This, on Slate, I found interesting.

[Drum]

I didn't find that the author was challenging the smarts of any of these victims, but found that the aspect of self-examination was an interesting take on these events....

Please Don't Remain Calm
Instinctual response in the wake of crises like 9/11.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, May 12, 2006, at 6:18 AM ET

http://www.slate.com/id/2141642/

From the article:

The story of United Flight 93, more than any other tale—true or fable—of our lifetime, makes you wonder about yourself. These were not young soldiers in battle. This was not the culmination of some long crisis with time to ruminate and firm up your resolve. These were ordinary, middle-class and (mostly) middle-aged Americans going about their everyday lives, when—bang!—they faced the ultimate test. And passed. "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide," goes the old hymn. But usually it's not literally just a moment. These people were not just courageous. They were instinctually courageous.

I think I'd flunk. Oh, perhaps optimistically, I give myself a 50-50 chance of having the courage to rise from my seat and join a charge toward the cockpit (once I'd concluded I was almost certainly going to die anyway). What I find harder to imagine is disobeying the instructions from authority figures—flight attendants, anonymous voices over the public-address system, telling me to stay seated and remain calm.

In retrospect, this was bad advice. Similar instructions were even worse advice at the World Trade Center, where people who called 911 were told to remain at their desks. Many ignored or didn't wait for this advice, fled anyway, made it partway down the emergency stairs, and then were told to go back to their desks, or to wait at assembly points in the doomed buildings. Hundreds did as they were told and died as a result. Other hundreds defied authority, proceeded out of the buildings, and went about the rest of their lives.

So, what's the lesson? Is it to defy authority and follow your own instincts in an emergency? If so, we haven't learned it. For a while after 9/11 there was talk of changing the official policy regarding hijackings and to start encouraging the passengers to whack the hijackers with their pillows, and so on. An urban myth sprouted about an airplane captain who gave the passengers detailed instructions in guerilla warfare at 30,000 feet. But today, airline passengers are still told at the start of every flight that in an emergency they should remain calm and follow instructions from anyone in a uniform or—in the case of United—even inanimate objects ("lighted signs and placards").

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Worth a read....

[Mythsaje]

1. If it comes to a choice between following orders

and doing what I believe needs to be done, I'm sure as hell not going to follow orders.

I'd take on a box knife with a rolled up in-flight magazine with a fair chance of success.

[kaygore]

2. I agree. But then I have always bucked authority!

[applegrove]

3. But panic kills as many as terrorists. Remember the Night Club fire

a few years ago? I think that is why the message is to stay calm. Truly amazing that people did get out of the towers and that there wasn't a panic that blocked the stairwells. Yes - of course they should not have been told to stay. Of course that was a mistake. But panicking is dangerous too.

I don't think the people on flight 93 panicked. I think they made their peace and touched god (or their maker), though of family and walked into the light carrying boiling hot water and pushing carts. Humans do that at times. WWII pilots did it every day. That isn't panic. It is pure love of mankind. Pure love.