What It Takes To Survive

A decade earlier, she had battled the disease on the other side. But this was a brand-new malignancy and not a recurrence of the old tumor, which has lower survival rates. This was like starting from square one, a brand-new battle. Klor felt so lucky that she let out a whoop when the doctor informed her that only one lymph node was implicated and the disease was contained.

The knitting needle through her heart had actually saved her life, her doctors said. If she hadn't gone to the ER—if she hadn't been screened with all those machines—the tumor probably wouldn't have been detected until it had grown and spread. Klor believes she's one of the luckiest people in the world. I didn't die from the knitting needle, she remembers thinking, So I'm not going to die from cancer.

Klor spent most of the year undergoing surgery, chemo and radiation. On every single trip to the doctor, she was accompanied by family or friends. During that time, she also managed to finish a quilt, knit shrugs, scarves and shawls, and watch her daughter grow up fast. Klor suffered plenty from the treatments, but she also discovered something she didn't know about herself. She had always struggled with a sensitive nature; at times, she had been vulnerable to depression. Physically, she wasn't very tough either. "I really have surprised myself," she says about her experience, adding, "I didn't think I had this kind of strength."

The blunt reality of survival is this: too many people perish when they shouldn't. They morph into marble instead of taking decisive action. Exploring this phenomenon is the main focus of Dr. John Leach, one of the world's leading experts on survival psychology. He has lived for more than 20 years in England's Lake District, where he teaches an advanced course in survival psychology at Lancaster University.

In November 1987, Leach was changing trains one night in London at the King's Cross Underground station, a sprawling hub that throbs with more than 30,000 passengers during rush hour. He noticed the "thickest, greasiest, most cloying smoke I've ever seen." At first, it didn't make sense. There were no flames—just acrid smoke like the kind that belches from a ship's funnel. Almost without thinking, he found his way up to ground level and hurried to the exit.

Today, more than 21 years later, most of the memories have faded, but Leach can still smell the foul smoke and hear the wail of a uniformed railway worker: "There are people dying down there." For some inexplicable reason, as the fire spread, trains kept on arriving in the station. Meanwhile, aboveground, officials unwittingly directed passengers onto escalators that carried them straight into the flames. Many commuters followed their routines despite the smoke and fire. They marched right into the disaster, almost oblivious to the crush of people trying to escape—some actually in flames. Thirty-one people perished in the King's Cross fire, and incredibly, the Underground staff never sprayed a single fire extinguisher or spilled a drop of water on the fire.

Leach has a name for this syndrome. It's called the "incredulity response." People simply don't believe what they're seeing. So they go about their business, engaging in what's known as "normalcy bias." They act as if everything is OK and underestimate the seriousness of danger. Some experts call this "analysis paralysis." People lose their ability to make decisions.