Frozen in a Burning 747 (Tenerife Air Disaster 2)

proof of their existence. We've had people who trusted in technology when they shouldn't, and those who didn't trust it when they should and that's before we get to the doctors, business leaders, and scammers who abuse the trust put in them. I'm fascinated by questions of trust, and given that you're a loyal listener to cautionary tales, I'm guessing you're quite interested in them too, And that's why I've invited Rachel Botsman to join me for a special edition of Cautionary Questions.

Rachel is the author of the new audiobook How to Trust and Be Trusted, So do better to answer your trust questions. Maybe you'd like to know why we naturally trust some people but recoil from others. Maybe you're curious about why so many people are taken in by particular historical figures, there might be an episode of cautionary tales that makes you tear your hair out at the gullibility of those involved. Are we right to be suspicious? Whenever

a politician says trust me? Can being too distrustful be as dangerous as being too trusting? Whatever your query, you can trust Rachel to have the answers, So send them two tales at pushkin dot FM. That's t a l e s at Pushkin dot FM. Fifty eight year old Jean Marshall Brown were sitting in the cabin of a Pan American seven four seven. She ran a travel company in La Mesa, California. She was leading a group of retired holidaymakers on a twelve day cruise of the Mediterranean.

The trip hadn't got off to the best of starts. That had to divert to the next island over from where their cruise ship was waiting. But now at last they were taxiing down the runway, ready for the final short leg of their journey. When what on earth was that? Whatever just happened, some passengers near Jean when killed. Over the next few minutes, the ruptured cabin of the pan and plane will be consumed by explosions, smoke and fire, and as Jean sits in her seat, the thought pops into her head.

pan Am then scudded down the runway. But on the PanAm plane, a lot of people survived the impact, people like Jean Marshall Brown. In this episode, like the previous one, will explore a quirk of the human brain. This time we'll look at how the brain works in the moments after disaster strikes suddenly and unexpectedly. How would you react? It may not be how you'd hope. Jean sat in her seat. Time passed was hard to say how long. The fire caused by the impact grew stronger. Smoke started

to fill the cabin, but Jean still didn't move. She just sat and watched. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales Hanam. Captain Victor gre Rubs and First Officer Robert Bragg have had a frustrating afternoon. They've flown through the night from New York to the Canary Islands, but just before they could land on Grand Canaria, a bomb threat closed the airport. They've had to divert to

the tiny airport on the nearby island of Tenerif. When they get there, they discover lots of other planes have been diverted before them, including another seven four seven the KLM ITS captain has let his passengers disembark to kill time in the terminal, which is now rammed to capacity. Grubbs has to tell his passengers to stay on their plane. He feels bad about that most have been on board

since California. He decides to invite everyone for a tour of the cockpit and repeats the same apologetic story.

soft and the plane weighs over three hundred tons. They can't risk getting stuck. Grubs is annoyed. Another delay and now thick fog is rolling in. Are they going to be able to take off at all? He calls the KLM captain.

of the runway themselves. Hold on those headlights, getting closer they are. That KLM plane is moving. It's moving quickly. It's heading straight for them.

runway and onto the grass. Brag glances out of the window to his right. The KLM plane is right upon them. It's beginning to lift but not high enough. He sees the red rotating beacon on its undercarriage.

the ground. He grabs hold of the captain's seat to steady himself and jumps. Three hundred and ninety six people were on board that PanAm flight seventy one made it out, though some later died from their injuries. At the moment of impact, the plane was angled across the runway, the result of the pilot's attempted left turn. The KLM plane lifted, but not high enough. An engine and landing gear ripped

through parts of the PanAm cabin. The passengers sitting directly in their path, such as those in the first class lounge, never stood a chance. But what about those in other seats who weren't in the way of the engine or the landing gear. Could more of them have made it out alive? Why didn't they? We'll explore how the mind responds to a sudden crisis after the break. One night in the early nineteen tens, the Harvard physiologist Walter Bradford

Cannon woke up with a flash of inspiration. Canon was writing a book about how emotions affect the functioning of animal's bodies. It was a new field of inquiry, and he'd stumbled across it by accident. When using the newly discovered technique of X rays to study how digestion works, Canon experimented on cats. It'd feed them some food mixed

with bismuth salts, which show up on X rays. Then he'd tie them down and watch on the fluoroscopic screen as the food traveled down the esophagus into the stomach. The cats, not surprisingly, sometimes took exception to being restrained. They'd cry out and struggle to get free. Canon noticed something intes whenever a cat got distressed.

