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I

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Want to see something really scary

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The worst fears we can imagine live inside our own minds

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They give us cold chills and nightmares

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But

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They can also help us recognize danger and keep out of harm's way

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Truth or scare is going on the most dangerous mission of all challenging fear itself. Do you have the guts to keep watching?

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Oh

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Are you afraid of the dark

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Fear is one of the strongest human emotions most people would say being afraid is one of the worst feelings there is

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But then why do we love horror movies and roller coasters so much?

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The answers are more complicated and more frightening than you might think

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What does fear look like

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The dentist's drill a stormy night

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Snakes

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Fear gives us all the chills, but while some people will do anything to avoid the things that scare them

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Others are looking for a little rush and confront their fears for the ultimate thrill

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You

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But could fear really be all in our heads

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In a way yes

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When we're afraid our brain sends out signals

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Signals that get us ready to fight run away and hide

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Everyone's brain works like this

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There's a good reason that people are born with a fear instinct already in place

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Fear can sometimes keep us safe. The best defense against danger is to avoid it in the first place, right?

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That's why humans are so good at learning which animals can be deadly and remembering them

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We've been practicing this skill for millions of years

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Most of the things that make us afraid are not things that are burned into our brain by evolution

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But burned in by our personal experiences

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But sometimes a fear can grow into an uncontrollable force of its own even if it doesn't make any sense

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If it happens to you

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You've got a phobia

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Afraid of spiders you're not alone

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It's called arachnophobia and even though most spiders are harmless

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It's an extremely common fear. I shake I tremble

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I've got goosebumps up my arms and I

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Have to get away from it

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Shirley Faulkner has arachnophobia in the worst way

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It started when she was a kid and has kept her in its grip and ever since then it's been getting worse and

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worse

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I am always on edge

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I can't just sit there and watch a television program because I'm waiting for one to run across the room

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It's silly little things that when you speak to other people they'd say to you come on. It's only a spider

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Finally it got so bad that Shirley couldn't take it anymore

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It got so bad. She was practically a prisoner in her own home held captive by her phobia

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I got out of bed one morning. I went into the bathroom. There was a gigantic spider in the bar

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I mean really big and it was black. I just I didn't feel as I could breathe them

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I really panicked and I thought no, I can't go on for the rest of my life like this

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What's a desperate arachnophobe to do?

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Well, Shirley signed up for a class at the London Zoo

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This is where lots of people come to get over their fear of spiders and Robert Ferraggo teaches them how

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Everybody who's phobic knows it's insane

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They know it's stupid to be afraid of a little spider. That's insane

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But they can't change it on the conscious level

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Even though Shirley has been scared of spiders her entire life

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Dr. Ferraggo knows how to help her the only time a spider would ever really bite

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First an expert explains why there's no reason to be afraid of spiders

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The expert is in total control so the students can see he's not afraid

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For some people this can be enough to help realize there's really nothing to be afraid of

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When this method doesn't work, Dr. Ferraggo has a way of reasoning directly with his patients deepest fear

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Sometimes Dr. Ferraggo hypnotizes his patients

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That way he can convince them to let go of their anxiety

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Even if they think they can't

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What I need to do is to get into their subconscious mind. That's the part of their mind that simply reacts

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my job is to get in there and

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Switch off the program. You never needed this fear. You never wanted it and you don't have to have it

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Welcome back. Does the hypnosis work?

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Seeing is believing

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Yes

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Just like that fear becomes well not love but tolerance

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Shirley conquered her greatest fear, but the world is filled with phobias anyone afraid of

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Thunder and lightning

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Frank is his phobia is so bad. He came to the Georgia Institute of Technology

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Desperate for a cure

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Dr. Barbara Rothbaum uses a computer simulation of a storm

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This is a safe way for Frank to face down his phobia. You're ready for it to start raining harder. Yes

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Good

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With the virtual reality goggles Frank can learn to take control of his emotions

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So the next time the weather turns nasty for real Frank will be able to deal with it

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I

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Everyone loves a good movie, but some audiences demand a little something extra

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Demons from another world

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Psychotic maniacs who stalk the night if you're into scary movies the more blood-curdling the better

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I

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John Carpenter directed some of the scariest movies out there like Halloween the thing and vampires

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He learned how to scare an audience from another great director

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Alfred Hitchcock he talks about suspense versus shock and

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He talks about the bomb under the table. So there's a bomb under this table and you and I are having a conversation

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And all of a sudden

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You just can't help it when you see that explosion. It's like a shock to your whole system

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But that's not the only terrifying trick John knows

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Well, the other way to shoot the scene is to show the bomb while we're talking and keep cutting to the bomb so that our conversation

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Becomes anxiety and a tool of anxiety for the audience

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They say stop talking and get out of the room

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That's effective

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Highly effective and these techniques are used in other kinds of entertainment as well

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Computer games like quake are filled with danger and suspense. It's what makes them fun

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Play one of these games and suddenly you're running for your life

