Are you Still Alive? | A Fourth Examination of Death
Celebrating gregoryvig's 50th Post With the "Pink Tape!" An Examination of Death Through Music, Wildfire Experiences, and Managing it in Operations. NoiseBox Publications.
Author’s Note: This is the second post in a series focused on emergency response operations known as the “Cassette Series,” with an overarching goal still being considered. It is a rare post, with the unusual and limited use of voice, drawing from only a few academic sources, past experiences, and observations centered around death. It is prefaced by two other posts and the conclusion of a conference lecture exploring death. This is the most in-depth examination of the topic to date. This post may or may not become part of any larger goal, such as a book, but exploring the subject and seeing where it went was worthwhile. This blog has a broad focus, and death is included. To be clear, the Cassette Series and some older works are focused on chapter-length posts that provide more exploration than the traditional shorter read post.
Concepts have already been studied in this blog, and new ones will be applied to discuss emergency response operations. “Emergency” is not reserved for fields with lights and sirens responding to medical traumas, wildfire crews working to prevent forest fires from spreading, or search and rescue efforts. It applies to any field where an emergency can occur, meaning a situation where values are at risk; there is limited time to act to protect these values, and there are one or more hazards that add risk and often complexity to the response operations to protect them." Morin (1987) writes that when it comes to the word crisis, “Using the term merely allows one to say that something is wrong” (p.231). This definition is also applicable to emergencies.
The aesthetic of this series is essential. Music-related imagery, particularly the cassette tape, will be prominent here. It exemplifies a specific link the author understands between music and writing and an appreciation for old and new cassette culture. Lastly, this series sincerely recognizes the value and mystery one person can create through limited instruments, including a microphone, a synthesizer, a few effects, and a tape deck, equivalent to one person, a computer, and a couple of shelves of books—greg@gregoryig.com for contact. Use only with permission.
Side A:
Introduction
A Culture of Death
Drawing Death Near
Deep Chaos and Death
Assignments
Side B:
Legitimacy of Death
Denial of Death
Conclusion
Introduction
Write a letter, a paper, a poem, a song, tell a story, or have a long conversation. Now, do it again with death in the front of your mind. Once completed, compare and contrast with the original.
This Blog has previously touched on death in The Designer, the Designed, Limits, and Emergency Management, A Strange Post About Death in Emergency Management, and one of the author’s conference lectures. The motivation for writing on death related to emergency response operations may be questioned. However, there appear to be any number of valuable ways to approach death in different relational domains, moods, emotions, and new language. Following the fourth examination of death, there will likely be additional posts as the topic continues to offer openings. However unpopular and infrequent, death is part of emergency response operations. The motivation for writing another post about death has nothing to do with edge, shock, or being unique. Instead, this post is devoted to understanding death and how response resources relate to it. As it is used here, the term “resources” refers to, at least, equipment, crews, and teams of people, aviation, and single individuals. The individuals belonging to resources are known as “responders.” Different ways of relating to death are consequential to safety, understanding the potential outcomes of operations and hazard events, managing response resources, and gaining situational awareness. Death has been used in past posts to discuss the finite ends of processes, careers, strategies, interventions, and the continual reestablishment of organizational identity and function.
A detailed and intentional examination of death in emergency response operations follows. There is no gore, horror, or detailed images of death, but death itself is frequently implied. There is no obligation to read it.
A Culture of Death
Beginning with a broader cultural perspective on death from the angle of music with roots in cassette culture provides a backdrop for the discussion of handling death in emergency response operations. There has been and likely still is a culture heavily interested in death perpetuated by music. This is not in the sense of pentagrams spread across album art, which are joined by images of general sickness and depravity associated with the more extreme death metal genres. It is another type of music inspiring a culture of death that is more sophisticated and subtle, relying on the theme of death folded into music without lyrics penetrating the soundwaves. In this context, death has been described perversely as a beautiful woman in pretty, stylish clothing who brings death to individuals who are happily awaiting her arrival with laughter and a smile. Surrounding themes include pain, darkness, sickness, love, sleep, and a rejection of society. Death can be brought closer by self-killing, more popularly known as suicide. Awaiting death’s arrival or taking matters into one’s own hands has been brightly and romantically distinguished and fetishized in the darker corners of the world. These notions occasionally see a thin ray of light of popularity. Death is no longer exclusively thought of as something to avoid for as long as possible or a painful end. In an inconceivably small portion of the population, it is also perceived as an ultimate ending warmly welcomed and met with expressions of happiness and joy. Within the scope of the music, self-killing is thought of as a cessation of suffering and finally taking control over one’s bodyhood. The music gives the general sense that the death referred to here is not one where there is reincarnation or an afterlife; there is, instead, a disappearance, a complete fade to black. The promise of slipping into the void provokes a smile on the soon-to-be deceased’s face and accompanying feelings of happiness and an anticipated release from pain. Thank you, beautiful woman.
