Hours of Boredom, 

Moments of Terror 

 Temporal Desynchrony in Military and 

Security Force Operations 

Peter A. Hancock and Gerald P. Krueger 

Center for Technology and National Security Policy 

National Defense University 

October 2010 
ii

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official 

policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the 

U.S. Government. All information and sources for this paper were drawn from 

unclassified materials. 

Peter A. Hancock, Ph.D., is a Provost's Distinguished Research Professor and University 

Pegasus Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Central Florida, 

Orlando. 

Gerald P. Krueger, Ph.D., a retired U.S. Army Colonel, has done significant 

occupational and preventive medicine research and practical applications work with 

military forces, emphasizing prediction and measurement of soldier performance in 

stressful work environments. 

Defense & Technology Papers are published by the National Defense University Center 

for Technology and National Security Policy, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, DC. 

CTNSP Publications are available at: http://www.ndu.edu/ctnsp/publications.html. 
iii

Acknowledgments 

This paper is based on Dr. Hancock’s presentation at the Human Sciences Research 

Conference: New Approaches to Warrior Development, convened by the Honorable 

William A. Navas, Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve 

Affairs, and held June 13th, 2007, at the National Defense University in Washington DC. 

Dr. Krueger was the facilitator for that conference. The views expressed here are those of 

the authors and not necessarily those of any of the named agencies. 
iv

Contents 

Overview............................................................................................................................. 1 

Introduction......................................................................................................................... 1 

Hours of Boredom, Moments of Terror.............................................................................. 2 

The Importance of Transitions............................................................................................ 3 

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ........................................................................................ 12 

Summary and Recommendations ..................................................................................... 14 

Recommendations for Commanders, Leaders, and Supervisors ...................................... 14 

Concluding Notes.............................................................................................................. 16 
Overview 

The “hurry up and wait” phenomenon in many military operations is aptly called “hours 

of boredom,” whereas the transition to meet sudden task demands when combat breaks 

out is sometimes deemed to consist of “moments of terror.” Increasingly, other national 

security and paramilitary force personnel (e.g., police forces, border patrol, operational 

intelligence agents) also experience long periods of boredom interspersed with all-out 

response efforts when the going “gets hot.” The authors examine resultant psychological 

and behavioral implications for combatant and security personnel performance as viewed 

through application of a traditional human psychological stress model. Inadequate 

recognition of the implications resulting from long lull periods, combat pulses, and the 

need to recover from stress can lead to dysfunctional soldiering as well as poor individual 

and small unit performance. Accounting for such time-based transitions in the 

psychological state of military combatants and security force operators is important in 

configuring resilience training for small group leaders, their personnel, and their 

organizational units.

Introduction 

As we seek to come to terms with the rapidly emerging challenges of military and other 

national security operations in the new millennium it is crucial to take a careful look at 

the fundamental characteristics of some of the tasks our deployed personnel are now 

being asked to perform. This assessment embraces a wide spectrum of requirements, 

since many former military job elements are now subject to outsourcing. Contemporary 

national security policies witness deployments of large numbers of State Department, 

international development agencies, and even Justice Department employees, many of 

whom carry out a myriad of activities with some of the same military characteristics and 

accompanying psychological and physiological stressors.1 Our comments may pertain to 

other national security forces as well, but here we exemplify our points by referring 

mostly to the tasks and stresses of military personnel. While not unique to the military, 

the core security tasks that remain for our professional military have evolved under the 

driving force of a changing environment, including a broad expansion of defense 

missions; for example, providing humanitarian assistance, stability and security 

operations,2 implementation of new technologies, and emerging forms of conflict such as 

engaging in asymmetric warfare and counterinsurgency operations.3 Whereas Krueger4

 

1

 Terry Pudas and Catherine Theohary, “Reconsidering the Defense Department Mission,” in Civilian 

Surge: Key to Complex Operations, Hans Binnendijk and Patrick M. Cronin eds. (Washington, DC: Center 

for Technology and National Security Policy, 2008), 39–57. 

2

 U.S. Army Combined Arms Center. Stability Operations: U.S. Army Field Manual 3–07. (Fort 

Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Combined Army Center, 2008), available at http://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ 

fm3-07.pdf. 

3

 U.S. Army Combined Arms Center and the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Development Command. 

Counterinsurgency: U.S. Army Field Manual, FM 3–24 and U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 

MCWP 3-33-5. (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, 2006), available at 

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/ Repository/ Materials/COIN-FM3-24.pdf. 4

 Gerald P. Krueger, “Contemporary and future battlefields: Soldier stresses and performance,” in 

Performance under Stress, Peter A. Hancock and James L. Szalma eds. (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate 

Publishing, Ltd., 2008), 19–44. 
2

recently outlined an extensive listing of soldier stresses that impact performance of 

military personnel on contemporary and future battlefields,5,6 our central thesis here is 

that identifiable constants remain in the missions that military and other security force 

personnel are tasked to accomplish, especially in the temporal rhythm of these 

assignments. Often characterized as “hurry up and wait operations,” we term these 

requirements as “hours of boredom and moments of terror.” It is these forms of demand 

and their effect upon performance and health which form our primary concern. These 

temporal rhythms are normal and expected in military operations, and are becoming so in 

other security operations as well. Understood in this light, this article asserts that leaders 

should, in training, prepare their troops for high levels of cognitive and physiological 

readiness; they need to anticipate executing operational plans that often require patience 

and apparent, sometimes boring inactivity that will eventually be followed by sustained 

maximum performance. This is, in turn, is followed by anticipation of the next activity 

cycle as pulses in the normal sequence of boredom-terror-boredom―which is the 

military way of things. Advances in anticipatory strategy can help a variety of 

professional occupations (e.g., police, emergency response, and other security force 

workers) whose central temporal characteristics are highly similar to this military 

challenge. 

