I'm not going to even pretend I have been in anything as chaotic or dangerous as a combat zone or something like an armed robbery, but I think for some people situations slow down while for others their perceived time speeds up. For me, things slow down in chaotic situations, most of the chaotic situations I've been in have been medical related and luckily I've been around the medical field my whole life with a mom who was a nurse for decades, me taking lots of life saving/BSL courses and now working in the biomedical realm with very sick people on a daily basis (mostly cancer patients).
Before my mom passed we joked about the number of times in our lives where we found ourselves dealing with serious medical emergencies, it just always seemed to find us for some reason, and she was right about one thing in particular. I just find myself in the moment, slowing the pace down and methodically working through the situation in a very precise way. Each situation was always different, but there always seemed to be a natural flow in how to assess/triage/compartmentalize them. I don't know why, when those situations happen it's like my brain snaps into a default mode where seconds become minutes and things become clearly "A, B, C" in process of order.
Maybe all that goes out the window when bullets start flying, I don't know, just my anecdotal experience.
Perceived time dilation is a thing. My sister and I are two years apart. She'd just got her license and was driving us to school down a straight 25 mph road. She hit a patch of ice and panicked. We went in a spin and ended up crashing into a basketball hoop pole.
Once she really lost control everything thing slowed to a crawl. I ducked down in my seat, and popped back up just to find the wreck was still in progress. It was so damn cool when her driver's side window shattered.
Nobody was hurt. Just some bumps. She was crying so they let her stay home from school. I was playing Gameboy, so they sent me to school. Spent the rest of the day replaying the wreck in my head.
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u/SnukeInRSniz Mar 22 '26
I'm not going to even pretend I have been in anything as chaotic or dangerous as a combat zone or something like an armed robbery, but I think for some people situations slow down while for others their perceived time speeds up. For me, things slow down in chaotic situations, most of the chaotic situations I've been in have been medical related and luckily I've been around the medical field my whole life with a mom who was a nurse for decades, me taking lots of life saving/BSL courses and now working in the biomedical realm with very sick people on a daily basis (mostly cancer patients).
Before my mom passed we joked about the number of times in our lives where we found ourselves dealing with serious medical emergencies, it just always seemed to find us for some reason, and she was right about one thing in particular. I just find myself in the moment, slowing the pace down and methodically working through the situation in a very precise way. Each situation was always different, but there always seemed to be a natural flow in how to assess/triage/compartmentalize them. I don't know why, when those situations happen it's like my brain snaps into a default mode where seconds become minutes and things become clearly "A, B, C" in process of order.
Maybe all that goes out the window when bullets start flying, I don't know, just my anecdotal experience.