Survival Skillset #4: Mental Fitness

This is part four of a continuing in-depth series on survival skills, the beginning of which can be found here.

Being Mentally Fit

Mental fitness is an interesting skillset to discuss, and a multifaceted one. Being mentally fit for survival in a crisis is not something that is talked about enough in the prepping community, but it may be the most important survival skill of all. Physical preparedness (keeping enough supplies stored, having a bug-out plan, etc.) will keep you ready to deal with many aspects of collapse, but psychological readiness is what will help you survive and manage through it.

I am sure you have seen the slogans repeated often but with little detail. Vague references to having the “Will to Survive,” and a “Survival Mentality.” And those get repeated so often because they are true. But the meanings behind them are often glossed over and left unexplained beyond saying that you have to be tough and determined to survive. Well, that should be a given. But how do you do that?

The human mind is a very complex and resilient thing, and it has an amazing ability to endure, to overcome stress and hardship even when there appears to be little chance of continued survival. This is often where that “will to survive” comes into play. That mental fortitude can bridge the gap between becoming aware of the severity of your situation, comprehending the fact that things are not going back to normal, and determining to adapt and endure in the post-collapse world without quitting, no matter what.

Post-collapse survival will depend a great deal on your ability to withstand stress during dire situations. Your mind is without doubt your most important survival tool. It is the most valuable asset you will have, and it must be just as prepared as your physical body for survival, perhaps even more so.  It isn’t always the physically strong and tough who are better at handling fear and stress in emergencies. Survival will most often depend on your reactions to stress than it will on the actual danger presented by whatever event you endure. To adapt is to live. Your mental skills and resilience will be much more important than physical conditioning in a post-collapse survival situation. Your psychological reactions to the stress of what you will go through have the potential to make you unable to use your available resources, and unwilling to do what needs to be done to follow through with the business of surviving. In short, you probably won’t use your physical skills or all your fancy gear if you don’t maintain your mental fortitude.

While beginning your descent into a post-collapse existence you will be confronted with a great many problems that you will need to overcome. Your mind will be both your best ally in that struggle, as well as your most dangerous enemy. You will have to defeat negative thoughts and control your imagination, mastering your fears. You will need to shift mental processes and adopt a “By Any Means Necessary” attitude and outlook. You will need to be creative and unconventional in using your abilities to improvise and adapt to new situations. You will have to shed your civilized skin and change how you think to function in a world bereft of the protective norms of society. Working with nature rather than against it will become paramount.

Above all else, you have to stay alive. That is the most critical problem you will need to be able to endure and solve, day in and day out. And solving that problem must be based on recognizing threats to your life, knowing their severity, and taking actions that will keep you alive. You will go from being in a stable world of relative safety to a chaotic and hostile world where the only rules are jungle rules, and that means no rules at all. It is a fight and a struggle, and your focus has to shrink down to encompass you and yours alone. Such is not an easy transition, but you will not always be fighting against something unknown. Injury, fatigue, pain, cold/heat, hostile people, hunger, thirst, and fear are your major enemies in a post-collapse world. Get to know them well, and learn how to defeat them. That is the purpose of mental fitness.

There are a variety of factors that contribute to your mental fitness for surviving collapse, or any other catastrophic event, and we will go through the most important of them here. We can start off with one of the big ones: Managing fear.

Fear is the Mind-Killer

Frank Herbert, the renowned author of the science fiction thriller Dune, was spot-on when he made that famous observation. Fear is indeed the killer of the mind. It’s not all bad, fear certainly serves an important purpose, and there are going to be plenty of times after collapse when fear will be justified. When those times come the effects of fear on our brains and bodies will be needed to keep you alive. I’m sure you have felt that jolt of adrenaline when something scares you—that’s your fight-or-flight reflex readying you to either combat the danger or get the hell away from it—and that has served an important evolutionary purpose in our long development. But, when allowed to take away control of your body from your conscious mind, that is panic, and panic kills.