Hours of Boredom, Moments of Terror 

Working environments comprised of long periods of quiescence interrupted by crucial 

but brief periods of intense activity are by no means confined to military and security 

operations. Any fireman or emergency service provider will confirm the vast majority of 

their time is taken up with waiting (which is often used as a period of preparation). 

Professional athletes, professional musicians, actors, and the like engage in extensive 

preparation time that is then punctuated by short, intense, highly stressful periods of 

performance demand. Indeed, for some individuals like Olympic sprinters or divers, the 

actual intervals of performance can be measured in mere fractions of a second while the 

preparation interval can be assessed in terms of a lifetime. 

Military missions lie very much in this realm of temporal desynchrony. Today, modern 

technology exacerbates the already enormous differences between military trainingreadiness exercises and actual combat performance. For example, while presumably not 

bored, modern-day fighter pilots might train for years to engage in aerial combat and then 

never even see their opponent as they “fire and forget” their weapons beyond the range of 

normal visual perception. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operators (pilots) housed 

thousands of miles from the battle front develop significant levels of boredom while 

monitoring countless hours of satellite video feed depictions of desert terrain which prove 

 

5

 Paul T. Bartone, “Resilience under Military Operational Stress: Can Leaders Influence Hardiness?” 

Military Psychology 18, (2006), S131–S148. 6

 Paul T. Bartone, Charles R. Barry, and Robert E. Armstrong, To Build Resilience: Leader Influence on 

Mental Hardiness, Defense Horizons 69 (Washington, DC: Center for Technology and National Security 

Policy, 2009). 
3

innocuous most of the time.7

 Soldiers and Marines routinely perform numerous nightly 

patrol missions for weeks without incident, but then when least expected, they are blasted 

from their armored vehicles by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in surprise 

ambushes. In these terms, “hours of boredom and moments of terror” have evolved into 

“months of monotony and milliseconds of mayhem.”8

We clearly need to know more about these transformations from periods of chronic 

underload to episodes of acute overload. One way to understand such transitions is to 

appeal to the underlying theory of human stress and performance. Thus, it will come as 

no surprise that we use the Hancock and Warm9 model of stress and performance 

capacity here. 

The Importance of Transitions10

Before beginning a formal analysis of the psychological and behavioral implications of 

sudden task demand transitions, we first give a brief précis of the relevant components of 

the Hancock and Warm9

 model whose central tenets are expressed graphically in figure 1. 

The Hancock and Warm (psychological and performance) model, more widely known as 

the extended-U model of stress and performance, can be conceptualized as a series of 

nested envelopes depicting the limitations of adaptation protecting any exposed 

individual (e.g., a soldier) from the threatening vagaries of the environment surrounding 

him or her. Implicit in this conception is the notion that the soldier is seeking to achieve 

some desired optimum state which, being dynamic in nature, is never fully achieved for 

any extended interval of time. In the center of the illustrated continuum is a “normative 

zone.” This represents a desired state of environmental balance and is equated with 

complete physiological and psychological adjustment. If the individual is working, then 

the normative zone is very similar to the notion of a “flow” state,11 in which the 

individual seems to anticipate each upcoming requirement sequentially and so appears to 

effortlessly achieve the goal of the present task. We hypothesize that this state is linked 

with the psychological phenomenon of déjà vu in which events actually seem to reoccur. 

The temporal basis of this phenomenon has recently been articulated.12

 

7

 Mary Cummings, “The Effects of High and Low Workload on Human-System Performance in 

Decentralized Unmanned Vehicle Control” (presentation made to the National Research Council 

Committee on Human Systems Integration (CO-HSI), Washington, DC, May 20, 2010). 

8

 Peter A. Hancock, “Hours of Boredom, Moments of Terror—or Months of Monotony, Milliseconds of 

Mayhem” (paper presented at the Ninth International Symposium on Aviation Psychology, Columbus, OH, 

April 1997). 

9

 Peter A. Hancock and Joel S. Warm, “A Dynamic Model of Stress and Sustained Attention,” Human 

Factors 31 (1989), 519–537. 10 In one of his Aubrey-Maturin novels, the author Patrick O’Brian comments “on the stage and waiting for 

the curtain to go up . . . I wonder whether actions have the same distorted sense of time, a present that 

advances to be sure, but only like the shadow on a dial imperceptibly, and even then it may go back.” 

Patrick O’Brian, The Letter of Marque (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988), 216. 11 Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper and Row, 

1990). 

12 Peter A. Hancock, “The Battle for Time in the Brain,” in Time, Limits and Constraints: The Study of 

Time XIII, J.A. Parker, P.A. Harris, and C. Steineck eds. (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, 

2010), 65–88. 
4

As a practical example illustrating the theoretical relationship shown in figure 1, consider 

the case of combat. The traditional inverted-U view of stress, when applied to 

performance levels, indicates that individuals under the stress of combat will slowly 

reduce in their response capacity as the stress increases. But is this true? In general we 

suggest not. A commonly reported experience is that some individuals fight full out as 

hard as they can for as long as they can. Others don’t fight at all.13 In the former case, 

individuals can function at a high level for a surprising length of time. However, when 

they fail, they tend to fail suddenly and drastically, not in a slow and predictable decline. 

In general parlance, they “fall off the edge of the table,” “reach their tolerance threshold,” 

etc., and their respective commanders must understand and respect when they or their 

soldiers are approaching their own individual limits, although the exigencies of battle 

often do not permit immediate exclusion from duty. But these are reactions at the very 

edge of stress tolerance. To begin understanding such reactions we need to start in the 

center of the illustration. 

Figure 1: Hancock and Warm Extended-U Stress & Performance Model14

Any unanticipated source of disturbance can cause an individual to leave the central, 

normative zone; a loss of comfort is a good indicator of such necessary adjustment. In 

terms of physiological adaptation, the behavioral indicators of comfort have been 

neglected for too long as symptoms of stress, especially chronic expressions of stress 

disturbance. As can be seen in figure 1, each sequential envelope (described by the series 

 

13 S.L.A. Marshall, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War (New York: 

William Morrow, 1947). 

