The Unthinkable is the thinking person's manual for getting out alive. ”
NPR, National Public Radio
“Engrossing and lucid … An absorbing study of the psychology and physiology of panic, heroism, and trauma … Facing the truth about the human capacity for risk and disaster turns out to be a lot less scary than staying in the dark.”
I was in the National Press Club lobby this afternoon when the news broke that the House had failed to pass the bail-out package. I sat there staring at the wall of TV monitors with a group of stunned reporters, no one sure what to do next. One screen showed the Congressional vote tally going up; the one next to it showed the Dow going down, down, down.
Despite the sense of foreboding in my office here in DC, I am still not convinced the bail-out package was the right response. The whole thing reminds me too much…
OK, so you may not have noticed between election mania and fiscal implosions, but National Preparedness Month is almost over. Part of the reason you may not have noticed, ironically, is that so many of the country’s preparedness soldiers were too busy dealing with actual hurricanes to do PR about future hurricanes. Right before things got out of hand, the Red Cross was nice enough to come visit my office and chat with me about the book. You can see some of our conversation here.
My colleagues at Time, Karen Tumulty and Massimo Calabresi, have written a story that details what officials are afraid will happen without a bailout. Nicely done.
On Sept. 18, Paulson and Bernanke laid out the dark scenario for stunned-silent congressional leaders: a stock-market crash, businesses going under, unemployment soaring, consumers unable to get so much as a car loan, banks failing so fast that they would quickly drain the federal deposit insurance fund--and with it, countless people’s life savings. And unlike the chain reaction that came over the course of weeks and months in 1929, this…
Listening to US officials warn of a fiscal crisis, I am struck by how much they sound like officials on the brink of a disaster or a terrorist attack. In both cases, the official instinct is to say less rather than more. This is a mistake.
We hear vague warnings of impending doom--but no details. We are expected to follow orders--and support a $700 billion bail-out package--without knowing what will happen if we don’t. And now the proposed bail-out plan is vague, too.
No one can predict the future. But it is obvious that Treasury Secretary…
Amanda Ripley, a senior writer at TIME Magazine, has traveled the world studying disasters, natural and manmade. Her book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — and Why, is the first mass-market book to explain how the brain works in disasters — and how we can learn to do better. It is being published in 15 countries.
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