An emerging schema for classifying previously disparate phenomena relating to disasters and victims is presented, and its rationale given. It was borne of necessity after the 1979 DC10 crash on Mt. Erebus in Antarctica, when reports of previous research studies of different kinds of disasters were found to be widely scattered conceptually and graphically, and it was modified in the light of further experience. It is presented with the hope that other researchers and clinicians might find it helpful as they try to draw fragments together of the wider picture of humanity in situations of catastrophe.
 

INTRODUCTON

Classification is at the heart of every intellectual, empirical, and pragmatic endeavor. It helps to establish the boundaries of a given topic under consideration, and paradoxically it enables the topic to be broken into manageable parts for closer scrutiny and comparison. It is also a process to use when modeling complex problems before developing practical solutions. In the present case, the problem concerns the conceptual integration of different disasters and of different victims, and their inter-relationships. The solution concerns the integration of diverse research reports, and the acquisition and deployment of appropriately skilled personnel, equipment, and facilities to meet the clinical and organizational needs of individuals and entire populations exposed to the effects of any kind of disaster.

My interest in these matters arose after the Mt. Erebus air crash in the Antarctic in l979 because of prior links with the New Zealand Antarctic program (Taylor, 1987). My immediate concern was for the reactions of the wintering-over party near the crash-site at NZ Scott Base, because of some problems that had arisen 10 years before after a helicopter fatality down there. Accordingly I contacted the central co-ordination rescue/recovery HQ, but the next day a query from the chief of the group of face-rescue climbers prompted me to extend my concern to the personnel that were engaged in the task of collecting body-parts from the scattered debris on the ice-covered slopes. A week or so later, I thought it wise to include the reactions of the entire multi-component team that followed-up the identification of victims in the Auckland Mortuary back in New Zealand.

My clinical involvement led to the development of a project in double-quick time to identify and remedy any significant stress which the various personnel might have experienced as a result of their work at different stages of the operation (Taylor & Frazer, 1981:1982). Not that everyone was expected to suffer substantial stress, or that those who did would necessarily suffer the same symptoms, at the same time, and to the same extent. But it was possible that there might be some among the fit, well selected, highly trained, highly motivated, and organizationally well-supported, large and composite group of emergency personnel, who needed help to regain their functional efficiency.

It was only after the first batch of data had been collected that there was time to hunt for clinical reports of disaster victims. These were strewn far, wide, and deep. In those pre-Internet days there were no worldwide search engines on hand, nor the kindly disposed enthusiasts with their own web pages of information available to help kindred researchers. Even today, the Internet has yet to go beyond key words in the titles of research to conceptualize the material into categories.

The outcome led me first to create a 4 x 3 classificatory system for disasters (Taylor 1984), and then a 5 x 3 x 4 refinement (Taylor 1990), together with a corresponding 6 x 4 x 4 matrix for the classification of victims.  Taken together the two patterns served a useful clinical and bureaucratic purpose. But they required more attention from researchers to determine how different combinations of disaster type and victim type might interact, and to identify what kinds of interventions might be appropriate for the prevention and treatment of disaster stress.

But despite the imprecision, the classification of victims attracted approval from of staff to debrief the British troops returning from the academics (Raphael 1986, p 224), from health policy planners (Disasters Working Party, 1991, appendix V), stress clinicians and researchers (Young, Ford, Ruzek, Friedman, & Gusman, 1998). It was used during the 1990/1 Gulf War in an American casualty clearance station in Kuwait (Frederick M. Burkle Jnr., private communication April 1, 1991) and in the training same war (R. Siegert, private communication, December 20, 1991). Martel (1999) also used part of the classification to identify the major groups of victims he encountered after a number of disasters in the Province of Quebec.

In short, classification is necessary if comparisons are to be made between different kinds of victims and different kinds of intervention intended to help them. The matter is complex because of the uncertainty, not so much in the onset and diagnosis of the wide range of post-disaster reactions, as in the outcome of any of the many single or clusters of treatments which might have been adopted to reduce them. For example, Raftery (1998) refers to no less than six conventional treatments and 17 specific alternative treatments for victims with PTSD alone, the use of which separately or in various combinations in any given study would need to be specified for comparative purposes.

In traversing the ground now, consideration will be given to the definitions of disasters and victims, to the essentials of classification, and to disasters and victims as phenomena, before presenting a working model for the consideration of clinicians and researchers in the field.
 

DEFINITIONS AND USAGE

If pragmatism were the motive, and NSOD the initial guide, disaster can be defined as:

'sudden or great misfortune, an event of ruinous or distressing nature, a calamity; suffering death, injury, ruin, etc., as a result of an event, circumstance, or oppressive or adverse impersonal (or interpersonal) agency '- (my italics to condense the entry).

 The corresponding NSOD definition of a victim is of one who has been:

'subjected to cruelty, oppression, or other harsh or unfair treatment, or suffering death, injury, or ruin, as a result of an event, circumstance, or oppressive or adverse impersonal agency, whether or not the person might have contributed wholly or partly to the adversity experienced'.

Interestingly, the definition includes offenders who suffer traumatic effects from their crimes (Kruppa, 1991).

However for reasons that shortly will become apparent, disasters will be defined for present purposes as:

 Catastrophic events which seriously overtax the    resources of individuals, their families, their     communities, the organizations in which they work, and   sometimes threaten their vital cultural traditions.

In a similar vein, victims will be defined as:

 People whose lives have been affected adversely by    their direct or indirect exposure to catastrophe,    whether or not they might not have contributed to their   misfortune.

CLASSIFICATION

By definition, classification is the process by which phenomena can distributed systematically into separate but somewhat related categories. It follows that the categories must be sufficiently discrete to establish criteria by which allocations can be made within a given range, and the range must be sufficiently extensive to cover the variety of phenomena presented. The resulting framework has to meet the criteria of being extensive, comprehensive, manageable, and useful. Here the Linnean system for the classification of zoological specimens comes to mind, as well as the Dewey Decimal system for the classification of library material.

But three warnings need to be given. The first is that some classifiers who work with human beings are like the contentious medieval scholars of old that seem inclined doggedly to seek either general factors or the unique (Schachner, 1962, pp. 19-24). They have insufficient flexibility of mind either to clump or to split the components according to the pattern of material presented. They do not seem to realize, for example, that in some ways all humans are alike, in other ways they are somewhat alike, and in other ways they are quite unalike. They forget that the appropriate focus should therefore depend more on the matter under investigation than the rigidity of the mental set they bring to their work.

The second warning is that the process of classification can itself become a seductive preoccupation with which some academics seek to establish and maintain their reputations. Such indeed seems to have been the case in the early days of abnormal psychology, when clinicians tended to vie with each other in an attempt to produce the most elegant and comprehensive, if also the most complicated and confusing, system for the classification of mental disorders (Stengel, 1959). The third warning, is that at the other extreme there is still an odd assortment of prehistoric iconoclasts and the scatter-brained at work who deny the value of classification altogether. At best they function in each situation de novo, but at worst they do not learn from their own experience - much less make a contribution to the training of others.

DISASTERS

Although droughts, earthquakes, famines, and floods were well known from 'pre-axial' time before about 500 BC, there was no generic term to describe them. Different ethnic groups just chronicled their occurrence and attributed them to natural events. Only with the growth of the major religions and their spread across ethnic boundaries, were attributions made to the supernatural (Geering, 1994). Then in the 16th century, pervasive astrological attributions for the occurrence of major external events led directly to the construction of the word - 'dis-a-star', i.e. disaster, a person or community being without the protection of a guiding star of astrology or religion (NSOD, 1993).
 
The advance of science and technology brought the need for mankind to seek causative explanations for calamities that were other than metaphysical and superstitious. It also led to the broadening of the concept of disasters to include the deliberate as well as the untoward effects of technological development. The implication was that mankind had to shoulder responsibility sometimes for having brought tragedy about directly by incompetence, ignorance, and negligence, rather than indirectly by moral turpitude as was thought before. Such was the case, for example, when the side effects of early industrialization included numerous dam bursts, factory explosions, fires, mining tragedies, and various transport accidents (Hoehling, 1973; Perkes, l976; Kingston & Lambert, 1980). The side effects of later technological development included the pollution of the land, sea, and air by radioactive and toxic waste.

The complexity of the topic suggests that in the search for causes of disaster, any simple reliance on astrological phenomena, devilry, or Divine retaliation is anachronistic. Yet some communities continue to attribute natural disasters to moral turpitude (Gavalya, 1987; Taylor, 1998). They also misunderstand that although the phrase 'acts of God' still appears as a standard feature of many commercial and insurance contracts (Williams, l993), it is used there more in the legalistic rather than the religious sense. It refers to events that are unpredictable, unavoidable, and beyond the control of individuals. It is synonymous with the phrase 'force majeure' that relieves the parties of certain liabilities and obligations, but still requires those exposed to catastrophe to make a reasonable attempt to overcome the consequences. (Le Petit  Robert, 1981).