14 The extended-U description of capability under stress by Hancock and Warm (1989): The central regions 

provide an extensive region of relatively stable performance capacity bounded by regions of dynamic 

instability. Unlike the inverted-U there is no graceful degradation but rather a rapid and distinct precipice of 

performance failure at the extremes of stress. Changes in capability and response at these thresholds are 

described in figure 2.
5

of matched vertical lines around the “comfort zone”) actually represents the same 

fundamental process. The essential process is one of self-survival and it is expressed at a 

number of differing levels. The two primary levels described in figure 1 are the 

psychological thresholds describing the brain’s appraisal and assessment of the source of 

threat; the next envelope out is the physiological threshold describing the limits of basic 

bodily processes. These limits are formally characterized as the progressive failure of 

regulated negative feedback. Such failure is evident as each progressive envelope departs 

from the flat-topped plateau of the extended-U and begins its descent into degradation of 

response capacity. Simply put, each expression of response degradation represents a 

progressively more gross process, starting with those related to achieving goal states and 

ending up with those that serve solely to preserve life. The characteristic leitmotif of 

failure is not a slow, graceful degradation of capacity, but a sudden falling “over the 

edge” of regulatory capacity. Tasks of progressively greater difficulty prove more 

vulnerable to the same level of stress. Thus, although there are only a limited number of 

‘envelopes’ illustrated, a whole series of such envelopes of success and failure are 

embedded in the model, and the transition between stable and failing states under any 

specific stress is contingent upon the demands placed by the task. 

A simple physical analogy may help here. A soldier carrying 30 lbs at 50% VO2Max15

will last a certain time before experiencing the onset of performance failure. A soldier 

carrying 60 lbs will last a much shorter time (e.g., the envelope is tighter toward the 

center of the illustration). A soldier carrying 120 lbs will be very limited in performance 

capacity. These are simple physiological loads. However, they represent direct analogies 

in psychological dimensions of task demand. Thus a soldier asked to remember 5 random 

numbers will be able to perform this quite well under stress but a soldier asked to 

remember 15 random numbers will be much more vulnerable to that same level of stress. 

Of course, memory is only one of the psychological capacities that challenge our soldiers 

and other dimensions of performance such as multiple tasking will prove even more 

vulnerable. Thus, one primary purpose of technology is to support the soldier, and so 

alleviate stress-related performance degradation by supporting their task response 

capacities. This is especially true in stressful conditions so technology that is not userfriendly but actually adds to the demands placed upon the soldier is actually a double 

disservice to that individual. 

The time scale of these various actions also very much depends upon the nature of the 

disturbance affecting the soldier. In our present case, we evaluate the effects of both 

prolonged boredom and sudden extreme demand for immediate action and the transition

between these two states.

Bartone5,6 identifies six of the most common soldier stressors in military operations as 

isolation, ambiguity, powerlessness, boredom (alienation), danger (threat), and workload. 

Examples of boredom include long periods or repetitive work activities without variety, 

lack of work that can be construed as meaningful or important, with the overall mission 

or purpose not understood as being important, and having few options for play and 

 

15 VO2Max = the respiratory measure of a person's maximum capability for physical energy expenditure—a 

useful measure of one's state of physical fitness. 
6

entertainment. A key issue influencing the impact of any stress is one’s actual and/or 

perceived level of control over the sources that represent the appraised stress (in some 

regards, powerlessness). Individuals can tolerate a great deal of stress if they believe they 

can exercise a moderating influence over it. Conversely, even small levels of stress, if 

they are unalterable by the actions of the individual, can prove extremely deleterious. 

Historically, in the military case, strategic decisions (e.g., deployment patterns) are 

largely made elsewhere at a higher level of command, not at the soldier level. In contrast, 

however, modern military forces have been consistently and significantly moving toward 

delegation of tactical authority. Employing advances in electronics, network-centric 

communication systems, and individual battlefield computers provides linked, but 

distributed communications from small teams in “frontline foxholes” to the senior 

generals in charge, enabling rapid decisionmaking by warfighters at the farthest forward 

echelon of command.16,17 Thus, compared to forces two to three generations ago, lower 

level personnel in contemporary forces have a much greater degree of influence on their 

own immediate activities. This is expressed in General Charles Krulak’s notion of the 

Strategic Corporal wherein even Marines at the first level of command (squad or platoon 

level) are occasionally expected to engage in rapid, sequential decisionmaking for which 

the outcomes may have international repercussions.18 This dispersed autonomy has a 

beneficial effect on acute stress since the control that it gives the individual ameliorates 

some of the stress each person experiences, but it still leaves the hours of boredom as a 

persistent issue.

One of the universal attributes of boredom and underload is that people often don’t see 

“the quiet time” as an issue of stress—that is, waiting for the next sequential event and 

how that, in effect, interrupts the flow state. On the surface it appears that the individual 

is doing almost nothing. Unless they are of an ardent “type A” character, then doing 

‘nothing’ appears to be rather acceptable. Indeed, doing nothing is often what we aspire 

to do on a ‘vacation,’ and vacations are viewed as a good thing—at least for a while. 

However, as many retired people find to their considerable stress, having nothing to do 

for an extended time can be deleterious to one’s health. Extended periods of enforced 

quiescence, especially to normally active people, can represent almost intolerable 

conditions that strongly interfere with normal cognitive functioning, as extensive 

literature on sensory and perceptual deprivation and its linkage to prolonged torture 

 

16 David S. Alberts and Richard E. Hayes, Power to the Edge: Command, Control in the Information Age

(Washington, DC: Command and Control Research Program, Center for Advanced Concepts and 

Technology, 2003). 

