Only people who’ve never been in traumatic and life-threatening situations fervently insist that humor doesn’t occur there.

I’ve been in numerous situations where life and limb were not assured and I can tell you, humor still happened. It diffuses tension and conveys that everyone is in this mess together.

One time back when I was a paratrooper we were about to jump into high winds (very dangerous!) with non-steerable chutes. Just before the jump, a colleague of mine commented, “If I die, make sure my pants are still on!”

What he was joking about was that when you jump in high winds, you can get dragged so hard that your pants get torn off. Luckily, the winds weren’t quite as high as expected, so we were ok that day.

I’ve got dozens of stories (mostly from the army) of similar gallows humor that people tell me “doesn’t happen.”

But it actually is rather constant.