The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life - Hardcover

Sherwood, Ben

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446580244 ISBN 13: 9780446580243

Verlag: Grand Central Publishing, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Which is the safest seat on an airplane? Where is the best place to have a heart attack? Why does religious observance add years to your life? How can birthdays be hazardous to your health?


THE SURVIVORS CLUB


Each second of the day, someone in America faces a crisis, whether it's a car accident, violent crime, serious illness, or financial trouble. Given the inevitability of adversity, we all wonder: Who beats the odds and who surrenders? Why do some people bound back and others give up? How can I become the kind of person who survives and thrives?


The fascinating, hopeful answers to these questions are found in THE SURVIVORS CLUB. In the tradition of Freakonomics and The Tipping Point, this book reveals the hidden side of survival by combining astonishing true stories, gripping scientific research, and the author's adventures inside the U.S. military's elite survival schools and the government's airplane crash evacuation course.


With THE SURVIVORS CLUB, you can also discover your own Survivor IQ through a powerful Internet-based test called the Survivor Profiler. Developed exclusively for this book, the test analyzes your personality and generates a customized report on your top survivor strengths.


There is no escaping life's inevitable struggles. But THE SURVIVORS CLUB can give you an edge when adversity strikes.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Award-winning journalist Ben Sherwood is a former broadcast producer for NBC Nightly News and executive producer of Good Morning, America. In addition, he is a bestselling author whose novel The Man Who Ate the 747 was published in 13 languages. He lives with his wife and son in Los Angeles.

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The Survivors Club

The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your LifeBy Ben Sherwood

Grand Central Publishing

Copyright © 2009 Ben Sherwood
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-446-58024-3

Introduction

The Survivors Club

The field is known as "human factors in survival." Translation: Why do some people live and others die? How do certain people make it through the most difficult trials while others don't? Why do a few stay calm and collected under extreme pressure when others panic and unravel? How do some bounce back from adversity while others collapse and surrender?

This book answers those questions. It shares the true stories of regular people who have been profoundly tested by life-men and women who have been beaten down, sometimes literally flattened. It explores how ordinary folks somehow manage to pick themselves up, again and again, in the face of overwhelming odds. It investigates whether survivors are different from you and me. And it dissects the mind-set and habits that are shared by the most effective survivors. In short, it unlocks the secrets of who lives and who dies and shows how you can improve your chances in virtually any crisis. At the outset, I'd like to put a few things on the table. Almost everyone I know has faced-or is coping with-some kind of serious challenge or adversity. I wrote this book for them and for myself. While I certainly haven't been tested like the survivors in these pages, I've hit some bumps and experienced my share of loss and grief. My father was in excellent health when he died suddenly at age sixty-four from a massive and inexplicable brain bleed. Defying the probabilities, my mother has beaten back ovarian cancer for nine years, always deflecting credit to the aggressive treatment orchestrated by her superb oncologist. As a journalist, I've had a few close scrapes and witnessed plenty of tragedy. In August 1992, while covering the bloody siege of Sarajevo for ABC News, I was sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with a veteran producer and friend named David Kaplan when he was fatally wounded by a sniper. A nine-millimeter bullet ripped through the back door of our Volks-wagen van, pierced David's back, and severed his pulmonary artery. French combat surgeons fought to save him, but his injuries were too grave. It was pure chance that he-not I-ended up in that fatal middle seat, which had seemed the safest spot, away from the windows. I've always been something of a control freak, so each of these events called everything into question. Why do healthy people drop dead without reason? How can cancer strike those who aren't at risk? Why do bullets find one victim and not another? Perhaps in an attempt to regain some command, I began to ask: Are there any hidden ways to improve the odds? If "no one here gets out alive," as Jim Morrison sings, what are the tricks of sticking around as long as possible? My search produced this book, and the answers are both humbling and comforting. When it comes to survival, as you'll see, there's a whole lot that you can't control, and a surprising amount that you can. A few other disclaimers: I'm not a survivalist or an outdoors-man. I don't stockpile canned goods and I'm not preparing for Armageddon, although I did buy emergency kits for my car and home while researching this book. I'm a city guy, a journalist, and an occasional novelist. I've spent most of my life asking questions and I've always been drawn to stories of people under pressure. I remember the summer at age ten when I began to read Alive, the astonishing saga of a plane crash in the Andes Mountains and the passengers who endured seventy-two freezing days on a glacier. It's human nature to speculate: What would I have done? Would I have pushed myself to the same extremes? In March 2000, while working for NBC Nightly News, I marveled at images of Sofia Xerindza, a woman in Mozambique who escaped the deadly floodwaters of the Limpopo River by climbing into a tree, where she gave birth to a baby girl. At ABC's Good Morning America, where I worked as executive producer for two and a half years, I watched a veritable parade of survivors on the screen and always wondered: How did these people endure their trials? Were they always so strong and resilient, or did these abilities suddenly materialize when they most needed them? Television interviews last only a few minutes, so what would these survivors say if the clock wasn't ticking? How did they really get through it? In quieter moments, what wisdom might they share about their experiences? I also wanted to know about all the people who face life's everyday challenges without any attention or fanfare, the unheralded folks fighting illnesses like cancer, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's. In the face of life's inevitable crises, how do they get through their days? Where do they find the fortitude, sometimes literally, to climb out of bed? And selfishly, how could I get some of their strength? In this book you'll meet survivors of every imaginable ordeal, young and old, rich and poor, the guy down the street and people in the news. I've gathered tales on every continent; if you can conceive of a crisis, I've probably interviewed someone who has gone through it and come out on the other side. A woman doused with gasoline and set on fire by her husband; a bicyclist on a morning ride crushed by a twenty-one-ton truck; veterans who lived through the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and survived the great battles of World War II; a young ballerina forced to dance for her life by Dr. Josef Mengele in Auschwitz.

The Survivors Club will explain how they did it. You'll learn some of the secrets of survival-like the safest seat on an airplane, the best place to suffer a heart attack, and how the number 3 could keep you alive in a crunch. You'll discover how some people are born with a Resilience Gene that actually protects them from the worst knocks in life. You'll find out how a few easy changes in your food and vitamins can boost your ability to bounce back from hardship. In Manitoba, Canada, you'll meet the human Popsicle: a professor who has dunked himself in ice thirty-nine times in order to understand freezing to death. In Boston, Massachusetts, you'll sit down with the Harvard Medical School expert who specializes in cases of people who are literally scared to death. And in England, a magician-turned-psychology-professor will welcome you to Luck School and show you how to increase your good fortune by 40 percent. Perhaps most surprising of all, in Charlotte, North Carolina, you'll discover the emerging field of posttraumatic growth and the remarkable theory that more people benefit from life's worst events than are shattered by them. The two questions at the heart of this book are these: (1) What does it really take to survive? And (2) What kind of survivor are you? The answers will unfold in two sections. In part 1, I'll investigate the keys to survival in everyday crises ranging from car wrecks to violent crimes. I'll take you inside one of the country's top hospitals to explore who lives and dies in emergency rooms and why, for instance, the ideal age for a brain injury is around sixteen. I'll delve into the psychology of survival and what specific personality traits give you the greatest advantage in beating the odds. I'll explore whether the will to live makes a difference in defeating diseases like breast cancer. And I'll take you on a pilgrimage to a little chapel in the Sangre de Cristo...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Grand Central Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0446580244
• ISBN 13: 9780446580243
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Grand Central Publishing; https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/imprint/grand-central-publishing/; ; 6th Avenue 1290; New York; New York; 10019; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar