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One sentence summary: In extraordinary circumstances, like accidents or catastrophes, some people survive and others die, such that sometimes things lead you to believe that the first ones die and the second ones survive; this book explains, using numerous stories of accidents and catastrophes, and by exploring the latest scientific theories – from neuroscience to the theory of chaos – what makes one person die and another survive.

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Shortly before the author reached the American aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, an important step in his quest that was leading him to explore the frontier between life and death – frontier because some people succeed and others fail – a pilot was in the middle of landing, a normal sort of thing on such a boat. But his approach was too low. And many signals were indicating that to him, both in his cockpit and on the runway – the landing officer had turned on large red lights which meant your approach is not good, you should not land! And of course he yelled into his microphone, his voice echoing in the pilot’s helmet. But the latter continued, even though he only had to push down a fraction of an inch on the throttle to take off again and try a new approach.
The impact of the tail against the aircraft carrier cut the plane in two, and sent the pilot ricocheting off the runway in a shower of sparks, still clinging to his seat.
He survived. That was not the end of the story, that is not where the frontier is. The frontier can be found in this question: What was he thinking? He was intelligent, well prepared and had undergone extremely rigorous training. Something powerful blocked him. Something strong enough to continue trying to hit the runway even though all signals indicated that he wouldn’t make it. This reminded Laurence Gonzales of numerous accidents in dangerous sports like canyoneering which happened because people were ignoring the obvious signs for some inexplicable reason. It is this mystery that the author was trying to solve.
What the pilots of the Carl Vinson know, is that some time issues come up. There are things that you cannot control and you would be better off knowing how you are going to react to them.
The first rule is: face up to reality. Good survivors are not immune to fear. They know what is happening and fear permeates them completely. The whole question is what they do right afterwards.
When a pilot takes the controls of a plane and soars off the runway, he is often in a state of advanced excitement. Flying is his passion and sometimes he only lives for that. Every flight is a pure moment of joy and happiness, even though he is piloting several tons of a highly unstable machine that is full of explosive fuel where the slightest mistake could be fatal. They take a calculated risk just as snowboarders do before taking off from the top of a mountain, alpine climbers, parachutists and numerous other sports.
At times like that, people are not really totally present. They are each in a state of perception, of awareness, of memory and of deeply altered emotion.
Today, scientific studies tell us that emotions are an instinctive response designed for survival. These are faster than intellect, and occur due to many physical changes which are preparations for action. The nervous system becomes more energetic, blood changes its chemistry so that it coagulates more quickly, digestion stops, and numerous chemicals are sent in the blood to help the body become ready for everything that must be done. Reason is hesitant, slow and fallible, while emotions are sure, rapid and unhesitating.
There are primary and secondary emotions. Primary emotions are those you are born with, like the need to search for food or the sudden desire to catch something when you feel it falling. And the emotional system can get hung up on anything and everything. If you are a soldier at war, evolution has not formed your brain to throw you to the ground at the slightest gunshot. But once you have made a connection between gunshots and the risk of death, this connection becomes so deep that you don’t even need to think when it happens; your reaction is automatic. These are secondary emotions: connections between things and primary emotions that make reactions automatic.
Fear is a very powerful emotion. During a fear reaction, amygdale in the brain – as opposed to throat amygdale – helps to put in motion a series of incredible, complex events designed to produce a reaction that aids survival, bypassing the intellect. For example, if you are walking up a mountain path and notice something on the ground that looks like a snake, you will stop dead before you have even really registered what is on the ground because the strategy that evolution has fashioned with amygdale is “better be safe than sorry.” Then the neocortex takes over and tells you whether you are looking at a simple stick or an actual snake.
Many pilots, therefore, experience fear when they are in the landing stage – taking off is optional, but landing is a must – and fear in the cockpit is like knights dueling in a telephone booth. Pilots out of necessity develop a very strong secondary emotion associating safety, and even ecstasy with the ground – or the flight deck – and the overwhelming feeling that if only they can get this thing on the ground they will be safe and sound. A pilot develops a physical memory of this feeling, which is a powerful driving force for action coupled with direct experience with a primary emotion. He also has intellectual know-how telling him that if he tries to land, if it is too low or too slow, he could die. Unfortunately, he has no secondary emotions linked to that event since he has never experienced it. It is an abstract concept which cannot fight on equal terms to become a driving force to act upon.
So fear is often a stress trigger. In the case of stress, the brain secretes cortisol, which has many effects, one of the most important being the fact that it erodes our ability to perceive things and constrains our field of vision by targeting only what we think are the most important. And sometimes these are not good things. Therefore sometimes a pilot focuses too much on what he feels is the most important thing: the landing strip. His home. And thus the pilot of the Carl Vinson very well may not have heard the voice of the landing officer and not seen the red lights on the bridge. His body was doing what it knew was best for him: escaping the danger and getting to safety as quickly as possible. The rest of the environment became uninteresting noise efficiently filtered out by his brain.
So he hit the carrier.
As complex as the brain is, the world is even more so. The brain cannot deal with and organize all the facts it receives. It could not define a reasonable plan of action if everything was treated equally and perceived with the same intensity. Thus, the brain must simplify reality and only perceive a part of it in order to be able to deal with it, otherwise it would cave under the weight of the complexity. This is what is difficult about logic: it happens step by step in a linear manner. Reality is not linear.
The brain’s role with respect to reality is similar to that of a search engine with respect to millions of pages that it finds on the internet. Without a powerful search engine you are paralyzed.
One of the brain’s search engines involves emotional book-marks, in which emotions help to direct logic and direct reason towards a place where they can do useful work. A second strategy that the brain uses to manage complicated problems is to create mental models, simplified schema of reality. A mental model can tell you what the rules are for a particular environment or the color and shape of a familiar object.
Magicians use this creation of a temporary mental model in their most subtle tricks, a short term memory of the world. Every world model has its own underlying assumptions based on experience, memory, secondary emotions and emotional book marks, which influence our expectations and what we see and what we plan to do about it. The magician creates a world model then passes from one model to another so quickly that you remain stuck in the first model, and you are surprised by the new reality he shows you. It is the disconnect between the first model and the second model that is surprising. You believe that it’s the magician doing the trick, but in fact you are doing it yourself.
One of the reasons why magic tricks work can be explained by the working memory. The working memory is a temporary memory which manages what we are doing at the moment. It can only manage a few things at one time, maybe half a dozen or so, when new things require our attention, these elements are forgotten. The working memory can also use information from long term memory. The fact that you are able to read this long sentence is the result of your short term memory which is capable of remembering the beginning, the middle and the end of the sentence, while using definitions and associations coming from your long term memory to understand the meaning of the words. It is also the result of the fact that you have created mental models of the words, you have associated to the symbol – the word – a meaning, an image of reality. When you read camel you immediately think of a camel, if you have ever seen a picture of that animal. If you have never seen a picture of that animal, then the meaning that you attribute to this word will depend on knowledge that you have acquired about this subject – perhaps you will classify it in the general category of “animal,” you might associate it with the desert or put it simply in the case of “I don’t know what it is” – and you do this in an instant.
There are three difficulties with the descent:
1.Attitude
2.An emotion tied to reaching a goal
3.Stress
Research suggests that there are five general stages that a lost person goes through:
1.First, you deny that you are disoriented and you move with a sense of urgency, trying to reconcile your mental map with what you see.
2.Then, when you realize you are lost, the sense of urgency vanishes and becomes a complete urgency to survive. Thinking clearly becomes impossible and actions become frenetic, unproductive and even dangerous.
3.At the third stage, often after getting hurt or exhausted, you develop a strategy to find a place that corresponds to your mental map. It’s a bad strategy, because you don’t have a map; you are lost.
4.You deteriorate both rationally and emotionally as soon as you perceive that your strategy is failing to resolve the conflict.
5.In the final stage, when you are low on options and energy, you become resigned to your difficult situation and accept it for what it is.

These stages for getting lost don’t only apply to hikers in the woods. For example, the Xerox corporation, a multinational American company which made its fortune by selling one of the premier photocopiers, got lost on the road that leads to innovation even though that was the spearhead of the company. Throughout the 70s, when personal information technology was in its infancy, and had barely started spreading through homes, and when computers such as the Apple 2 were driven by command line interfaces in green text on small yet cumbersome screens, Palo Alto Research Center, a laboratory that belonged to Xerox, invented the mouse, the graphic interface, the flat screen and Ethernet, the standard for information technology networks. Veritable treasures, a generation ahead of its time, which could have allowed Xerox to completely dominate the emerging market for computer technology.
But others were to become rich with these inventions. The executive leaders of Xerox, busy with their old mental models, were still worrying about managing paper and photocopiers and did not relate any more to the reality of a world which had changed rapidly, did not see the enormous potential of their discoveries. They left others to profit, notably Apple, and its founder Steve Jobs, who used their ideas to create Lisa, then the famous Macintosh.
Unlike Killip, Xerox is still lost in today’s woods.
Because Killip, after spending his third night in the woods, could no longer honestly deny that he was lost. He could have resigned himself to it, but that is not the path he chose. He built a shelter and lit a fire, something he should have done the first day. He remained in the same place for two days, resting his body, adapting to his environment. He had begun to make a map of his real surroundings rather than imagining the map he wished for. He had discovered the first Rule of Life: Be in the here and now.
To survive: stay calm, make decisions and act, accept the situation and understand whether the chances are slim, everything is possible, and do your best, your absolute and total best, to survive.

To avoid getting into difficult situations:

Notice, believe, and then act
Avoid impulsive behavior; don’t rush
Know your business
Get information
Be humble
If in doubt, don’t

To better manage difficult situations when they arise:
1.Notice, believe. Be attentive to your new surroundings, accept them as well as the consequences that occur.
2.Stay calm. Use humor to focus your fear. Survivors keep their sense of humor and therefore their cool. They use fear rather than being guided by it.
3.Think/analyze/plan. Stay organized. Identify small manageable tasks. Survivors get organized quickly, define routines and instill discipline.
4.Take decisive and appropriate actions. Be both brave and wise when you identify tasks. Survivors are ready to take risks to save themselves and others.
5.Celebrate your success. Take joy in accomplishing tasks. It is a very important step in order to create a sense of motivation and not fall into hopeless depression.
6.Consider yourself happy. Recognize it – you are alive. That’s how survivors become survivors and not victims. They always have someone else to help, even if they are not present.
7.Play. Sing, play mind games, recite poetry, count whatever you like, do math problems in your mind.
8.See the beauty. Survivors are sensitive to the wonders of the world. Beauty appreciation, the feeling of seeing something great, awakens your senses, reduces stress and greatly increases your motivation.
9.Believe that you will succeed. Develop a deep conviction that you are going to live.
10.Surrender. Let go of the fear of dying and accept it. Resign yourself without giving up.
11.Do everything necessary. Be determined. Have the will and the skills. Survivors have a meta-knowledge: they know their abilities and don’t overestimate or underestimate them.
12.Never give up. Don’t let anything break your spirit.

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