Fight or Flight?
Back when I was in the military (20 years ago) one of our instructors sat us down after a long hard day of field training and discussed fight or flight. He said that 30% of us were going to be totally ineffective on the battlefield due to our genetic makeup. He went on to tell us that all the training in the world cannot flush out, or change the flighter's, and that we won't know who they are until a real mission is upon us, and that even then we may not know, because there are different levels where people are triggered. As a bunch of macho 20 year olds, we thought this was complete b.s. and laughed it off as scare tactics. We were highly trained and we had huge egos, there was no way we were running from a fight.
About six months later we found ourselves in our first gun fight. I have to admit, all the training in the world does not fully prepare you for this. The shear volume and chaos of active gunfire is frightening, the distractions like animals running out of fear, or bark flying off of trees hitting you in the face. You can't prepare for these little details, but eventually your training kicks in and you execute your plan. When the shooting stopped, we discovered what our instructor had told us was true. One of our teammates was sitting in the fetal position, frozen. We thought he had been shot or injured but he was perfectly fine. We felt terrible for him, a few hours later he resigned from our unit. He called himself battlefield ineffective and he apologized to all of us for letting us down. I worked next to this guy for a year in training, and I can tell you he was one tough dude. It was a day of mixed emotions. We finally got the chance to use our training, but we lost one of our own. We didn't lose him to enemy gunfire. We lost him to genetics! Judging by the look on his face, I think he would have rather been shot.
If you are put in an extreme situation, would you be FLIGHT or FIGHT?
Wow. One has to be in that situation first before you can know i think.
to know we have to be in that situation, no one knows what happens then, before all talk does not matter
the team is always as strong as the weakest member.
Based in the story i will fight in order to pass that situation and then feel me proud of that
It depends but in this situation I would fight. It is easy for me to sit here and say that but I don't know what I'd truly do.
Thanks for your service and all your work @davidp
Nice post. Extreme situations shows who you really are. Man character is not judge after he celebrity a victory, but what he does when his back is against the wall. I will probably fight, but you never now until you are in this kind of situation.
all i remembered after reading is "Cowards die a million deaths.......the valiant die but one." ;)
i definitely fight because i have a very strong believe on Elizabeth Kenny words
"It's better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life".
nice question i will fight in that situation. upvoted and followed you now
I have fired an automatic rifle. The noise was astonishingly loud. I'm pretty sure I would struggle to function in that environment. I'd be ok in a war in a library maybe ;)
The SAS training reality series I watched was fascinating. They are looking for control rather than just aggression. The ability to continue to function when under severe pressure and fatigue and stress. The trainees (civvies not military) we
re all super fit. Half of them dropped out in a few days.