Themes of death are prominent, if not at times outright explicit, in this extreme and avant-garde music involving, at a bare minimum, synthesizers, effects, samples from movies or interviews, a mixer, a tape deck (now digital recording, as well), and a microphone. Early on, albums were recorded in homes, sometimes in one day, done quickly and in the moment, and entirely improvised. Initially, artists subverted the music industry and its recording studios, record labels, vinyl, cassette tape, and CD manufacturers, making underground, homemade music controlled by the artist and affordably distributed through tapes. The simplicity with which this overwhelmingly dark music is created and issued, sometimes up to five releases a year or more, is an inspiring story to any artist, regardless of medium. It also speaks to the importance of gray or industry literature and sharing the results of an initiative broadly while circumventing academic journals that often gatekeep critical information or slowly publish it. There is vitality in the homegrown and the underground.
Death dominates the album title and album artwork in this obscure and nearly entirely dismissed assemblage of genres. Lyrics, generally unprovided, are inaudibly shouted, screamed, and screeched across tracks with abysmal names. Although lyrics are rare, understandable vocals are even more so. The theme of death is instead conveyed through sinister, brutal, shocking sounds, including ambient noise, synthesizer outputs, effects, and samples, looping, climbing, dropping, shearing, chaotically ricocheting, spinning, and obtrusively exploding onto each track. Some tracks are dominated by enduring or intermittent walls of noise and static, like that found by accidentally tuning to A.M. radio. Tracks may also use various undulating hums, squelch, high-pitched noises, shaking, vibrations, whirring bass, and play with unpredictability. The music is widely variable and evades any limitation of what a listener might think it cannot do. There are scattered instances where something at a distance from deserving of the term “pattern” can be found in the music, which is neither healthy nor friendly. Within the sounds is a constant reminder of death’s shadowy, looming presence, maybe not nearby, but out there somewhere, and there is no safety.
The collection of menacing sounds has been described as the product of unwanted negative energy passing through the artist's bodyhood and being transferred into the cassette. It can be imagined this contorted the artist’s bodyhood as they relentlessly sought new sounds, moving back and forth across their equipment with fervor, sweat dripping from their brow and nose. From this music, it is apparent that fixations and fascinations are expressed through the artist through flows of negative and positive energy. What was begging to be released becomes harsh, aggressive, and painfully wandering music from a simple array of instruments. Occasionally, an obtrusive, distorted, and hopeless voice cuts through. This process's first and evident boundaries are technical and lie with the equipment’s capacities. However, the actual limitations are what the artist can imagine: what they can pull from the dark recesses of their brain and transform into sound. The resultant albums contain an unnerving A Side and B Side rife with sounds provoking feelings of death, darkness, and discomfort.
To be edgy or otherwise, current releases and music resurfacing from forty years ago inspire the emergence of a related culture of death. Tapes are still traded, limited releases are made available, and individuals continue to make music in their homes, sometimes in tribute to those who have passed on. Regardless of how far in the margins, there is still a distributed culture of death driven by music with varying levels of associations ranging from interest to affection to obsession. We do not all have the same brain. Even archaic tapes drive the culture forward as they are uploaded to media and music sites, celebrated for their timelessness. However obscure and off-putting this all is, it is not without relevance to emergency response operations. While the fetishization of death is far too extreme, emergency response operations resources might still think about what their relationship with death is and what it means. An extreme version has been articulated in the above. Whatever one’s dynamic manner of relating to death is, ideas of safety are on the other side.
What possible benefit could there be for bringing the discussion of a culture of death perpetuated by niche and generally appalling music into an emergency response operations context? The value of doing so is found in revealing a particular culture where death is not repulsive but, in some instances, admired. Strange and far from the norm of emergency response operations, this culture, at a minimum, signifies the possibility of bringing death into the culture where it may be of value.
