The origins of the U.S. Military Code of Conduct are explained and Articles of the code are revealed. Readers are directed to focus on Article Five, committing a POW to evade captors’ questions beyond name, birthdate, rank, and service number, “to the utmost of my ability.” Article Five is purposely evasive and noncommittal, suggesting that given learning acquired from the barbaric experience of captives in the Korean and Vietnamese wars, the Advisory Committee understood that in a time of barbarism there is a limit to resistance that will vary from captive to captive. By drawing a movable line at which captives save themselves from further torture—the point at which death or severe incapacitation loom large—the warriors and civilians who drafted the Code of Conduct tacitly agree that there is a conspicuous discrepancy between moral aspiration and reality, thus a line at which moral judgment ceases. Focusing on brain and behavior, neurophysiological research is marshaled to support Frankl’s pithy insight, “an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” But Frankl’s further claim, “we who have come back, … we know: the [morally] best of us did not return,” is addressed critically. With a view toward moderation in philosophic thinking and a temperate guidance of fellow humans that shies from Socratic and Kantian invitations to death, the author argues for an empirically informed, empathetic approach to the survival behavior of traumatized captives whose judgment, in the extremity of captivity and barbaric torture, will become severely impaired, given excruciating pain and both physical and psychological debilitation.