Your single most important survival tool is your mind, and that mind must be working correctly in order to be an asset. Unfortunately, the beginning of any true survival situation throws the mind out of balance rather quickly. Fear emerges and very quickly panic can set in. Your mind controls your body and your body automatically reacts. Your stomach drops, you break out in a sweat, and your mind begins racing. Not a good feeling, for sure, and one that is out of your control.

One of the biggest problems with this unexpected feeling is that it is unfamiliar to us. The fear response is not necessarily a bad thing, that is not how nature intended it to be, nor does it create the same kind of handicap in wild animals as it does in us civilized beasts. Panic is not an asset for those who want to survive a life-and-death situation, but the fear that triggers it is intended to be of help, not harm. What it is meant to do is heighten your senses, get your body ready for action, and help you focus on the matter of survival. But when you are not used to such things as a trained soldier in a warzone is used to it, or as a gazelle on the plains of Africa most certainly is, then your reactions are out of sync. People who are used to managing a hostile environment in life are much more capable of dealing with the fear and using it as the advantage it is supposed to be rather than letting it become panic.

Panic and fear are not the same. Fear is an instinctive response that helps you not only recognize dangers around you but also respond to those threats in self-preserving ways such as the fight-or-flight reaction. Such responses are there to help protect you from things like a sudden animal attack or an impending avalanche.

But when fear is not controlled it can end up reducing your survival chances by completely bypassing your rational thought-processing abilities, and this can put you into a constant state of reactionary behavior that hinders your ability to plan and process information. It is kind of like what you see in a movie, where some character is fleeing in terror from a killer, and in the course of that flight, they are making terrible mistakes and not taking advantage of surrounding factors that could help them. It is because they have completely given over to panic, and the higher functions of their thought processes have been shunted aside by the base motivation to flee from the danger.

Controlling this negative emotional response to fear is very important to avoid panic. If you can control your fear (as opposed to being controlled by it), you will have a greater chance of surviving whatever traumatic event induced the fear in the first place. Fear can help you identify and respond to deadly situations, but panic will only reduce your ability to think clearly and plan your actions. It will also produce very high levels of stress that cause wear and tear on your body physically, and cause you to be reckless in action which could easily lead to real injury.

The normal fear response creates a stress load that can be handled by your body in such a way as to maintain balance, but a full-on panic prevents you from maintaining any normal state of functioning.  Because of that, it is critical to be able to recognize and respond to the presence of fear by identifying it, and embracing it, in order to keep it from controlling your behavior in an emergency situation. If you panic, you will not be able to plan your response, and if you can’t plan, you will not survive.

The cognitive capacity to think calmly, plan rationally, and assess your environment are crucial for survival. Yet those of some of the first things that become inhibited as soon as your brain floods your bloodstream with adrenaline, cortisol, and other hormonal messengers of the fear response.

That biochemical mixture prepares your body to react to danger and trauma in several beneficial ways. It thickens your blood to slow bleeding, constricts blood vessels and increases the heart rate to improve circulation and get energy into your muscles, and it even narrows your field of vision down (the so-called “tunneling” effect) to keep you focused on what you are dealing with. It also directs your body to reduce functions that are not needed for fleeing or fighting, such as your immune system and also your pain response. There is even more to it, but the short version is that the fear response basically hijacks your body and mind and puts you into automatic mode, reducing your normal cognitive capacity in favor of heightening your reactionary behavior.

But those beneficial increases to speed and strength, along with the heightened senses, come with some significant trade-offs. The process of the fear response involves your brains doing a lot of complicated things, such as coordinating all those hormonal releases we already mentioned. Because of becoming occupied with those functions, it becomes less able to do other things as well. This can impact your thinking and decision-making abilities, leaving you susceptible to impulsive reactions. Sometimes those reactive impulses are lifesaving, such as ducking or jumping back from some projectile, but you need to be able to maintain your control lest the instinctive reactions become all there is to your behavior.

One goal of mental fitness is to help your mind overcome that primal instinct to recoil or flee when facing pain or fear. By controlling that emotional reaction and conquering your fear, you can remain logical, aware, and ready to manage the threat. The idea is to embrace the benefits of the fear response while limiting the trade-offs. As Frank Herbert said in full:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Managing Your Fear

So, how can you control your fear? The first step is being able to understand what is making you afraid. In order to prevent panic, you must understand the fear that can induce it. Think over some of the fears that can affect people in a crisis.

Often, the fear of death or injury is the biggest of them. But some others can be like the fear of not knowing what to do in a given situation. This will occur most often in people who have little training or experience in surviving dangerous situations. When an event occurs they recognize that they are in trouble and fear that they won’t know how to help themselves or their loved ones. Panic can easily build from that as the situation progresses. Imagine suddenly finding yourself in the midst of a mass shooting situation. Soldiers and SWAT cops may not panic because they have “been there and done that,” but what about you? Do you think you could stay calm and assess the situation appropriately, or do you feel as if you may panic with the rest of the people around?

This is only one example, and the list of fears can be a long one. Fear of the unknown, not knowing what is going on or what will happen. There can also be fear of finding yourself completely alone and separated from your family and everyone else, not knowing if you will see them again. I am sure you can think of many others, and I encourage you to reflect on it and come to understand the things that could cause you to become fearful. Such understanding is the first step to gaining control.

But that alone is not enough. Understanding your fears helps you get ready to experience them, and then you must learn how you can control them. To manage the responses so that panic never has a chance to set in.

When fear strikes, one thing you know for sure is that you must act immediately. Don’t run from that knowledge or let your instincts decide what to do for you. Instead, recognize and embrace it. In order to prevent many of the panic symptoms listed above, there are several things you can do:

1. Take a breath. When frightened or scared suddenly, people tend to either hold their breath or begin hyperventilating. So, to combat this you can remember to make a conscious decision to control your breathing. Breathing deeply and evenly will help you prevent hyperventilation and manage your respiration and heart rate, and that in turn will help control the flood of adrenaline entering your system. Try to immediately relax and establish a steady breathing pattern.

2. Make a move. Another tendency people have when scared is to freeze up like the proverbial deer in the headlights. The managed breathing will help you to relax, and that will keep you from becoming too tense. Tensed-up muscles will add to your anxiety and reinforce the fear you feel. When you freeze up in the midst of some dangerous situation, your inaction can cause you to become, literally, a stationary target. You have to break that natural instinct to freeze and take action, and any action is always better than no action. By focusing on doing something, you will reduce the dread you feel and it will help you restore your confidence.

3. Widen your focus. Avoid the tunnel vision effect of focusing solely on the danger that is approaching. See it, acknowledge it, and then begin to think. Focusing on the solution rather than the problem puts your mind back in the direction of being in control, of considering what can be done rather than what could happen. In a building fire, for example, once you have become aware of the threat, you need to start looking for ways to get out, tools that are around that may help you escape, or methods to protect yourself from smoke inhalation during the course of your evacuation. Thinking directly about these things will pull your mind away from the fear of the fire and instead give it things to look for and problems to solve. And that gives you conscious control over the resulting actions.

4. Finally, one of the primary ways you can limit the effects of fear is by being prepared and ready to survive at all times. This means on the larger scale of preparedness which this book is about, but also in your day-to-day life. When you are going out from the safety of your home, such as a day hike or even a trip across town, make sure you are carrying the basic essentials for survival with you. This will be discussed in more detail later when it comes to bug-out bags and everyday-carry essentials. But for the moment, know that being ready for bad things to happen can go a long way to calming your mind when they do. As they say most often about firearms, “better to have and not need than to need and not have,” and this goes equally for extra water when hiking in the desert or tools in your car to deal with a flat tire. The presence of such things helps to reassure you that you can handle it when bad things happen, and that reassurance goes a long way.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Another fundamental aspect of mental fitness for collapse is adaptability. The world is going to be very different from what you are used to, and old behaviors and habits that once helped you exist in civilized society will be some of the things that can bring about your downfall in a collapsed version of that society. You cannot remain rigid in your thinking. Rigid people are dangerous people outside of the safety nets afforded to them by civilization. As they say in the military, “Improvise, adapt, and overcome.” To survive and function after society is no more means to be able to adapt, and to adapt is the capacity to change from what you have always known and how you have always behaved. But you have to first realize that this means adapting to the actual environment, not your preconceived notions of how “things should be.”

