Failure spiral

A documentary on the south pole, shot by renowned film maker Werner Herzog, follows a group of people taking the mandatory upon arrival survival course. They do a drill called bucket head, where they place (you guessed it) buckets on their head to simulate a white-out snow storm that kills your eyesight completely and muffles your hearing. They then have to leave the building to go find somebody lost a hundred feet away. As they leave the building, guide rope in hand to help them find their way back, they yell out numbers - "One out the door", "Two out the door" etc.

They start out well but then begin a circle back on themselves and get tangled in the rope. The instructor turns to the camera, as we watch in the background a bunch of bucket heads bumping into each other, and says "This is really important, we want to see if they will realized their mistake and return to the building to formulate a new plan or if this will turn into a failure spiral where one mistake leads to another mistake which leads to another and never ends".

1) I've been in a failure spiral for a couple years now, it's interesting when your in it because you spend so much time trying to figure out your next move when your really need to go back to the building. What gets really wild is that each decision you make seemingly makes it so much harder to make the decision to go back, we're this far now why restart?
2) I don't know how they picked guy #1 but he acted like guy number one, leading by pulling on the rope and yelling, and guy number three acted like guy number three, following, bucket on head, collecting a paycheck (only kidding all you paycheck junkies). The moment you are lost you have to realize that guy #1 (also known as Ben in many examples) got you here and all power is shifted to the last person in line, the one holding the rope that leads directly back to the building.
3) Realizing that there is a bucket on your head is paramount, the same rules don't apply as in regular life. Sometimes you have to restart, sometimes you have to slow down, sometimes the person at either end of the rope has to take control.