Would that fear of future shame be as primal as the fear of imminent death, at the moment of conflict?

Probably, people regularly place their own lives as a much lower priority than the group their part of. I assume most air traffic controllers get emotionally invested as their actively talking to the pilots involved.

I’d rather die than kill hundreds of people in error.

That may be true, but your brain reacts at a more primitive level in the moment.

That really depends on the person and situation. Some people get really emotional, but it’s also common for people in highly stressful life or death situations to emotionally shut down and end up going through rote responses. This is dangerous because you effectively lose creativity and can easily get stuck in a loop repeatedly doing the same things.

One example is WWII commanders would sometimes continue to bring ammunition to machine gun nests even when just adding it to large piles. It may have been the best option when they start, but they never revisit that choice. The same thing happens to pilots where people investigate a crash and find pilots keep doing the exact same thing that’s not working for several minutes without considering that perhaps some assumption they have is wrong.

Finally, some people don’t seem to react much at all to such personal risks.