No Mercy True Stories of Disaster Survival and Brutality

No Mercy : True Stories of Disaster, Survival and Brutality
ISBN: 9781922147240
Publication Date: 24 July 2013

Disaster strikes. A ship goes down, a plane crashes, a party of travellers is cut off.

But when the panic and confusion subside and the dead are counted, the survivors must find a way to keep surviving. And in desperation, unconstrained by law or conventional authority, the tactics they resort to can be both horrifying and ultimately self-destructive.

Learmonth and Tabakoff outline the physical and neurological changes that typically affect the victims of disaster. Then, using true stories from history as case studies, they investigate the scenario famously imagined by William Golding in Lord of the Flies and borne out by the extraordinary Robbers Cave experiments of the 1950s.

As this fascinating book unfolds the awful truth becomes clear. In extremity, humans are capable of a descent into murderous savagery so swift and complete it could-literally-take your breath away.

Read Caroline Baum's Review

There is something irresistibly compelling in the darkest stories of human behaviour, something necessary about facing the worst we are capable of, no matter how savage.

Using William Golding's classic, The Lord of the Flies, in which a utopia soon turns dystopic, this fascinating study of human nature poses the question: what happens in real life scenarios of extremes Does humanity degenerate into social implosion as Golding would have us believe How does the process begin and what causes survivors to abandon altruism in favour of ruthlessness

Bringing together historical examples of terrible shipwrecks and other calamities, the authors analyse each case in the light of current psychology. Well researched and well argued, lively and energetic, No Mercy is full of insights into leadership, loyalty,...