Ben Sherwood was executive producer of ABC’s Good Morning America and senior broadcast producer of NBC Nightly News. He wrote two bestselling novels, The Man Who Ate the 747 and The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, and has a website devoted to survivorship, www.TheSurvivorsClub.org.

True or false: When a plane crashes, everyone dies. In an exclusive excerpt from his upcoming book The Survivor’s Club, Ben Sherwood explains why the answer is false.