Social scientists have not been particularly interested in disasters as a topic, but the few who were, focussed on the major dimensions of disasters rather than the major types of disaster. One of the first, Carr (1932), classified disasters with the scales of instantaneous \ progressive onset, and diffuse \ focalized impact. Powell, Rayner, and Finesinger (cited in Baker & Chapman, 1962, p 30) identified the progressive stages, of warning, threat, impact, inventory, rescue, remedy, and recovery. Barton (l969) added scales of duration, and of social preparedness. Then Drabek (1986) presented a masterly analysis of over 1000 disasters, from which he derived the four phases of preparedness (planning and warning), response (evacuation and emergency), recovery (restoration and reconstruction), and mitigation (perceptions and adjustment). About the same time, Britton (1986) proposed a useful continuum of emergency service activity, according to the extent of disruption that ranged from accidents, through civil emergencies, to disasters. Most recently Granot (1998) made it clear that disasters can be a) of insidious as well as of sudden onset, b) of longer as well as shorter duration, and c) created as much by mankind as by the natural forces of the environment.

However, none of those researchers applied their dimensions to warfare, and none regarded warfare as a disaster. The omission is far from trivial, because in the 30 year period after 1945 there were no less than 119 civil and international wars, involving 69 countries and 81 armies, in which millions more people were killed than in World War 11 (Higgins 1978, p 73). Since then there have been more examples to reinforce the point that the resolution of conflict by methods other than slaughter needs urgent attention (World Disaster Report, 1998). The urgency is accentuated by the increasing sophistication of modern weaponry, and the growing number of countries with nuclear weapons at their disposal that might indeed bring about the ultimate disaster (Taylor, 1989) - despite the sudden end of the so-called 'cold war' between the 'super-powers'.

Short of the occurrence of such a 'technological Armageddon' (McKibben, 1990), there is still sufficient post-war debris in the form of some 1 million unexploded land-mines in position in 51 countries to cause international concern (World Disasters Report 1994, 1995, pp. 59-67). There is also the pitiful horde of refugees from disasters who trudge territorial borders wearily in search of security, only to find themselves sometimes under renewed attack in the confines of their over-crowded camps. (Here the current television coverage brings sharply to mind the desperate plight of substantial minority groups in the former Yugoslavian territories).

In 1984 the number of refugees throughout the world was given as 35 millions. There is evidence to show that it has not dropped since then. In 1993 the plight of the refugees led the United Nations Disaster Relief Organization (UNDRO) to include the 'deliberate acts of man' in the definition of disasters (DHA News, 1993, p. 54). The next year it led UNDRO to integrate its separate peacekeeping, peace making, and humanitarian aid activities. It also led the International Red Cross and Red Crescent (IRC&RC) to focus on the 'disaster inducement' work of powerful self-promoting economic and political groups. Then it went further to use the term 'disaster development' to describe the increasing alienation, degradation, famine, and poverty of people who are most vulnerable to major adversity (World Disaster Report, 1994, p. 52). Yet in 1998 when the IRC&RC drew attention to the rapid escalation of violence from civil and ethnic rather than international wars, it stopped short of classifying wars as disasters (World Disaster Report, 1998, pp. 138-139). However, in the typology of disasters now presented, warfare will appear with other such major forms of violence in the cross section between animate creatures and human causes (Table 1).

(INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE)

Usually it is possible to identify a single major domain for the classification of most disasters - i.e. either the natural, technological, or human, cross-matched with earth, air, fire, water, or animate creatures, with the phase of preparation, response, recovery, and mitigation at which they were researched. But some disasters will have a succession of components - e.g. a policy of deliberate defoliation leading sequentially to deforestation, soil erosion, landslides, the reduction of water absorption that increases run-off and creates delta floodwater problems lower downstream.

Some individuals and some communities might also have suffered a sequence of separate disasters. Erikson (1994) for example, gives the example of a community that suffered successively a dam failure, the methyl mercury contamination of water supplies, and the widespread defalcation of their precious savings by devious landowners.

