Quote:
Originally Posted by raysallx
You took in an amazing amount of visual information in a very short time. Well done!
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It is situational awareness that comes from being a firefighter and arson investigator (we don't have a dedicated arson investigator so I somehow ended up being the guy that takes point on investigations and works with the sheriff's department). I am that guy that never sits with his back to the door, can give a general description of everyone that has come in at the end of the meal, and stuff like that. In this situation, it was a combination of this and probably a chronostasis type phenomenon. This is where you get an adrenaline boost, blood vessels constrict, your brain goes into hyperdrive, and time seems to slow. This happens a lot in dangerous situations. For example, I was in a burning building last week and part of a ceiling collapsed and wires that came down caught on my and my partner's SCBAs and entangled me. The rest was coming down very soon and I knew my partner and I knew we had to get out of there. There was no time for someone to get to us. Time seemed to stand still. The heat was intense and I was scrambling to bet my knife out and cut the wires off of us. I clearly remember the flames rolling out of the attic and down the wall. I oddly noticed nails that dropped and were glowing. Everything seemed as if it was in a slow motion movie scene.