Re: Why we fight (there was an old B&W movie by that name IIRC)

Laserlight wrote:

> > > Esprit de corps and regimental history (plus a good
> > > dose of in-your-face noncoms) get them
> > > to the fight and blind panic will keep them there,
>
> Blind panic does *not* make for effective soldiers.

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

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).  To my pleasant surprise, it actually worked.  A
more
tragic example was a licensed skydiving instructor with several hundred
(thousand?) jumps who fell to his death when he thought that jumping
with
an off-handed harness was no big deal; even though, he had never done it
before.

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.

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.