What does this book bring to an emergency manager? 

Emergency Management tends to get one of two extremes. Either a hyper focused case study of one person’s experience during one emergency/disaster or a 30,000 foot focus on how a general population will respond to a general disaster. Unthinkable on the other hand is much more of a look at why people have the internal reactions they have. How those trends manifest in the general cases. Lastly, how to potentially control them. 

One of the main conclusions that stands out to me is the idea of “Train Your Brain”. This is the idea that one should think through emergencies and what will happen and how they would like to respond. Going through the motions of responding to an emergency will increase the likelihood that in an event a person will be able to do what is needed. For the average person this is knowing how to evacuate a building (and doing it ahead of time) or where to go during an active threat.

Training your brain is backed up by Chris Hadfield in his book “An Astronaut’s Guild to Life on Earth Guide to Life on Earth”. Chris Hadfield is a former Canadian test pilot and astronaut (going to space 3 times). If an EM wants to get a look at the extremes of emergency planning NASA is an interesting case study. In his book, he states that preparing for as many bad outcomes as possible leads to a less stressful life. Though this idea comes from his experience as a test pilot and as an astronaut, he uses it throughout as much of his life as possible. Unthinkable is not to this extreme but is more focused just on emergencies.

I think that it makes for an interesting case study. For emergencies being prepared mentally leads to better outcomes. The area that I have a bit of contradiction is when we start getting into longer term disasters. It is notable that no example in unthinkable is longer term focused. I think that when it comes to disasters, a different model starts to take over that is not fully described in the book.

Aaron Titus’ book “How to Prepare for Everything” (a title I partially disagree with) makes an argument that the way most EM approaches preparedness is unproductive. The cover even states “This book does not contain doomsday scenarios, zombies, or nightmarish predictions. Proceed with happiness and a sense of hope.” The argument of this book is that focusing on “the big one” does not help the average person prepare. Instead a planning for disturbances (lack of transportation, power failure, ect) is more effective strategies can be developed more easily and implemented in combination for whatever disaster the prepper faces.

The disturbance model is in some contrast to the idea that a person should visualize and practice for an event. There are some similarities, for example both talk about the importance of community and some form of planning.  I do not think these methods are truly in conflict with one another. Instead are solutions for different scales and need to be used in tandem, something that EM does not do well in its communication.

Immediate response to an emergency, it is more useful to have mentally prepared. In a disaster, a more disturbance based preparedness is more useful. Using one for the other, could lead to worse outcomes. Not mentally preparing for evacuating a fire, would lead to less effective evacuation. Thinking about how to respond to a house being destroyed by a tornado does not lead to covering the basis of all the disturbances that will have to be solved.

As an emergency manager, I personally will try to work at making the distinction between when to train/educate on the two models. On a personal level, I am always finding the emergency exits in new places, but also use more of a disturbance model for longer term disasters. As I learn more, I will change my mind (for goodness sake I am only 2 years into studying EM, I know very little). These are my personal thoughts, and I recommend everyone do their own research. 

-Stassen