Drawing Death Near
Drawing from experience, the possibility of death while fighting forest fires was something I generally perceived as being at a distance from myself and the rest of the crews I worked on. Close calls had occurred, but training and conditioning had become autonomic, and the right movements were consistently made. From the perspective of a much younger person, death falsely appeared as an outcome experienced by other firefighters but would not intrude upon us. Death did not appear to be a problem for the crews I was a member of due to the measures taken to mitigate risks and the management’s decades of experience informing their decision-making about the present and future. I recently had the privilege of helping a friend prepare for their first upcoming wildfire season. At their University, they had previously studied the Yarnell Hill Fire, where 19 wildland firefighters lost their lives. We discussed fire shelters one day, and I mentioned I could not recall ever thinking about the one I carried. I knew I had one, but beyond that, it did not enter my mind even though I took the annual fire shelter deployment simulation seriously. As I recall, this relationship with my fire shelter seemed out of place to her. In practice, part of the commonly used phrase “twenty firefighters out into the field and twenty back” involves avoiding any situation where a fire shelter deployment may be necessary. My friend had courses in wildfire that included fieldwork provided by their university. Through the experience of this education and time practicing in the field, they arrived at a different conclusion regarding the fire shelter and how it is attended to than I had discovered in practice, which may be of value. To their benefit, they may have also started building the foundation of a different sense of wildfire suppression safety than I had had.
It was not until the year after the Yarnell Hill Fire tragedy that the idea of death was drawn near. I cannot recall if death had been so explicitly discussed before as it was at that moment. Death was made present. I was rightly asked for the contact information to gain direct access to my dental records and a phone tree if I could not use one. In this moment, the realness, the closeness, and the possibility of death had never felt more present. The dental records were requested in preparation for identifying my body, my corpse, in the event of death. Death’s presence was enriched by visiting with survivors from an older fatality fire and walking the ground where they made it out alive. These experiences were indispensable to the development of the crew and on an individual firefighter level. Additional “slides,” as they are called, were gained from listening to the survivors speak. I was visiting the hallowed ground and gaining insight from those who survived the wildfire. I provided access to dental records, a phone tree, and funeral information, including details such as pallbearers, all involving death. They were undoubtedly all the right moves to make. However, death felt a little closer periodically throughout the season.
Deep Chaos and Death
A few months ago, a longer post on this Blog, Chaos in Emergency Management and the Proposal of a Terminal Domain, presented different chaotic domains in a linear sequence that an organization could pass through. As the organization progressed down through the domains, the consequences became more severe until they fell into deep chaos through a chasm adjacent to the edge of a cliff, similar to the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland. In deep chaos, organizations cease to exist. If one set of conditions existed, an organizational element would eventually materialize out of the shadows. The newly found element would help the former members of the fallen organization escape the despair of deep chaos. If another set of conditions prevailed, after descending into deep chaos and losing their organization, no organizational element would materialize to aid their escape from the domain. Instead, those belonging to organizations that meet these conditions would need to seek refuge with those eventually presented with a means to escape. Deep chaos is the last chaotic domain. It is presented as the most severe in experience and inoperability and a bookend to chaos theory, an excellent means for studying systems.
Deep chaos is a great cavern carved out of uneven black rock that response resources (systems in the original post) experience as an expansive grand hall. However, the room's darkness swallows any light, so it is impossible to tell how vast it is and what exists. Response resources, even small groups of a few responders, may be moving at velocity toward deep chaos. In deep chaos, there is no loss of life, just organization. Suppose an organization is not just chaotic but has also taken on so much risk that it has transitioned to a severe threat of death and is now irreversibly intending towards demise. The action taken by the response resources, communications, and changes in the hazard profile where work was being performed may have sealed the resource’s fate.
While not part of the original conception of deep chaos, there is one dynamic, one move, past deep chaos that was brought into being after publishing the initial post but not included. It may involve extremely chaotic behavior, but pure chaos is not what condemns a response resource to death. Chaos can be an antecedent to death. However, when the amount of risk overwhelms the ability of the chaotic resource to manage it and maintain safety during their operations, the threat of death appears. The threat grows unabated until conditions improve inside or outside the response resource, or both. Whether chaos has been involved or not, the threat of death increases until the threat transitions to an act of death, and then there is death. Death may affect the responder or responders who are most exposed. If those involved had become chaotic before their demise, they would have rushed past the chasm of deep chaos, launched off the cliffs with force, and met the rocks and freezing sea below.
The possibility and probability of death in emergency response operations are not a popular subject. So why write about them? Because death is an ineradicable part of emergency response operations. Each involved field should take the time to determine and shape its relationship with death. Tragic responder death is prevalent in fields such as wildland fire, where the hazard is actively engaged. Wildfire suppression is a job where resources often operate in the “gray” where risk is mitigated to the degree possible. However, significant risk may still exist even though its probability of being actualized is low. In contrast, subsiding on little to no sleep, pizza, hamburgers, Swedish Fish, and coffee while the office handles the emergency of fixing a product. While different, this emergency has its risk profile, values at risk, hazards, and involvement with death. Albeit slower and less dramatic, those who work within the confines of an office also experience emergencies, as discussed in the author’s note. One does not need to be adjacent to a forest fire to experience an emergency.
