panic

Richard Bell, singularly amazing, wrote:
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. 

[Tomb] Perhaps just "high stress". 

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

[Tomb] I tihnk this is true _in_general_. It reflects why soldiers train
to do Immediate Action drills. A trained response will keep you alive.
HOWEVER, in elite units, you learn (and are selected for) (among other
thigns) an ability to keep your head and think even in a tough
situation. Similarly, you tend to get promoted because you keep your
cool and think. This means that NCOs and better troops tend to do more
"thinking" and less "reacting". This is necessary because even simple
drills like IAs and more complex ones like Section Attacks are limited.
There are some combat situations where more thinking is required to keep
you alive. People think Spec Ops forces are tough - they aren't
pushovers, but this isn't their main trait. They are professional,
collected, and think on their feet and keep stress if not at bay, then
at least under control. 

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, 

[Tomb] Hmmm. My history is off, but I'm sure the English fled the
occasional field during those wars. 

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.

[Tomb] I'll agree that when you are out of your element or your training
does not cover a situation, it is easier to let stress get the better of
you and opt for the fight/flight reaction. Similarly, in those
situations, sometimes your training clamps down and all you do is follow
your training until you die or the situation abates. That's darn good
training. I think many of the USMCs battles around the Chosin reservoir
are an example of training prevailing long after the situation has gone
right out of whack. 

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).

[Tomb] How many dice damage? Did you penetrate the armour? :)

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.

[Tomb] Don't blame insufficiencies in simulator modelling and a lot of
luck entirely on this stress-enhancment thing. We still can't totally
analyze these situations (we have finite amounts of data) and our
simulators still aren't perfect so the fact we can't duplicate them
isn't a sign that something superhuman was done.... 

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.

[Tomb] I will take a couple of counterpoints. 
	Your odds of surviving many situations like combat increase if
you can suppress (as much as feasible) the stress and THINK while you
fight. When I wore a uniform, I never got shot at. But I have in
paintball plenty of times, and the times I died were usually when I went
on autopilot of shoot-cover-shoot. When I thought and fought smart, I
usually won out over other players using sudden movement, advantageous
terrain, flanking, and shock assaults. But these take a certain level of
clarity to time and execute. Also knowing when to withdraw takes a
fairly rational assessment, but is key to not losing men needlessly and
going into blind function-by-training mode often loses all sight of this
type of concern. Often the consequences are grim. 
	Also, I think different folks have different adrenal systems. I
know many people get exciteable and can't shoot when the stress is on
(see US law enforcement shooting stats). This is because their
adrenaline is spiking up, their heart rate is up and breathing is fast
and uneven, and they are afraid they're gonna die (plus often
surprised). But, if you can put aside the mortal danger (just don't
think about it), then you can keep your heart rate and breathing sane,
and shoot better and think while you fight. 
	I've never ever been in mortal terror of my life, even doing
life-and-death (often stooopid) things (not bragging, just an odd
characteristic I don't seem to share with most folks I know). That has
meant that I've probably done some things no sane person would have
done, but I've also survived even the dumb ones because I was only
somewhat tense, very focused in a calculating way, but not panicked or
over-stressed. 
	And I'm lucky... my adrenaline system runs quite different than
most - I never get "adrenal rushes", I just get a slight amplification
of my efficacy. I never get the shakes before or during stressful events
that are happening, only after when the (noradrenaline? Opposite of
addrenaline) pumps into my system to calm things. Then I get whole-body
shivers. It's unpleasant, but it is strictly physiological. It's my body
"coming down". Frankly, since I never have panicked AFAIK, I'm quite
happy paying this relatively benign after-effect's price, given that the
other alternative is the "panic" effect you describe.