Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger

235 Pages·2009·1.576 MB·English

by  Jeff Wise

EXTREME FEAR
THE SCIENCE OF YOUR MIND IN DANGER

Jeff Wise
EXTREME FEAR
Copyright © Jeff Wise, 2009.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is
by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered
in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire
RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and
has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the
United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–0–230–61439–0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wise, Jeff.
Extreme fear : the science of your mind in danger / Jeff Wise.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–230–61439–0
1. Fear. 2. Neuropsychology. I. Title.
BF575.F2W565 2009
152.4′6—dc22 2009018929
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: December 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
To Sandra and to Rem, our joy and terror
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Mystery of Fear
PART ONE: FEAR IS A PARALLEL MIND
One The Person that Fear Makes You
Two Superhuman
Three Losing It
PART TWO: THE STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL
Four The Structure of Chaos
Five Fear Itself
Six In Love and War
Seven “One of the Biggest Chokers of All Time”
Eight The Eyes of Others
PART THREE: COUNTERATTACK
Nine Force of Will
Ten Steeling Yourself
Eleven Hanging On
Twelve Mastery
Thirteen A New Conception of Courage
Notes on the Sources
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I OWE A DEBT of gratitude to my agent, David Kuhn, whose persistence was
essential in bringing this project to fruition; and also to my editor, Luba
Ostashevsky, who with skill and enthusiasm helped me take the manuscript to a
level beyond what I could have achieved on my own.
I would also like to thank the magazine editors who worked with me on fear-
related articles as I honed my understanding of the topic: Kent Black at Outside’s
GO, Chris Raymond at Details, and David Dunbar at Popular Mechanics.
Finally, I could never have written a word of this book without the support of
my wife, Sandra Garcia, who in addition to emotional and intellectual support
kept our newborn baby pacified while I sweated under deadline.
INTRODUCTION
THE MYSTERY OF FEAR
ON JUNE 3, 1970, shortly before noon, a British pilot named Neil Williams
strapped himself into the harness of his blue-and-white Zlin Akrobat, a rugged
but nimble single-engine airplane built in Czechoslovakia. The World Aerobatic
Championship was coming up, and Williams planned to prepare himself by
running through the sequence of maneuvers that he’d be flying in competition.
With a lantern jaw, deep-set eyes, and shock of dark hair swept back from a
high forehead, Williams looked every bit a casting director’s idea of a daredevil
pilot—and in his case, looks did not deceive. Williams was a veteran flyer with a
vast and varied store of experience under his belt. In the course of his career he
had flown more than 150 different kinds of airplanes and accumulated more than
six thousand hours in flight time. A retired Royal Air Force test pilot, and four-
time winner of the UK aerobatic championships, he was, at thirty-six, already
regarded as one of the greatest all-around pilots that Britain had ever produced.
But his skills had never been tested as they were about to be.
Rafts of fair-weather clouds drifted over the Royal Air Force base at
Hullavington, England, as Williams lined up on the runway, opened the throttle,
and roared into the air at full power. The wind aloft was gentle, and as Williams
climbed he noted with satisfaction that there was no detectable turbulence—that
meant he’d be able to carve his maneuvers all the more precisely.
Williams ran his sequence twice through without incident, then brought the
Zlin back to level flight and prepared to practice his routine one final time. After
only a few minutes in the air, he was already near his limit for fatigue.
Competitive aerobatics is a uniquely demanding undertaking. As a mental
discipline, it requires exacting attention to detail, the ability to think quickly and
three-dimensionally, and the ability to maintain one’s poise while rapidly moving
through maneuvers that turn the plane upside down, cause it to fall backward, or
spin like a top. As a physical discipline, it requires grit and superb fitness as the
airplane’s abrupt changes of direction slam the pilot from one side of the cockpit
to the other, with centrifugal forces at times pressing on his body with nine times
its actual weight and at other times leaving him hanging upside-down from his
