Rescue at Laurel Hills

What went into the saving of a life in the freezing waters of Raleigh.

When confronted with a situation like, say, a child flailing in a frozen pond, the human brain typically enters a state of “cognitive narrowing” a shutting out of everything, everything, sadly, but panic. But when this situation played out in from tof Sergeant M.T. Foran, what transpired was the opposite. A demonstration of something called cognitive expansion. In seconds, he was processing on multiple levels. The water temperature, the weight of his own armor, and the position of a bystander who might be useful, he took all of these data points and acted.

This isn’t just a story about what was an amazing rescue. It’s about what went into that rescue and we get into that special type of mental clarity after the paywall.