Hero or Villain/Criminal Dilemma, a Study and Opinion

I was reading the newspaper as usual and came across an interesting study being carried out in Germany. The study was about how the public opinion may differ from the law and the judicial system and how the law does not keep in mind the scenario of a crime. Let me sketch out the scenario: “an airplane with 168 people on board was hijacked by terrorists with the plan to fly into a football station that houses 70 000 people. An army captain gives the order to shoot down the plane”.

I find this a very hard emotional dilemma; considering it asks the usual difficult question of do you kill 1 to save a 1000 people? But if we think of this from a logical point of view it would be normal to give the order to shoot down the plane. The first reason being that by allowing a hundred people to die, you could save thousands of people. The second reason being that the 168 are still going to die. Considering that the plan of the terrorist is to fly the airplane in to a stadium full of people, the chance is great the people on the airplane will do on impact along with thousands of other people.

On the other hand you have HOPE an emotional aspect that is very important. You know hope makes the world turn around, a person can’t live without hope. So considering this important aspect people will always hope that a miracle occurs. By miracle I mean things like passengers overpowering the terrorist or one of terrorist having a change of heart.

For extra information here are the results of the study: by German law the captain was considered a criminal because of the following principle that every live is just as important, so trading one life for another is a criminal fact. While four out of five German people said that the captain was innocent, and possible even a hero for making the hard choice.