Author: Caroline Bach

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Who survives, and why.

Guess what I just found..

“Ripley, an award-winning writer on homeland security for Time , offers a compelling look at instinct and disaster response as she explores the psychology of fear and how it can save or destroy us. Surprisingly, she reports, mass panic is rare, and an understanding of the dynamics of crowds can help prevent a stampede, while a well-trained crew can get passengers quickly but calmly off a crashed plane. Using interviews with survivors of hotel fires, hostage situations, plane crashes and, 9/11, Ripley takes readers through the three stages of reaction to calamity: disbelief, deliberation and action. The average person slows down, spending valuable minutes to gather belongings and check in with others. The human tendency to stay in groups can make evacuation take much longer than experts estimate. Official policy based on inaccurate assumptions can also put people in danger; even after 9/11, Ripley says, the requirement for evacuation drills on office buildings is inadequate. Ripley’s in-depth look at the psychology of disaster response, alongside survivors’ accounts, makes for gripping reading, sure to raise debate as well as our awareness of a life-and-death issue.”

Did I ever tell you how much I love the internet? And psychology. And books.

..click the picture for more info.

Caroline Bach1 Comment

Worst case scenario

You’re in the middle of a 12 hour bus-ride through the desert, it’s the middle of the night, you’re on very high altitude and it’s really, really cold. The bus breaks down and people start panicking and suffering from altitude sickness. It’s dark. There’s children. And the bus driver doesn’t have any mechanical skills but still refuses to call for help. You’re alone, your language capabilities are very limited and you’re the only foreigner in the bus..

My travelbuddies and friends have often gotten to join me on my “what would you do if” -wonderings. It often turns into great conversations and theories about laws of nature and ways to handle different situations and people. Naturally, travelling to strange places sparks the greatest scenarios and possibilities. And of course, gives you the most interesting people to discuss with.

What would you do if you were stopped by three ten year old boys with knives?

What would you do if you were kidnapped and taken hostage?

What would you do if corrupt police had planted drugs on you and stopped you?

What would you do if you were in a falling elevator?

I’ve discussed all of the above scenarios for hours and days, there’s so much to take into consideration and so much to think about that it leaves you wondering and thinking and spinning off to all kinds of different themes. I wonder what determines who survives a planecrash and who doesn’t, what is the difference between people who freeze in a situation and those who start acting? Why do some panic and other get their act together and make sure to fix things as fast as possible? When does high fear turn into a strong adrenaline-rush of rational reaction, and at what point is fear overwhelming to the point that it makes a person break down? How much does technical knowledge actually matter in a situation of chaos? How much does physical strength matter in relation to mental strength?

I haven’t found myself in a really horrible situation yet. I was in the above situation in a bus in Peru, where people were screaming and suffering from altitude sickness. I was giving away cookies to old ladies and I was holding babies while their mothers were crying in panic. But what mattered most was that I went out and forced the busdriver to call for a mechanic, which he was refusing because the company wasn’t insured and he wouldn’t get paid if he couldn’t fix it himself. I went angry-gringa on him with my really bad Spanish and made him make that phonecall. Being on the verge of hitch-hiking with some random truck to the closest village, the mechanic arrived and we got rolling again after three hours in the cold. Victory! haha..

My reaction probably didn’t change a lot because if it wasn’t for me, some angry Peruvian guy would soon probably threaten the stupid busdriver and make him call anyway, however, my main trait in these kind of situations is that I need to try to affect them somehow. I just can’t wait for things to happen and solve themselves.. So, if I was kidnapped and taken hostage? I don’t know.. but I think I would probably try to escape or do something really stupid.. after trying to psyche the bad guys out of course. haha

My point is, experiences are always a great thing. No matter if they’re good or bad. I always enjoy chaos and think that if it doesn’t hurt me too much physically or mentally, it’s been a valuable lesson and a great adventure.

Disclaimer: Please do not confuse my statements above with brainlessly putting oneself in unneccesarily risky situations. Stupidity is unforgivable. haha

Caroline Bach1 Comment

Lucid dreaming

I’ve always had a vivid imagination, when I was a kid, I used to start daydreaming and make up scenarios and stories and experiment with how I would handle different situations. I love putting myself in chaos. Train crashes, robberies, riots, kidnappings.. being in the middle of horror and asking myself how I would handle it. After creating scenarios and working with my fantasy for some years I learnt how to distinguish imagination from reality. At one point I found myself in the middle of a really bad dream, realized it, and started enjoying. I could control what was happening and use the dream as a playground for my fantasies with unlimited time and possibilities. Kind of like playing a videogame, but so much better, more real and more fun.

Lucid dreaming provides you with a possibility to explore and live and try the things you always wanted to try. The only limit there is is your own imagination and it’s capacity of creating an artificial sensation of something that you have never felt, kind of resulting in the sensation that you think you should expect. My favourite thing to do is stretching my capacities and doing things that I know my brain can’t handle, there is no pain in lucid dreaming, but there is still fear, knowledge of physical laws and natural instinct that holds you back from doing things. The fun thing is to try to work against it. Jump off that cliff, go touch that puma, try climbing that wall. Once I tried to break a glass inside my hand, what happened was that it broke into small glittering particles and kind of dissolved into the air. No pain, no glass, no blood. I didn’t know what it was supposed to look like or feel like, and my brain clearly couldn’t handle it. haha

Another thing that’s great is going to places you have enjoyed and try to recreate the feeling you had when visiting them. After travelling for a while I have collected a few gems that I love visiting when I feel that I need to, what’s really funny is that though I visited the places for long periods of time and spent my days wandering around the streets, it’s often night and the streets are empty when I get there in my dreams to have a look around. Kind of like in the picture above from when we walked around La Paz in Bolivia in 2008.

Lucid dreaming is fun and I recommend it to any bored kid out there with a connection to their inner self. I usually enter by going “nah, this can’t be.. it’s a dream.” What also works is trying to read, looking at numbers or looking at your hands.. look around a lot and look for details in your dreams, they’re usually not all perfect, your brain isn’t good enough to recreate everything in a setting, and when you realise that things are strange, you’re in.

Now, don’t wake up and don’t be afraid, go flying instead – it’s a lot of fun.

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Avocado?

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I might not have internet but my phone does.. ha!

I’ve been working today and I’m insanely tired but after my 15 minute powernap I was good to go again. Things are awesome now if compared to yesterday, I love all the positive support I am getting and it keeps me above the surface in this dark ocean of conflicts, non-violence, activism, Palestinians, Israelis and.. why did all this make me start thinking about hummus? Yum. And avocado!

Ya, vamos, books!

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Books <3

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If you live in Malmö and you love to read, you need to go to ‘sopstationen’ behind gamla slagthuset which is like a second hand warehouse with all kinds of stuff. They have a book section which says ‘all books for free!’.

I found it today but I didn’t have time enough to look it through. I guess it could be fun to browse for some hidden treasures if you’re in the right mood. I’m in a ‘only-study-reading’ -time at the moment so I just got a book with an overview of philosophy that I’ve been wanting for a while.. But really, that’s it, no more books for me for now.. I don’t have space..!

Studytime!