This is the 2nd in a series of 4 articles that will discuss your ancient inbuilt survival responses. In the last article, we discussed about the Self Defense Response. In this article, let us tackle the Paralysis Response.

Paralysis Response Acting in Your Favour

You have an in-built paralysis mechanism that causes you to freeze during extreme fear.

Why would you freeze during extreme fear?

This again is an adaptive behaviour from evolution. Predator animals have a better chance of passing on their genes if they avoid eating sick or rotten prey. One way for a predator animal to identify rotten prey is if it does not struggle when attacked. Prey animals (humans included) use this to their advantage by freezing during an attack by a predator. It is totally involuntary and out of our controls. The higher the degree of fear, the deeper the extent of the paralysis.

David Livingston related in his autobiography about a hunting trip to Africa in the mid 1800s. He fired at a lion and hit him. As he was reloading his gun, the lion lunged at him, clenching his shoulder and knocking him down. Mouth firmly into his shoulder, the lion shook him like a cat would shake a mouse.

Livingstone when relating this terrifying experience said that he was overcome by a sense of dreaminess. There was no pain or terror even though he was conscious in the jaws of the ferocious lion. The paralysis response released a dose of chemicals in the body that numbed it of sensation. Had Livingston put up a fight instead of playing dead, the big cat would have mauled him up! The other hunters came a few seconds later to kill the big cat.

Paralysis Response Acting Against You

While the paralysis mechanism served our prehistoric ancestors well, it does not bode well in modern times. A deer freezes in the headlights of a car and gets killed. The paralysis mechanism was built to confront a predator animal like a lion and not an oncoming vehicle at high speeds.

Now lets look at how the paralysis response worked against the passengers of the MV Estonia when it sank 1t 130 am on Sept 28, 1994. I will not go into the details of one of the worst maritime disasters in history but do go to the wikipedia link to find out more about this horrific disaster.

The ship was equipped with the required number of life jackets and life boats and yet 852 of the 989 people perished that night. The survivors account of how passengers behaved while the ship was sinking was puzzling. Whole groups of people were immobilized. Survivors saw passengers standing like statues, just as a deer would freeze in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

One survivor saw 10 people lying on the deck. He threw them life jackets but they did nothing. It was absolutely astonishing to see them lie still while water started rising. Some of the survivors recollected their own experience of overwhelming urge to stop moving. They had to resist getting into the stupor.

At 150am, the MV Estonia sank upside down into the icy Baltic sea, entombing 852 people in the watery grave.

In 1977 two Boeing 747 airliners collided on the runway of Los Rodeos Airport (now known as Tenerife North Airport) on the Spanish island of Tenerife, resulting in the deaths of 583 people, making it the worst accident in aviation history. There is a fascinating write-up on wikipedia for all those interested to find out more about this tragedy.

In an aircraft crash (assuming that there are survivors after impact), survivors only have minutes to clear the aricraft. Apparently most of the deaths were attributed to passengers going into a form of paralysis and confusion after the crash.

One would encounter a similar freezing response when faced with a mugger or other crimes. The memory is completely blanked off. It is no wonder that key witnesses are so confused soon after and can hardly give concrete evidence and descriptions of the events there after. Its also another reason why rape victims are so paralyzed and unable to fight back. Have you ever been in an automobile accident? Can you recall the state of shock/paralysis after the accident?

So there you have it! The paralysis response in action. What was an invaluable survival response for our prehistoric ancestors has become a tremendous liability in this ultra modern world. The genetic programming was not designed to deal with aircraft crashes, ship sinking, mugging, rapes, etc.

Our brains have increased tremendously in efficiency and capability. But the survival response programming has remained the same for millions of years. Imagine running the early DOS system on the ultra modern dual-core pentium processor, if you know what I mean!