However it is suggested that the scheme presented here might be of heuristic value to those that face a forbidding array of research reports on different kinds of disasters. It leaves them free to plot the extreme reactions of any Doomsday cult, and the untoward effects of the 2YK bug, as the new Millenium approaches. Clinicians are known not to be the only groups making preparations in that regard.

VICTIMS

Turning to a corresponding classification of the victims, the plural noun is said first to have appeared in print in the Rhemish translation of the Bible in 1592. It was applied to Christ offering himself as an expiation for mankind, and it came into general currency in the 17th century to describe living creatures who were killed and sacrificed to the deities or supernatural powers (OED, 1928). Then it was generalised to any person put to death, subject to torture or suffering, or property loss, through cruel or oppressive treatment or a destructive agency.

The first classification of victims seems to have emerged from the Napoleonic wars, when front-line medical staff introduced a triage system for assorting casualties according to whether they could recover unaided, they needed help to recover, or they were beyond recovery. More recently another was produced by the sociologist Barton (1969) when he classified victims by the magnitude of the external social chaos, disruption, and havoc which they experienced. Then others came, like those of the Milne (1979), and Collins, Baum, and Singer (1983) that differentiated victims by the particular methods they used for coping with such circumstances. Beinin (1985, p. 10) sorted victims by the extent of the personal injuries they sustained, their sickness, bereavements, and property loss. Kilijan and Drabek (1979) addressed the physical and emotional vulnerability of the elderly, Bromet, Parkinson, Dunn, and Gondek (1980) addressed the problems of young mothers, and Lystad (1985) those of children. More recently, the International Committee of the Red Cross defined disaster victims simply by their humanitarian needs to ensure survival rather than any other criteria (DHA News, 1994, pp. 60-61).

From the foregoing it still seemed sensible to retain the six-fold classification of disaster victims that arose from the Mt. Erebus study, and to consider the different types of intervention and support which those in each category are likely to require. Not that people in each of the categories necessarily require different kinds of intervention, but experience shows that they have different precipitating emotional factors requiring attention.

But before elaborating further, it can be said that the comprehensive identification of victims is dependent on a number of factors, such as the ability of the classifiers:

a) to put the presenting symptoms within the normal range of alarm reactions rather than necessarily in the range of the pathological

b) to time their observations to allow for the onset of cultural as well as clinical effects (Palinkas & Petterson, 1990), and also be aware of the restrictions imposed by logistics, politics, and resources (Taylor, 1992) and by the volatility of a given situation (Doherty, 1999)

c) to recognize that some people have to cope as members of more than one category – e.g. when an emergency workers find their own families and homes endangered

d) to appraise the positive as well as the negative outcomes of disaster experience.

With those provisos, the primary victims can be seen as those who suffer directly from catastrophe. Many do not survive, but those who do, might develop symptoms that range from the mild to the severe, and be instant, delayed, transient, or chronic. They will have to reassemble the shattered parts of their pattern of activities and responsibilities along the familiar Maslow path, first to satisfy their basic needs and then progressively to address those of belonging, security, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Some might have unresolved earlier problems to deal with that have come to the front of their minds. All will need gradual encouragement to face their perceptions of the disaster situation, the enormity of which will have proved too much for them to incorporate immediately into their lives.

The secondary victims are the family members and close friends of the primary victims who develop symptoms. They need time, opportunity, and encouragement to grieve, express their anger, distress, despair, and tragic loss before they can pick up the threads of life again. They too might find their vicarious suffering to have exacerbated dormant emotional problems. Depending on the intensity of their emotional attachment to the primary victims they might need more prolonged attention and support.

The tertiary victims are the workers in all types of agency that succumb to occupational stress and fatigue during the course of their post-disaster assignments. They are found in the statutory ambulance, emergency, fire, military, and police services (Paton & Long, 1996), as well as those working between warring factions as mediators and peace-keepers (Taylor, 1991; Stewart, 1994). They are in the variety of non-government agencies involved in humanitarian and resettlement services, for example in refugee camps. For them the strain is chronic, because they never have sufficient resources to meet continuing demands, and to their own detriment they might find themselves identifying too closely with the primary victims (Asken, 1993). Even in the most propitious of circumstances, these international emergency workers face resentment, resistance, and bureaucratic disorganization at local levels that prevents them from doing the rescue and recovery work for which they have been trained (Paton, 1992). Their reactions are compounded when they come under deliberate physical attack (DHA News, 1994, pp. 54-55).

