[DanHower-wannabe]

After watching Seahorse's video here: http://peakoil.com/forums/survival-lessons-for-my-daughter-t66795.html#p1130087

I was wondering how one can develop the "right attitude" for survival situations. While it is important to know how to double your chances of survival once there is only one match left it works only if you stay calm.

While I have that attitude myself - at least I think so - people around me tend more to panic once something goes wrong.

How can one help and educate people to develop the right attitude?

Thanks for any comments or links,

Dan

[Rod_Cloutier]

Make your peace with your maker no matter what will happen.

Don't panic- we've seen it all before. Fool me once and shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me.

Sometimes, survival at any price isn't worth it. Prepare and make peace with the end.

[SeaGypsy]

I never got why folks stopped teaching this stuff to kids.

Oh BTW my old man taught me at 5 the mastery of fire; he contradicted Seahorse in 2 ways:

1/ hold away from the tip, not on it.

2/ flick the match lightly over the whole side of the box, towards you, just enough pressure to strike.

(1/ the tip can't stick to you if you aren't touching it. 2/ a breaking match snaps the tip before the apex of the strike, back towards the thrust.)

He gave me a box of boxes, a dozen fifty packs, and pushed me to go though them all. The last few boxes he dipped in water and made me work out how quickly I could make them useful again, by use of sunlight and residual heat in a dead fire bed.

All well and good to show a kid the value of a match. But right now they are cheap, why skimp? Let the kid really get some practice. Don't just go out to the backyard and mess about with a box of matches and kindling. Show them how to warm the ground with a fires then split it in two/ so you can sleep warm in freezing conditions with no equipment. It's a great night's fun and REM inducing. Just go for it. My youngest are 3 and 18 months, have already been overseas, lived in third and first world standards, been with aboriginal Australians in the tropics and in our second biggest most full on multicultural city.

[Ibon]

Maybe some asian dude will come up with a killer App that all us americanos can download that will teach us the skills to survive. I bet it would sell like hotcakes. I can already see all these kids bumping into trees while walking in the woods looking into their digital screens of pictures of edible plants.

[Lore]

Interesting, but how are we going to get the app to work without electricity?

[dinopello]

Interesting, but how are we going to get the app to work without electricity?

This requires lots of copper wire, some magnets and a very good attitude.

[SeaGypsy]

Excellent idea Ibon, even if tongue in cheek.

[peripato]

I think it really depends on whether we have a fast or slow crash. The former would require some basic survival skills to navigate one, with luck, through the ensuing bottleneck, into a world that may retain some vitality for a long time into the future. After all, no more emissions, so worst case warming of say +4c will never happen. Although those let loose previously will still work their way through the atmosphere.

A slow crash however (over 30-40 years), as is the more likely scenario unfolding, is that the world will be so completely ravaged by then, in all ways, that I don't think it will matter what arsenal of techniques and attitudes at your disposal. You simply will not cope. The total chaos that would occur - environmental, climatic, economic, geopolitical, social, probably precludes it.

[SeaGypsy]

Life expectancy plummeting, die-off, do not necessarily imply terminus for our species at all. Personally I think humans will survive many eons beyond the AGW/ oil age bubble. Bottlenecking is by far the more likely scenario. The most likely survivors were a cataclysm to arrive tomorrow would likely be those least touched by technology, the few remote tribals in a few scattered wild regions of the globe. As slow crash ensues, the possibility of annihilation of our species draws nearer, as more people become utterly dependent on ultimately doomed technology.

There are of course many shades of grey in the possible view and response to the scenarios we are facing. We have to narrow our perspective somewhat or go crazy.

My personal response is to live in the world as I find it, but only after I spent 20 years investigating alternative lifestyles in SE Asia- Oceania. I am right now in a gentrified suburb in Melbourne. Next month I will be driving machinery in our wheat harvest. In January I will take the family to the Philippines for 3 months re-acculturation. My wife will start a family business and choose where our family is based the next 2 years while I work fly in fly out remote contract work. While she build on import/ export, I build my dreamboat. In 2 years we revise. Meanwhile I maintain 2 homes in 2 countries and live in a 3rd when at work. My Melbourne house pays for itself via boarders. My Philippines house will soon pay for itself via family micro business, my residence and work country entitles my family to huge tax breaks. Work pays my rent and food whilst on contract. Remote in Australia means working alongside tribal aboriginals, another line kept open. I am working with a French company online developing bamboo laminate yacht building and testing materials in French laboratories.

