This article was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper
Preparedness isn’t just about the supplies you stockpile and the skills you learn. It’s about psychology too. And an important step toward survival is understanding the psychology behind hesitation.
In a worst-case scenario, hesitation kills.
He who hesitates is lost. Swift and resolute action leads to success. Self-doubt is a prelude to disaster.
~Joseph Addison
It’s simple psychology that no one wants to accept that something horrible has happened.
The human brain is configured in a way that it is in our very nature to deny that something outside our normal paradigm has occurred. This is called cognitive dissonance.
“Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of discomfort when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting cognitions: ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions…Dissonance is aroused when people are confronted with information that is inconsistent with their beliefs. If the dissonance is not reduced by changing one’s belief, the dissonance can result in restoring consonance through misperception, rejection or refutation of the information, seeking support from others who share the beliefs, and attempting to persuade others.” (source)
In a crisis situation, denial can be deadly.
These are the phases of psychological reactions in a crisis:
- Denial – People do not want to believe the event occurred or is occurring. They simply cannot accept, for example, that a plane just deliberately crashed into the building where they are working.
- Delay – People often opt to do something to delay the acceptance of what is going on. They might tidy up, put away food in the refrigerator, or methodically gather belongings to give themselves another few moments of perceived normalcy.
- Diagnosis – People then begin to assess the situation. They begin to consider the input from their senses: the smell of something burning, the sound of something crashing down or people screaming, the sight of the devastation.
- Acceptance – People then accept that this crisis is indeed occurring.
- Consideration– At this point, most people begin to consider their best course of action. Others are so overwhelmed by the situation that they shut down and have to be aided by first responders or other victims of the crisis in order to survive.
- Action – Finally, a course of action is chosen and implemented. Some examples of this could be escape, evacuation, fighting back, performing first aid on injured people, or fortifying their position.
Some real-life examples of psychology at work.
Interviews with people who escaped the World Trade Center after the 9/11 disaster, those who survived plane crashes, and others who lived through fires, all describe how they instantly froze when the devastating incidents occurred. Despite the fact that their very lives were at risk, structures were crumbling, or they were the victim of people who were intent on harming them, they could not immediately accept that the event was occurring.
Many people talked about gathering up documents or personal belongings before heading for the stairwells on 9/11. People in plane crashes often grab their carry-on bags, despite flight attendants’ warnings to leave them behind. People in house fires will often try to grab photo albums or possessions before escaping the building. The response is very common, and it is a function of a brain that doesn’t want to accept the dreadful reality: people busy themselves with things which are mundane in an attempt to delay accepting the current situation.
While these stories are from survivors who did manage to escape with their lives, there are likely many others who did not live because their brains simply refused to accept that something so horrible could be occurring.
These are the most common reactions.
Dr. A. R. Roberts performed a psychological study in 2000, which he reported on in his Crisis Intervention Handbook. Roberts noted these common reactions in the midst of a crisis:
- People first begin to recognize that there is a threat.
- Next, these individuals discover that the stress and trauma of the event cannot be dealt with using existing coping skills.
- People then begin to experience fear, confusion, and stress.
- Those facing a crisis begin to exhibit symptoms of distress and discomfort.
- Finally, people enter a state of imbalance where the crisis situation seems insurmountable.
(source)
During military training, recruits are put into situations that train them to immediately assess a situation and instantly choose a course of action. This allows them to act more quickly than other people, and it gives them an advantage in many scenarios.
The key, though, is not just to simply act as soon as an event occurs. It is to speed up your actual decision-making process. One way to do that is by skipping the cognitive-dissonance phase. You must go through the above reactions quickly or not at all in order to respond quickly.
If you can immediately accept that something out of the ordinary has occurred, you will be able to move on to the assessment phase instead of wasting precious reaction time convincing yourself that the event itself has occurred.
You can improve your reaction to a crisis.
Speeding up your reaction to unexpected circumstances is a two-fold process. It is both physical and mental.
Think about an athlete. If you throw a ball, even unexpectedly, his immediate reaction is to put up his hand and catch the ball before it hits him in the face. His muscle-memory has kicked in and this is his automatic response. A non-athlete might react differently. He might stand there and get hit with the ball or put up his arm to block the ball, but his first reaction might not be to try and catch it.
The athlete has spent many hours catching and throwing, so his body is already prepared to do that in a split second. As well, sports like boxing or martial arts hone your reflexes and teach your muscles to instantly respond in a certain way. When police officers and members of the military are undergoing training, they spend many hours at the shooting range to make their weapon an automatic extension of their arm.
Training isn’t just for professional first responders. It can speed up your reactions, both physical and mental. It may not turn you into a ninja but it can definitely improve your chances of survival.
Here are some ways to keep your physical reflexes sharp (or to improve them if they are a bit rusty):
- Use it or lose it. If you have a desk job, you may not spend enough time being active. Take some time every day to toss around a ball, to go to the gym, to hike, or to go for a run.
- Learn to fight. Martial arts, boxing, krav maga: all of these are great exercise and great training.
- Perform a balancing act. Little kids love to walk on curbs, blocks of concrete, or anything else that can serve as an impromptu balance beam. As adults, most of us spend little time practicing our balance. Try walking on the curbs right along with your kids, climbing, or going to yoga. Help your body remember what it is to use balance.
- Cardio. In the event of an emergency, you don’t want to be huffing and puffing after you’ve gone down two flights of stairs. Get your heart in shape and keep it that way with regular cardiovascular exercise that gets your heart rate up.
- Practice, practice, practice. You can create muscle memory by repeating something over and over until it becomes as natural to you as breathing. Go to the range and practice shooting your weapon. Practice archery. Play catch. Do agility drills. All of these things prepare your body to respond instinctively in an emergency, which can shave precious seconds off of your response time.
You can improve your mental responses, too.
Equally important, if not more so, is improving your mental response to a crisis. As was discussed above, people tend to squander time dilly-dallying over the acceptance of the fact that the event is actually occurring. If you’re reading this article, more than likely it is because you have already mentally accepted the fact that sudden emergencies occur, and that puts you one step ahead.
- Run scenarios. No one can be mentally prepared for everything, but by imagining situations in which a crisis occurs, you can train your brain to look for solutions. You will have already overcome a portion of that cognitive dissonance that says “This can’t be happening to me.” My kids and I do this when watching movies. Sometimes we stop the movie and discuss what we could do if a similar incident happened to us. They’ve taken it a step further and sometimes bring up a scenario when we are out. We run through our options and talk about the pros and cons of a course of action.
- Don’t live in a bubble. Be aware of trends in the news. For example, back in 2014, there was a spate of horrific attacks across the country called “knock-out” attacks. In this so-called “game”, a group of teens, for sheer amusement, brutally assaulted an innocent victim. If you know that this something going on in your area, you can sometimes recognize the situation immediately and pass that moment of cognitive dissonance. This allows you to respond and defend yourself quickly and decisively.
- Be aware of your surroundings. If you are glued to your iPhone or otherwise oblivious to that which is going on around you, then it’s going to take you longer to assess the crisis. Actually, it’s going to take you longer to realize the crisis is even going on. A person who practices situational awareness will often observe unusual behavior and be in response mode before the crisis is fully developed. For example, they might notice suspicious behavior from another patron in the store before that patron whips out a gun and tries to rob the clerk. This would give the observer a distinct advantage because they’d already be moving on to the consideration step in the crisis process while everyone else in the store was still on Step 1, denying that they had found themselves in the middle of a hold-up.
- Practice blocking out distractions. At my Krav Maga class, the instructor likes to add some distraction to the scenarios. Loud music and strobe lights are regular additions to drills. You can’t hear, it’s hard to see, but you still have to focus on your opponent.
Know the psychology so you can sidestep the unhelpful steps your brain wants to take.
By understanding the natural human responses to crises, we can cut our personal reaction times.
Hopefully, you are never in a 9/11-style attack, present at a convenience store robbery, or caught in a natural disaster, but if you are, your ability to accept the situation, think quickly, and take action could save the lives of you and your loved ones.
Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.
Daisy is a coffee-swigging, gun-toting, homeschooling blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, and the pursuit of liberty on her websites, The Organic Prepper and DaisyLuther.com She is the author of 4 books and the co-founder of Preppers University, where she teaches intensive preparedness courses in a live online classroom setting. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter,.
Only one vampire in three sucks blood, all the others prefer tea. But even the ones that suck blood also like tea. In all other respects they are the same. So which vampires do you kill?
Speeding up your reaction to unexpected circumstances is a two-fold process. It is both physical and mental.
I have seen this a LOT in traffic accidents. People in traffic accidents seem like they are in a state of shock but really they are knock out of there normal routine and have ZERO idea how to respond, what to do or what action to take. They just stand there dumbfounded.
Correct. Last night a young guy on his bike got hit by a car outside my local gin mill. Neither party knew what to do. They just stood there. I called the ambulance and the guy got checked out. Only damage was to his bike. However, today he may be sore as heck. Always make a report in case something pops up the next day.
Whose blood and whose tea?
all of them rrrr, all of them..
Parasites cannot feed on each other, they need a host.
He/She who peddles fear porn for a living, also counts on those who get very afraid, to then click the prepper bait adds to make their living. Ahhhh the power of suggestion and fear porn.
Remember preppers, it the 2nd mouse who get the cheese. Those who hesitate, watch those who get snared first.
It’s all about fear.
Fear sponsors inaction and inappropriate action and inaction or inappropriate action sponsors failure.
Control your fear and you control your destiny.
Make your pans and decisions on logical rather than fear based thinking.
“Fear not” or word equivalents “Do not be afraid..” or similar constructions in this context appear over 100 times (not 365 times like some popular memes hold) in the Christian Bible.
Pretty important concept.
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He who hesitates is lost. Or as the SAS motto indicates, Who Dares, Wins.
Learn to fight. Martial arts, boxing, krav maga: all of these are great exercise and great training.
This should be changed to Carry a gun
Someone fucks with me, they are getting shot. No kung fu, no karate, no hand to hand trying to disarm them or take away a knife. I am just shooting the fucker. I am too old for martial arts bull crap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YyBtMxZgQs
JS,
This is not a boast,
but I’m the only guy I know that was kicked out of Kindergarten and entire school districts for fighting. I’m not a good fighter as I’ve broken both hands multiple times from hitting people. I’ve been fighting all my life. But at my age I fully agree, easier to just shoot the a$$ hole.
Amen, John. Amen.
Krav is good, so is jujitsu, but anyone with any experience knows full well that martial arts are great in a studio, but absolutely useless on the street (go ahead and put one leg in the air for me, you dumb*ss).
I’m a combat vet and able to handle most situations, but you’re better off letting Smith or Wesson do the “fighting”.
There are also canes and staffs for self defense. These may look innocent but they are no joke. Here are a couple of links:
http://www.canemasters.com/
https://americancaneselfdefense.com/
A retired military guy at my old office told me about them. He had one and was practicing the moves. He normally carries but is aware there are situations where it’s not allowed such as certain offices around the metro DC area. An old guy with a cane isn’t considered a threat and would be allowed onto say a plane.
Aikido looks like “soft” techniques like they have in kung fu, but that is just for practice. In actual use, it is very brutal. Watch old demonstrations of Steven Segal in Japan before he was famous.
It originally was derived from jujitsu and Daito-ryu. It has unique bokken and jo techniques. The jo can be seen here, very slowed down so you can witness how the technique is done. And these can be used with a cane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=293PurL6_P0
Mas Oyama in his karate version which originally came from Funakoshi’s Shotokan style utilizes cane techniques.
Tak Kubota taught his students to use the yawara which is a very small weapon that was frequently used by monks. Interestingly, both the Secret Service and the CIA taught similar techniques using improvised weapons like a rolled up magazine. Try it sometime. Roll up a magazine. It forms a very durable cylinder that can be used very effectively if you every studied using a tonfa as a law enforcement officer.
In the words of “Tuco” in ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’….”If you’re going to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk about it”.
In my experience, the ones that the herd of zombies think will survive, almost always fail. Watch any season of the Alone tv series in which trained bushcraft “experts” only survive by pushing past dehydration and starvation by skills and will power.
The strongest do not survive ie warrior types. Why? Because warfare is built on conflict with others and this only plays an incidental role.
Skills help achieve nominal supplementation of caloric and nutritional intake. But they get you water and reduce exposure. The caloric intake is so meager as to be between 10-25% of normal ie 500 calories a day while needing allegedly 2000 calories a day, but peak need is 3500 calories a day.
What helps you survive is FAT. A healthy muscular person with bushcraft skills plus FAT then has basic needs met and insulation to cope with hunger and the cold.
The next most important skill is positive mental outlook and almostalways was based on morality and Christianity. Thus that personnever felt truly alone but felt YHWH’s presence.
Finally, rugged determination to ignore cold, pain, starvation, dehydration, and loneliness. These folks allowed themselves to bury their current emotional state and focus on future success to benefit…not themselves…but their FAMILY.
You see when all alone, every nagging doubt will be persistent and you know all your flaws. Without the love of Jesus Christ plus memories of belved family and friends, you won’t make it.
The winners who endure have these qualities. They never survive SOLELY on their own merit but ENDURE hardship to reunite with their loved ones. That is what you live for.
Money and fame are worthless when up against survival. Only love matters ENOUGH to get you past outrageous hardship and toil.
Everyone breaks after 30+ days but those with GOD and fond memories can ignore their present circumstances IF they have fat, survival instinct, and bushcraft.
You MUST caerefully examine a good nutritionally sound survival free manual like the LDS prepper manual. Fat is always a way to cope as is sufficient sugar otherwise morale suffers. Protein is what people think and plan for but they neglect the other two. And Calcium and Iron deficits will ruin you. Scurvy due to insufficient Vitamin C is easily addressed in Nature albeit for men. If you are a lady, carefully check wild edibles for health issues due to potential pregnancy.
Maranatha, you noted the “Alone” tv series where experts have difficulty surviving assorted obstacles. I’ve noticed the same issues with “Naked and Afraid” participants. So many times an dumpy mom will outlast some ‘expert’ simply because she has the extra body fat and will to survive even though her bushcraft is nominal.
Thanks for the reminder about the LDS Prep Manual. A search quickly revealed a link to download it.
Survival Mom has a fairly recent free LDS prepper manual. I am not a LDS proponent as their beliefs are totally incompatable with evangelical Christianity. They do have far more people actually prepping plus they are armed and are supposed to be prepping by their leaderships initiatives.
It’s obvious that nutritionists and physicians carefully planned food lists to maximize calories and nutrients but minimized what was necessary for food storage and being frugal at the same time.
You can find food calculator lists made by them and these then tell you accurately what you need to achieve standard nutrional necessity that is scientific.
That demystifies the whole process. I think lots of people do not plan well but just sort of wing it and so they buy too much or toolittle and then worse…fail to rotate. Ideally it saves you money by buying in bulk.
And they are great about recipes based on what is on the list and these are common meals that Americans eat.
Otherwise you can waste a lot of money on expensive food…and that is bad stewardship.
Sadly, the majority of survival training is either spent on the SERE paradigm. That is survival, evasion, resistance, and escape.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival,_Evasion,_Resistance_and_Escape
Why? Bugging out is a routine aspect of military survival training yet, in routine survival, it’s extremely limited as the goal is to survival a week to get back to base camp and or a secure location.
If you instead supplement with a week of intensive bushcraft training and then spend a week surviving, then the MAJORITY of longer term survival has only 15-25% to do with SERE.
Plan for that. There honestly is never going to be a “base camp or secure location to bug out to”. Instead, you have to establish one …yourself. That takes a vast array of ancestral skills and likely two solid years of supplies. You are trying to outlive your errors whilyre reestablishing a self made agrarian tribe.
I am very much against bugging out. Why leave all you supplies, your preps, your home, equipment, tools and shelter?
Now, my situation will be different from other, as I own my home, no mortgage. Others may live in an apartment, rent house, or face foreclosure.
Shelter in place. Better then fleeing into the unknown.
You are correct, Sir. Only a fool is unprepared. Bugging out is foolishness. You need the sheter and tools and books.
Yet it is estimated that 76-81% of Americans live in urban zones with totally inadequate carrying capacity. These are the ones who willbe forced to bug out. And that HORDE may run you out based upon your proximity to an urban zone with high population density.
Something I tell my wife and daughter….
Sometime you have to just tell people to fuck off.
Don’t hesitate to throw a cussing on someone.
I say this because there are people that will take advantage of you by putting you in a position where “you don’t want to be rude” and they take advantage of that.
I call it the “gift of fear”. When red flags go up or the hair on the back of your neck stand up…. it is time to take action. Don’t brush your gut feelings aside because “you don’t want to be rude”.
If someone gets too close to you, or getting in your space panhandling, wanting money or food or what ever…. throw a cussing on that person and get out of there.
If you are about to walk down a darkened hallway and there is a stranger there, DON’T. If you are about to get in an elevator and there is a creepy wierdo in there, DON’T. When they insist you get in the elevator, TELL THEM TO FUCK OFF.
End of soap box rant.
Just for your own education. Let’s presume there was abundant fish and you could catch sufficient fish to stave off basic hunger.
A 70 kg man needs 2000 calories. A trout has 111 calories in a filet of 79 grams. That is your best case scenario. That guy would have to catch 18 fish per day just to break even.
Now, is there anyone outside of perfectly using a cast net in an ideal spot and in perpetual summer weather who can achieve this? NOPE.
Why? Insufficient FAT and totally inadequate sugar and the guy will waste away and get hypoglycemia.
This means UNLESS you can take down a large animal and get fat and have the knowledge to realistically restore blood sugar, your mental clarity will progressively decline.
That is about a concise and scientifically and medically accurate enough for common sense bushcraft folks to comprehend.
Hunter-gatherers in history were remarkable at ancestral skills.
Don’t filet fish in a survival situation,boil it so you can obtain every calorie possible,including the bones…When boiled,fish bones are not only edible,they also provide calcium .
Pretty much. You remove some guts as these can be filled with feces and bacteria and worms. But yeah, fish head stew is full of nutrients.
Still it would take at least 15 fish every single day to live. Who can do it? Not very many.
Carp and catfish can be eaten but they are bottom feeders. Otherwise every prepper should investigate cast nets as they are remarkably efficient besides standard troutlines.
Saw a cast net in action on a Naked and Afraid program. The woman had lost her partner a few days into the challenge so the producers sent in another guy. His one item for survival was a cast net. They had food that afternoon. Their problems began when a tropical storm (think they were in Nicaragua) brought flooding to their stream which changed the pattern of the fish and so no food then.
The point of this story is that weather can make unpredictable changes in your food sources. If you are in a new or unfrequented area, locating food and water could become harder than in familiar surroundings. I know the weather patterns in my area. My father taught me (all us kids really) how to tell the weather by reading nature so I don’t have to rely on the tv people.
A cast net also works well on crustaceans. So you could get shrimp or crawdads.
There’s an old Beverly Hillbillies episode where some beatniks think Jethro is using a euphemism about mary jane when all he means is smoking crayfish.
Sure, any storm is going to alter fishing holes. In the second season of Alone, the tide changes dramatically affected where and when people fished as well as methodology.
Fowler who has the distinction of lasting the longest amount of time, ate fish and fish head soup but lost 70+ lbs doing so. He was terribly sick for the first two weeks with diarrhea. A very thin young lady lasted nearly as long but to the great detriment of her health as she couldn’t catch hardly any fish.
Now what no one has discussed is the main issue. Any anthropologist could examine ethnic records of the indigenous tribes who did survive and thrive and thus greatly extend the time period. But would people watch it?
You see people can survive IF they live there year round and grow crops based upon rainfall, weather, climate, and then be harvesting both cultivated and wild edibles. Meanwhile be harvesting gameand sealife and even raising livestock. Now that would be realistic.
Instead and on purpose creates a false drama since they arrive past the point of harvesting and thus limit the show to 30-80 days and ten episodes.
Now survival is the lowest level on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. What I greatly enjoy are historical reality shows where beginners or experts replicate history and have period accurate technology and try to make it. I would love to see a 20 episode show with all the seasons and demonstrating the difficulty.
I think there is enough interest in homesteading that either a
homesteading show that is wholesome or the above would be very enjoyable.
A good homesteading show would demonstrate all of the ancestral skills like finding dye sources, growing flax, then making cloth. Or making a bow from a robust osage orange sapling, steam treating it,making the bow from rawhide, and then making adjustments to improve accuracy and precision, then practicing to improve distance, then stalking and hunting and butchering.
What is getting boring is watching pointless whining and starvation and betting on which fat person will win. That accomplishes nothing.
There is nearly nothing that is edifying nor praiseworthy nor admirable on tv or in film. Yet these are aspects of Art that make up Viking sagas for example.
Maranatha…. PBS had a “reality” show called Frontier House that they did in 2000. Check it out. I enjoyed it and a few years back re-watched it with my kids. I believe I was able to get it through Netflix but my memory is fuzzy.
Yes. I frequently recommend it. The same production company made one on the colonial period. There was a Texas Ranch House that was very well done too.
Though they were aiming at historical accuracy, this irked the ladies. But on the latter when a lady tried acting in the capacity as a ranch hand, she couldn’t keep up. It became near rebellion at the end.
Twice the Australians made a very lengthy desert island survival show that greatly utilized agriculture.
There was a total failure by the BBC attempting the same on a Scottish manor where the participants went feral and became very cruel.
In the US, there was short run series replicating the difficulties of traveling by covered wagon too.
You would essentially be attempting to emulate your ancestors by becoming a homesteader.
The successful ones in history either had a great honestead and a year of food or a middling homestead and two years of food. Otherwise they went “bust” before the seven year minimum was achieved to get the deed.
A beginner homestead will make errors with agriculture and almost certainly fail to routinely supplement more than 10% of calorc and nutritional intake by hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering wild edibles.
And we are not ready because of soft living coupled with low levels of wild edibles and low levels of game animals especially herd animals like deer, elk, and buffalo.
Few wild edibles exist in abundance in America other than acorns, maple syrup, hickory nuts, mulberries, cattail, white clover blossoms, and grass seed. The later must NEVER be collected when black rust is on it. Focus on learning these.
And some of th0se Hickory nuts are too bitter to eat.
Quite a few nuts have worms. Acorns are like that and have excess tannin. These take copious amounts of water changes but doing so reduces starches. I’ve been trying to find a Korean or Chinese person who knows bushcraft because there they make a kind of tofu from acorns.
Here locally we have walnuts and some pecans but the latter are furter south. Hickory nuts are feasted upon by wildlife and so harvesting adversely affects game animals.
Persimmons can be plentiful here. They are also a powerful astringent that was used during the Civil War.
Locust beans can be edible and are an untapped resource.
But wild edible plants generally have low calories as most are water and carbs. They do have valuable vitamin values and medicinal value.
You are hoping to catch a porcupine as that is good eatin’.
repr you must mean acorns, hickory nut ain’t bad but acorns almost always have to be soaked to remove the tannin. Trekker Out
The balance between thinking and doing.
Except, most people are not situationally aware, nor capable of executive function.
That’s a Type A. Are they common or uncommon. Think, pack of dogs, insect colony.
My original posting was wiped otu as I finished it. Learn to see reality not what you want to see. A dawn at Morro Bay I could look down on a boat loading fishermen at so much a head the boat was sinking as the hold was full of water. I warned the fishermen the boat was sinking and they got mad at me as I interferred with there dream of a good time. A week later the boat sank at sea and people were killed. They only saw what they wanted to see not reality.
Question: how does one distinguish between a thought out response and just rushing around like your hairs on fire with your ass catching?
Unless you are a reloader with supplies, you almost certainly cannot afford to expend the required levels of ammunition to realistically resolve conflict under SHTF situations.
Try this. Talk to a member of a SWAT team and inquire about realistic ammunition expended. It is inordinately HIGH.
You have to be smarter and reduce reliance on ammunition. The two equalizers are denial of water and cruely using fire. Otherwise you are adopting a siege or beseige mentality and these are not rapid responses. See Curtis LeMay.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay
There are valid reasons for psychological warfare and guerilla tactics and subterfuge to break sieges. You do not possess standard resources to use conventional warfare but must use asymetrical warfare tactics.
wouldn’t people be SHOOTING BACK at you? why does nobody consider that when talking about the amount of ammo needed for shtf? i’m here to tell you, if you’ve expended 5000 rounds of ammo………somebody will have killed you WAY BEFORE that happens. very few people i know even give a second thought about kevlar….the ones that DO are the ones that will have a chance at surviving.
I’ve sailed through a few Gales.
Been in some really dicey situations.
You learn mental survival skills especially when
you are the captain and responsible for
other peoples lives. In all cases
I was the only one on board that knew how
to sail a boat or take the necessary
actions to keep us safe.
Nature is the best instructor in the world,
Nobody but yourself or God can save you.
And God only helps those that help
themselves.
Thank You. These are life saving tips. Everyone can get caught off guard by some horrible situation, but how we react to the situation and how quickly we react can turn out to be a life saver & soul saver too !
STAY ALERT. STAY ALIVE.
The Koreans make dotori-muk from the acorns as an edible starch with protein of course and it’s supposed to greatly boost nutrition plus absorb spices readily.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotori-muk
It seems to be an ideal food source at least in terms of wild edibles but I have yet to find a good person who knows how to make it.
Here is an elderly Korean woman making this acorn jelly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9IhQhdfN8
Native Americans often processed the acorns into either a gruel or into a flour extender. See acorn flour…but this loses the starch in the process.
The fastest way to do this in an ordinary fashion is to put the acorns in a clean sock and rinse them with lots of pressurized water. However that stains your porcelain sinks with the tannins. Be careful.
Historically acorns were buried in river banks and then retrieved by the Native Americans but that has health risks and it takes a full season to leach out the tannins.
The only fast way to remove tannins is to steam acorns under a little pressure. The oils though are extracted which has a medicinal effect as an emollient, and the nuts are pallatable, but obviously with fat loss.
See Billy Joe Denny’s video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU4XALy9j3g
I recommend people watch the episodes of Frontier House. They took three families and had them emulate homestead life in 1880 in Montana. And they went through lots of issues with low calories and heavy workloads and stress. And they actually had it relatively easy versus what our ancestors had. They get very skinny and it alarms one family. Insufficient sugar zaps the morale of one family
Then they reevaluated. One couple might have made it. The main issues are insufficient food stores, lack of sufficient firewood and cutting enough fodder to keep the livestock alive. In history, sometimes sheep or goats were buried alive in the snow. Believe it or not. Look online for videos where they are trying to save herds caught in snowstorms.
Here’s a Welsh sheep farmer digging out sheep caught in snow drifts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI053DSGTVo
“Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of discomfort when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting cognitions: ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions…Dissonance is aroused when people are confronted with information that is inconsistent with their beliefs. If the dissonance is not reduced by changing one’s belief, the dissonance can result in restoring consonance through misperception, rejection or refutation of the information, seeking support from others who share the beliefs, and attempting to persuade others.” (source)
———————-
As in Global Climate Hell (global warming)– pretending that its not happening, even though, about 97% of the best, most highly-respected climate scientists in the world say its happening… in every country. (Those with the highest credentials– the very top of the top!)