Assignments
It is attractive to focus on responders carrying out the operations. Still, emergency response operations also involve middle management, Incident Management Teams, Emergency Operations Centers, and considerable support. At the top of the Incident Command System resides the Incident Commander, who works with the remainder of the Incident Command Team, local administrators, and intelligence from middle management from responding resources to make decisions. These decisions determine what action the response resources will take. At incident-wide briefings, response resources can share information with middle management and discuss how to complete objectives. The Incident Management Team has a keen and enduring awareness that their decisions may place others where the possibility and probability of undesirable outcomes will vary but can always quickly increase exponentially due to aleatory events. There is no way to relate or feel the way the Incident Management Team does when they send response resources to the incident to follow a plan they wrote. The locus of responsibility felt by Incident Management Teams for what happens to each responder is undoubtedly staggering.
In a dynamic and hazardous environment, the threat of death is constantly changing and being mitigated. Incident Management Teams do not confront the nagging feeling of the threat of death, the experience of it rising, mitigating the approaching fog of death, and, in some extreme cases, even evading death. However, experienced Incident Management Teams have worked alongside the threat of death on the ground while earning the qualifications required for their current position. The engagement with death or situations with traces and tendencies of death may be reported to middle management, for example, directly to the Division Supervisor, who may then communicate these conditions upward. An encounter with death expressed through narrative is not the equivalent of an encounter with death. Unquestionably, any decision-maker, including Task Force, Strike Team, Division, and Incident Management Teams, will viscerally feel the loss of life resulting from the materializations of their decisions. Again, there is no way to relate to this situation and its enduring memories and emotions, and it would be irresponsible to think there is. Indeed, death casts a heavy burden.
Strategy, tactics, and set of ordered objectives can meet their death as the environment and its hazards shift drastically; a product is no longer wanted or can be developed, resources are depleted, or in any other way, significant change occurs. As the incident slips through the fingers of those responding to it, there is, in a sense, death. There is death to plans and their components, death to anticipated outcomes, death to parameters, and death to time. An earlier post examined design, death, emergency planning, and the fatal consequences of the blameless inability to plan for all scenarios. A lack of coherence and cohesiveness permeates the room, forest, or flooding city. The incident just landed on Mars.
Legitimacy of Death
As the discussion unfolds, it is essential to remember that in both domains, the primary goal is and will always remain resource safety. One extreme end of relating to death is the relational domain, where it is recognized that death is as legitimate as resources responding to an incident (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008). From the perspective of this domain, death is supposed to be there; it is part of emergency response operations. It becomes more of a matter of living with it safely than treating it illegitimately. In this way, death arises in coexistence with responders. When seeking coexistence, it is essential to ask questions. For example, “There is an increased threat of death over there, which interferes with completing objectives; what steps can be taken so that the resource and the threat of death can coexist in the same area without issue?” The acceptance of death as an event that first appears as the threat of death has an equal right to be present during emergency operations as responders do, and its threat can never be fully managed. This is not to say death is perceived as a gorgeous woman in a dress awaited with laughter and smiles, nor is it seen with affection. Instead, death is related to as a legitimate, appreciated, and respected part of emergency response operations that arises alongside the actions of resources. The acceptance of death does not indicate a surrender to it or readiness to die; it only signifies that death in the form of a threat and potentially an event if the threat rises high enough are accepted as possible outcomes of emergency response operations. Establishing a healthy relationship with death in this relational domain is critical. It begins by recognizing that death’s dynamic threat is inextricably linked to the operations carried out by resources, the amount of risk, exposure, and vulnerability they generate, and resource interactions with a hazardous environment. Death related to as legitimate opens a more significant space of awareness and understanding of demise that can become a valuable part of managing risk, hazards, and response resources. It becomes a critical part of managing operations if its threat steadily rises or appears impending. In this domain, death’s threat is not denied and is never seen as entirely eradicated. Crucial to understanding the relationship between risk and the threat of death is how risk management can quickly transition into being the threat of death management.
The possibility and probability of the threat of death being proportionate to the operations undertaken by resources have been established. As resources engage in riskier emergency operations in a more hazardous environment, they may progress toward the threat of death if the risk cannot be mitigated. The gradient of risk eventually transitions into the gradient of the threat of death. Once resources are exposed to the threat of death, it would be a misstep not to see death’s threat as legitimate in coexistence with the risk-producing behaviors of responders coupled with the environment. As the incident expands, it becomes more complex, and hazardous conditions may increase and become more severe, raising the threat of death as resources interact with them. The incident's expansion and growing hazards or threat of death are also seen as legitimate and in coexistence with resources. The incident has the right to become more significant, hazardous, and deadly. In the same way, the efforts of resources to reduce hazards along their site of work and contain an incident are also seen as legitimate and in coexistence with the emerging incident. This relational domain's principle of coexistence makes obvious a back-and-forth between resources and the environment in connection with risk or threat of death management. Neither is denied, so both remain legitimate.
