your brain drawing a blank about what to do next, it is telling you to start moving and to feel four rows forward with your hands, where you know there is an emergency exit.

Self-awareness involves recognising what is happening when your brain does start seizing up during a crisis. It’s about ordering yourself to get a grip.

‘If it happens, you can say: “If I engage in this endless loop right now, I will go into a stupor. I must compose myself.” It’s a mindset. You can learn to flip that switch,’ says Sherwood.

He also recommends taking long, steady breaths, which should help you calm down and keep focused. And you can help others - telling them to snap out of it may be enough to help them start engaging their brains again.

Sherwood suggests that at some stage in our lives, we will all face potentially life-threatening situations and so should try to be well prepared for things that might go wrong.

This means having an escape plan that we rehearse in our heads - and keeping well informed about the world around us.

‘For instance, we know there is a swine flu pandemic so it makes sense to seek out information on how to reduce the risk of infection to give ourselves a better chance. Survivors are information seekers,’ he says.

Whether you end up in a life-or-death situation, your initial survival is down to what Sherwood describes as ‘the cosmic roll of the dice’. Anything that happens after that is up to you.

By the time I’d moved from my hiding place after the bomb, the departure lounge was empty.

Outside, I saw a man treating a girl’s badly cut leg after she ran into the windows; a few people tore into their bottles of duty free alcohol; several vomited. I’ve no idea what happened to the woman I’d seen running in circles.

At the least, my decision to hide behind the check-in desk away from the flying glass and frenzied crowd spared me cuts and grazes. Had a second bomb exploded, it might have saved my life.

The Survivors Club - The Secrets And Science That Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood (Michael Joseph, £15.99) is published on June 25.