'Unthinkable'

The Lizard is currently reading the fascinating book ‘Unthinkable’ by Amanda Ripley. For a book that takes a cold hard look at crises and disaster it’s surprisingly readable and a real page-turner.

She uses an abundance of interlinked case studies that look at how people respond in a crisis and has some practical advise on how to live to tell the tale. The one big takeaway is that people who have had some form of crisis training have a far greater chance of survival.

There are also some extraordinary stories of heroism that make this a far from depressing book, but it is perhaps the totally counterintuitive ways in which people respond to a catastrophe that linger in the mind. The Lizard gives it 5 stars.