What does it mean to be a hero? Not a superhero or a soldier in a film, but an ordinary person who sees a stranger in danger and steps in. That question sat behind a short video that circulated widely in 2013 and 2014 under the title "One of the most powerful videos you will ever see". It was a compilation of security-camera clips showing everyday people saving strangers from death, including a man on a metro platform who grabs someone about to step in front of an oncoming train.
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
The video is no longer available, but the question it asked is worth answering properly. Here is what researchers say makes someone act, why the idea that crowds simply stand and watch is only part of the story, and what you can do to be ready if you are ever the person who has to decide.
What the video showed
Copies of the clip were shared by sites such as The Mind Unleashed and catalogued on the Empathy Library, which describes it as CCTV footage of ordinary people saving strangers, tagged with themes of suicide and compassion. Its power came from the format. Security cameras have no music, no slow motion and no hero shots. You see a grainy platform or street, something going wrong, and then someone moving towards the danger instead of away from it, often within a second or two.
The original creator of the compilation is not clearly credited in the copies we could find, so we can only describe it in general terms. What makes such footage moving is not drama but speed: the rescuers clearly had no time to think about rewards, cameras or risk.
Defining a hero: action, beneficiary and cost
A practical way to talk about heroism is to ask three questions. What did the person do? Who benefited? What did it cost, or risk, for the person acting? Those questions separate courage from kindness. Holding a door is kind; pulling a stranger back from a train while it is moving is heroic, because the rescuer accepts a real risk to themselves.
The Carnegie Hero Fund, set up by Andrew Carnegie in 1904 after two men died trying to rescue miners in the Harwick Mine disaster in Pennsylvania, uses almost exactly that test. Its medal goes to civilians who knowingly and voluntarily risk their own lives to an extraordinary degree to save someone else. More than 10,000 Carnegie Medals had been awarded by the end of 2022, the vast majority to people nobody had heard of before.
A famous example is Wesley Autrey, a construction worker in New York. On January 2, 2007, at the 137th Street station, a young man had a seizure and fell onto the tracks. As a train approached, Autrey jumped down and pressed the man into the shallow trench between the rails; most of the train passed over them and both survived. Afterwards he said simply that he had seen someone who needed help.
Do bystanders really just watch?
Many people have heard of the "bystander effect": the idea that the more people are present, the less likely any one of them is to help. It was demonstrated in laboratory experiments by John Darley and Bibb Latané in 1968, partly inspired by the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York, where a newspaper reported that 38 neighbours did nothing. That account was later shown to be exaggerated; there were far fewer witnesses, and at least one person did call the police. In 2016 the New York Times itself described its original reporting as flawed.
Real-world footage tells a more hopeful story. A 2019 study by Richard Philpot and colleagues analysed 219 public conflicts caught on security cameras in Lancaster (UK), Amsterdam and Cape Town. In about nine out of ten cases at least one bystander stepped in, and the chance of someone helping went up, not down, as more people were present. Research also suggests the bystander effect is weaker when the danger is obvious and serious, which is exactly the kind of moment shown in rescue videos.
Heroism is learnable
Psychologists Philip Zimbardo and Zeno Franco argued in a 2006 essay called "The Banality of Heroism" that heroism is not a rare personality trait but something ordinary people are capable of, especially if they have thought about it in advance. Their work led to the Heroic Imagination Project, a nonprofit founded in California in 2010 that runs training on bystander behaviour.
Latané and Darley's own model helps explain why preparation matters. Before anyone helps, they have to notice the event, interpret it as an emergency, feel personally responsible, decide what kind of help to give, and then act. A failure at any step means nobody moves. Knowing those steps in advance makes each one quicker.
How to be ready to help
- Look up. Many emergencies are missed simply because people are looking at their phones.
- Assume it is real. If something looks wrong, treat it as an emergency until you know otherwise.
- Make it yours. In a crowd, say out loud "I'm calling for help" or point at a specific person: "You, please call emergency services."
- Choose safe help. Help does not have to mean jumping onto tracks. Alerting staff, pressing an emergency button or calling emergency services is real help, and you do not need to become a second casualty.
- Learn basic first aid. A short first-aid or CPR course gives you a plan, which makes acting far more likely.
Some rescues in footage like this involve people in crisis. If you are struggling, or worried about someone, contact your local emergency number or a crisis line; talking to someone is a good first step.
The lesson from those grainy camera clips is not that heroes are special. It is that the people in them were ordinary, close by, and willing to move first.
Sources: The Mind Unleashed; YouTube (video no longer available); Empathy Library: One of the most powerful videos you will ever see; Wikipedia: Bystander effect; Wikipedia: Carnegie Hero Fund Commission; Wikipedia: Wesley Autrey; Wikipedia: Heroic Imagination Project.
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