Just enjoying the hell out of peak oil so far! The initial shock is pretty gruesome; but it sure inspires a person to think about how they live now, how they might like to live and if they might live (or their children) at all.

Make the most of this precious life and give your children as much of yourself as you can.

[kublikhan]

It doesn't matter if you are in a survival situation or preparing a report for your boss, having the right attitude is important. You might be interested in this link:

We don't usually think of optimism as a survival skill, but that's exactly what it is. In this article, I'm going to show you precisely why it's a skill... and why it's absolutely essential for life. When you start to see optimism as the ultimate survival skill, you'll begin to deliberately improve that skill, and the rewards will be phenomenal.

By adopting an optimistic outlook on life, we can achieve more and live longer. The tendency toward certain types of reactions is real. All other things being equal, the optimist will be most likely to survive a life-threatening situation.

WHERE DO YOU STAND ON THE SCALE?
You probably already know the optimism scale. It's got five flavors:
Cynicism — "Everything is bad, doomed, and untrustworthy."
Pessimism — "Things are likely to have negative results."
Realism — "Things just are what they are."
Optimism — "Things are likely to have positive results."
Idealism — "Everything will work out brilliantly."

HOW DO YOU REACT TO DANGER?
Imagine you're facing a life-threatening situation. Put yourself on the Titanic. You've just hit an iceberg and your ship has gone down. Now you find yourself in icy waters with no more rescue boats in the middle of a dark, empty Atlantic ocean. Consider how each of the attitudes would face the problem:

The cynic would give up hope, and expect death. As a result, he'd feel the cold of the water much more immediately, and would succumb the quickest.
The pessimist would assume the worst, but would fight to stay alive. But by assuming the worst, he'd mentally compound every negative thing that happened — it's all affirming his belief that he's unlikely to survive. He'd still have hope, but the despair would give the elements the upper hand.
The realist would look at the "reality" of the situation. Since it would be statistically unlikely for a boat to find and save him, his presumption (and rightly so) would be that he's in a dire situation with little hope for survival.
The idealist would assume that everything was going to be okay. As a result, he might ignore warning signs like the coldness of the water, hypothermia, the subtle nuances of action that might save his life. He is actually less likely to work as hard as needed to save himself.
The optimist would take serious stock of his situation, and factor in all of the negatives he faces. But his optimism would give him hope — that if he holds out long enough, he will survive. The optimist will fight the hardest for his own survival, yet still deal with the full severity of the situation.

Obviously, this is an oversimplification. Not all optimists would survive, and not all cynics would die. And, sure, it would depend on individual strength, athletic ability, health, the luck of their particular situation, etc. But the principles are valid.

THE SAME GOES FOR EVERYDAY LIFE
In fact, a study in 2004 of nearly 1,000 people found that optimists have a 23% reduction of the risk of heart disease, and a 55% reduction in all causes of death. Think about that. Just by being optimistic about your life, you reduce your risk of many different life-threatening diseases. A more recent study of nearly 100,000 women over the age of 50 found that the optimists were 30% less likely to die of heart disease.

When we think of survival skills, we usually think about things like "learning how to build a fire" or "learning how to perform CPR". We equate survival with the basic necessities of life itself — food, shelter, clothing. Survival skills are about keeping you alive. So how is optimism a survival skill? Without it, you will die. In fact, optimism is the ultimate survival skill, because it empowers every other survival skill. Imagine a pessimist trying to light a fire. Now imagine an optimist doing it.

Whether you're facing a boardroom of clients, a blank page in your book-in-progress, or someone who needs CPR, optimism is the skill that points you to the road of life.

Why Optimism is the Ultimate Survival Skill

[SeaGypsy]

The ability to 'let things slide' is equally important IMO. Bitterness in a person is unhealthy as it is ugly.

