Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

OK, so a smallpox epidemic is not something you want to visualize. How about a dirty bomb? Not so much.

But humor me for just a second. I want to share with you a report that a wise man sent to me earlier today. It came out a while ago, but for some reason I had never heard of it. It’s a really powerful study of the huge disconnect between emergency plans--and people’s real plans. A case study of what happens when emergency plans are not written with the public in mind.

The study found that plans to respond to these emergencies won’t work because people will not react the way planners want them to. In a smallpox outbreak, only 43% of the population said they would follow instructions to go to a public site to be vaccinated. In a dirty bomb explosion, only 59% of the population said they would stay inside the building they were in for as long as officials told them.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Redefining Readiness study found that the public’s reluctance to follow instructions is not due to ignorance, recalcitrance, or panic. Quite the contrary, most people have solid, common-sense reasons for their behavior. Because current plans have been developed without the direct involvement of the public, they don’t account for all of the risks people would face. As a result, the plans make it unnecessarily difficult for many people to decide on the best course of action to protect themselves and their family. Even worse, the plans inadvertently create serious and unnecessary risks for millions of people.

You always have to be cautious when you are looking at polls that ask people what they intend to do...at some distant, unimaginable point in the future. People don’t know for sure until they get there. But I still found the report valuable, and I wish every emergency planner had a copy on his nightstand.

Round and round we go. Any bets on how long until we get to Hurricane Omar? Check out my latest Time.com story about Why Disasters are Getting Worse. (Hint: It’s not because of climate change. Not mostly, anyway.)

Gustav is churning through the Cayman Islands today, just in time for the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It’s already clear that Gustav will be a serious hurricane when it makes landfall on the Gulf Coast late Monday or early Tuesday. Right now, it sure looks like it’s aiming for Louisiana, just like old times--although it could smack down anywhere from the Florida Panhandle to South Texas.

Other than that, Gustav feels a lot different from Katrina so far. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has been in Baton Rouge since Thursday. FEMA has been filling my inbox with eager beaver press releases and teleconference alerts. And Louisiana’s new governor, Bobby Jindal, seems to be in close touch with the locals in New Orleans and the feds in Washington.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is still around (the more things change...), but this time he is saying he will probably call for a mandatory evacuation as early as Saturday morning--which would be a day before he did the same thing in advance of Katrina. This time, there is a plan for evacuating people who don’t have a way out of the city. And the Army Corps of Engineers is saying the city is better protected from flooding than it was three years ago. (But only barely.)

It’s worth remembering, though, that Katrina was only a Category 3 hurricane. And it did not directly hit New Orleans. So even though it may feel like the Gulf Coast has already seen the worst possible scenario, it just ain’t so. Here’s hoping Gustav is a friendly ghost. 

I did a short piece for Time this week on the new book, The Obama Nation, by the guy who co-wrote the 2004 hit job on John Kerry, Unfit for Command. Both books were bestsellers.

I didn’t like it, I think it’s safe to say. Let me know if I was too subtle.

The crash of the Spanair flight in Madrid on Wednesday was exceptionally awful, even within the already grim category of plane crashes. Only 19 of the 172 people on board survived. In most serious plane accidents, the survival rate is higher, and passenger behavior can make a big difference. (The cause of the crash is still unknown.)

In this case, I was particularly struck by the story of one survivor from the crash--a young boy who was rescued by a firefighter. Moments after he was pulled from the fiery wreck, he repeatedly asked the firefighter where his father was--and if what was happening was real. “When will this film end?” he asked.

This is a heartbreaking example of how the brain strives to normalize even the most atrocious of catastrophes. I’ve seen different versions of this behavior in all kinds of disasters from terrorist attacks to shipwrecks.

Our brains work by recognizing patterns; when something happens, we sort through our database of experiences to make sense of it. But in a disaster, the only precedent we have in our heads may be what we have seen in the movie theater. So that is naturally what we think of.

There is something poignant about the way this boy’s mind was coping with the violence he had just experienced; he was wishing hard for the movie to be over.

There is an unexpected irony that comes with publishing a book. You spend years scouring the Earth for stories; then the book comes out, and the stories start coming to you.

All summer, people from all over the world have been sending me unforgettable stories of human behavior in near-death experiences. Some of these stories arrived in private email messages that I can’t share; others are embedded in the comments on this site; and many more are floating in the ether, in blogs, articles and on TV. Check out this TV News segment that aired last night, from an ABC affiliate in Phoenix, AZ. They did a nice job with the book, and they also found a classic story of delay and denial.

What I like most about Tom Vanderbilt’s new book, Traffic, is that it takes us on a tour of our most cherished delusions. We all think we are better drivers than we are (yes, even you); we estimate the odds of our next accident by reflecting on the number of crashes we’ve been in before (not the number of near misses we’ve had); and the safer we feel (in SUVs, say, or on straight roads on clear, dry days), the worse we drive, and the more accidents we have.

It reminds me a lot of how we respond to hurricanes. We overestimate the strength of our homes (even people in trailer homes are confident they can ride out the storm); we base our decisions about whether to evacuate before a hurricane on what happened the last time we were told to evacuate for a totally different storm; and when it comes to “natural” hazards like weather, we are lulled into complacency by the illusion of control (unlike in airplanes, where we worry a lot about risks that are so small they are effectively zero).

Here’s the thing: Nearly 40,000 Americans die every year in car crashes. And a disproportionate number of the dead are young--people who should have their lives stretched out in front of them. Then there are the tens of thousands of other young people who survive accidents, but are maimed for life. So I think of car crashes like one giant, atrocious disaster that happens every year. And, as in other disasters, what matters far more than anything else (but gets the least amount of attention and research funding) is human behavior--not technology or steel or anti-lock brakes.

And there’s a quiz! What’s not to love? I scored horribly, I admit. Really just God awful. I could quibble with quiz-master John Tierney about whether it is really important to know the length of the dashed white lines on the highway...but the fact remains that I didn’t even have the right number of digits.

Check it out. Let me know how you did. Help me restore my delusional belief that I know all about driving. Thanks. 

Here’s my latest TIME article about the new developments in the anthrax case. The FBI has released a slew of documents related to the case. And they make a compelling case for why Bruce Ivins was a suspect in the attacks.

But just as revealing as the documents are what the FBI did not release. We still do not know any details of the mysterious and fantastic new science that the government says it used to link the anthrax used in the attacks to anthrax used by Ivins. We do not know what their search of his cars, home and other property (in November 2007) turned up. We do not know if he had a convincing alibi on the days the anthrax letters were mailed.

Once again, we have a rash of anonymous federal sources leaking information about these crucial questions, but not nearly enough straight-up transparency from the Justice Department.

I really wish we could have a trial in this case. Unlike many crimes, this one has enormous implications--for the many victims of these attacks, for counterterrorism policy in America, for deterring future bioterrorism attacks. But since Ivins committed suicide, our options for getting the truth are limited. Congressional hearings are a sure thing; an independent investigation would be better.