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Trying to obliterate your enemies before they obliterate you

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Even though, you know, you're never going to meet one of these monsters in real life the fantasy is pretty convincing

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Fans of these thrilling video games can thank people like Brandon James

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He's one of the game designers who scares kids to death for a living

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you have the nightmares and we put him into the game and

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I think it's it is very instinctive

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Of course, there's no chance of actually getting hurt, but that doesn't matter

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Players feel the fear just like the audience in a movie theater

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Probably even more. I think that that's basically our number one priority. It's what drives a player

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It's what keeps the player going, you know, just to have the constant threat around every corner

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The brain's fear center doesn't discriminate ask any gamer

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They'll tell you it's only a fantasy, but the fear and excitement they feel is the real deal

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Scared of heights so are these guys so why are they doing this?

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Next untruth or scare

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I

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Why would anyone choose to be scared cuz it's fun, that's why

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Just ask anyone into those extreme roller coasters

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You know the ones that take you right to the edge and then plunge you down

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With an overpowering rush of mind-numbing terror

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Welcome to oblivion the world's first vertical drop roller coaster

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That's drop as in straight down

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First you go up 100 feet up and then

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Jet back to earth at a heart stopping 70 miles an hour

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If your trip is terrifying thrills oblivion is the ultimate ride

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What is it about roller coasters that get so many sane people to go temporarily nuts

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Dr. Glenn Wilson thinks he knows one of the things a lot of people get out of riding on a roller coaster is to put their

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Worries and anxieties into perspective after you have traumatized yourself on one of these

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Life's little hassles seem much less important

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For some people amusement park rides are just a warm-up

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Because nothing beats free falling for hundreds of feet with only a giant rubber band to stop you

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I've never been so scared my whole life

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Natalie herb is about to bungee jump and she is terrified

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But she just can't resist the challenge to take the plunge

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I'm getting cool all my friends now my family say I did it I did it

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For Natalie taking the dive off the very very high board was a way of testing her own fears

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and overcoming them

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But Glenn singlerman takes jumping to an even higher level

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It's an incredibly motivating thing to be scared. It really forces you to confront

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Not only your environment, but who you are and what you're doing there

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When he's on the ground Glenn is a medical doctor

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His patients depend on him to stay cool in any emergency so he's a master at controlling his emotions

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But when works over this is how Glenn loosens up

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Glenn and his friend Nick start the day with a little hike up Tango Tower in Pakistan

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19,000 feet up

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It's the biggest cliff in the world

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So of course they're going to jump off it

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If they survive they'll break the world record for longest free fall

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That's a mighty big if when you're flying back to earth at 125 miles an hour

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But Glenn wouldn't have it any other way

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Only by risking going too far can you know how far you can go

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The

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Way to learn the value of life is to put it at risk

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The

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Science of fear counts down to the most dangerous missions on or off the planet

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Angle of Lampard

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For most of us our natural fear is tell us to avoid real danger

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It's called the survival instinct and it comes in very handy if you want to stay alive

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But some people's brains are wired a little differently

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Every day they face serious danger in their jobs

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even risking their lives

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And

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A job doesn't get any more dangerous than an astronaut's

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Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to walk on the moon

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But to get there they had to take one of the scariest rides of all time

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They almost ran out of gas before they could land

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They made it with just 20 seconds to spare

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The

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History was made that day

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But tragically not all space missions go so smoothly

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Even though they know the dangers astronauts somehow face their fears

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Thanks to them the rest of us get to take the amazing trip to outer space without ever leaving home

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All right, here's we impact you're gonna do

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Reference point okay your best way here here across out to the door all right down your goggles

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Ready gentlemen grace for impact

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Fear can inspire us to take chances the key is staying in control in a scary situation

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It can mean the difference between life and death

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That's what they teach at the US Navy's aviation survival training Center flight crews here practice keeping their cool

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No matter what even in the middle of a crash landing panic is the number one factor

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Determining survivability if the crash itself is survivable

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Panic and you won't survive

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To prepare them for the worst the students are strapped into a huge tank and then dropped into a training pool

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What that doesn't sound scary?

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Try it with just 60 seconds of air

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All of our helicopter air crew and pilots carry a miniature scuba bottle and it's got

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Approximately a minute minute and a half of their

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Available to him if any of the pilots freak out this exercise could end in disaster

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But it's worth the danger this is the best way to prepare the trainees for a real crash in the ocean

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Before they went on these training exercises

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Only about 10% of the air crew survived helicopter crashes in the water

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Now that they're learning how to overcome their fear of drowning the survival rate is over 80%

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Fear can make us do weird crazy and sometimes amazing things

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We're just starting to figure out the connection between people and their deepest darkest emotions

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Do you think we can ever completely get over our fears

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Maybe not

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But people have proven you can conquer certain types of fear by taking control of a scary situation

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Scientists are constantly learning more about how our brains work

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So maybe one day we'll finally figure out why some people are afraid of the dark

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And other people just can't get enough of it the only question is which one are you?

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You