Even in light of the above, death's presence is accepted as legitimate. It is not viewed as detached from the activity of resources and the environment but rather tightly coupled with both. An operation may be almost entirely successful in mitigating risk and keeping responders safe by recognizing and abating death’s threat alongside resources. Death is not denied but accepted. In some situations, the threat of death can be minimized, barring random and chance events that may cause death, such as vehicle accidents, power lines falling or snapping, trees falling, being overrun by fire, explosions, helicopter crashes, and structure collapse. An acceptance of death’s legitimacy and its coexistence with resources on the ground brings with it acute senses and a broader, anticipatory understanding of where and how death may drift or suddenly appear as a minor, medium, or severe threat (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008).
In the domain of death as legitimate, the resource-level briefings on the incident ground fully disclose the environmental and operational hazards, the risk the operation generates initially, the changing risk profile throughout the day, and the potential for the threat of death and related mechanisms. Response resources may be carrying out a high-priority operation while gradually taking on increasing levels of risk. At a certain point, the accumulation of risk factors approaches the outer boundary of what can be contained by descriptions of risk, and a minor threat of death appears. Similar to the manner of relating to death found in the next section, managers and responders may be committed to completing the operation. To do so, they may devise new temporary tactics and mitigation strategies to hold death at arm’s length, reduce its threat, and create enough space and time to complete the operation. However, if death is understood as legitimate, mitigation strategies are perceived at best as a temporary deflection of death that may provide a tenuous opening big enough to complete the objective. At worst, mitigations are perceived as biding time until they are outpaced by the rising threat of death, triggering a constant revision cycle.
The cycle of mitigation revision entered into by coexisting with a threat of death between minor and moderate threat is constant but practical. Mitigation fails, it needs to be changed, and if the resource-environment coupling continues to produce a threat of death, then mitigation measures need to be revised again. The threat of death returns, possibly heightened due to the operation and its interactions between resources and the environment increasing the threat. Next, mitigation strategies designed to address this threat are operationalized, allowing resources to continue. Resources then incur a degree of risk that transitions the operation or a few responders back to the threat of death again. This then leads to the development of new mitigation techniques again. This is normative behavior in either manner of relating to death. Seeing death as legitimate emphasizes the transition point from accruing risk to a present threat of death. This manner of relating to death may promote early scrutiny of the operation; the actions response resources need to take to complete it, and the propensity of the operation to produce unmanageable risk. Coexisting with death also entails a sensitivity to the mitigation cycle and how frequently it must be moved through. Cycles moving closer indicate an unmanageable situation, a growing threat of death, and may signify an ideal time to leave. Coexisting with the threat of death requires perpetual assessments and motion. In the domain of death as legitimate, no strategy to reduce risk and keep the threat of death at bay is anticipated to last long. A more sustainable solution is to back down the Risk and Threat of Death Scale by modifying actions and location considerably so it is a matter of risk and not death in need of management.
Management is sensitive to the number of mitigations put in place. At the same time, there is an awareness of how often responders or entire resources have already had to adjust their position and tactics in the name of safety within the boundaries of these mitigations. The more mitigations are in place, the more there are that can fail, and cascading failures are possible. Suddenly, the wall of safeguards leaves resources exposed. With the operation beginning to transition into the threat of death, management quickly moves away from the operation before it advances any further up the threat of death scale. With their site of work fading behind them, the resources let death ride the incident. There was coexistence with death throughout, dynamic mitigation strategies, readjusting to hazardous conditions, and existing alongside death by being adaptive, zigging, and zagging as necessary to maintain coexistence and not lose existence. However, in the end, death listens to no one, and sometimes that is made abundantly clear.
Coexistence is a vital part of this relational domain. As discussed earlier, mitigation efforts support this manner of existing with the threat of death in the same place, such as a site of work. Death first exists as a threat. As has been said, death is a valid, natural, and legitimate consequence of emergency response operations and can never be eliminated. Coexistence is a unidirectional principle, as death knows nothing of the sort. Coexistence is best understood as unequal. While death as a threat can exist in the same area as resources, the relationship is always asymmetrical, even though mitigation strategies may appear to indicate some level of symmetry. For example, despite their repellant nature toward death, mitigation measures support coexistence between death and resources. Defined as existing in the same place, mitigations in this relational domain allow death and resources to exist side by side, to coexist, divided by a wall of safeguards preventing confrontation. This is to the benefit of resources who can now engage. However, there are no guarantees, and those who relate to death as legitimate and valid understand the asymmetry of this coexistence. Beyond mitigations, varying resource activity and tactics, predicting conditions, and engaging additional resources while respecting the situation’s fragility are critical to operations. At the same time, death has the potential to exercise its upper hand. With coexistence in mind, there is a need to repeatedly assess the environment, the operation, and the responders using metrics such as the scale introduced here. While resources scramble to coexist with death, death is not concerned with existing alongside resources. Resources coexist with death, while death continues to be itself. Albeit one-sided, coexistence continues to be seen as an advantage, a metric for evaluating operations, and an essential part of the approach to handling death as legitimate (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008).
