freediver:
Heh, no I am not going to enter the "agency and lack of training" realm so stop trying to pull me into it.
What I am referring to is simply understanding the stressors that may lead to a panic in your life and the ability to recognize and suppress them so they do not lead to a panic. It seems to me that elevated breathing and heartrate (both controllable) are common to a stressful situation. If one could recognize this soon enough before the event spirals out of control then, I am of the belief that the panic can be avoided.
Freediver - Most panic... a lot of panic can be avoided, not all, and there is a very big difference between most and all.
Jump in the water off of a boat, and your breathing and heart rate will go up...neither you nor anyone else can "control" that. Experience and training all are capable of reducing the window for panic... and that is a very good thing... but everyone has a limit.
Sometimes in life, you get just one second to make the right choice... just one, and if you pick wrong that is it. What happens next may be fatal, and it may not even matter if you Panic. Hope that never happens to you, or anyone you know... but every year there are people that it does happen to.
I hope that you are allowed to go thru life, believing that you are in control of everything... because it means that you have never been in that situation to discover the nasty hard reality of this.
Don't care if it is Walter, or you or anyone else, if the combination of tasks exceeds either you ability to handle them, or the time you have to handle them.. it is going to get ugly. I know I am good at three... might be ok with four (don't know, thankfully never have had to try), but what if you have to deal with 5... or 7 or 10? At some point, you will run out of time, or pick the wrong order, or make a mistake... and there you are in panic mode.
You do know why they don't pull masks off, shut air off, inflate vests on students any more, don't you... because every so often, it will go terrible wrong... even with the trained ones.