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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

  Why would anyone evacuating a
  plane waste precious moments
  retrieving his Sudoku book

I think part of understanding this is replacing "Sudoku book" with "Passport, travel insurance documents, money, and return plane ticket"

Everyone's heard the Kafkaesque stories of people getting stuck living in airports for hundreds of days [1] or having to pay huge sums for hotels and different flights out of their own pockets. Not that I imagine that would happen if you fled a burning plane - but who'd be calm enough to reason that through while their plane was on fire?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_lived_...

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When traveling, I keep those important and valuable belongings (identification, money, life sustaining meds) on my persons either on inside pockets or a holder on a lanyard tucked inside my clothes. The only time I might be separated from them is when going through airport security. Typically I'll hang onto my ID though and carry it through the body scanners (unless they tell me not to).

I do the same: passport, visa, wallet and mobile stay in my jeans' pockets through the flight.

I don’t do this anymore ever since my passport fell out of my pocket onto the airline seat after a long haul. I was able to get it back, but lesson learned: passport goes into my carryon after the secondary visa check before boarding.

Use the sealed pouch ID holder on a lanyard around your neck under your clothes and it won't fall out.

People who don't check their pockets every time they get up blow my mind.

I check them every time I get up...

except for that one time I actually dropped something

The only thing you need is your passport. This is because if you de-plane without it, you have to wait for the authorities to confirm your identity, which can take hours. Which can happen if e.g. your plane overshoots a runway in the mildest case. Money is maybe a close second, followed by a phone.

(edit: parent was edited to include the part about the "the Kafkaesque stories", so this response seems to duplicate things a bit now)

How is it the only thing you'll need though? If you're not wealthy then the loss of some of that stuff can complicate your life.

Such an event will "complicate your life" regardless. When you're poor, that's always an issue, e.g. if/when your car breaks down. Just one reason why being poor sucks. But should you put others at risk? No. The point still stands, there's an immediate need for identification, everything else can be sorted later.

Not really. You don't evacuate airplanes unnecessarily since people get scared, trampled or hurt. So once there is an evacuation you can't treat it like anything else than an actual emergency. At which point no one is expected to have their documents. If it turns out to not be a life treating situation someone will get you your stuff soon enough and otherwise you shouldn't have it anyway.

People don't understand rapidly evolving situations because it is hard to do. They will do whatever they normally do. They will process what is happening in their own frame of reference. Which isn't "smoke inhalation in 30 seconds", but "let's hurry a little bit". I don't necessarily think you should blame people though.

Not to mention life saving medication. I frequently travel with someone who has a kidney transplant. Their medication is always in their carry-on and with them so it doesn't get lost or shipped ahead.

If our plane went down I would definitely be helping them retrieve their carry on as we evacuated the plane because they would die without their medication.

To take the recent example: Medication so rare the Moscow medical system can't provide it in time?

If you don't know the local language, it may be difficult to obtain. The local medical system may also use a different medicine for the same purpose, but that doesn't mean one can simply switch between them.

The person I travel with takes two rounds of their medication in a given day. If they miss the morning round, their joints lock up and are in severe pain. If they miss their evening round, they risk damage to their graft kidney which could turn into rejection. At each round they take controlled substances to relieve pain.

So getting the medication in a timely manner, according to the law, at a price they can afford, and from a doctor that can understand them is a big ask in Moscow in the aftermath of an aviation accident.

If they had to choose between intractable pain, inability to move, destroying the kidney that they got from a cadaver, and risking their death and giving someone an additional 30 seconds to get off a plane then I would wager they would take living. I would tend to agree with them.

How many people are you willing to put at risk for death to save your friend?

Most people would willing to sacrifice some number of people to save the life of family or friends; it's human nature to look out for your own. I bet there's a good "trolley problem" study out there about this if you're curious.

Edit: I don't know if this one covers friends, but it does cover family and romantic partners.

Bleske-Rechek, A., Nelson, L. A., Baker, J. P., Remiker, M. W., & Brandt, S. J. (2010). Evolution and the trolley problem: People save five over one unless the one is young, genetically related, or a romantic partner. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 4(3), 115.

All of them including myself.

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