Summary of Amanda Ripley's The Unthinkable

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

#1 On Feb. 26, 1993, a terrorist attack took place on the World Trade Center, and Elia Zedeño was in an express elevator carrying a slice of Sbarro’s pizza. She had taken a new temporary worker to the food court to show him around, and they were on their way back to their desks.

#2 The 1993 bombing became a story about terrorism, but it was also a story about procrastination and denial, the first phase of the human disaster experience.

#3 Zedeño, who is from Cuba, came to America with her family in 1971. She worked in the Trade Center for over twenty-one years, and was forty-one years old when 9/11 occurred. She would head up to the cafeteria to get some breakfast, as usual.

#4 The Trade Center did not feel like a cluster of seven buildings, but like a city. Every day, fifty thousand people came to work there, and another two hundred thousand passed through.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669382157

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Insights on Amanda Ripley's The Unthinkable

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

On Feb. 26, 1993, a terrorist attack took place on the World Trade Center, and Elia Zedeño was in an express elevator carrying a slice of Sbarro’s pizza. She had taken a new temporary worker to the food court to show him around, and they were on their way back to their desks.

#2

The 1993 bombing became a story about terrorism, but it was also a story about procrastination and denial, the first phase of the human disaster experience.

#3

Zedeño, who is from Cuba, came to America with her family in 1971. She worked in the Trade Center for over twenty-one years, and was forty-one years old when 9/11 occurred. She would head up to the cafeteria to get some breakfast, as usual.

#4

The Trade Center did not feel like a cluster of seven buildings, but like a city. Every day, fifty thousand people came to work there, and another two hundred thousand passed through.

#5

The author went to the National Fire Academy to find out what firefighters thought about the curious indifference of people in fires. They said that people are often cool during fires, ignoring or delaying their response.

#6

Delaying actions is a classic manifestation of denial. We have a tendency to believe that everything is OK because, well, it almost always has been before. We are slow to recognize exceptions.

#7

The most important finding from the Trade Center evacuation is what did not happen. The attacks took place on the same day as the mayoral election in New York City, which many people had stopped at the polls to vote in and were late to work.

#8

When given the choice, people generally choose to be calm and orderly in a disaster. They don’t tolerate irrational panic behavior.

#9

After the explosion, Zedeño was