美國機場巨響被當槍聲，恐怖主義引發(fā)全民恐慌

“It sounded like a stampede of cattle,” Donna Melanson said — 30 to 40 people fleeing, terrified, through Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday night. “Everyone is yelling, ‘Shooter, shooter, shooter,’ and they start diving under the seats to hide.”

“聽上去像狂奔的牛群一樣，”唐娜·梅蘭森(Donna Melanson)說。周日晚上在洛杉磯國際機場，三四十人四處逃散，驚恐萬分。“所有人都在喊，‘槍手、槍手、槍手，’然后開始鉆到座位底下藏起來。”

Ms. Melanson, 53, a yoga instructor who was waiting to fly home to Miami, grabbed her bag and joined the stampede because, she said, “I couldn’t think of why people would be running unless there was a true emergency.”

現(xiàn)年53歲的梅蘭森是瑜伽教練，正等著搭乘飛機回邁阿密的家。她一把抓起行李，加入狂奔的人群，因為她說，“除非真的出現(xiàn)了緊急情況，否則我想不到大家為什么會跑。”

There was not. A loud noise mistaken for gunfire led to rumors that spread at blazing speed in person and on social media, setting off a panic that shut down one of the nation’s busiest airports, as passengers fled terminals and burst through security cordons, and as the police struggled to figure out what was happening and to restore order.

實際并未發(fā)生緊急情況。一聲巨響被誤以為是槍聲，進而引發(fā)傳言。傳言以閃電般的速度在人們口中和社交媒體上傳播，造成恐慌，最終導致這座屬于全美最繁忙之列的機場關閉。乘客逃離航站樓，沖破安全警戒線，警察則努力想要弄清楚發(fā)生了什么事，并恢復秩序。

Far from being an isolated episode, it was essentially what had happened on Aug. 13 at a mall in Raleigh, N.C.; on Aug. 14 at Kennedy International Airport in New York; on Aug. 20 at a mall in Michigan; and on Aug. 25 at a mall in Orlando, Fla.

這遠不是一起孤立事件。基本上，這一幕8月13日在北卡羅來納州羅利的一家商場、8月14日在紐約肯尼迪國際機場、8月20日在密西根州的一家商場、8月25日在佛羅里達州奧蘭多的一家商場均上演過。

In the wake of terrorist attacks at airports in Brussels and Istanbul — and against other targets in Paris; San Bernardino, Calif.; Orlando; Nice, France; and elsewhere — Americans are primed, when they hear a loud bang or screams, or see a crowd break into a run, to think in terms of mass killings and active shooters. Yet crime statistics show that over all, violence in the United States is as low as it has ever been, and experts say the fear far exceeds the risk.

在布魯塞爾和伊斯坦布爾的機場，以及巴黎、加利福尼亞州圣貝納迪諾、奧蘭多、法國尼斯等地的其他一些目標遭遇恐怖襲擊后，美國民眾一聽到巨大的響聲或尖叫聲，或是看到人群突然開始奔跑，就會想到大規(guī)模殺戮事件和正在開槍的兇手。但犯罪統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)顯示，總的來說，美國的暴力事件發(fā)生幾率處于歷史最低水平，并且專家表示，民眾的恐懼遠遠超出了真實的風險。

“I would say that we are in the grip of a moral panic,” said John Horgan, a professor of global studies and psychology at Georgia State University who specializes in the study of terrorism. “The constant threat perception of being vulnerable to mass violence has seeped into our collective consciousness.”

“我想說，我們陷入了一種道德恐慌，”喬治亞州立大學(Georgia State University)專門研究恐怖主義的全球研究與心理學教授約翰·霍根(John Horgan)說。“始終認為自己會受到大規(guī)模暴力事件的傷害這種想法，逐漸滲進了我們的集體意識。”

Sam Macon, 36, a documentary filmmaker who was at the Los Angeles airport on Sunday, said: “People who were running had absolutely no idea why they were doing so. I don’t think it takes a social scientist to understand that the general tenor of American society right now is that we’re all wound up pretty tight.”

周日當天，36歲的紀錄片工作者薩姆·梅肯(Sam Macon)也在洛杉磯機場。他說：“跑的人肯定不知道自己為什么跑。我認為不需要社會科學家就知道，美國社會現(xiàn)在的主基調就是我們都很緊張。”

The recent false-alarm panics injured dozens of people, some of them seriously.

最近，假警報引發(fā)的恐慌導致數(shù)十人受傷，部分人傷勢嚴重。

Kokila Patel, 66, and her husband, Manu, 74, had just finished lunch at a Panera in the Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh on Aug. 13 when she heard a noise and turned to see panicked shoppers surging toward them. People had taken still-unexplained sounds for gunshots, screamed, dived into stores and made a chaotic rush for the exits, paying little heed to what was in their way — including the Patels.

在8月13日，66歲的戈吉拉·帕特爾(Kokila Patel)剛和74歲的丈夫馬努(Manu)在羅利的克雷布特里山谷購物中心(Crabtree Valley Mall)吃完午飯就聽到響聲。她轉過身，看到驚慌失措的購物者向他們涌來。大家把迄今仍原因不明的響聲當成了槍聲，尖叫著沖進店鋪里，一片混亂地涌向出口，幾乎不管擋在自己面前的是什么，包括帕特爾夫婦。

The crowd knocked the couple down and trampled Ms. Patel, breaking her right femur and leaving her to wait in searing pain for two hours until police officers in tactical gear arrived and helped carry her out of the mall on a plastic display table. Surgeons braced her shattered leg with a steel rod, plate and screws, but the pain is still intense. Ms. Patel, who usually travels to India for three months each year with her husband, remains homebound.

人群將這對夫婦撞倒，并從帕特爾身上踩過，導致她右股骨碎裂。她在劇痛中等了兩個小時，攜帶著戰(zhàn)術裝備的警察才到達現(xiàn)場，幫忙把她放在一張塑料展示桌上抬出商場。外科醫(yī)生用鋼棍、金屬板和螺絲把她粉碎性骨折的那條腿固定了起來，但痛感依然劇烈。通常每年都要和丈夫去印度待三個月的帕特爾至今仍被迫待在家里。

“People always think, ‘A gunman, a gunman,’” said Ms. Patel, who with her husband was earlier interviewed by The News and Observer. “People’s mentality are changing. People are always being afraid.” “大家總以為，‘槍手，槍手，’”

帕特爾早前和丈夫一起接受《新聞與觀察報》(The News and Observer)的采訪時說。“人們的心態(tài)變了，總是很害怕。”

Mr. Patel said he could see fear on the faces of the people who rushed over him and his wife.

帕特爾的丈夫說，他能在朝自己和妻子沖過來的人臉上看到恐懼。

“They thought that somebody’s there to kill them,” he said. “Psychologically, we have been damaged.”

“他們以為那里有人要殺他們，”他說。“從心理上來說，我們有創(chuàng)傷。”

Social media feeds that kind of frenzy, said Roxane Cohen Silver, a professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine.

加州大學歐文分校(University of California, Irvine)的心理學與社會行為教授羅克珊·科恩·西爾弗(Roxane Cohen Silver)表示，社交媒體加劇了這種瘋狂。

“There’s rapid dissemination of information on social media that’s not being filtered by anybody,” she said. “This provides the unfortunate opportunity for rumors to be transmitted very quickly, without any ability to evaluate the veracity.”

“未經(jīng)任何人過濾的信息在社交媒體上迅速傳播，”她說。“遺憾的是，這讓流言有機會火速擴散，人們無法評估其真實性。”

Before there were television news reports about what was happening at the Los Angeles airport, she said, her son in Chicago had called to tell her, “I’m watching Twitter videos of people running at LAX.”

她說，在介紹洛杉磯機場所發(fā)生的事情的電視新聞報道出來之前，在芝加哥的兒子打電話和她說，“我正在Twitter上看洛杉磯機場人群奔跑的視頻。”

At the Florida Mall in Orlando, popping balloons were apparently mistaken for gunshots. At the Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi, Mich., it was a glass door toppling to the floor, knocked over by thieves who had smashed a glass display class in a jewelry store to grab two luxury watches.

在奧蘭多佛羅里達購物中心(Florida Mall)，人們似乎把氣球爆裂的聲音當成了槍聲。在密歇根州諾維的十二棵橡樹購物中心(Twelve Oaks Mall)，則是一扇玻璃門被竊賊撞倒在地上的聲音。在那之前，竊賊為了搶走兩塊名貴腕表而打破了一家珠寶店的玻璃展臺。

As the robbers ran, so did shoppers, and people posted videos of the chaotic scene on social media and said — falsely — that shots had been fired. That message spread fast, and calls to the Novi police overwhelmed the 911 system, shunting overflow callers to the state police.

隨著搶劫者逃跑，購物者也跟著跑了起來。有人把一片混亂的現(xiàn)場視頻發(fā)布在了社交媒體上，并錯誤地宣稱有人開火。這個消息迅速擴散，打給諾維警方的電話淹沒了911報警系統(tǒng)，無法打入電話的人被迫致電州警方。

“It’s a wildfire you try to control,” said Detective Sgt. Scott Baetens of the Novi Police Department. “We try to put out timely and accurate information. But you can’t put it out fast enough to beat Twitter and Facebook.”

“你試圖控制的是一場野火，”諾維警察局的探員斯科特·貝滕斯警佐(Scott Baetens)說。“我們努力發(fā)布及時、準確的信息。但你的速度不足以超過Twitter和Facebook。”

Once people start to flee, it is fairly normal for others to join in, experts say — even people who did not hear any suspicious sounds or rumors of terrorism. But people who study crowd psychology and the fear of terrorism say the steady stream of news reports of bloodshed has heightened anxieties out of proportion to the threat, making panic more likely to take hold.

專家稱，一旦有人開始逃散，其他人加入很正常，即便是沒聽到任何可疑的聲響或恐怖活動傳言的人。但研究從眾心理和對恐怖主義的恐懼的人士表示，源源不斷的有關流血事件的新聞報道加劇了民眾對威脅的過度焦慮，導致爆發(fā)恐慌的可能性增加。

“This overexposure can cause increased fear, anxiety and helplessness, particularly in already psychologically vulnerable populations,” said Daniel Antonius, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University at Buffalo. He described “a national anxiety” about mass attacks that did not reflect the real level of danger.

“這種過度報道可能會導致恐懼、焦慮和無助情緒加劇，特別是在心理上已經(jīng)頗為脆弱的群體中，”紐約州立大學布法羅分校(University at Buffalo)的精神病學助理教授丹尼爾·安東尼厄斯(Daniel Antonius)說。他認為，對大規(guī)模襲擊的“全民焦慮”未反映出真正的危險程度。

Dr. Horgan stressed that in addition to physical violence, “terrorism is fundamentally a form of psychological warfare, and it’s one of the greatest ironies that we help give it its strength in our reactions to it.”

霍根強調，除身體上遭受的暴力外，“恐怖主義本質上是一種心理戰(zhàn)，我們對它做出的反應助長了它的力量，而這堪稱最大的諷刺之一。”