Notes:
_Deep Survival_ by Laurence Gonzales
Laurence Gonzales website
Gonzales gives some of the best advice in terms of a habitual and lifelong survival mentality that provides advantages in just about any environment, including a complex modern society. (Care to play "Papers & Paychecks", anyone? P:D )
U.S. Army Field Manual 3-05.70 Survival
The original, and still the one you want to remember if the excrement hits the air-conditioning. (Cough, cough.)
In general, there are a few steps to Strategic Survival (Cybernetic Version):
(I've added a few elements of my own that I find helpful.*)
- Size up your situation.
Be mindful of the past and future of the information environment.
- Undue haste makes waste. Use your senses and your common sense.
Choose solutions that do better under challenges, rather than worse.
- Remember your position.
What is it that you really do or accomplish strategically? Don't get bogged down in specific systems or methodologies if they begin to degrade or are beginning to be widely deprecated.
- Vanquish negative emotion.
Anger, fear, and regret will often make survival harder. Learn the lessons, then try to move on. Live to feel those emotions more deeply another day. Find systems that do work.
- Improvisation, imagination, and invention are tools.
Improvise, modify, adapt, and overcome. See, hear, smell, touch and taste alternative plans in your mind. Walk through different plans step by step, to avoid mistakes and forgetfulness. Use even setbacks or detours to further your goals.
- Value life.
If what you are doing is worthwhile, keep those values in mind when things get tough. Continue to move toward your goals with flexible strategies and sound tactics.
- Establish alliances.*
Carefully explore when other people or institutions may be helpful to you. Where there is an affinity or common goals, helping others can do your own efforts a world of good.
- Act like the natives.
Where you see people succeeding and doing well, attempt to make some of their skills and habits part of your own skill base.
- Learn the basics, and live by your wits.
Fundamental skills are learned quickly and easily, and often have an immediate payoff in terms of needs, desires, and goals met. Make the best of your time, and accumulate skills as your situation improves.
- Look to the future.*
Your situation may be changing around you, even as you come to grips with it. While a planned course of action still seems viable, use it, but if certain elements come into doubt, prepare to adopt new strategies or tactics.
SURVIVE ALL! Hoo-Yah!