Memory of Events During a Crisis Dive

[Mark Michaud SELAUSAR]

Hmmm...not sure if I agree. In the few instances in which I've experienced a crisis of some sort, I don't believe I lost any memories of what transpired. If anything, my memories were even sharper than normal. I have this annoying habit of needing to TALK about critical incidents that happen to me...and I don't recall having any lack of memory of all the details, even from right after it happened.

I'm sure that happens...just not sure it happens to everyone.

Critical being the key word. A crisis may not be as severe as critical. When your life, is in imminent jeopardy of death, or someone elses (life) you may have just taken, it is a critical incident. During officer involved critical incidents, serious crashes of civillians, or officers, a loss of memory is normally documented as part of the CI. Officer's say they fired twice but a 15 round mag is empty. Are they lying? NO. Most remember later. They train in two round bursts, but also train to stop the threat. The 2 round burst training is going away, but with both (being part of training), memories can be skewed for a time. The same holds true in most critical incidents. Debriefing may appear to show a person is not truthful, when in fact it is how they remember it. They may not remember everything for a time.

For the sake of this thread, I agree that narcosis also has a lot to do with memory as well, but it is only one of the mitigating factors.

 

[tracydr]

I think a lot of your amnesia could be attributed to narcosis and co2 retention. Thank goodness you survived to tell the story!
I'd like to add that I was thrown from a horse once ( not the only time, by far) and have no memory from 12 hours before and after the fall. There was no head injury as far as we could tell but it appears the horse flipped over backwards which was always my worst nightmare. Must have scared me to forget everything!