Create Your Personal Survival Philosophy
Instinct obviously comes first. You want to survive because instinct drives you towards survival, but instinct will not take you all the way. Neither will gear, knowledge, experience, or the will to survive if they are not all put together in a neat little package. That is where your survival philosophy comes in. You need something more to guide you and what you need is organised by your philosophy on survival.
Most of my readers already have a philosophy on survival without necessarily calling it that. Bear Grylls for example always heads downhill towards water and then follows the river or stream towards civilization. Depending on where he is he then determines the necessity to organize shelter for the night, starting early enough to not get caught by low light and the ending of the day.
Bear Grylls always has a plan based on experience, but that is not necessarily a survival philosophy. When he puts various plans together with his approach towards survival, his experience, his knowledge and combines that with the way he chooses to prioritize survival in his daily life, he has a philosophy on survival.
A survivalist who organizes their life around the choice to be ready for any survival situation would have a much more unique philosophy towards survival than an active soldier or somebody who has a good idea of what kind of conditions they would have to survive in. For example, somebody who flies planes in Alaska knows he would have to survive a day or two in the wilderness after an emergency landing. He can plan for that specific eventuality.
Factors to consider in writing your Philosophy on Survival.
I would recommend you consider some of or all the following points when setting up a philosophy on survival. You will notice I do not discuss the will for survival because if you do not have that or did not consider it why would you consider a philosophy for survival? The will for survival obviously remains of utmost importance:
— Where do you live?
Living in the USA with established infrastructure and emergency services would make your priorities different from others, and you would not prepare for a foreign invasion. If you lived on the border between India and Pakistan, you would be ready for a foreign invasion because it could happen. What is the history of your area or country? Where you live could also determine what the chances are of search and rescue finding you if there are any such services.
— Your level of knowledge.
The less you know about survival, the more mistakes you will make. You might have to take a survival handbook with you as well, which means more weight to carry. It might also be a good idea to be knowledgeable in situations where you have no gear, in other words, prepare for not having gear.
— Gear availability.
What type of gear do you take with that is not normally part of your every day loadout and what do you always have with you, i.e. a survival bracelet, multi-tool on your belt, etc. In other words, what may you have to do without? It is probably better to plan for no gear.
— Maintenance of energy.
Especially in the beginning of a survival situation, you would not want to expend too much energy because that might relate directly to your ability to escape from an enemy or criminals or to your ability to survive extreme weather. It also takes time to set up traps and snares and catch food. In that time you might have to spend energy building a shelter and gathering firewood with no way of replenishing your energy.
— What is your survival priority?
In a desert, your priority might be water, while in tundra your priority might be a fire and shelter. You may also be in danger so your priority could be to escape from your hunters or at least remaining unseen. As a rule, you might want to be found by the good guys, so considering that they may fly over at any point, prioritize your visibility.
— Survival preparations.
Do you have stores ready, a safe room, different readiness lists for different situations? Do you have caches, will you carry water with or purify water?
— Your plan.
Your plan might feature a great deal in your philosophy, but only if you have a good idea of where and in what type of situation you will find yourself. A pilot who flies all over the world cannot plan for the situation he will find himself in, because of all the different terrain he will fly over and the different countries with different laws and security situations he may find himself in after a crash landing.
Your Final Product.
After all these issues have been considered, I would recommend you sit down and write out your survival philosophy. The way you write it should not matter because it is about how you best understand it. Most philosophies are written as a paragraph, but a list will also work or even a single word.
This is my personal philosophy:
Because one is rarely prepared for a survival situation, I must assume I will find myself in a survival situation with little or no gear. I must therefore focus on having knowledge and skills of survival by reading and rehearsing survival situations with no gear, while still making sure I have as much quality gear on or near me as often as possible. In a survival situation, my priorities will be safety and/or visibility, conservation of energy, shelter, food and water, and weapons.
I would suggest you could write your philosophy as a list as well where you prioritize what is important. For example:
Be prepared.
Safety.
Visibility.
Shelter.
Food.
Adapt.
Whatever you choose as your philosophy, remember that it is the basis upon which everything else rests. A well-worded philosophy means you will not waste time and energy on unnecessary actions and preparations and make you better organized and -prepared in the end.