Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

The crash of the Continental Boeing 737 in Denver on Saturday was classic, if you can say that about a plane crash. It was a case study in how plane crashes actually happen—not how we imagine they happen.

We tend to assume that if your plane crashes, you’re doomed. The plane will plummet from the air in a terrifying free fall, and there is not a thing we can do but be very, very afraid. In fact, in most plane crashes, the accident happens during take off or landing (take off in this case) and the plane ends up on the ground and on fire. Then everything depends on the passengers and crew getting off quickly.

By all accounts, this was a hell of a fire. The survivors reported that overhead bins were liquifying in front of their eyes. But by the time the firefighters got on board, all the passengers were already gone. As Mike Benton of the Denver Fire Department told a local ABC reporter: “I took a little pause before went on plane and braced myself for what I was going to see. And I was overjoyed when [I] walked in and there was nobody on the plane. It was like an abandoned plane.”

We don’t know yet what happened on board Continental flight, but there are early reports that the flight attendants blocked passengers from trying to exit on the side of the plane that was on fire and directed them to safer exit doors. Most flight attendants are now trained to shriek at passengers to “Get out! Get off the plane now!”—which tends to be very effective. There is also this report from a passenger who posted a string of messages to his Twitter account shortly after getting off the plane: “Whoever was on the left side exit row, God bless him, was johnny on the spot and instantly had the door open.” An excellent reminder that leg room is never free: People who sit in the exit row have a responsibility to pay attention to the safety briefing and to visually rehearse opening the door. It’s actually no small feat to get that thing open under stress.

As in most crashes, some passengers also slowed down the evacuation, according to early reports, by taking the time to try to get their overhead bags (a very common reaction that usually has more to do with how the brain works under stress and less to do with a craven desire to save one’s laptop). But in the end, all 110 passengers and crew members survived (58 people were injured).

I am endlessly fascinated by the science of crowds. Why do some crowds remain orderly and safe, while other, equally large and rowdy crowds become deadly? The death of a security guard working at Wal-Mart on Black Friday was a reminder of the importance of physics—and fairness. Check out my latest Time.com story on how to prevent a crowd crush.

Thanks to Dr. G. Keith Still, my go-to guy on the science of crowds.

Amidst all the horror seeping out of Mumbai, I was struck by the behavior of the hotel employees—the stories of cooks, bell boys and waiters risking their lives and in some cases dying to help keep the guests safe. I have seen this same behavior in other disasters—most notably the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, which I wrote about in detail in the book. But each time, it strikes me as surprising all over again.

Here is an excerpt from a New York Times story about the heroes of Mumbai:

As the city faced one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in the nation’s history, many ordinary citizens…displayed extraordinary grace….[At] the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, a sous chef named Nitin Minocha and his co-workers shepherded more than 200 restaurant diners into a warren of private club rooms called The Chambers. For the rest of the night they prepared snacks, served soda, fetched cigarettes and then, when told it was safe, tried to escort the diners out through the back. They wanted to make sure their guests, many of them Mumbai’s super-elite, were as comfortable as possible. “The only thing was to protect the guests,” said the executive chef, Hemant Oberoi. “I think my team did a wonderful job in doing that. We lost some lives in doing that.”

In catastrophes, human beings tend to hold fast to the roles they held before anything went wrong. Hotel guests, like airplane passengers, tend to play the part of the passive, obedient victims. Employees—even ones earning poverty level wages—tend to feel a profound sense of responsiblity for the guests they were serving cocktails to just moments before. A study of the Beverly Hill Supper Club fire found that about 60% of the employees tried to help in some way—either by directing the guests to safety or fighting the fire. By comparison, only 17% of the guests helped. People were remarkably loyal to their identities, and so it was in Mumbai.

These stories are important, because they remind us of our humanity just when we are close to losing faith. But these stories are also lessons about what could be, about latent defenses we don’t know we have—and don’t cultivate the way we might. Imagine, just for kicks, if our culture pushed everyone to have an identity as someone who helped, who took action in the face of terror and confusion, who was responsible for the safety of others. Imagine how crowded the trenches would be.