17 Gerald P. Krueger and Louis E. Banderet, ”Implications for Studying Team Cognition and Team 

Performance in Network-Centric Warfare Paradigms,” Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine 78, 

no. 5 (2007), Section II, B58–B62. 

18 Charles C. Krulak, “The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War,” Marines Corps Gazette

83 (1999), 18–22. 
7

illustrates.19,20 Thus our brains are naturally active, and preventing them from engaging in 

their normal level of activity can be highly damaging.

In combat deployments wherein actual fighting occurs intermittently in pulses and cycles, 

small unit military leaders often report their leadership challenges include a fair amount 

of “boredom, fighting complacency, and maintaining motivation of their troops.” Such 

concerns are illustrated in the following comments extracted from U.S. Army after action 

reports: 

• “Maintaining morale in my platoon has become a demanding leadership 

challenge. This is because of the monotony of patrolling with no enemy contact. 

Soldiers feeling they are not accomplishing anything out in a sector also brings 

morale down.” Chris F., Armor Officer. 

• “Fighting complacency, maintaining motivation, and remaining disciplined. This 

is a battle we fight every day from both ends—platoon as well as higher echelons 

of command. Defining a purpose for our missions, being prepared at all times for 

any situation, and staying motivated and transferring that attitude to the platoon.” 

Austin F.J., Infantry Officer. 

• “Keeping men focused on the mission while staying in static positions, even 

upholding basic soldier standards.” Erich R., Infantry Officer. 

• “Maintaining intensity during a low-intensity conflict with an accelerated battle 

rhythm.” Quinn R., Field Artillery Officer. 

• “Keeping my soldier focus and bearing under fire when we were recovering some 

of our own dead and wounded.” Erik K., Infantry Officer. 

The above comments21 confirm that the issues outlined are not merely academic concerns 

but rather are the direct everyday challenges that face present officers and troops in the 

field. 

These hours, days, weeks, even months of boredom can represent cumulative stress 

which can result in very adverse effects on both health and performance.5,22,23,24

However, in the military, such relative inactivity occurs against a background 

understanding that, at any moment, maximal effort may well be required on occasions 

 

19 John P. Zubek, ed., Sensory Deprivation: Fifteen Years of Research (New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1969).

20 Valtin, “Heart of darkness: Sensory deprivation and U.S. torture—where from here?” Daily KOS Blog, 

comment posted May 9, 2007, available at <http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/9/234216/8201>. 

21 Interview comments about soldier boredom extracted from Center for Army Lessons Learned After 

Action Reviews from Small Unit Leaders Following Military Deployment to Conflicts in the Middle East, 

(2006). Acquired from Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy at 

West Point, NY. 

22 Donald O. Hebb, “Drives and the Conceptual Nervous System,” Psychological Review 62 (1955), 243–

254. 

23 Philip Solomon, Herbert Leiderman, Jack Mendelson, and Donald Wexler, ”Sensory Deprivation: A 

Review,” American Journal of Psychiatry 114 (1957), 357. 24 S. Weinstein, L. Fisher, M. Richlin, and M. Weisinger, “Bibliography of Sensory and Perceptual 

Deprivation, Isolation, and Related Areas,” Perceptual and Motor Skills 26 (1968), 11–19. 
8

when the bullets start to fly. Military personnel compensate for intervals of boredom by 

participating in training, maintenance, additional activities and duties, and using modern 

electronic access to make contact with home and family. Maintaining such continuous 

activity levels may even lead to over-compensation resulting in mental fatigue and 

exhaustion. Keeping a time-related activity balance on active deployed military duty is a 

difficult challenge. If periods of boredom are a problem, so are the sudden transitions to 

combat action. As anyone who has received a sudden fright knows, the body reacts 

strongly to the perception of immediate threat.25 Various physiological and neurological 

reactions are put in motion to permit the body to respond to upcoming, perceived 

challenges. Such global alerting effects have a cost in respect to bodily capacity. They 

can be easily tolerated on a relatively infrequent basis, and if our normal life becomes too 

mundane, we even seek to stimulate ourselves in some fashion (e.g., purposefully 

watching scary movies). 

However, repeatedly being subjected to these sudden transitions from boredom to 

ultimate action can have damaging long-term physiological and psychological effects. 

These effects have been noted in arousal-based bodily systems (e.g., hormonal, 

circulatory). What we have much less knowledge and understanding of is how these 

repeated incidents of threat affect cognitive functioning. Like all other aspects of stress, 

we expect that high frequencies of sudden transition from one state to the other and 

perhaps back again will have a harmful influence. As well as stress-based concerns, there 

are many performance-based issues associated with sudden task-load transitions.26 In this 

case, what we hypothesize refers to the “shoulders” or edges of failure as expressed by 

the down slope drop off curves in figure 1 (Hancock and Warm’s stress model9). 

Component elements of these shoulders are represented in particular detail in figure 2. 

Capacities become unstable in these regions, exhibiting decreases in mean level of 

performance accompanied by increases in response variability. Since the first form of 

decrease reflects in the first “moment”27 of response distributions (e.g., the mean level of 

response) and the second form of symptom of degradation is reflected in the second 

“moment” (e.g., the variability of an individual’s response), the combined effect is a 

systematic influence on the coefficient of variation (COV). This is because the coefficient 

of variation is derived from the division of the standard deviation (variability) score by 

the mean value of the current level of performance. Thus, systematic changes in COV 

over time are those which induce the chronic damage and represent the major effect of 

repeated transitions.

