Word: stupors
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Johnson (Kevin Costner) is a loser, a wastrel, a jerk--and not one of the purportedly adorable kind in the Judd Apatow movies. The stupor Bud drinks himself into each evening leaves him barely able to drag himself to work the next morning, let alone care for his young daughter Molly (Madeline Carroll). His employer has been "insourcing" Mexicans who'll work for less money and firing hapless guys like Bud. It's no wonder that feeling disenfranchised, disaffected and perennially dissed, he belongs to what would be by far the largest U.S. political party: the We Don't Voters...
Contrary to popular expectations, this is what happens in many disasters. Crowds generally become quiet and docile. Panic is rare. The bigger problem is that people do too little, too slowly. They sometimes shut down completely, falling into a stupor...
Later, when interviewed by the police, some survivors said they understood this behavior. At some point, they too had felt an overwhelming urge to stop moving. 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...
...also help each other do better. A loud sound will cause animals to snap out of their stupor. Likewise, many flight attendants are now trained to scream at passengers in burning planes, "Get out! Get out! Go!" People respond well to leadership in a disaster, and then they can do remarkable things...
Rescorla implicitly understood that he could turn office workers into survivors. He respected the ability of regular people to do better. He understood the danger of lethargy, the importance of aggressively pushing through the initial stupor and getting to action. He had watched employees wind down the staircase in 1993, and he knew it took too long...