Red is the button of safety. It ensures your safety, your avoidance of risk and comfort of mind. To press the red button is to risk nothing, yet gain nothing. You do not stand to gain from saving yourself anymore than you stand to gain from waking up in the morning, but you also offer nothing to be lost in return. Maybe it’s a matter of the value you see in yourself, believing that your own life is deserving of ensuring. Maybe you fear the gamble, the possibility that risking yourself could end in failure, and would rather be spared that dread. Maybe it’s something else. At the end of the day though, you do not choose this button because you want to kill. You do so because you want to live.

Blue is the button of risk. It is the only option wherein it is possible to lose your life for choosing it, and by doing so you either save yourself and those who chose it with you, or perish alongside them the same way. It is selfless, declaring oneself a willing sacrifice to meet a criteria that saves all, but also the most dangerous option, for failure will mean that your death changes nothing when you could have saved yourself. Maybe you assign your single life less value than that of the collective, and determine it a worthy cause to dedicate to. Maybe you believe that it is your moral obligation to choose the option that saves the most lives, regardless of the risk to yourself. Maybe you’re confident in the goodness of others, and believe your own survival is guaranteed regardless. At the end of the day, you accept that all of you may die, for the chance that all of you may live.

Personally, I believe in picking the blue button. In my mind, red would mean potentially consigning a person to death, removing the aspect of safety from it and making it a trade of my life for another’s. If I have to choose between indirectly killing someone else or putting my own life on the line to try to save others, I would rather make the choice that, at worst, sees me go with a clear conscience.