If once emergency workers were described as the ‘hidden victims’ of disasters, they are now recognized more openly as being vulnerable to fatigue and stress reactions. In many instances their employing organizations provide preventive training and subsequent treatment to facilitate their recovery. Such treatment is designed to dismantle gently the emotional defenses that gruesome work obliges emergency workers to adopt. It helps them to ‘de-role’ or debrief, and so regain their resilience for living. Otherwise they would become case hardened and burnt out.

The quaternary group of victims consists of the well intentioned but emotionally labile in the community at large who identify with the initial victims as to act inappropriately themselves. It includes those who display what has been called the 'cornucopia syndrome' from opening their cupboards and their hearts without foresight to impose burdens of perishable food, inappropriate clothing, and offers of hospitality on unwilling recipients. They soon experience 'compassion fatigue', but recover quickly to repeat the same identification process with victims of other disasters.

The fourth group also includes those who hammered on the door of a mortuary in Rome in 1981, demanding to see the corpse of a seven year old boy who died tragically after slipping down a pothole. They had identified closely with the family from the overnight non-stop television coverage of the scene as despairing attempts were made to recover the boy alive.

They need to ask themselves why they responded with such abandonment to assist the primary and secondary victims. Conceivably the unconditional expression of compassion might in some circumstances be admirable. But not if it is forced upon primary and secondary victims and accompanied with intrusive claims for quasi-family status.

Fortunately, the majority of aid-dispensers can be encouraged to give support of a more appropriate kind at a sustainable level through properly organized civic appeals. The minority might develop maladaptive symptoms if they have residual problems that are brought to the fore when they identify with those people more directly involved with disasters. Some of them might even experience post disaster stress by proxy from witnessing the graphic portrayal of tragedy through the news media, although not necessarily to the point of satisfying the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The quinternary, or fifth group of disaster victims, consists of the troubled and the troublesome with pathological proclivities that in times of phantasmagoria lead them to lose their self-control. The troubled indulge their fantasies by indulging in voyeuristic activities, collecting pictures of body parts, and even expressing necrophilic desires. It is a moot point whether the group includes the ‘disasterotropic’ who chase ‘twisters’, tsunamis, and volcanic activity to satisfy desires other than the scientific. The same can be said about the 'surge of tourists with ghoulish tastes' that visit sites of destruction - such as those for whom the government of Honduras made provision after Hurricane ‘Mitch’ in 1998.

Some of this fifth group might have either latent psychological problems, or residual problems from previous stressful events that become activated after viewing heart-rending news media pictures of catastrophe. Some pretend to have been involved in a well-publicized disaster, either to play on the sympathy of donors, or to seek notoriety. The former is known to inflate the number of insurance claims. The latter includes such the person who rang a radio station and pretended to be a multiple murderer who was known to have committed suicide.

The most troublesome are those who in times of social chaos lose control of themselves and go on the rampage to loot, plunder, and riot. Not far short of them are the unscrupulous members of the news media that adopt devious and intrusive means to capture ghoulish details of raw anguish and anxiety with which to tear the hearts of their readers and viewers. Their aim is to increase audience ratings and to eye the Pulitzer Prize. It is not to meet the needs of the people around them. Some are known to have put health professionals under pressure to divulge confidential information, and even to pose as health professionals to gain direct access to the primary victims of disaster.
 
The troublesome with curious impulses to express, and those who take advantage of the tragedy suffered by others, usually can be contained by the law enforcement agencies once a security zone is established around and above a disaster area. The air coverage is required to prevent journalists in helicopters hovering above school grounds to obtain pictures and stories. Those who are prone to have their symptoms evoked or exacerbated by news media reports will require the resumption of previous treatment. Those who commit criminal offences and are detected will be liable for prosecution in the normal way. News media enthusiasts might be persuaded to adopt an informational and an educational role as happened after a major earthquake in Mexico City (Palachios, Cueli, Camacho, Cleriga, Cuevas, Ayal, & Cossoff, 1993).

The final category, the sesternary, is for the miscellaneous group of disaster victims who are trying to cope with diverse problems. It includes people that but for chance would themselves have been primary victims, and are now tormented with questions as to why they should have been saved from such a fate. It includes those who in all innocence had persuaded friends and acquaintances to go into a situation which subsequently turned into a disaster. It includes those who in some way consider that they had brought a given disaster about. It includes clinicians and researchers, who in their post-disaster work were unaware of the insidious effects of the strain and fatigue upon themselves, had neither personal nor professional supportive networks, and insufficient help to cover their regular practice commitments.