harness straps. A four-minute aerobatic routine is enough to leave a pilot drained
and soaked in sweat.
Midway through the third run-through of his routine, Williams was coming
over the top of a loop, a high arcing figure in which his plane carved through the
air like a high fly ball. As it reached the top, Williams was upside-down in his
seat, the checkered farmland of southwest England arrayed above his head, the
cloud-dappled sky under his seat. The plane continued its arc downward past its
apex, and the horizon sank toward the bottom of his windscreen until all he
could see in front of him was ground. His descent grew steeper and steeper until
he was staring straight down.
Barreling earthward through fifteen hundred feet, Williams hauled the stick
toward his chest in order to pull the Zlin back to level flight. He clenched his
abdominal muscles in anticipation of the resulting g-forces, as gravity combined
with the centrifugal force of the plane’s curving path would press him into his
seat with five times his normal weight. Only by grunting and clenching his leg
and stomach muscles could he prevent the blood from rushing out of his head
and causing him to black out.
The plane was just coming level with the ground, one thousand feet up, when
—
BANG!
A jolt shook the airplane. The Zlin started rolling left—all except the left
wing, which stayed oddly level with the horizon. Williams instantly intuited
what had happened: The force of the pull-out had likely broken the internal spar
that gave the wing most of its strength. If that were the case, then the whole wing
was about to fall off. He pushed the stick all the way to the right, but the plane
kept rolling left. The ground was just 300 feet below and rising fast.
For most pilots, that would have been the end. But in the few seconds he had
left before his plane cratered, Williams had an insight. He remembered the story
of a Bulgarian pilot who had suffered a malfunction in a similar Zlin model
years before. The circumstances in that case had been different—the Bulgarian
had been flying inverted when a bolt failure in one of the wings had caused the
plane to unexpectedly flip right-side up. But a detail of the story stuck out: Once
the Bulgarian’s plane was right-side up, the wing had snapped back into place.
Maybe Williams’ situation was analogous, but reversed. If he went from right
side up to upside down, his wing might snap back in place, too.
In less time than it takes to form a complete thought, Williams threw the stick
hard to the left until the Zlin was fully inverted, then pushed the stick forward.
His face swelled and turned red as gravity and centrifugal force drained blood
from his body into his head.
WHUMP!
With a satisfying thud the wing settled backed into place. By now Williams
was almost in the treetops, and for a moment he was sure he was going to crash.
Then the plane began to climb.
Hanging in his harness, Williams coaxed the stricken craft skyward, eking out
precious altitude foot by foot. He didn’t have much time: His engine, he knew,
would only run for eight minutes upside-down. Without a parachute, his options
were stark. Should he try to crash land upside down in the trees? Find a lake to
ditch in?
Just then the engine sputtered and died—a new potentially fatal disaster.
Williams scanned the cockpit and quickly found the problem. In the initial jolt,
he had accidentally hit the knob that shuts off the fuel supply to the engine. He
flipped it back to the “on” position. After a few coughs, the engine came back to
life.
Williams was running short on time. He decided his best chance for survival
was to crash-land at the airfield. He guided the Zlin home and set up his landing
approach upside down. As the end of the runway passed above his head, he
pushed the stick hard to the right and rolled the plane right-side up. Again the
left wing folded up and the plane careened sideways as it touched down.
Williams curled into a ball until the plane stopped moving, then broke open the
damaged canopy and leapt free. The plane was a wreck, but he had survived
without a scratch.

HOW WILLIAMS MANAGED to survive the catastrophic failure of his wing
at low altitude is a mystery. In aeronautical terms, to be sure, the question of
staying in the air was simply a matter of physics. But the psychology of what
happened is another matter. By conventional understanding, Williams should
have died that day. Under such intense pressure, with fatal impact a few seconds
away, the surge of hormones should have been so intense, the neurons of his fear
circuitry so overloaded, that Williams should have been barely able to function,