To buggery with the cause or the people they're fighting on behalf of, the survival instinct is strong enough in most characters that they'll simply turn and run, Earth Merge, Withdraw, Blink etc, and leave it to others to fight it, because they don't want to risk character death.

Ah, but given the introduction of things like the Wardens and such, a larger proportion of characters can't just run away these days. Or if they do, there needs to be severe IC consequences for such an act. Which is a different debate.