Panic

Panic - Goverment seems to assume that people's first response to unforeseen calamity is to panic.

Yet one of the great untold stories of 9/11 is the calm with which most people on the scene reacted. People helped each other down from the floors below the airplane impacts, even before the firemen arrived; Pentagon workers (military and civilian) reacted quickly and effectively; and of course, the people on Flight 93 (citizens, not soldiers and cops) assessed their situation quickly, and quickly organized and moved to re-take their plane - hardly a panic response. Says the article:

Note that most of the positive social behavior that saved so many lives was not organized by any formal agency, much less by any command-and-control mechanism. People saved themselves. Other people converged from all over the city to help. As Tierney says, ''The response to the Sept. 11 tragedy was so effective precisely because it was not centrally directed and controlled. Instead it was flexible, adaptive and focused on handling problems as they emerged.''

In some sense, Sept. 11 was a victory over the terrorists. Socially responsible free Americans prevented the loss from being much worse. Yet, the response of the planning agencies has been to establish more and more elaborate command-and-control structures, which will force a population that is not about to panic into panic behavior.

Says Tierney: ''When Sept. 11 demonstrated the enormous resilience in our civil society, why is disaster response now being characterized in militaristic terms?''

Perhaps because those who are determined to control everything don't understand that even in military situations, it's the second lieutenants and the sergeants who win battles, as, for example, in the Omaha Beach chaos at Normandy.

Americans are good at sizing things up and taking charge when the heat is on. One of the most jarring stories from 9/11 was that after the first plane crashed, an automated message went out over the Trade Center's public address system - advising people to stay put in their offices. Fortunately, most of those in the WTC knew better.

People, far from being the panicky rabble, tend to keep their cool and react appropriately.

So - why won't government give us any credit for this?