Shirl:
Took 3 years of flying and just under 200 total hours for the inevitable
emergency for me. We'd just practiced emergency engine failure *two
weeks* prior, and at only 1300' AGL, having the drill freshfreshfresh in
our minds was helpful. Having been through it takes away the "I wonder
what that would be like and how I would react?" questions, but calm? I
doubt having been through it would take away the "Oh Sh*t!" part of it.

RST Engineering:
Didn't mean to imply that. The "Oh, Shi#" takes about four to ten seconds
to realize that you are really in a pile of it. The rest of the minute or
two to impact is securing all the heavy stuff (including the passengers),
briefing them that this is NOT a drill, and hitting the softest, least
expensive object you can find (in that order).

Oh, I know you weren't implying that.
We had less than a minute, were busy flying the plane, getting our
emergency call made, and then shutting things off (had just topped off
the tanks and were only 6 min into the flight). If we'd had room for
passengers, there wouldn't have been time for any discussion about it,
nor did we have time to think about securing objects.

Done it twice, walked away both times. One with an airplane that was then
scrap and once with an unscratched airplane.

Yeah, mine was totaled, 10 hrs after a near total restoration. But have
to be grateful to have walked away.