“If you had 3 seconds to choose between hiding… or saving 500 lives… what would you do?”
His name is Spencer Stone. And on August 21, 2015, he proved that the difference between hundreds dead and everyone surviving can be three seconds of decision. The Thalys train #9364 was traveling at 186 miles per hour through the Belgian countryside toward Paris. It was Friday evening, August 21st. Nearly five hundred passengers were aboard—families returning from vacations, businesspeople heading home for the weekend, tourists seeing Europe. In the bathroom at the rear of car 12, a man was loading weapons. His name was Ayoub El Khazzani. He was a 25-year-old Moroccan national who'd been on European security watch lists for months. He'd traveled to Syria, received training from ISIS, and returned to Europe with orders to kill as many people as possible. He carried an AK-47 assault rifle with nine magazines. A Luger pistol with extra ammunition. A box cutter. Over three hundred rounds total. His plan was simple: walk through the train cars shooting everyone he encountered...