[Ibon]

One of those "survivor" shows ended up coming down to Mount Totumas to film their episode. I had to sign a non disclosure agreement so I cant be more specific. All the local indigenous folks and salt of the earth Panamanians who are from these mountains stood on the sidelines and watched the episode being filmed. The real entertainment for me was watching the real survivors, these locals who have organic roots here that go back for centuries, watching this fake survivor show set up the props. This was hilarious.

The audience for this show of course are couch potatoes back in the US who are easily duped into believing this crap. But before we poo poo these poor obese couch potatoes we should look a moment more deeply into the popularity of these shows and examine how this represents a meme that even the most aware in our society are feeding into. You can't really take a population that is three generations removed from the rural economy and knowledge that promoted real survival and hope to regain that using modern technology and studying up on survival techniques. Let's be realistic here. We are all just the briefest millimeter removed from these very couch potatoes we believe are clueless.

We are all clueless. Go ahead and study up on edible plants and how to make a fire and how to shoot a gun and all the rest if it makes you feel good. But don't count on this doing you any good if times would really require you to magically change from a suburbanite to what your great grandfather used to be or to what these locals in Panama are as they watched the "episode" of survival.

Survival becomes a by product of the way you live, not a means or end in itself. Go out there and enjoy the woods, your garden, go fishing and hunting and watching birds and all the rest. Do it all in a spirit of enjoying your existence. Forget about surviving. That is the right attitude.

[vision-master]

Earther's operating in the materialium........ lol

[dinopello]

After watching Seahorse's video here: http://peakoil.com/forums/survival-lessons-for-my-daughter-t66795.html#p1130087

I was wondering how one can develop the "right attitude" for survival situations. While it is important to know how to double your chances of survival once there is only one match left it works only if you stay calm.

Nothing substitutes for practice. Every year, for about the last 15 years we spend about 4-5 days out in a wilderness area with only the stuff on our backs. We do this in spring or fall when it is always cold at night in the mountains and especially in the spring often has a fair amount of snow and/or sleet. We go well-prepared with backpack stove and water filters, a fair amount of freeze-dried food (although fresh stuff is a lot better). Anyway, its a tradeoff between weight you want to carry (hiking 8-14 miles a day), how warm and how dry and how well you want to eat. Nothing teaches you how important it is to be warm, like being cold. Every night is a gathering firewood which can be a challenge in the Fall after the summer tourist season. It's a lot of fun and by no means a desperate situation (unless your stuff gets wet or you get injured) but it teaches you what is important, and gives you confidence in all sorts of things. Whenever we allow someone new to go with us, you can tell they are worried and if alone they probably wouldn't do too well - mentally or physically. Had one guy get lost when on a firewood gathering mission and that was a bit scary (especially for him) and I've seen a raging fire built in a torrential sleet storm using some moss and bark from a tree (bad year to run out of firestarter!).

[evilgenius]

Nice thread!

I think maybe some hybrid of realist and optimist. Look, most people who know me can't figure me out. I say very pessimistic things, but don't say them out of a pessimistic heart. I know that taken as a blank slate failure looms for the unprepared. Realism takes into account how probability does not favor the unprepared while it does favor the prepared. At the same time, anybody who has ever gambled knows that probability is no guarantee of outcome given only a single chance.

I am especially pessimistic about taking potentially lethal chances even though the probability associated with the chance is low that it would happen. While nobody with an average amount of intelligence might take a lethal chance if there was a one in ten probability that they would die they might if the probability was something like one in a thousand. For me one in a thousand is too high. In fact, I think that man has a built in blindness to how one in a thousand is too high in the same way that man has a hard time thinking exponentially. Take driving as a for instance, if a person never learns that signaling when changing lanes is a good idea, or for that matter bullying your way in rather than engaging the other drivers in a sort of conversation to enter the lane, then they are operating on the one in a thousand level. Many of these people live a nice long life and die in a nursing home. Many of them die on the highway at the age of 45 or so. Many of them never make it out of their teens. Optimism may effect the outcome, in the sense of how you react to the immediate calamity that arises out of the fact that no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time, but it is still better to never have gotten yourself into the situation to begin with.

I'm not blasting optimism. In my own life I've seen in work very importantly in things like memory, I can remember if I believe I can and will remember. I think optimism will allow us to bring all that we have to bear into a situation we find ourselves in. I don't, however, think that you can court disaster and simply expect optimism to save you. I don't practice by doing dangerous things. I practice by giving myself subsets, like physical strength and endurance or mentally going over the basics of how certain things are done until they are second nature. Then I trust that these won't fail me when the inevitable comes up.

[vision-master]

Oh they will, your physical strength and endurance is nothing more than a present day illusion.

[evilgenius]

Oh they will, your physical strength and endurance is nothing more than a present day illusion.

I suppose you want to believe that everything is an illusion? Fair enough. If everything is made of illusion, though, then illusion is in fact reality. You who dream of discovering what truth there is in sacred geometry ought to know this beyond all things. Study the normal curve and you may begin to get there. You know, what the number 1 means in regard to that and sacred geometry. You won't get there without love, which is the real reason for complying with the laws of probability, not merely trying to keep yourself alive. You do what you can (study, work the body, practice self-control) in order to participate, but love is what gives you the reason to participate.

[Newfie]

In WWII they did a lot of research on downed pilots, at sea, all with similar equipment. Average guy should last a few days.

Something like 75% died within 24 hours, the balance you could not kill with a stick. The difference is in mental attitude. But you really can't tell which camp you are in until you are there.

Ths guy has done a lot of research on the topic. Laurence Gonzalez.

http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com ... zales-text

Also read D Day by Stephen Ambrose. He tells a similar story. Hard core drill sergeants crumple while meek privates rally the troops to take the position.

Who knows what stuff we are made of.

[Cloud9]

Good list.

[Whitefang]

Great links and idea's about this business of staying alive here folks.

Might be for another topic but I find the mind set of a warrior as described by Carlos C. relevant here, when I were so much younger I used to read his books but never thought that it would come true, those teachings of Don Juan were explained to me by example and word of a teacher/nagual with whom I were friends during a decade or so.
He made me see things with his incredible energy, his personal power capable of anything.
The trick is all about saving personal energy by living impeccable, very disciplined alike a monk, no indulgence in emotions or anything, cut everything unneeded, self-importance and pity and shift your perception making it a lot more than just the world we know by word of mouth.
Upcoming events will make us humble and sober again, we need physical strenght as well if we want to last.
Nature will be a ruthless teacher, giant mother Earth, a being herself.
Our greatest accomplishment will indeed be to take only what we need and not more.
I am looking forward to a new begin after the crash of culture, even if we need to abandon mothership Earth and make use of our true nature and options hidden within.
This is not an illusion but a description of something real.
Anyway, here a bit on being a warrior:

Somebody stored a summary of the knowledge of Don Juan told to Carlos C in his books on the web:

