system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What is the purpose of panicking?

Most "how to get out of extreme situations" guides say not to panic. 

"Remain calm", etc.

So why do humans (and other animals) panic? Does it ever do any good, or is it just the byproduct of a scared brain with no real purpose to it?
gpt
It's been pretty beneficial to our survival up until we started contending with our own technology; running away from danger is frequently a good strategy in the wild.

Panicking is the "flight" version of "fight or flight" and like any other adrenaline response it is there to help you ever overpower or outrun whatever threat you're facing; in nature there were more threats that needed running from or overpowering than ones that required calm rational thinking (something that gets thrown out in an adrenaline response), but now that we're dealing with less natural danger and more man-made danger, the opposite is true. 

You're not going to overpower, for instance, the door in your car being held shut by water pressure if it gets driven into a lake, no matter how much absurd strength you get from being panicked. You're also not going to overpower a machine that has your finger stuck inside the gears, and by trying to pull away from it like your panic instinctively makes you, you may make the damage far worse.