When 'Unthinkable' Catastrophe Hits, Who Survives?

In her new book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — and Why, journalist Amanda Ripley searches for patterns in human behavior in response to emergency situations.

"The more I learned," Ripley writes, "the more I wondered how much of our survival behaviors — and misbehaviors — could be explained by evolution. After all, we evolved to escape predators, not buildings that reach a quarter mile into the sky."

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