The sort of experience one doesn’t easily forget or get over
In the thick of a nightmare that’s unfortunately real, time seems to telescope or expand:
Anthony, another survivor [of the concert shooting], said the fact that he was at the back of the room saved his life.
The moving crowd knocked him to the floor.
When he lifted his head, after a moment that lasted “between 30 seconds and 20 minutes…”, he saw “a bearded guy, no mask, a gun in his hand,” who was shooting methodically.
“I was waiting for the fatal shot,” said Anthony.
“And then somebody yelled that they (attackers) were gone, everybody wanted to get out. I slipped in a pool of thick blood. We crawled, we climbed over people.”
A thought occurred to me recently that Europe is r-selected and Islamics are K-selected. Centuries of close city dwelling has bred passivity into the Europeans (massively accelerated by war deaths). I think you can see this in their group-focused, emotion-based reactions to these attacks. What else is a candlelight vigil except a group bonding exercise? I doubt it will have any other tangible effect.
What we may be witnessing is the interaction of the two approaches. Ks will always win in the short term. In the long term, they always lose because they are absorbed into the society.
This also explains why urbanization always turns a country soft.
Matt_SE:
You may or may not be right, but I don’t think that the small sample of Parisians participating in candlelight vigils and the like means a thing. First of all, what percentage is that of the entire population? A small percentage, the percentage that is drawn to candlelight vigils.
Secondly, candlelight vigils and a hard-hitting reaction are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they can co-exist in the same person. Don’t assume you can read the mind of a person holding a candle.
I wonder how this will affect the chances of Marine Le Pen, who had already been rising in the polls anyway.
Ben Carson was excoriated by the pajama boys on the left not long ago for saying that if he were faced with that situation, he would have rushed the shooter because if he was going to die anyway, maybe he could help others by doing so, or something to that effect.
Look what happened on Flight 93 on 9/11. The passengers heard on their cellphones about the Twin Towers, and decided that they weren’t going to allow themselves to be led like sheep to help kill others. They all died but no one else did.
No one knows for sure how they would react in such a terror-filled situation. Maybe I would end up peeing myself, running away or pleading for my life, but I would hope I had the courage (insanity?) to rush the shooter(s) to try to get one of their guns to fight back with before they killed me anyway, and try to get others to join me. It would sure beat just waiting for them to shoot me.
How many were methodically shot at the concert by 6-8 men – 100 or more? How much would it have taken to overpower one or two? They can’t protect themselves from all sides at once and after they’re taken down they’re very vulnerable.
In our modern world, especially in America, males have been sissified, wussified and pussified by militant feminism. We drug our boys who exhibit too much energy, arrest 2nd graders for sexual assault for stealing a kiss, do away with tag, dodgeball, jungle gyms and recess as too dangerous and suspend another boy for pointing a finger like a gun.
If we’re going to win, society as a whole in the Western world has got to grow a very big pair of cojones. Feminists are going to have to let males be men again; otherwise, in the coming conflict between Islam and civilization, we’ll lose.
geokstr:
It’s actually much more complicated than that.
In a venue like the train where the 3 heroes stopped the shooter, they were aided by the fact that there was one shooter with restricted ability to move (a train aisle) and a somewhat defective weapon. They were able to see him clearly, and it was three to one, and he was unable to shoot them, as it turns out.
In a scene such as the Paris theater, it’s very very different. There are many shooters (I’m not sure what the number was, but it was apparently at least 3) but it is somewhat dark in the theater, and the three probably are spread out around the theater. So the theatergoers are confused and have trouble sorting it out. They can’t see clearly what’s happening, and they are distracted by several shooters coming from different directions. It takes a while to sort itself out.
A group attack by potential victims takes some coordination. On Flight 93 the passengers had a certain amount of time to talk to each other, and they knew that they faced certain death anyway and therefore had nothing to lose. In the theater, on the other hand, people would have had trouble organizing and communicating and coordinating a rush on the shooters, and in addition the audience members realize that they have several options, unlike the passengers on Flight 93. They can run for it and perhaps get out of an exit. They can play dead (a lot of them did that and survived). Or they can rush the shooters. Because there’s a big crowd of people, though, only those closest to the shooters have a good chance of making their way towards them. Other people will almost undoubtedly block their way (people fleeing, for example, or just standing there in shock).
So, how to coordinate? If a person goes it alone, he is likely to be killed, if the gun is functional (which these were). That might easily have happened on the train, too, if the shooter’s gun had been working properly or if he’s known better how to operate it. To coordinate, you need (a) to be near enough to a shooter to reach him (b) to have time and ability to communicate with those around you, (c) good enough visibility to see what’s happening, and (d) an unblocked path to make your way through the crowd.
Oh, and of course you also need courage. How many times do all those elements come together?
Lastly, why do you think you know that no one tried to rush the shooter? There may have been many people who tried and were murdered for their pains.
“I was waiting for the fatal shot,” said Anthony.
Just like a sheep waiting to be led to the slaughter.
“So, how to coordinate? If a person goes it alone, he is likely to be killed, if the gun is functional (which these were).” neo
You don’t ‘coordinate’, as you say, there’s no time and conditions make coordination highly improbable. You react with “fight or flight” determining the reaction. If enough react with fight, then while some will die, the shooters may be brought down. Better to be shot as a sheepdog, at least trying rather than as a sheep, waiting to be slaughtered.
Which is exactly what motivated the three heroes on that train. They didn’t have time to coordinate either. They reacted with fight. Just as Churchill would have and did react.
“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” ― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
How many of the people in that theater will ever feel safe again? Those are the true ‘wages’ of r-selected sheep.
Geoffrey Britain:
You misunderstand what I mean by “coordinate.” I mean “rush the person at the same moment.” I don’t mean plan a mission.
On the train, they were lifelong good friends/buddies who rushed the perp at the same moment, together, although one was in front, and they spoke to each other very briefly a moment beforehand in order to coordinate that. Otherwise, if one had rushed him alone, AND the gun had functioned, that person would almost certainly be dead.
So if people can act as a group (not in a coordinated and planned way, but coordinated in the sense that they all are in it together) they have a chance of succeeding rather than being mowed down.
I am basing this not on my own feelings, but on things I’ve read by people trained in the art of self-defense and reacting in crises. I don’t have a link, because I read it a long time ago.
I repeat, though: why do you think you know this didn’t happen in Paris? One person might have rushed a shooter alone in the theater, and been killed, and we wouldn’t even know about it, if the rest of the audience was lying on the floor or fleeing.
Also, most of the time, unless a person is trained military (as were two of the guys on the train) or martial arts, people are going to freeze. Now that military service is more unusual, because there’s no draft, the number of trained people in an audience like that would be way down.
I can predict there will be an upsurge in concealed carry — throwing knives, dirks — what have you.
This atrocity is EXACTLY what one must presume to be the new battle formation for the Muslim suicide cells.
Our police forces will know all about these wolves — as apparently has been the case here, too.
But, they will be PC enough to throw you under the train.
The police don’t work for the public, they work for TPTB.
That’s what’s real.
This breakout is more towards 1938, which started in Paris, IIRC. Something about an ambassador for National Socialism.
Anyhow, it’ll come to me.
The wages of sin is death. Death of the mind. Death of the soul. Death of the spirit, the Will.
This also explains why urbanization always turns a country soft.
That’s the right path to begin looking at things, for sure.
Urban cities are insect farms, where specialization is king. Human freedom functions on polymath abilities, general competency, not insect specialization.
Here’s my take on time distortion when under adrenaline and endorphins (meaning fear triggered).
The human brain’s visual cortex and the eyes work via a bag of tricks. It’s like a hack. That means the total number of frames people usually see in a second is no more than 30. Less than that, in a video, and the visual cortex notices “stuttering”. Inconsistent movements.
However, the visual cortex does not process every millisecond of a second. At best, it can process 30 frames per second, which means an update every 1000/30.
When enough oxygen enriches the blood to brain barrier, when fear triggers down the conscious awareness of logic and emotion, prioritizing the brain stem/lizard/machine mind which calculates only via reality as it inputs into the nerves, what tends to happen is that the visual cortex is now “overclocked” to process more than 30 frames per second. A slow motion camera captures frames every few milliseconds, that’s how they can see a “bullet” exist a gun.
There have been no scientific study of this process, because it is not something that can be easily lab reproduced. It is something fighters and warriors understand intuitively and instinctively, though. Even though most cannot explain it in words.
When a person’s visual cortex can pick up a photograph from the eye organ every 50 ms, that means over a single second, 1000s, the mind is now updating 1000/50. That kind of process overclocking can extend the perceived internal time, since the human brain is used to the visual cortex being slow, running underclocked to save on energy.
There are also cases where people “blank” out. Meaning, their temporary memory of the event was never uploaded to middle or long term memory. This usually happens when a high degree of motor control is necessary, one where the “conscious mind” is shut down because it just gets in the way (people who try to control every muscle movement as they walk consciously, tend to not do as well as the autonomic processes).
These days, I visualize the human brain as an OS running within another OS. The conscious mind is not the “superior” CPU core at all. There are GPU cores and various other cores running at higher efficiencies, that the main OS isn’t aware of.
The greatest thing those people can do is die for their “cause”. The greatest thing the rest of the world can do is make sure that is the way it happens. After that, perhaps we can work down the list.
Yes, I do know that dreamers come in all shapes and sizes. Before Jimmy Carter changed my mind, I was a democrat. Ronald Reagan allowed me to chisel the change in stone.
I would add another observation:
The people on facebook who adopt either the Eiffel Tower peace symbol or the tricolor shading are the lefties (and usually the women, as well).
This is social signaling, to demonstrate that they care. Not that their care is worth a damn…