It became a classic due in part to the sudden inspiration that woke him up in the night. A clever form of words to tie together the physiological changes he'd discovered.

common f of all. In the cabin of pan Am flight one seven three six, the passengers haven't heard that ominous radio message from the KLM plane we're now at takeoff. Most of them haven't been looking out of a right hand window to see the headlights approaching through the fog. As far as they're concerned, this is just a routine taxi down the runway before a routine flight, a yawning, chatting, reading,

slipping off their shoes, arranging their bags under their seats. When, as in the cockpit, the initial noise doesn't convey the severity of what's just happened, Survivors later liken it to a snapping twig, a swarm of bees passing overhead, or a length of adhesive tape being ripped off. One woman assumes that the shuddering thump must mean that the pilot has veered off the edge of the runway in the fog, how annoyingly careless of him. No doubt, they'll have to

queue up now for the emergency exits. She calmly leans forward and reaches under the seat for her handbag, puts the strap over her shoulder, gets up and looks around. Only then does she see the carnage, blood and bodies everywhere. Some people are dead, Some have been hurt by flying bits of metal or the overhead luggage bins collapsing on top of them. Still others are unscathed, just confused about what's happened. They've been talk of a bomb scare at

the airport. Was it a bomb? It's hard to imagine your world being torn apart like that. It's hard to guess how you'd react. We all hope we'd react like passenger Jack Rideout, a thirty three year old entrepreneur sitting in first class. The first thing ride Out does is blurt out a call to action, seemingly as much to himself as anyone. This is it, says ride Out. He unclips his seat belt, and gets up. He sees his girlfriend next to him, struggling to get her belt undone.

He helps her up, and the two find their footing in the aisle amid the fallen contents of the overhead luggage bins. Rideout looks to the right. He sees the fire starting on the wing. He looks to the left, he sees a hole ripped in the fuselage. He notices that the plane seems to be tilting to the left. That's the way to get out, then further from the fire, closer to the ground. Those engines are gonna blow.

to help out of the plane. There's an older woman seemingly unconscious. He picks her up, but realizes that she's dead already. Ride Out puts the body down and decides it's time to jump to safety himself. He lands on the rubber raft. We'd all like to hope that in a sudden crisis, we'd react like Jack Rideout, selfless, strong, and above all, self possessed. Ride Out quickly appraised his new situation, the need to get out. The fire on

the right, the hole on the left. That's the fight or flight response, working as nature intended, a laser like focus on the essential facts, quick and decisive action. But more often things go quite differently. Our brains don't work as we'd like to hope they would take Warren Hopkins, fifty three years old, a meat wholesaler from Illinois, and his wife, Caroline. They're also sitting in first class. In the moments after the impact, Hopkins reacted just as quickly

as Jack ride out. He touched his wife on the arm and said, let's go. He unbuckled his seat belt, picked his way across the debris in the aisle, and launched himself through the jagged hole in the fuselage. Only when he'd landed did he remember that he'd forgotten to check that his wife was with him. She wasn't because Caroline had forgotten something else, how to unbuckle a seat belt.

How strange she found herself, thinking, I must have unbuckled airplane seat belts a hundred times, and I can't remember how to do it. She later said she thought she might have been trying to press a button like you would in a car. Eventually, she remembered how airline seat buckles unclasp and made her way to the jagged hole. She looked down and felt vertiginous. She reached out to hold something and gashed her hand. She jumped and landed

awkwardly on her shoulder. Warren dragged her away. She managed to get up and saw that a wound in his head was gushing blood over his formal white dress shirt. Warren hadn't realized that's part of fight or flight. There's no time to feel pain. Caroline slipped off her floral patterned underskirt and wrapped it around Warren's head wound. She noticed the gash on her hand and wrapped it in

a handkerchief. Warren and Caroline Hopkins later worked with the author John Ziamec to gather recollections from fellow survivors for his book Collision on tenor Reef. Their stories of leaps, burns, and broken bones, but their stories about other passengers too, passengers who weren't making any attempt at all to get themselves free. One survivor recalled.

an emergency. Leach studied survivor accounts of eleven disasters on airplanes, oil rigs, and ships. One person who got off a sinking ferry recalled how they hadn't been able to understand why others weren't trying to help themselves. They just sat there being swamped by the water when it came in. Leach came to the startling conclusion that freezing wasn't just common, it was the most common response to disaster. It happened to about seventy five percent of people in the cases

he studied. The classic response to danger, wrote Leech, should be restated as fight, flight or freeze. We hope we'd react like Jack Rideout. We're more likely to be deer in headlights. But what's going on when people freeze? There are two possibilities hard to tell apart from the outside, but quite different. Physiologists reserve the term freezing for something that happens before the fight or flight response. The same bodily changes are going on the surge of adrenaline for

thumping heart. We're primed for action, but not acting yet. It's as if the body has slammed on both the accelerator and the break at the same time. In the animal world, this can make perfect sense. You've seen a predator, you're not sure if the predator has seen you. You stay very, very still and hope the predator goes away. If it comes for you, the break comes off and you fight or you flee. The other freezing scenario happens after fight or flight are no longer options. You're trapped.

