I’ve parachuted just once. I hate flying but I hated jumping out of a plane even more; that’s why I’ve only ever done it once. I wouldn’t say I was relaxed but I made sure not to be panicking and to simply keep going over the procedure of the jump in my head. I wasn’t as our instructor – someone who I guessed loved parachuting as he’d made it his profession – going to take the time to “enjoy” it whilst I was up there. My goal was simply to get back to the ground, though not as fast as I could; my hope was that the parachute would take care of the speed of my descent. A lot of my focus and concern was around having to deploy the reserve parachute, in the event that the main one didn’t open properly. Failing to pull the reserve parachute – a “no pull” – accounts for 11% of all parachuting fatalities, and even the most experienced parachutists can forget in the stress and duress of the moment (the main chute not opening) to do what would seem to be the most obvious, and perhaps the only thing i.e., pull the reserve. In 2005 a 31-year-old, with 2,300 recorded jumps, died when their main canopy failed, and they “forgot” to pull their reserve, and they are not alone in the number of experienced jumpers that this happens to. Whilst we might expect a “novice” and/or inexperienced jumper to make such a mistake, getting completely overwhelmed by their experience of falling, it is not something we’d expect from someone with a lot of experience. It is believed that in crisis moments everyone – regardless of experience – will have difficulty pulling information from long-term-memory, where something like pulling the reserve chute in a crisis would be stored. An experienced parachutist who had never had to do this before, and had come to believe that their main canopy will always open, may find themselves in a more panicked state than a novice such as myself who believed there was only a 50/50 chance it would be opened; I had already moved the idea of pulling the reserve shoot into my working memory.

                When I teach people how to deal with social violence in the Pre-Conflict Phase, I try to teach things in a way that brings potential threats and dangers into working memory. Social aggression and violence are the result of social interactions that have gone “bad” e.g., in a normal/ordinary social situation such as queueing, where someone believes you have jumped the line and has become angry by your action – it doesn’t matter whether you actually did or not, it is their perception that results in an angry, potentially violent response. The Pre-Conflict Phase is that phase of an aggressive/potentially violent encounter where you recognize that you are the target of another person’s aggression; with social violence this normally involves some form of verbal aggression, such as shouting, making threats etc. When in this state, I teach people two things:

  1. Step back, and
  2. Put your arms up in a non-aggressive/placating manner

I also teach the associated reasons for this e.g., you step back and control range, so the other person has to make a body movement in order to attack you, and by putting your hands up in front of you, you create a “barrier” between you, to help intercept any attack they may make. There are other reasons for doing these things e.g., stepping back demonstrates from a legal perspective a claim of innocence (you weren’t the aggressor looking to engage/fight), and your attacker has to move forward to put themselves into a space where they could make contact with you, demonstrating “assault” etc. However, part of the idea behind these actions and their associated reasons is to bring into working memory, the reality that you may be attacked. It’s not just engaging in these physical actions that are important, but in “reminding” yourself in the moment why you are doing so, you will be “thinking” of what may happen next e.g., if a punch is thrown at you (the canopy doesn’t deploy), you are more likely to respond with your contingency, such as blocking and moving etc. (pulling your reserve chute). Fortunately, we have an instinctive “trigger” when such attacks happen, such as our startle/flinch reflex being triggered if it is a circular attack, whereas no such natural “trigger” exists when the main chute doesn’t open i.e., the solution to the problem needs to be searched for.          

                The sooner we can accept a situation we can respond to it, and this involves both recognizing the threat and having a solution to it. The strange thing about “no pulls” is that pulling the reserve chute is the only solution to a canopy not opening/working. Whilst an experienced parachutist may have some tricks to make a partially deployed canopy unfurl etc. there comes a point when/where there is only one solution, which is to pull the reserve and yet not everybody does. As well as having difficulty retrieving things from long-term-memory (LTM), and pulling from working memory is less than perfect, we shouldn’t underestimate the other factors that are at play during high stress incidents, one of which is denial i.e., this can’t be happening to me/this sort of thing happens to other people, not me etc. If you are the veteran of 2,300 successful jumps that occurred without incident it might be hard to register what is actually happening and fully understand the seriousness of the incident you are involved in. Whilst you are denying or discounting the situation you are in, you will not be looking for solutions, and if the solution is buried at the “back of your mind” it is unlikely you will retrieve it. Overcoming denial and moving your solutions into your working memory are two things which will improve your survival chances regardless of the threat or danger.