Of all the jobs I wouldn’t want in the new administration, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is up near the top. An agency set up to fail, that did fail, and is now, um, trying not to fail anymore. Check out my brief introduction to Gov. Napolitano, the new Secretary, on Time.com.

For me, doing this TIME story on DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee was a revelation. I knew our schools were troubled, but I hadn’t realized the compounded effects of all that mediocrity. I hadn’t known that a child who has three bad teachers for three years in a row really never recovers. I had not realized that the difference in test scores between white and minority kids goes away—totally vanishes—if they both have effective teachers for a few years.

Once I understood that, I started to feel the same urgency Rhee and a lot of teachers and principals feel. I remember walking through an elementary school in DC with her, smiling down at the kids in their crisp school uniforms, and feeling the weight of every minute that ticked by without any learning happening. Until I spent time talking to kids—in their classrooms, in their homes, in front of their schools—I never appreciated just how much of our children’s time we waste. Nobody understands the problems of a school system as well as the students who are in it.

Rhee herself could be a little frightening, depending on her mood. She has a level of confidence—some might say arrogance—that is surprising. Most women—even women in power—want on some level to be liked. Not Rhee. I kind of admire that about her, even as I wonder whether it will ultimately be her undoing. As I told a friend of mine after finishing up a day with Rhee: I wouldn’t want to work for Michelle Rhee. But I’d like her to be my kid’s superintendent.

I gave a speech at the State Department yesterday, and as always happens at these things, I came away much the wiser. In fact, I am starting to think that the main reason to do these speeches is the selfish one: because at the end, I just stand there sipping from a bottle of water and people walk up to tell me wondrous, strange, fascinating stories.

Anyway, after this speech for the Overseas Security Advisory Council, a man came up to me and told me about Jeff Cooper’s Colors. I neglected to ask if I could use his name here, so I thank him anonymously. But I’d like to share what he told me.

Lt. Col. Cooper was a writer, a historian and a master gunslinger. His Color Code was essentially a theory about how your mental state of readiness affects your ability to respond to a threat. I wish I’d known about his Color Code before I finished The Unthinkable, because we were both saying the same thing in different ways.

One of the things I found again and again, in all kinds of disasters from plane crashes to car wrecks, is that people are extremely likely to freeze up and do nothing. Cooper’s theory is that your mental state just before the crisis determines whether you will shut down or respond more appropriately.

The four colors are White, Yellow, Orange and Red. If something goes horribly wrong when you are in the White state, you will fail, Cooper wrote. White is a state of relaxation and complacency. Yellow is the ideal—a state of relaxed awareness, when you are not conscious of any particular threat but you are conscious of the horizon, of what is happening around you and of the possibility that anything could happen at any time. Orange is when you are acutely aware that something is wrong, and Red is when you are in the thick of it.

I love this idea. I would, with apologies to Cooper, who died two years ago, like to extend this idea beyond gunfighting to all kinds of trauma and conflict. We should all aspire to be in the Yellow Zone: a place of equanimity and readiness, where we are aware but not anxious; engaged but not frightened; informed of the range of possible threats and our own ability to prevent, respond and recover from loss and change, but not consumed by hypotheticals. Imagine that.

Once again, California is proving itself way ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to disaster resilience. Check out my Time.com story on the Great Shakeout here.

Exciting news! The Unthinkable has been chosen by Hudson Booksellers as one of the best books published in 2008.

Honestly, it is just a ridiculous thrill to be on any list with the 8 other nonfiction books Hudson selected. Check it: The Animal Dialogues by Craig Childs, Hot, Flat & Crowded by Thomas Friedman, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ by Hooman Majd, Out of Mao’s Shadow by Philip P. Pan, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, The Way of the World by Ron Suskind, and The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria. See what I’m saying?

Also a shout out to my colleague and friend at Time, Jeff Kluger, whose smart, fabulous book, Simplexity, was chosen in the business category. You should now be able to find both our books at Hudson’s 400 newsstands in airports and train stations around the country.