It is still an open question as to whether interventions of various kinds were better done through peer group services or health professionals, through techniques that are formal or informal, and on an outreach or a conventional referral basis (Berah, Jones, & Valent, 1984). Much would depend on the skills and the training of those concerned with the interventions, and on the availability of an appropriate network of general medical services, of religious and social agencies, and of any other similar network in the communities in which the victims live.

But it seems clear that any such interventions were more likely to be successful were they provided in terms of proximity, immediacy and expectancy (Glass, 1969). Proximity, enables victims to retain the membership of their supportive social groups; immediacy refers to the treatment being made available at the time the need is perceived; and expectancy to the aim of the intervention being to restoration of the same level of personal control as before the disaster.

Those who consider that by their acts of omission or commission they might have brought a disaster about, present a particular problem for therapists, because any admission of guilt on their part could have serious legal and occupational consequences. They should be advised to seek legal support. Specific studies have not been made of those who make allegations after a disaster has occurred, but the 'whistle-blowers' that make disclosures in advance of any disaster are known to suffer subject to severe employment, financial, health, and personal problems (Lennane, 1993).

But it has to be acknowledged that the efficacy of post-disaster interventions has yet to be established (Ford, 1999). Some practitioners have reported benefits from techniques of critical incident stress management (Mitchell & Everly, 1993: Robinson & Mitchell, 1993), but others have not (Moran, 1998). Gist and Woodall (1998) went so far as to describe the technique as more of a social movement rather than a systematic intervention. Rose and Bisson (1998) asserted that the early optimism for brief psychological interventions including debriefing was misplaced, and that there is an urgent need for proof in the form of randomized controlled trials. Smith and Suda (1999) struck a familiar chord with psychotherapists when they described the relevant publications as being ‘typical (in) the evolution of an immature domain in the science of human behavior’.

However, the classification of victims can be presented usefully by the three dimensions of a cube, with the vertical differentiating the kinds of victims, the horizontal the kinds of interventions adopted, and the depth the settings or situations in which the intervention was carried out.

DISASTERS AND VICTIMS COMBINED

Finally, figure 1 shows how studies of particular victim groups of particular disasters can be placed to compare them with others. The reader is left to apply the categories to disasters and victims with which they are familiar and place them in their appropriate position in the model. The outcome, it is hoped, might save them time and effort when they try to compare previously unrelated phenomena.

 TABLE 1: A MATRIX OF DISASTERS

 NATURAL

INDUSTRIAL HUMAN
EARTH Avalanches
Dam failures
Ecological irresponsibility
Earthquakes
Ecological neglect
Road and train accidents
Erosions
Landslides
Eruptions
Outerspace debris fallout
Toxic mineral deposits
Radioactive substances
Toxic waste disposal
 
AIR Blizzards Acid rain Aircraft accidents
Cyclones
Chemical pollution
Hijackings
Dust storms
Explosions over and underground Spacecraft accidents
Meteorite and planetary shifts
Radioactive cloud and soot
Thermal shifts Urban smog
Tornadoes
 
FIRE
Lightning
Boiling  liquid/expanding vapor accidents
Fire-setting
Electrical fires
Hazardous chemical
Spontaneous combustion
 
WATER
Drought
Effluent contamination Maritime accidents
Floods Oil spills
Storms Waste disposal
Storms
Tsunamis

ANIMATE CREATURES
Endemic disease
Epidemics
Famine
Overpopulation
Plague
Pestilence Design flaws
Equipment problems
Illicit  manufacture and use of explosives and poisons
Plant accidents
Criminal extortion by virus and poisons
Guerilla warfare
Hostage-taking
Sports crowd violence
Terrorism
Warfare

Behavioral scientists and clinicians concerned with the anxiety manifested by victims of potential disaster such as interplanetary collisions, and the effect of uncontrolled automation, are left to formulate an appropriate category for such people. There is a case for professionals to focus on preventive measures to reduce the number, rather than simply to try to envisage the additional treatment that those affected will require once the dreaded day arrives. My assumption is that Armageddon, like the prophecies of Nostradamus, is a product of fantasy, anxiety, and depression.
 
 
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