The incident ground is shared in coexistence until tendencies, traces, or concrete changes indicate the threat of death will soon increase. Coexisting with death and accepting its existence means observing the turning of the tide and the fog of death rolling onto the beach. Processes indicate that local or incident conditions are about to shift, with the operation already being overly saturated with risk. The transition point from increasing risk to the threat of death has been met, and the clock is ticking on the final hour, or less, to accomplish the last objective. The risks generated by operations related to interactions with the environment cannot always be fully mitigated. The realm of not giving up ground and seeing ways to operate within risk and amongst hazards is the realm of specialized, highly trained, highly conditioned, and highly skilled response resources who can function in environments and carry out operations where they continuously metabolize a certain amount of risk. They may also operate with the knowledge that a specific and unmistakable threat of death is associated with the operation. They rely on their training to exist alongside it and deploy familiar strategies to reduce it. Specialized resources may continually move through processes to maintain safety while working in a hostile environment and subduing the parts of it that they can.
Death is not denied, treated with hostility, rejected, or loved. It is seen as legitimate and has the right to exist in the same environment as resources. On a deeper level of analysis, resources’ behavior welcomes, amplifies, or dampens the threat of death. This manner of relating to death can improve overall safety by accepting that the threat of death ebbs and flows through the dynamic environment and operations. Death is not rejected but a part of everything that is done, including safety. Observations of the hazards that can potentially cause death, those that might occur later, and the general degree of the combined threat of death with emergency response operations with the environment, serves as a basis for mitigating risk or the threat of death or deciding an operation cannot be done safely.
Death is seen as a natural process, the threat of which is in process itself, becoming more or less closer or having a stronger or weaker relation to actions taken by response resources. Death, distinguished as a natural process, is not a reason to discontinue mitigating against it, training response resources to be safe, investigating its causes when there is loss of life, and encouraging resources to be safe when responding to an incident. Referring to death as a natural process only indicates death is something that will occur in the course of our living. All living humans will eventually die, and this is entirely natural. During emergency response operations, the mechanisms that cause death may be unnatural. Whether or not the end of a life, however early in their years and caused by unnatural means, can still be considered natural is a quandary. Suppose death is accepted as a legitimate and random consequence of living. In that case, those who relate to it this way will have to contemplate if early death by unnatural mechanisms can be placed in the frame of “death is a natural process” or not. This will remain an open question.
Denial of Death
Alternatively, there is the other, more normative, extreme domain of relating to death, where death’s existence and threat are denied (within certain functional margins; Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008). In this domain, wherever death appears, it has no right to be there; its existence is illegitimate and invalid. Death does not universally arise in coexistence with response resources and operations. Like those who see it as legitimate, response resources relating to death through denial understand that past a certain transition point, risk management becomes threat of death management. This is the difference between being in a scenario where the ultimate risk is stumbling and falling due to instability on a rock scree versus the threat of death from falling off a razorback ridgeline. While the relational domain of legitimacy may view the previous examples as being coupled to an operation, the relational domain of illegitimacy, or denial, largely does not. At its most intense, denial sees death as an intrusion. This deadly pathogen infiltrated a redundantly and heavily fortified wall of defenses by acting in complex and deceptive ways. Death’s existence is entirely illegitimate. It has entered a place in which it has no right to exist. It is counter to the plan. At best, it is a tragedy, but not an event management or responders think will ever be a factor they face or endure.
In the domain of denying death, it is seen as an external force to be mitigated, to have its threat diminished, and to the closest degree eradicated. This is similar to the domain of relating to death as legitimate, except for a lack of coexistence. In coexistence, death is treated as a natural component of emergency response and the outcome of interactions between the environment and resources. In this domain, mitigation measures, confidence in the response resource’s abilities from management, and a century or more of collective experience slip between the response resource, risk, and any eventual threat of death. In this way, death is severed from operations, assisting in the safe control and regulation of responders. As a result, death becomes a distant concern with dynamic increasing and decreasing threat that wavers between making itself known and fading away for responders and management. Furthermore, in this domain, response resources may feel they no longer have a reason to think about death with control, regulation, and mitigation features in place combined with experience. Should the severance become thin due to the overwhelming risk of transitioning to the threat of death, options include making the severance more robust by requesting additional resources, devising more mitigation strategies, and changing tactics or locations.
