We all know survival is not a game, and prepping is not a game either, though in some cases, people make it out to be such. Survival situations are gritty, pulse pounding most of the time, stressful to say the least, and can at times even be boring.
However, survival will always be a competition, because there is always an adversary. You may have to go up against Mother Nature and other humans to survive, and you may have to go up against yourself as well.
Conflicts within your own mind can cause problems. Lack of skills and training will cause hesitations, because you simply have no idea as to what to do next, so nothing is done, and yet you know something must be done and so decisions are made without the proper information. Lack of training and skills may also mean not having the right supplies, or not enough supplies, materials and equipment, and of course, no plans.
Prepping is not À la carte. Prepping is not just skills and knowledge you need a plan too. You need to order up supplies, materials, and equipment, to be able to compete as well. Being prepared requires the entire package. You can put it together piece by piece, but in the end it all has to be there when your survival is on the line.
The definition of survival is to sustain life in spite of an ordeal whether it is a tornado, hurricane, mass shooting, terrorist attack, nuclear or chemical attack, pandemic or in some cases survival in spite of a bee sting. You have to be ready as an individual, because survival always comes down to the individual.
In any Prepper group there is always going to be those that are more enthusiastic about preparing than are others. The same may apply to families. Someone gets the ball rolling, and then spends considerable time from that point forward trying to convince others in the family or group of the importance of being prepared. You as an individual may care more about it than your spouse, your children, more than your extended family, more than your Prepper group, but you have to continue on, have be ready to compete, so you and everyone else can survive.
Back To the Game
A previous article had talked about rendering aid and comfort to others, and the article mentioned that to be able to render aid you have to be capable of doing so. In other words, you have to make sure the situation does not overwhelm you to the point you cannot give aid to your children or other loved ones or even to strangers.
You as an individual have to sustain life in order to ensure others can sustain theirs. You have to know how to compete with your adversary, and of course be ready at all times to compete.
Like any competition you have to know who or what you may be going up against, so you can form a strategy. In some cases, brute force may work, but in today’s world it is not always survival of the fittest, but survival of the smartest.
Take Ebola for example, force does not work. You cannot meet it head on and expect to win. You have to have a plan for avoidance, and then plan for the worst case scenario, but your objective is to not make contact with this adversary in the first place. As with a hurricane or tornado, you want to get out of the path of destruction, you have to know your adversary and its capabilities.
Forewarned Is Forearmed
The news is not full of feel good stories, there are a few, but for the most part it is about threats. Pandemics, terrorist attacks, local crimes, break-ins, carjacking, cyber attacks, and the lists go on.
At some point you may have to deal with one of more of the listed threats. Your entire community, or the country as a whole may have to deal with the same threat or a series of threats, but regardless survival is still at the individual level. What have you done to prepare yourself for the competition?
You cannot wait for the government to tell you what to do or when to do it. You cannot wait on them to pass out food, water, and blankets. No one can compete against the threat in your name when it comes down to it. It is up to you to survive, and by doing so, you can ensure your family survives even though you are the only one that believed in preparing in the first place.
Be Real
People may believe they need superior firepower to be able to conquer their adversaries. The more guns I have the better chance I have, this may be true in certain situations, in very limited situations however.
No matter how many guns you have stockpiled if it is just you and your family, you cannot go head to head with a well armed group. You cannot compete and expect to survive, so you have to change your strategy. If you cannot adapt and see the stark reality of a situation, you will not survive the situation. It does neither you nor your family any good to pretend otherwise.
If you say you fear nothing you are a fool. Having fear means caution and fear motivates you to do things that can save your life and the life of others. In ancient times, fear forced humans to adapt. It did not take too many humans being dragged off by four legged predators at the cave opening every morning to cause others to change their habits so they could compete with the threat. You have to live long enough to fight back.
Ten thousand years ago, humans reacted to threats by sitting down and planning different paths to the water source, for example, and they learned the habits of their adversaries so they could avoid them. Then humans learned how to fashion weapons, to build shelters, to raise their own food. Humans learned to compete, so they could survive the threat.
Humans learned to adapt and to control their environment, so they went from prey to predator in some cases. You have to fear the threat to be able to compete against it or to conquer it, because otherwise you will ignore it until you are the one being dragged away from the cave opening.