The predator has got you. In this situation, you'll sometimes see animals stop struggling and play dead. This too has evolutionary logic. Predators don't want to eat meat that might have been dead for a while. It could poison them. Play dead and they might lose interest. It's a last desperate roll of the dice. Physiologists call this state tonic immobility, and it seems to happen to humans too. Were some PanAm passengers experiencing tonic immobility. We can't ask the ones

who died, but it seems likely. One survivor recalls hearing an elderly woman turn to her husband and say, I think this is it. The same words as Jack ride out, but a different meaning. The task of getting out is realistically beyond us. Perhaps it was, but we can ask the passengers who froze initially before the breaks came off and fight or flight kicked in. Remember Jean Marshall Brown, this is.

wing but died from their burns. Jeane spent two months in hospital and lived. What can snap you out of a frieze? Jean Marshall Brown's story suggests there are two things, a thought popping into your head or someone else showing you the way. Jean's story was mirrored elsewhere on the airplane. David Alexander was twenty nine years old, an amateur photographer. He later wrote a book about his experience called Never

Wait for the Fire Truck. Just like Jeane, David Alexander remembers the first thought to cross his mind, I Am going to die. Then along came another thought, No, I'm not. Alexander doesn't remember what he did next. Not forming memories is another common feature of the fight or flight response, but a couple sitting near him later told him what he did and how it made them realize what they too had to do. They saw him climb up onto the back of his seat and clamber his way out

of a hole in the ceiling. They got up from their seats and followed his route out of the plane. The psychologist John Leech says that when people freeze in an emergency, it's because their memory contains no appropriate response for their brain to latch onto, and as stress hormones flood their brains, they can't come up with one. Their thinking is sluggish, their reasoning impaired. If you know there's a particular kind of emergency you might encounter, you can

train for it. Do drills again and again until the right response pops straight into your brain. That makes sense. For soldiers or pilots see a fire on the wing, reach above you for the levers that cut off the fuel to the engine, and most of us aren't likely ever to be in an airplane crash or a sinking ferry. Training again and again for specific emergencies isn't a wise use of our time. So what can we do to reduce the likelihood that we freeze if disaster strikes. The

best advice is boringly predictable. Don't ignore the in flight safety briefing. But the experience of Jean Marshall Brown and David Alexander tells us why we should pay attention, even if we've heard it a hundred times before. In a sudden disaster, You can't predict which thoughts will flash into your mind. I'm going to die, or we can get out of here. If you've recently said to yourself, my nearest emergency exit is three rows behind, maybe that thought

will pop into your head. It might be enough to save you. Years after the crash, Jack ride Out talked to a journalist at the Los Angeles Times. He was, of course haunted by flashbacks, but the most disturbing memory not when he exclaimed, this is it. Not the flight attendant being killed by shrapnel while trying to inflate the rubber raft, not shoving his girlfriend through the jagged hole in the fuselage. What kept coming back to him, said ride Out, was seeing all those people, not harmed, but

not doing anything, just looking calmly ahead. Hundreds of them. He thought they could all have got out. Hundreds an exaggeration, surely, but perhaps not by much. Investigators later tried to piece together how many people had died in the collision and how many survived the impact but died in the fire. They did this by seeing if the bodies had soot in the trichea, that would indicate they'd still been breathing

as smoke filled the cabin. Almost half the bodies were too badly burned to tell either way of the others. They found sixty without soot. They had been killed before the fire took hold, but almost twice as many one hundred and eighteen did have soot in the trachea. These people had survived the crash, then died in the inferno. Some, no doubt, had been knocked unconscious or injured too badly to move, but others it seemed simply froze until they burned.

First Officer Robert Bragg falls thirty eight feet and rolls on the grass. He's broken an ankle, but he doesn't notice that. Captain Victor Grubbs tumbles through the floor into the main first class seating area, then falls through that floor too, into the cargo hold. He sees a hole ripped in the side of the hold and wriggles towards it. He drops onto the tarmac and lies there, burned and bleeding. Someone comes towards him. It's one of the flight attendants.

He looks at her, whatever done to these people? She slips a hand under.

by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melany Gushridge, Stella Harford, Jammas Saunders and rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, Beteal Millard, John Schnaz, Eric's handler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary

Tales is a production of Pushkin Indus. It's recorded at Wardour Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review, tell your friends and if you want to hear the show ad free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus