I posted this on another forum, intrested on some more feedback.





One thing that many of us seem to forget in our study and preparation for survival scenarios is mental attitude.

So why did I post this in Gear and Equipment, well it is one of the most important things to bring with you, and we don't have a MENTAL ATTITUDE section. (maybe we should)

Consider a survival scenario, many of us have experienced brief encounters with the elements since we all enjoy being out in the wild. But consider being just tormented by insects for hour upon hour day by day. Tormented so intensly that you just want to frantically run and run. Couple that with bone chilling wet and cold and then total and complete darkness, with little to no sleep. Add injuries, being lost, hungry, and other traumatic events to the situation sometimes the mind just cannot or will not cope.

It has to take a toll on your mind, and if you loose your mind you have a good chance not surviving. People that have actually been through a survival episode usually report that it was "Life Changing" if they survive.

As a student of survival study I think I am well prepared with skills and gear, if I am fortunate to have some if any gear. But sometimes I wonder how Mentally prepared I really am. And most importantly how can I train my mind to cope with the situation.

I am a Medical Rescue Technician and a Search and Rescue Tracker. I am trained to operate in bad situations that happen to others. I have seen and been involved in traumatic situations that would sicken most people, and that have required me and my teammates to go through numerous "Critical Incident Stress Debriefings" but when the tables are turned and I am the injured, cold, wet, tormented by insects and darkness for days on end. "Can My Mind Survive"? I don't know........

So how do you guys/gals train your mind to cope. Just being annoyed by biting flies for a couple hours makes me frustrated. How about you!

To sum it up in ~10,000 words:


Step 1: Imagine them needing me RIGHT NOW!
Step 2: Tear through anything that stands in my way of getting to them.

-Blast

I can relate on you about being tormented by insects, I had to go to the hospital during a summer camp when I was in the Cub Scouts. There were clouds of black flies harassing us and I ended up vomiting and my ears and neck started to swell. A head net is a very important piece of equipment if you venture in the wild. If you don't have one, at least try to improvise something like from a scarf or something.

Frankie

Depends on the flies- I'm allergic to blackfly bites. Everything else I can ignore or dies when it drinks my blood.

But you're right, mental preparedness is key. While my reason to keep going isn't as strong as Blast's, they are mine and they require that I die properly. Freezing to death or being ecxanguinated (sp) by bugs are not part of the plan; too many people count on me for me to pass on without sharing that which is in my head.

Aloha Blast,

Nice words! I must concur.

By the way, nice family picture!!

Being a sick minded retired military type, I concentrate on my goal (the finish line) and that my family is counting on my safe return.

I used to take tragic and/or bad experiences and lock them up in a closet in the back of my mind. Shortly after retirement, the closet busted open and I had to deal with 22 years of crap, all at once. The result was that a former shipmate (retired) and I pulled a 3 day drunk that ended up with both of us spilling our guts (debriefing each other) and we have both been back to normal since then.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Mental Attitude in others is a difficult thing to predict. Even some of the most apparent tough looking guys just give up in a tough survival situation, whilst the most unimposing types just get on with it and succeed in extracting themselves from the danger.

At the end of the day if you find yourself in a life threatening survival situation it is probably because you have seriously screwed up somewhere along the line – you haven’t prepared well enough or you have just been continually making bad decisions because you have not recognised that you have been making poor decisions previously. This is why a cup of hot sweet tea is so important – it allows you time to reflect on your situation and allows you formulate your own plan to get you out of the survival situation.

This problem becomes even more difficult when group dynamics become involved because if you cannot admit to your self you have made an incorrect decision then the chances are even more improbable that you will admit the error to a group.

In a very strange way people are like the preverbal lemmings. They continually look for someone to take the lead. Inevitably the tough guy feels he will need to step in and take control of the situation. The danger of this of course (depending on the tough guys experience and training) is that this will inevitably lead the group going over the cliff just like the preverbal lemming. This situation gets even worse in the military even though the group dynamics have had a formally introduced hierarchal structure because the military have had a long history of regarding your life as something that is expendable. Be very wary of people who assume a leadership role without fore knowledge of their abilities especially if they are putting your life at risk. If you get that strange feeling that you should be doing something else to extract yourself from danger but are constrained by a formal leadership issue – go with that feeling and act on it despite social constrainment risks.

So to sum up – Believe in your self, believe in your abilities and don’t take to seriously what others have to say because they are more likely to get you killed than any other plan you come with anyway. Oh and don’t give up and if you do die it was probably because it was someone else’s fault anyway. If it wasn't you really don't have much to complain about.

on da forums page how can i go from pg 1 to pg150 help

(Warning, long windbag reply ahead, sorry)
One problem for a lot of folks when they are put in a wilderness survival situation is that they have never experienced anything remotely close to it in their lives before. We live such "comfortable" lives, that most people have never spent a night out, let alone an extended stay, with just what's in their pockets, and their brain. When they are put in a Man vs Wild scenario, they are facing not just survival, but, all of the shock, confusion, fear, anger, etc that comes with being in a new and uncomfortable situation.

I think one of the best things we can do is to occasionally put ourselves into scenarios that take us out of our "comfort zone", and see what we can do to make things a little better. Sometimes you try to put yourself in a situation, other times it throws itself on you.

The first time I had to spend the night out with just what was on me I was about 17 I think (many moons ago) on a "walk" in the mountains. We had all just gotten our drivers licenses recently, and went to NH for the weekend. One guy in our small group of 4 had managed to twist an ankle,(later discovered to be broken) and dislocate a shoulder. Yeah, it was a fall on rocks, probably after trying to leap from rock to rock like Superman, rather than climb... Anyway, it was late enough in the day, getting dark, etc, and he couldn't move very well at all. We decided it was better to try to make a fire, get comfortable, and spend the night. We'd improvise a way to splint up his foot, tie his shoulder/arm to his chest, and walk out in the morning when we could see better and take our time. It was a very long night, no sleeping bags, no tent, minimal food, just a couple Snickers bars or something like that. We did have a stream nearby, and at that time, we didn't worry about water quality, so water was no problem. Fortunately one of the guys had a lighter, and we did all had pocket knives I think.

I wish we had a picture of the lean-to that we made in front of the fire, I bet you'd get a good laugh out of it. Still, I did sleep, a little, more like passing out. Eventually, the exhaustion overcomes the mosquitoes buzzing your ears. Our campsite must have looked like a forest fire, we just kept building a bigger fire with deadfall branches, it didn't really keep us that much warmer, but, it felt better, and the smoke helped with the bugs. We're lucky we didn't set the White Mountain National Forest on fire that night.

When I see those guys now, we still laugh about that night, and it was, as I said, many moons ago. This was before cell phones, sat phones, GPS, EPIRB, PLB etc. Of course, nobody knew we were missing, we left no notes, we were away for the weekend. Our parents would have eventually figured out that we didn't come home Sunday night... it would have been interesting if the situation had been more severe, rather than just uncomfortable.

At the time, we were all near the end of our years in Boy Scouts, but, this was not a Scout trip. If it were, none of this would have happened probably, because we wouldn't have still been on the trail that late, would have had a larger group, better equipped, and one of the adults would have told us to stop jumping between the boulders, probably, before my buddy got hurt. We were smart enough to know what we should do and bring, but, young enough to still ignore what we knew to be appropriate. Still, it was because of all those prior trips with my Troop, when we learned how to improvise shelter, get a fire going, make splints, etc, that we were able to make ourselves somewhat comfortable.

When I was a kid, and took long walks in the Maine woods with my grandfather in the summers, he would invariably drop something into the conversation like, "what would you do if you had to sleep here tonight?", "if I broke my leg right now, on our walk, what would you do?", "if I hit my head on a rock...", "if we lost our compass...", "if you were separated from me...", etc. He was always making me think about how quickly things can change from comfortable and familiar to somthing different. I think it's a mentality that helps the survivor.

Since those days as a young lad with a skull full of mush, I've had the "opportunity" to spend the night out with just what's in my pockets or daypack a few more times, sometimes by design, sometimes because of problems. I was the leader on one of them by design. The rest of the time, I just found myself in the position of leader, or maybe a better word is coach. People want to have something to do, to take their mind off a difficult reality. You can coach them through it, by having a role for everyone. They always have to have something they can do that moves them closer to where they want to be; they can focus on that, rather than the bugs, cold, rain, etc.

I better stop now, before I fill up the disk on the ETS server, sorry. (This is a topic near and dear to me, I am constantly trying to coach my crop of 20 or so young Scouts on this all the time.) Thanks for listening.

Great stuff do I have permission to use at our Search and Rescue Training class?

Thanks Again