This phase transition (e.g., from boredom to immediate action) is very much related to 

the use of information within the individual person. In general, both physiological and 

psychological processes (which we contend are largely reflections of the same general 

use of energetic information) are dominated by the dampening effects of negative 

feedback. As the thermostat on the wall acts to keep room temperature at acceptable 

 

25 Hans Selye, The Stress of Life (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976). 26 Beverly M. Huey and Christopher D. Wickens, Workload Transition: Implications for Individual and 

Team Performance (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1993). 27 Here, “moment” refers to the formal way of describing distributions. It does not mean the moment in 

time. 
9

levels, so negative feedback loops in the body look to counteract the effects of stresses 

encountered in the environment. These notions reflect the classic insights of Claude 

Bernard, Walter Cannon, and other early luminaries, in what was termed the concept of 

homeostasis.28 This use of regulatory feedback is clearly advisable for any individual 

hoping to survive and prosper in an uncertain environment. In essence, this is a 

conservative but still adaptive strategy. 

Embedded within this general approach is the use of feed-forward or anticipatory 

mechanisms. Imagine that you are going out on a mission. It is a good idea to plan that 

mission first, and to generate a list of the resources one might need and then collect these 

prior to departure. These are direct examples of anticipatory (or feed-forward), 

mechanisms which are embedded in bodily response. Arguably, it is the superior level of 

this capacity to anticipate the future in detail that offsets human beings from the rest of 

the animal kingdom. Largely predicated upon past experience, it is vital for the growth of 

our adaptive capacity that the individual anticipate the coming conditions, at least to 

some degree.12 Each of these strategies, negative feedback and positive feed-forward 

serve the individual well in circumstances in which conditions are largely anticipatable, 

or more colloquially, “normal.” 

However, axiomatically normal anticipation does not work well in conditions that are 

exceptional. Consequently, such strategies are less advisable, especially in very 

exceptional circumstances. Similarly, the dampening of negative feedback can inhibit the 

immediate use of full capacities in just those moments where they are needed to survive. 

In the transition phase identified in figure 2 (see bold bracket), we see a representation of 

the individual (in this case the human operator) transferring from the everyday negative 

feedback and positive feed-forward, as shown by the phase transition region. It is this 

manifest variation in someone’s normal behavior that begins to indicate the onset of 

possible failure. These later processes are largely emergency, reactive responses and may 

well be adapted to sudden emergency conditions; but they are abrasive and chronically 

damaging to the individual and are only enacted because they are preferable to extinction. 

That these emergency responses are sometimes inappropriate in a modern world, or that 

they are damaging if they persist across longer intervals of time, represents some of the 

stress problems faced by military or other security personnel in harm’s way. 

 

28 Walter B. Cannon, The Wisdom of the Body (New York: W.W. Norton, 1932). 
10

Figure 2: Hancock and Warm Phase Transition toward Failure at the Edge of 

Adaptability29

Here, stress is seen as that influence that pulls the individual away from longer-range 

planning activities and stable, error-correction regulation (e.g., a military intelligence 

officer anticipating and plotting likely responses of friendly forces to enemy activities) 

toward reactive responses that are largely dictated by the immediate and momentary 

vagaries of the environment around them (e.g., responses to artillery or ambush attack). 

From a reasoning, planning person, largely in control of his or her situation, the 

individual becomes almost like a puppet, dancing to the immediate demands of the world 

directly around them. It is little wonder then that control and perceived control are such 

important mediators of stress effects.30,31 The exhaustion expressed in the latter phases of 

Selye’s physiological stress model derives because the individual is constantly on watch 

against the perceived imminent threat. More formally, stress acts to shrink the future 

anticipative element of perception and action.32,33 This very much implies that stress acts 

as the primary agent of evolutionary adaptation and that the failure of adaptation under 

 

29 Performance capacity failure at the edge of adaptability. The extended-U description indicates that 

performance remains relatively stable for extensive ranges of stress (expressed at the left of the illustration 

and extending well out to the left as shown in figure 1). As failure begins to be expressed, we see an 

increase in the variability of speed of response (upper line) and error of response (lower line). These are 

symptoms of a phase transition between feed-forward and feed-back–based response strategies. These are 

the first symptoms of incipient failure. 

30 Robert A. Karasek, “Job Demands, Job Decision Latitude and Mental Strain: Implications for Job 

Redesign,” Administrative Science Quarterly 24 (1979), 285–306. 31 Robert A. Karasek and Tores Theorell, Healthy Work: Stress, Productivity and the Reconstruction of 

Working Life (New York: Basic Books, 1990). 32 Peter A. Hancock and Mark H. Chignell, “On Human Factors,” in The Ecology of Human-Machine 

Systems: I. Global Perspectives, J. Flach, Peter A. Hancock, Jeffrey K. Caird and Kim Vicente, eds. 

(Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates, 1995). 33 Nelville Moray and Peter A. Hancock, “Minkowski Spaces as Models of Human-Machine 

Communication,” Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science 10, no. 4 (2008), 315–334. 
11

the driving force of stress is not simply an influence on the evolution of a particular 

species, but has its most direct and immediate effects on the exposed individual. 

In human beings this is inevitably a complex process because of our strong social nature. 

Military personnel benefit from “shared stress buffering” in their social groups 

represented by teams, crews, patrols, squads, units, groups, battalions, and so on. All take 

extensive advantage of the fact that the group is much more resilient than the equivalent 

number of isolated individuals. However, just as the capacity limit envelopes expressed 

in the Hancock and Warm stress model (figure 1) are each expressions of sequential 

limits of the same general sort, so too the group will also eventually fail if the stress is 

extreme enough or persists for a long enough interval. In examining current, repeated 

deployment practices of Western forces in the Mideast conflicts, it is possible we are 

starting to see the symptoms of such group failure. 

Having dealt with chronic boredom and underload and the transition between states of 

boredom and states of emergency, we now focus specifically on the breakdown of 

performance during the “moments of terror.” Often, combat missions require the 

individual to do something that is highly paradoxical. Military actions ask that for an 

expressed “higher” purpose, individuals expose themselves to significant threats which 

are known to cause either injury or fatality. A frank cognitive appraisal of such a 

proposition shows just how curious this is. While it is true that numerous nonmilitary 

people face fatal circumstances on many occasions (perhaps excepting firemen and 

policemen), they rarely do so on a purely voluntary basis. What this means is that every 

combat mission possesses elements of unique stress which occur before, during, and after 

events. This tripartite differentiation is very much representative of Haddon’s matrix34 of 

stress as viewed over phased temporal flow, an example of the structure of which is 

presented in table 1. 

Using Haddon’s simple matrix of stress by temporal flow we can follow the experience 

of an individual exposed to sudden emergency conditions. Haddon identifies three 

temporal phases (table 1, vertical axis), logically enough—before, during, and after 

significant events, (labeled as pre-event, event, and post-event) and four components of 

that temporal flow (on the horizontal axis labeled as host, agent, physical environment, 

and social environment). The host in this case is the military Serviceperson (Soldier, 

Marine), and the agent is the source of threat (e.g., enemy combatants). The physical 

environment is that which surrounds the Serviceperson (e.g., high altitude mountainous 

terrain), while the social environment is composed of interactions with all other pertinent 

individuals (e.g., peers, leaders, subordinates, indigenous personnel in peace-keeping). In 

the military, Soldiers (the host) pre-plan as much as possible in the pre-event phase, 

considering the sources of threat, the conditions in which the action will occur and who is 

likely to be there, whether friends, foes, or neutrals. While the action (significant event) is 

in progress these are also the primary sources of concern, those which serve to focus the 

conduct of any after-action review, the post-event phase. 

 

34 William Haddon, Jr., “On the Escape of Tigers: An Ecologic Note,” American Journal of Public Health,

60, no. 12, (1970), 2229–2234. 
12

Table 1: William Haddon’s Matrix of Stress by Phased Temporal Flow35

Combat and conflict situations often can be difficult to comprehend during action 

because of the spatial and temporal distortions of perception that accompany high-stress 

events.36 Haddon’s matrix offers a descriptive approach, which helps us to structure our 

understanding of events that permit the accuracy and anchor-effects that pre- and postevent evaluations encourage. Since “moments of terror” are fleeting yet so crucially 

important, any structure that can be brought to these life-changing moments is vital. In a 

matter of milliseconds, lives can be altered forever. What we now begin to realize is that 

the self-same effects of these moments of terror can be transmitted about as effectively by 

the many hours of boredom, and the repeated transitions between these two states of 

boredom and terror. One important behavioral indication of these effects is noted in the 

rising incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among previously deployed military 

personnel. 

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 

As Bartone5 points out, many combatants suffer physical and mental health decrements 

following exposure to stress, while many others show remarkable resilience, remaining 

healthy despite high stress levels, even when working in the same military unit. One of 

the most critical concerns of the military, especially for Army and Marine ground forces, 

is the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In some ways, it is not appropriate 

to label this a “disorder,” because post-traumatic stress states are perfectly reasonable 

systemic reactions to the perfectly unreasonable levels of stress and strain encountered by 

 

35 Haddon’s (1970) Matrix. On the vertical axis are the three components of temporal flow. On the 

horizontal axis there are four forms of entity experiencing this flow. These are first, the Host represents the 

person at risk of damage. The second element is the Agent, the energy type which poses the threat, e.g., 

kinetic energy from weapons. The third element is the Physical Environment, the setting in which the 

threats occur. Lastly is the Social Environment referring to the norms and practices the particular culture 

expects and imposes on Hosts. 

36 Peter A. Hancock and Jeanie L. Weaver, “On Time Distortions under Stress,” Theoretical Issues in 

Ergonomics Science 6, no. 2 (2005), 193–211. 
13

our troops. In our minds, PTSD is often correlated with particular “spectacular events.”37

Given our Western view of causation, this is a common and reasonable way to 

understand the phenomenon. Such events may be the psychological trauma caused by 

witnessing sudden death or injury, or may be from the physical trauma of repeated “shellshock” stressors such as incoming artillery blast over-pressures.38 PTSD is a complex 

issue since it also involves the prior experiences of the individual, his/her immediate 

exposure to particular circumstances, and subsequent experiences both within the military 

following deployment and extending to experiences after returning from dangerous 

overseas deployments.39

PTSD can be represented as a chronic effect of prolonged stress over which one has little 

to no control. Such maladaptive conditions involve continuous threat of traumatic fatality 

and exposure to conditions and events for which an individual is unprepared. Military 

combat and its sequelae often expose individuals to events for which no normal human 

being can be fully prepared40 (see reported experiences in Iraq;41 and see embedded 

journalist Sebastian Junger’s vivid examples of endless anticipation of battle in front line 

infantry operations in Afghanistan42). It is perhaps one of the great ironies of all military 

engagements that even the victors have to live with the consequences of their actions, for 

example killing one’s adversaries,43,44 consequences that can prove morally and 

psychologically corrosive over the years to follow. In this way, the stress of combat 

affects not only the exposed individuals but society in general. 

As any nation increases its standard of living and the associated expectations of its 

citizens, those who volunteer or are selected for military service and national security 

jobs will become progressively less adapted to the rigors and experiences of war. This, 

for example, was why Thomas More advocated that “utopians” use mercenaries for their 

wars. Despite all the blather about video-game preparation of future soldiers, the higher 

the level of education that is provided for a nation’s citizens the more the antipathy for 

the actual process of war. At least hopefully this is true. Thus, we have an ever-growing 

moral obligation to those who fight the nation’s battles in helping to readjust after their 

 

37 Matthew J. Friedman, Terence M. Keane, and Patricia A. Resick, eds., Handbook of PTSD: Science and 

Practice (New York: Guilford Press, 2007). 38 David Marlowe, “The Human Dimension of Battle and Combat Breakdown,” in Military Psychiatry: A 

Comparative Perspective, ed. R.A. Gabriel (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 7–24. 39 Rick L. Campise, Schuyler K. Geller, and Mary E. Campise, “Combat Stress,” in Military Psychology: 

Clinical and Operational Applications, Carrie H. Kennedy and Eric A. Zillmer, eds. (New York: Guilford 

Press, 2006), 215–240. 

40 Daryl S. Paulson and Stanley Krippner, Haunted by Combat: Understanding PTSD in War Veterans 

Including Women, Reservists, and Those Coming Back from Iraq (Westport, CT: Praeger Security 

International, 2007). 

41 J.L. Merlo, Michael M. Szalma, and Peter A. Hancock, “Stress and Performance: Some Experiences 

from Iraq,” in Performance under Stress, Peter A. Hancock and James L. Szalma, eds. (Aldershot, UK: 

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2008), 359–379. 

42 Sebastian Junger, War (New York, NY: Hachette Book Group, Inc., Grand Central Publishing, 2010). 43 David A. Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (New 

York: Little-Brown, 1995). 

44 David A. Grossman and Loren W. Christensen, On Combat: The Psychology of Deadly Conflict in War 

and Peace (Belleville, IL: PPCT Research Publications, 2004). 
14

military service is complete. In the Western world, our naïve expectation is that all can be 

repaired or regenerated as it was before such exposure. This is incorrect. Some 

individuals who serve and experience the extreme stresses of war will never fully 

recover. Given the advances in biocybernetics and prosthetics, it may well be that the 

physical injuries of combat will eventually be more easily accommodated than the 

psychological damage. The former is more directly observable, the latter more insidious. 

Summary and Recommendations 

We have highlighted here some of the issues of sudden psychological and physiological 

transitions between temporal periods of boredom and overloading moments (of terror) as 

well as the potential for performance degradation and stress-related health problems that 

they engender. While there is not much research published on boredom per se, a recent 

book by two Norwegian professors45 asserts that wars consist of 95% boredom and 5% 

horror, and that boredom imparts certain demands on individual workers who endure it. 

Supervisors who ignore boredom exhibit poor leadership. In its simplest form, boredom 

can endanger operations, even military ventures, as it may even lead to tactical and 

strategic failures at a later time. 

The obvious question is—what can we advise military commanders or leaders and 

supervisors of security force personnel to do about this?

Recommendations for Commanders, Leaders, and 

Supervisors 

• Recognize rhythms in human activity. Leaders must first recognize that the 

rhythms in human activity (including military and security force activities) are natural 

and inherent expressions of human behavior. In actual fact, such temporal-based 

rhythms are most helpful in regulating and modulating both cognitive and physical 

load. What we need to ensure is that the changes from one phase to another are not so 

abrupt as to be damaging to workers (e.g., soldiers, security personnel). Practical 

strategies to elongate the transition interval by minimizing the hours of boredom 

should prove to be most useful to help dilute the phase shift to moments of terror. 

Practice in training activities, readiness exercises, and preparation for emergency 

calls-to-action can serve this function. 

• Spread out cognitive task demands. Similarly, shifting some of the cognitive load 

of sudden response to the intervals of quiescence can reduce the stress on pressured 

personnel. This strategy has already been enacted in the design and operation of 

complex human-machine systems; such ‘load-leveling’ operations are referred to as 

“adaptive allocation.” Approaches that focus on the minimization of large 

fluctuations of imposed task-demand often use pre-programmed responses to adjust 

the imposed load when some particular load threshold has been crossed.46,47,48,49

 

45 Bard Maeland and Paul Otto Brunstad, Enduring Military Boredom: From 1750 to the Present 

(Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillian, 2010). 

46 Peter A. Hancock, “On the process of automation transition in multi-task human-machine systems,” 

Transaction of the IEEE on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Humans and Systems 37, no. 4 (2007), 

586–598. 
15

These self-same principles can be applied at the individual or group level using both 

technical and planning support to distribute the imposed operational load—and so 

dissolve the inherent stress of the sudden call to action during the moments of terror.

• Acknowledge physiological rhythms. Just as combatant leaders understand that 

battles are fought in pulses, they should understand some of the normal human bodily 

and biological rhythms as well. As mentioned earlier, human beings naturally 

oscillate in their various physiological capacities, and among these forms of 

oscillation, circadian physiological rhythms are perhaps the most well known.50

However, there also are ultradian and infradian rhythms having frequencies which are 

either faster or slower than the circadian change across the 24-hour interval. Amongst 

these, the basic rest-activity cycle shows that continuous activity in the 2–3 hour 

range is well tolerated but prolonged activities which exceed a period of 4 hours in 

duration tend to prove more problematic. Well-planned use of work-rest breaks, and 

changing or alternating activities every couple of hours can help to break up 

monotony. 

• Plan for adequate rest and sleep. Commanders and leaders must recognize the 

many human factors involved in sustained and/or continuous operations and the 

inherent performance implications attached to working for extensively long hours 

without adequate sleep. Leaders need to assign sufficient personnel staffing in the 

workplace for sustaining operations; design and implement appropriate work-rest 

scheduling for the mission; and recognize the need and then develop and adhere to 

individual and work-unit sleep discipline policies and practices. These are outlined by 

Krueger.51,52 The degree of stress imposed in sustained or continuous around-theclock operations is of course contingent upon what the individuals are being asked to 

do for those extended intervals. Dull, repetitive work can lead to boredom, 

inattention, compromised vigilance, missed signals, etc. Often, it is the boring and 

supposedly undemanding tasks like watch-keeping that actually impose significant 

levels of stress.9 It is also often the underload element, combined with the knowledge 

that failure in that element can lead to serious if not fatal consequences for oneself 

and one’s colleagues, that imposes the greatest long-term sources of stress. This is all 

the more insidious since this stress remains hidden because these tasks “appear” to be 

so simple and apparently undemanding. 

 47 Peter A. Hancock and Mark H. Chignell, “Adaptive Control in Human-Machine Systems,” in Human 

Factors Psychology, ed. Peter A. Hancock (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1987), 305–345. 48 Raja Parasuraman and M. Mouloua, eds., Automation and Human Performance: Theory and 

Applications (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum Associates, 1996). 49 Raja Parasuraman and Peter A. Hancock, “Mitigating the adverse effects of workload, stress and fatigue 

with adaptive automation,” in Performance Under Stress, Peter A. Hancock and James L. Szalma, eds. 

(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2008), 45–57. 

50 Wilse B. Webb, ed., Biological Rhythms, Sleep and Performance (Chichester, UK: Wiley and Sons, 

1982). 

51 Gerald P. Krueger, “Sustained Work, Fatigue, Sleep Loss and Performance: A Review of the Issues,” 

Work and Stress 3, no. 2 (1989), 129–141. 52 Gerald P. Krueger, “Sustained Military Performance in Continuous Operations: Combatant Fatigue, Rest 

and Sleep Needs,” in Handbook of Military Psychology, Rueven Gal and A. David Mangelsdorff, eds. 

(Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons, 1991), 255–277. 
16

• Train to anticipate both hours of boredom and moments of terror. Perhaps the 

most helpful approach military commanders and civilian security force supervisors 

can take in preparing their personnel for hours of boredom and moments of terror is 

to offer practice in realistic training that mimics actual anticipated operations as close 

as possible. Troops naturally deal with the stresses of combat more successfully if 

they are trained to handle it.4

 In developing “stress hardiness,” exposing workers to 

“stress training scenarios” incorporating the kinds of traumas as well as the periods of 

boredom they likely will face in actual war or security operations is deemed 

helpful.6,53 As a practical matter, repetitive practice and rehearsal can fill some of the 

unending hours of boredom while readily addressing the sudden ramp up in demand 

that the call-to-action imposes. However, like all things, if overused, the practice 

(rehearsal) strategy can itself become a rote burden which annoys and frustrates 

personnel instead of acting as a source of stress mitigation. In training or preparation 

for deployment it would be helpful to educate soldiers/security workers about what to 

expect as the insidious effects of “hours of boredom.” 

• Anticipate future technological assists in cognitive assessment. In a classic human 

engineering approach, the high demands of many emergency responses can be 

diminished by transferring some workload to technological support systems (e.g., 

through application of augmented cognition technologies54). This strategy leaves the 

human responders free to answer the case-specific requirements of particular, unique 

incidents. Here, it would be of great help for a military commander or a security force 

director to have some on-line assessment of the cognitive and physiological state of 

readiness of the individuals under his or her command. This stress-level metric could 

guide decisions as to immediate response as well as an assessment of more long-term 

chronic exposure to stress of his or her troops/workers which could be useful in 

mitigating post-deployment problems. Largely composed of ongoing physiological 

and cognitive measures, an individual’s personal historic profile (prior experiences) 

could also be factored into the assessment. Although generally useful to assess the 

readiness of personnel, such information cannot change the fundamental nature of 

conflict and thus such proposals remain suggestions for consideration and research 

rather than hard and fast algorithms for stress response. 

Concluding Notes 

The “hurry up and wait” aspect of military operations, involving long periods of 

boredom, has been around as long as warfare itself. Today’s national security force 

personnel experience many similarities in their work (e.g., border patrol watch-keeping is 

not unlike some boring military operations). It is intrinsic to all human warfare that 

periods of lassitude and inactivity frame the incidence of actual combat. Battles are said 

to be fought in pulses, partly due to the necessity of moving troops and logistical supplies 

 

53 James E. Driskell, Eduardo Salas, John H. Johnston, and Terry N. Wollert, “Stress exposure training: An 

Event-Based Approach,” in Performance under Stress, Peter A. Hancock and James L. Szalma, eds. 

(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2008), 271–287. 

54 Dylan D. Schmorrow and Kay M. Stanney, eds., Augmented Cognition: A Practitioner’s Guide (Santa 

Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2008). 
17

over the geography of the battlefield. Such periods are commonly used for varying forms 

of preparation, but the waiting time cannot always be fully occupied by logistical 

preparation, maintenance, and rehearsal activities. Then one of two things happens. The 

first is that the preparation becomes the “norm” and the fighting force is blunted in 

proportion, or the alternative is that soldiers or other workers get “bored” and seek other 

outlets for their energies, not all of them productive or contributory to order.37 Neither is 

conducive to maximal preparedness. In some generations, when all-out international 

conflict is expected but never actually occurs, this can lead to whole generations who 

prepare for combat but never actually engage in it. In other generations, it can lead to 

almost permanent deployment as subcritical skirmishes predominate in an insurgencybased action such as currently exists in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not lost on us that each 

of these conditions is representative of Selye’s original conception of stress stages here.

It would be nice to be able to provide a simple formula that could be followed to dismiss 

these effects of maladapted temporal rhythms. However, the constraints of conflict and 

sustained security operations make this unlikely. Rather, the answer lies in familiarizing 

workers (troops or other security personnel) with these demands of temporal transition 

both in basic and advanced training. This is difficult since the “adrenaline rush” of real 

operations is never quite replicated in exercises or simulations and it is the very stimulus 

of being thrust into immediate action scenarios which permits troops to perform under 

extended high demand in the first place. Practice at varying the levels of cognitive 

demand placed on active workers, finding meaningful activities for mission “down times” 

and emphasizing the importance of variations in activity during off-duty hours can all 

help mitigate the impact of these sudden and demanding transitions in activity level. With 

the advent of advanced technology and automation, it is possible to conduct some 

missions in Afghanistan from control centers resident in the United States.7

 The notion of 

an automated and technological war might seem farfetched at present, and is far from the 

experience of combat troops on the ground. Thus, humans are still the central elements in 

current military and security-based operations, and the best policy for any commander or 

supervisor is to look after those human resources to the best of his/her ability. This means 

planning the temporal nature of the deployment experience is an important but as yet not 

fully resolved issue.