When Fear Makes Us Superhuman

[n2doc]

Can an extreme response to fear give us strength we would not have under normal circumstances?
By Jeff Wise

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger by Jeff Wise, published on December 8 by Palgrave Macmillan (Scientific American is a Macmillan publication). Extreme Fear explores the neural underpinnings of this powerful and primitive emotion by relating instances in which people were forced to act under duress and presenting the latest findings from cognitive science. In the following passage from the chapter
entitled "Superhuman" a seemingly ordinary man performs an extraordinary feat of strength to rescue a cyclist who has been run over by a car.

Here's how it is: one minute, you're going through your daily routine, only half paying attention. And the next you're sucked into a vivid, intense world, where time seems to move slower, colors are brighter, sounds more perceptible, as though the whole universe has suddenly come into focus.

It was about 8:30 P.M. on a warm summer evening in Tucson. Tom Boyle, Jr., was sitting in the passenger's seat of his pickup truck, his wife Elizabeth at the wheel, waiting to pull out into traffic from the shopping mall where they'd just had dinner. The Camaro ahead of them hit the gas, spun his wheels, and jerked out onto the avenue with a squeal of rubber. "Oh my God," Elizabeth said. "Do you see that?"


more:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=extreme-fear-superhuman

Boyle, it should be pointed out, is no pantywaist. He carries 280 pounds on a six-foot-four-inch frame. But think about this: The heaviest barbell that Boyle ever dead-lifted weighed 700 pounds. The world record is 1,008 pounds. A stock Camaro weighs 3,000 pounds. Even factoring leverage, something extraordinary was going on that night.

[bbinacan]

1. No comparison to what Boyle did but,

in 1987 I was in a head on collision. The driver of the truck I was in got pinned to the seat by the steering column. He was moaning in pain and I jerked the steering column up enough that he could free himself. After he was released from the hospital, he told me "damn, I can't believe you moved that column like you did". I was not a lifter and I am 5'9"/170 lbs.

Excellent article.