Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

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.