Or when the Jews pretended all was well when people tried to warn them that the Nazis (and fossil fuel industry!) was NOT their friends… they just couldn’t believe it and went on as if everything was fine.. all the way up to the gas chambers, they kept laughing at the people trying to warn them.
“They kept laughing at the people trying to warn them” yes just like the people warning everyone here that Trump is not going to MAGA: “Lock her up”, no wall, Mexico isn’t paying for a wall either like he said, no new infrastructure, stop the ATT/Time-Warner merger, and 12 other broken promises to date. This wolf in sheepskin is instead going to help usher in the NWO.
If I wanted to funnel $ away from the energy industry I’d be a global warming believer too. Cognitive dissonance applies to the climate change believers. the day al gore came out with global warming theory and the agenda to counter it I knew we were screwed. i remember the talk about holes in the ozone layer being caused by aresol sprays. You don’t hear about the ozone hole anymore that was the test on the public to see if they’d accept a bigger lie like climate change and they ate the shit sandwich with a smile.
No need to run to your death
A well meaning athletic person can crash fairly quickly due to minimal glycogen reserves in their muscles and liver because they are always exercising. Meanwhile they have minimal fat reserves. What often happens in a fasting state is the athletic person tries to carry the load as they are the fittest. Actually though, as blood sugar drops, the body’s first response is to generate gluconeogenesis ie make more blood sugar by an alternative metabolic pathway. You learn this in biochemistry. So to do this, the body burns muscle first, and causes weakness.
Meanwhile a lardbutt can initially loaf in a survival stuation in a typical tribe, and so has less physical demand, and is coasting while the athletic person is humping it.
It’s basic human dynamics in small groups versus biochemistry. A smart bushcraft person nibbles sugar sources like tiny tree branches or similar. They maintain adequate blood sugar far longer,so lipolysis starts…and that is fat breakdown for energy.
Thus a smart bushcraft expert will do a lot of initial work, then literally go dormant other than hydration and firewood acquisition, and live off fat reserves.
Rather than build a big shelter which requires enormous caloric activity, they build a very small well insulated debris hut and or live in a hammock tent. That drastically lowers food requirements and firewood acquisition.
The more times you experience traumatic events the better you get at handling them. It’s how we learn. Most prepper people exhibited the same kind of denial this article speaks of. Most think they will survive which isn’t reality. Most people don’t survive and sometimes it’s just stupid blind luck that some do. I try to be as prepared as I can but I don’t spend my life dwelling on it . Oh ,that’s denial .
It’s probably going to be controversial, but there was a few Imperial Japanese Army soldiers who were given outposts to defend on small Pacfic Islands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIffYi_JMog
Hiroo Onada
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyI9DDW6lo
One lived up until 1974 because he refused to quit as he believed that the dropped pamplets were propaganda.
Similarly some the Hmong kept fighting the Vietnamese Cambodian war for twenty years after the conflict ended.
Additionally there were brave homesteaders who fled to the taiga in the former USSR. It was either kowtow to the communists or live free.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68
Either prove that deterimined intelligent robust people can survive and thrive.
recognize the distinction between hesitation and doubt.
doubting is very often a useful mental process (be aware of prejudices and unverified assumptions, which can turn out to be wrong!), just as postponement of judgment, but one should know in which situations this is affordable…
a judge can ponder weeks on all aspects and facets of a case before he or she comes to a verdict, but the target of the home invasion did not enjoy that luxury…
recognize the distinction between hesitation and doubt.
doubting is very often a useful mental process (be aware of prejudices and unverified assumptions, which can turn out to be wrong!), just as postponement of judgment, but one should know in which situations this is affordable…
a judge can ponder weeks on all aspects and facets of a case before he or she comes to a verdict, but the target of the home invasion did not enjoy that luxury…
I just read an amusing Daniel Boone quip. “I’ve never been lost, but once I was bewildered for three days…”