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| Three Sheds on the Prairie (photo by V.A. McMillan) |
Adapt.
Improvise. Overcome.
A
Survival Mindset
Survival,
what is it?? What is survival training?? What do we need to know??
How do we avoid survival gimmicks??
Survival
is the art of information management, more specifically the
management of knowledge. Survival is a state-of-mind, more than a set
of skills. Yes, having skills is important to surviving, but not the
most important. The most important tool in your survival kit is your
mind!!
It
is the training/programming of our mind that is the key to survival
in any situation, in any climate, in any season, on any part of the
planet Earth. Your mind must be trained/programmed to be constantly
observing the world around you, taking in the changing conditions
(weather, politics, economics, etc) and constantly assessing what
level of risk these changes present to you and your family. Your mind
needs to be interpreting the risks and devising strategies to avoid
or mitigate each risk. This happens hundreds to thousands a time each
day, every day.
Should
you take a wilderness survival course?? Yes. In fact, you should take
every survival course you can afford to take. You should also take
courses on first aid, to the highest possible level. Navigation.
Languages. Threat analysts & Risk assessments. Communication.
Shelters & Construction. Water & Purification. Energy &
Generation. History. Politics. Economics. And How Things Work.
As
I stated at the beginning, Survival is the art of
information/knowledge management. The more you know, the more
situations you can survive. Here are two examples:
#1.
Lighting a fire. There are hundreds of techniques to light a fire.
Fire is important because it can keep you warm in cool/cold climates,
it can cook your food and it can be used to boil water to purify it
so it is safe to drink. If you only know how to start a fire with a
gallon of gasoline and a strike anywhere match, if you do not have a
match or gasoline you will not survive. If on the other hand, you
have mastered a fire bow, flint & steel or a 9V battery with
steel wool, you options for lighting a fire are 300% greater. (Never
trust the use of percentages in written material.) So, the more
methods of lighting a fire, the better chance you have for success
and survival. Thus the skill of fire lighting is important, it is
having your mind programmed with as many methods of starting a fire
and being able to access that knowledge that is most important.
#2.
Driving Routes. What does driving and survival have in common, you
may ask. First, it is the process of programming your mind correctly
and second, transportation during a crisis or natural disaster may
determine who gets to safety and who becomes a statistic. For the
purpose of this exercise you live in suburbia or a bedroom community
to a major urban centre. On a good day, the commute is 43 minutes
from your driveway to the parking lot at work. If you only know one
route to work/home and you do not listen to the road reports on the
trip to or fro; eventually, there will be a traffic snare-up that
causes your route to become clogged with vehicles. The 43 minutes
becomes 2 hours and your boss is choked because you missed the
meeting with the most important client your firm has ever had. And
since you had the presentation on why the partnership would benefit
both companies, your absence lost your company the opportunity to
grow. Or worse, because you were late getting home your 9 year old
daughter, who after waiting for more than an hour sitting on the
front porch, accepted an invitation to enter the home of a friendly
chap. Seemed like a nice guy, but now pictures of your naked daughter
are floating around cyber-space. Cause and effect. It all comes down
to managing information and knowledge. If you knew 36 different
routes home and listened to the traffic report you could adapt your
route to streets with less traffic and you would be home in an hour
and a quarter, instead of 2+ hours. Transportation, whether hiking a
long trail system or driving a regular route; the more information
you have at the time, the better your decisions are for adjusting
your route to the current conditions. This is survival thinking,
having a survival mindset.
The
mind is your survival toolbox, the more tools you put in, the greater
chance of survival/success in any given situation. Physical tools can
be improvised from the environment around us. Again, the more
knowledge you have the better your chances. If you need an axe, one
could be fashioned from a chunk of scrap metal and a willow branch,
the axe head tied in place with a shoe lace. But if you have no idea
how tools are made/constructed, then even having all the components
laying around will not help if do not recognize them.
3 minutes without oxygen you die
3 hours without shelter you die
3 days without water you die
3 weeks without food you die
3 months without companionship you die
Base
you quest for knowledge on the rule of three's. Learn first aid, to
the highest level. If you or someone you care about cannot breathe
they die. There is no sugar coating this. Shelter includes the
clothes you wear everyday, as well as, any structure you work, play
or live-in that provides a controlled environment – constant
temperature, protection from the wind, rain or snow. Know how to make
water safe to drink. If the water stops coming out of the taps at the
kitchen sink you know how-to get water for your family and make it
safe for them to drink. Food. This is one of the least important
items during a short-term survival situation. The fact is most people
in North America and Europe could survival at least 2 weeks without
any food at all. Our culture has become fat and lazy, going hungry
once in a while would do most folks a whole world of good. Know what
it feels like to be hungry. It won't kill you to miss a few meals
every now and then. Most folks put more food in the trash each week
than the hungry of the world eat each week. Ponder that if you will.
Last on our list, companionship, humans are social animals, they
thrive with a certain amount of social interaction. Isolation can be
made bearable if some form of communication can be established with
someone else. Some people require less interaction than others. If
you want to test yourself, see how long you can resist watching TV,
listening to the radio, checking your Facebook or e-mail, calling on
the phone, going out for coffee or any similar activities. Could you
stay in your own home for a whole weekend without social contact with
anyone else?? Only you can answer this question. If the answer is no.
You may want to add to your survival preparations – start/join a
community of like-minded folks. So, you can survive with others and
then you will not be alone.
You
are taking courses, reading, learning, doing. Your mind is a hive of
activity. You have plans, back-up plans and plans to back them up,
too. You can light a fire on an ice cube in a gale. You can convert a
scrapyard into a convention centre. You can even teach others how-to
start training their survival mind-set. But what about all that cool
gear. Everyone sells it. You can find survival gear on Amazon.com, at
the hardware store, the fishing & hunting stores, camping shops,
heck, even some grocery stores have a survival section now-a-days.
How do I separate the gimmicks from the really useful survival
tools?? And what tools do I need?? Let's start by separating the
chaff from the wheat, so to speak. No, you do not have to throw your
gear into the wind. First, look at the quality of the materials and
the quality of the construction. Just cause it costs more does not
mean it is made better or made from superior materials. You need the
knowledge of how things are made and what constitutes quality
materials. Fancy packaging and big claims by marketing firms does not
equate to a quality piece of gear. That is just hype. If a product
requires hype to sell it, the item is probably a piece-of-crap. Don't
buy hype or into the hype.
Quality
gear, build/made by quality manufactures will cost more than cheap,
assembly-line products from China. But you have to know what to look
for on any given piece of gear. Sometimes, the no name made in China
product is the exact same piece of gear sold by XYZ Corp from Little
Town, USA. If you know your stuff, deals can be had and pitfalls
avoided; but that success or failure rests on your shoulders. How you
spend your money will determine what gear is available. If it doesn't
sell, they stop making it – this is a double-edged sword. If you do
not buy quality gear from quality gear makers they will go out of
business. If you buy the cheapest gear that crud will never go away.
Use your purchasing power wisely. The peak of quality gear is
learning how-to make it yourself. Once you can build a knife from
scratch, or a backpack/gear vest or a log cabin, you can fend for
yourself without Wal-Mart, Costco or the internet.
Adapt.
Improvise. Overcome. The three words you hear all the time when you
are a soldier learning to survive on a battlefield. Failure is not an
option. Failure = death, your death. You learn to adapt to your
surroundings. Improvise whatever you have in your hands, rucksack or
on the ground around you. Overcome any and all obstacles that stand
between you and your objective.
Keep your head in the game,
And you live another day!
Mountainman.
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