A career without experience with dangerously close calls does little to acknowledge and bring death forth (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011). It may continuously limit awareness of recognizing death as the threat increases, and it reaches its critical point of moving from threat to event. Specialized resources with a long list of close calls may distinguish some operations as routine and approach them with the appearance of automation in how they mitigate hazards and carry out the operation. Indeed, specialized response resources have safety at the forefront of their minds and are adept at managing and addressing risk before it escalates into the threat of death where possible. Death may still be denied through the strength of active mitigation, giving the operation more space and time.
This way of relating to death may engender a habitual practice of nearly exceeding or surpassing the absolute maximum amount of operational risk that can be managed before escalating into higher levels of the threat of death. Experience, confidence in abilities, and mitigations may have been leaned on too heavily to maintain a safe working environment. Specialized response resources on the ground may be taking calculated risks with several contingency plans and escape routes, including escaping in their trucks, requesting water or retardant drops in the case of wildfires, piling into a helicopter, or double-timing down the street or hillside at the last second. It is not denied here that in some instances when heavily invested in values are at risk, highly trained specialized resources do everything in their power to save them. Even if, in the process, resources recognize escalations in the threat of death. This behavior may be expected from these resources, as this is what they exist to do, and the overwhelming majority of the time, they do it without consequence. These resources rely heavily on the developed capacity to detect and outmaneuver that which may harm them, even in the rising threat of death. In this setting and in this domain, death is something to be beaten, to outsmart, to defy, to deny the chance to claim a life, and to swiftly and skillfully evade. Highly trained resources can exist for prolonged periods in the transition between risk and death while expertly carrying out operations to save what is in danger of being lost. These resources may recognize the rising threat of death and partially (or entirely) deny it to prioritize the often overpowering relational domain of work culture, where core values are found. The domain of work culture may be placed slightly before or a few inches higher than the domain of the denial of death, driving a particular pattern of altruistic behavior and devotion to the incident while managing risk and the threat of death to the degree that these behaviors can continue (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008).
In the denial of death, constant present and anticipatory situational awareness are still maintained, and mitigation measures are put in place that may be short-lived, leading to the continuous creation of new ones. In the compressed space available to them, specialized response resources are guided by the ingrained domain of work culture through which they relate to the operation of protecting values at risk. This domain includes commitment, duty, respect, integrity, discipline, altruism, tradition, culture, and the denial of self in the interest of the larger operation and unit. After completing the operation, specialized resources rely on their knowledge, talent, and physical conditioning to make it to safety (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008).
Escaping at the last moment may indicate operational success, even by a razor-thin margin. The environment may have been becoming increasingly hazardous, and response resources may have been too exposed and vulnerable to the growing threat of death. Still, death remains an unlikely word to appear in the following After Action Review and discussion. There may instead be a conversation of how potential injury was avoided by fleeing the scene in an orderly manner at the right time, that the values at risk were saved, and injuries with the implication of death were avoided. Death was once again denied. If a close call is experienced, it is plausible that those who follow the relational domain of denial will use other language to discuss the event and focus on what went right. Death, as part of how a response resource understands actions it just took, is an admission of mortality that may be denied along with demise itself. Considering the possibility of death to deny its potential does nothing to expand the manner of relating between resources and the threat of death.
Expanding on mortality, in the denial of death, including never speaking its name, there may be a feeling of being untouchable at the most and robust at the least. By denying death and its threat on the same ground response resources work, death is no longer a problem for the resource. Death will be dealt with when it makes itself known. Denial is active in what is and what is not said, as well as the specific domain of the work culture of the response resource. Suppose it is continuously believed that incredibly experienced managers are mitigating risk. In that case, all is well, and there is no reason to think about adverse outcomes such as death. It should be noted that response resources vary in the amount of information management communications to responders. As a result, the total amount of risk present and being mitigated may not be common knowledge. On a wildfire, the risk incurred through constructing a fireline on an extremely steep slope while simultaneously felling hazardous trees and conducting a firing operation may not be disclosed or even perceived as an issue. In this content state, blind to the totality of risk, response resources instead focus on working together, keeping each other safe, and expediently carrying out orders, as they were hired and developed to do. The relational domain of the work culture is dominant. There is no reason to think about death. Any relation to death is the purview of management and depends on what they distinguish, their flow of emotions, communications, experience, relation to the domain of work culture, and estimation of the time left to complete the objective.