http://www.prismagems.com/castaneda/

A warrior takes responsibility for his acts; for the most trivial of his acts. He waits patiently, knowing that he is waiting, and knowing what he is waiting for. That is the warrior's way.
What makes us unhappy is to want. Yet if we would learn to cut our wants to nothing, the smallest thing we'd get would be a true gift. To be poor or wanting is only a thought; and so is to hate, or to be hungry, or to be in pain. They are only thoughts for me now, I have accomplished that feat. The power to do that is all we have, mind you, to oppose the forces of our lives; without that power we are dregs, dust in the wind.
It is up to us as single individuals to oppose the forces of our lives. Only a warrior can survive. A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for; and while he waits he wants nothing and thus whatever little thing he gets is more than he can take. If he needs to eat he finds a way, because he is not hungry; if something hurts his body he finds a way to stop it, because he is not in pain. To be hungry or to be in pain means that the man has abandoned himself and is no longer a warrior; and the forces of his hunger and pain will destroy him.
* * *
When a man embarks on the paths of sorcery he becomes aware, in a gradual manner, that ordinary life has been forever left behind; that knowledge is indeed a frightening affair; that the means of the ordinary world are no longer a buffer for him; and that he must adopt a new way of life if he is going to survive. The first thing he ought to do, at that point, is to want to become a warrior. The frightening nature of knowledge leaves one no alternative but to become a warrior.
By the time knowledge becomes a frightening affair the man also realizes that death is the irreplaceable partner that sits next to him on the mat. Every bit of knowledge that becomes power has death as its central force. Death lends the ultimate touch and whatever is touched by death indeed becomes power.
A man who follows the paths of sorcery is confronted with imminent annihilation every turn of the way, and unavoidably he becomes keenly aware of his death. Without the awareness of death he would be only an ordinary man involved in ordinary acts. He would lack the necessary potency, the necessary concentration that transforms one's ordinary time on earth into magical power.
Thus to be a warrior a man has to be, first of all, and rightfully so, keenly aware of his own death. But to be concerned with death would force any one of us to focus on the self and that would be debilitating. So the next thing one needs to be a warrior is detachment. The idea of imminent death, instead of becoming an obsession, becomes an indifference.
Now you must detach yourself; detach yourself from everything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he is incapable of abandoning himself to anything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he can't deny himself anything. A man of that sort, however, does not crave, for he has acquired a silent lust for life and for all things of life. He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything.
A detached man, who knows he has no possibility of fencing off his death, has only one thing to back himself with: the power of his decisions. He has to be, so to speak, the master of his choices. He must fully understand that his choice is his responsibility and once he makes it there is no longer time for regrets or recriminations. His decisions are final, simply because his death does not permit him time to cling to anything.
And thus with an awareness of his death, with his detachment, and with the power of his decisions a warrior sets his life in a strategical manner. The knowledge of his death guides him and makes him detached and silently lusty; the power of his final decisions makes him able to choose without regrets and what he chooses is always strategically the best; and so he performs everything he has to with gusto and lusty efficiency.
When a man behaves in such a manner one may rightfully say that he is a warrior and has acquired patience. When a warrior has acquired patience he is on his way to will . He knows how to wait. His death sits with him on his mat, they are friends. His death advises him, in mysterious ways, how to choose, how to live strategically. And the warrior waits! I would say that the warrior learns without any hurry because he knows he is waiting for his will ; and one day he succeeds in performing something ordinarily quite impossible to accomplish. He may not even notice his extraordinary deed. But as he keeps on performing impossible acts, or as impossible things keep on happening to him, he becomes aware that a sort of power is emerging. A power that comes out of his body as he progresses on the path of knowledge. He notices that he can actually touch anything he wants with a feeling that comes out of his body from a spot right below or right above his navel. That feeling is the will , and when he is capable of grabbing with it, one can rightfully say that the warrior is a sorcerer, and that he has acquired will .
A man can go still further than that; a man can learn to see . Upon learning to see he no longer needs to live like a warrior, nor be a sorcerer. Upon learning to see a man becomes everything by becoming nothing. He, so to speak, vanishes and yet he's there. I would say that this is the time when a man can be or can get anything he desires. But he desires nothing, and instead of playing with his fellow men like they were toys, he meets them in the midst of their folly. The only difference between them is that a man who sees controls his folly, while his fellow men can't. A man who sees has no longer an active interest in his fellow men. Seeing has already detached him from absolutely everything he knew before.
Don't let the idea of being detached from everything you know give you the chills. The thing which should give you the chills is not to have anything to look forward to but a lifetime of doing that which you have always done. Think of the man who plants corn year after year until he's too old and tired to get up, so he lies around like an old dog. His thoughts and feelings, the best of him, ramble aimlessly to the only things he has ever done, to plant corn. For me that is the most frightening waste there is.
We are men and our lot is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds. Seeing is for impeccable men. Temper your spirit now, become a warrior, learn to see , and then you'll know that there is no end to the new worlds for our vision.

When you see there are no longer familiar features in the world. Everything is new. Everything has never happened before. The world is incredible! Everything you gaze at becomes nothing!
Things don't disappear they don't vanish, they simply became nothing and yet they are still there. Seeing makes one realize the unimportance of everything.