Denying death may also create a certain blindness toward chance or random events that can cause death. Relating to death as legitimate and in coexistence with response resources is absent. The increased sensitivity toward understanding death associated with death as legitimate helps operate in a hazardous environment prone to random events. With the potential for chance happenings, there is no time to mitigate the hazard or safeguard against death as it unfolds in real-time. The disposition that comes with relating to death as legitimate and its heightened awareness of death may potentially find a different way through. Where unpredictability dominates the landscape, and the chances of deadly events are possible, those in the domain of the denial of death may only see risk that can be safely navigated. As part of navigating risk, alternative pathways may eschew one area of a potentially high threat of death to find themselves in another. They may safely make it through without incident. Those who adhere to the domain of death as legitimate may have taken another route entirely, seeing death far more prominently than where others observe risk.
Conclusion
A culture of death such as that perpetuated by music is too strong, odd, and ill-fitting for emergency response operations. However, it provides an example of one type of extreme culture that recognizes death, however obsessively. There may be an emotional crossover. The artists who made the death-obsessed music described earlier may have felt discomfort, even anguish, and likely more severe emotions. In emergency response operations, at least initially, some form of distress, anger, or pain is possible by thinking about death more regularly. Death remains a complex topic. The above advocates for a relational domain of death that views it as legitimate in coexistence with response resources, the risk resources generate, and the environment at the site of work. It is prudent to see death as a legitimate outcome entangled with the response rather than denying the legitimacy of death’s existence.
Albeit unusual, speaking plainly of death, for example, not describing close calls as “near misses” but as “narrowly avoided death,” and thinking of the processes that can cause death during an incident may help set boundaries and drive mitigation strategies, tactics, and objectives. Numerous hazards can cause injury, but defining the sequence of hazard events, their sudden onset or the risk profile of operations provides a clear view of the incident’s potential to cause death.
The word death, as it arises in language, brings forth an idea of a severe, final, ultimate, painful, and irreversible outcome (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011). Strategies, tactics, and objectives can bring death nearer to resources. At the same time, management may temporarily force death away in an ongoing exchange of mitigations and advancements from death. Recognizing the threat of death elevates the stakes of the emergency response operation. It raises the bar of what it takes to accomplish an operation and its objectives safely, without injury, and with all parties still alive.
In the event of serious injury, resources, or at least management, should be intimately aware of the medical plan. Management situates their location on the incident in relation to the plan itself and factors in helicopter and ground transit times. If the injury occurs in an area inaccessible to a helicopter, how long will it take to carry the patient to an area where they can be extracted? Will moving them require multiple resources who will, without question, put what they are doing on hold to rotate in and out of transporting the patient over varying terrain? Lastly, how long is the flight time before the patient lands at a hospital with the capabilities, knowledge, and skill to treat them? Throughout the process, is the patient stable or deteriorating? What is the relation to the threat of death? As it is now, transparency about life-saving capabilities is essential before engaging in an operation, as it sets a disposition for how much risk or threat of death should be accumulated through responder actions and engagement with the environment. The denial of death may tend toward believing the situation is stable and not using the plan as a looking glass. Alternatively, the legitimacy of death may compel management to call the hospitals listed on the medical plan to determine if they can accommodate a helicopter of the size of the one committed to the incident and work to arrange alternative plans if not.
It can be imagined that no one wants to talk about death as a part of a very early morning briefing, one held in the field at sunrise or at all. However, even fewer people have any interest in tending to the outcomes of a death involving a friend, a fellow emergency responder. This does not mean death has no place in the fabric of the broader culture. A culture of death related to music and its darkness and violent sounds would not be helpful for emergency response operations. Emergency response operations do not need a culture of death; they need a culture that constructively recognizes and relates to death. It is suggested that there is a need to engage in supporting a culture emerge that accepts and appreciates death and the legitimacy of its existence and manages operations involving its denial when necessary. This acceptance may shape hazard and operational analyses, the formation of strategy, tactics, and objectives, situational awareness processes, and developing operational pictures of the incident, all discussed with the plain-spoken word “death.”
References
Maturana, H. R., & Poerksen, B. (2011). From being to doing: The origins of the biology of cognition (2nd ed.). (W. K. Koeck, & A. R. Koeck, Trans.) Kaunas, Lithuania: Carl-Auer.
Maturana, H. R., & Verden-Zöller, G. (2008). The origin of humanness in the biology of love. (B. Pille, Ed.) Exeter, Devon, UK: Imprint Academic.
Morin, E. (1987). For a crisology. In E. Morin, & A. Heath-Carpenter (Ed.), The challenge of complexity: Essays by edgar morin (2023; T. C. Pauchant, Trans., pp. 231-245). Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.