The importance of flexible thinking cannot be overstated. It is the best way to not only understand the various stresses and challenges of survival in enduring collapse situations, staying flexible is also the best way to strengthen one’s adaptive responses to such a changed and hostile environment. Sometimes, sticking to a plan of action is critical to your success in one situation. At another time, abandoning the plan, based on changes to what is happening, is required. Being able to recognize these situations, and act decisively along a new direction, is a key part of mental fitness. And even for the best of us, there is often a struggle to find balance and control. We all make mistakes, and we will continue to do so. Those who have the ability to be flexible can see their error and adapt to it quickly and without reservation.

Part of such flexibility is being able to think outside the box that you have built around yourself to live in a civilized society. That means being unconventional and creative, and open to aspects of thinking that you may have never considered before. A creative mindset is an extremely important trait of adaptability. You cannot allow old patterns of thinking and planning to get in the way of your survival. Inevitably, this brings up the idea of being morally flexible as well.

That is a touchy subject, and for good reason. We all want to be good people and to believe that others are inherently good as well. That is how the world should be. But, as we mentioned before, when the SHTF, you cannot limit yourself to thinking and acting based on how things “should be.” Complaining about how things should be is all well and good for debating in your freshman ethics class, but in a post-collapse world ignoring the way things actually are will take you right out of the survivor category and put you firmly on the casualty list.

I should go into that more. I am not talking about abandoning your moral compass and becoming one of those “zombie” types I talk about sometimes. In fact, the entire point of preparedness is to avoid such an end. What I mean is that you have to shift your thinking about the world, and other people. Normally, in our civilized society, we encounter new people and assume that they are good and honest until proven otherwise, and that is something of a luxury. The vast majority of the time it is true, and even when it isn’t it is only in rare circumstances that such misjudgment turns out to be fatal. But in the world after the collapse of society, you have to take a different position. Things that were once seen automatically as safe now must be looked at as the threat they potentially could be, because more often than not that will end up being the case. There is just too much at stake. In today’s world, it is extremely rare for a person to kill another person over a single meal. But in the world after collapse, that could easily become commonplace.

Most people are not prepared, either physically or mentally, for societal collapse. And the thing is, a great many of them will still survive the initial events of all but the most catastrophic of ends. Even a nuclear war will leave quite a large number of survivors, at least for the short term, and many of those are going to be the ones to become like those zombies when faced with the dire need to survive just one more day. In their denial or ignorance of what was coming, they did not get ready for the worst, and when it comes they will lack the ability to deal with the situation rationally. And that is something that you have to realize as part of your own preparations. You have to know how they are going to think and act, and you cannot shy away from such truths on moral grounds. In a post-collapse world, moral grounds are burial grounds.

A large part of being adaptable comes from a process I call “Shedding.” It is a leaving behind of the old ways of doing things, and a casting off of habits and behaviors that may have been necessary in civilized society, but will exist only as hindrances to survival after the fall. Think of it like a snake shedding its skin. You have to divest yourself of that old soft and civilized exterior and present a new hard and resilient one to the world. That most certainly does not mean behaving without morality, not by a long shot. But it does mean that you have to recognize that the morality of people in the world will have changed, as well as that of any social groupings or communities that might emerge. Everything becomes more basic and primal, it is all about surviving at that point.

Rules and Laws

There is a big change from authority-based morality to survival-based morality. In an authority-based social system, moral concepts become codified into laws and rules that define what people can and cannot do within that society. Those coded morals are backed up by the force of punishment for infractions by the authorities society has put into place. Conversely, in a post-collapse world, social systems and sources of authority have disappeared and left a vacuum within which there are no consequences to be handed out by third-party intermediaries. So, how could the rule of law function in the condition when it’s not possible to call for help? The short answer is that it can’t. Not on a large scale anyway.

The rule of law will be one of the first of civilization’s social conditionings to have its hold broken after things get rough. The only thing that truly keeps it loosely in place now is the threat of swift and forceful reaction and the consequences that outweigh the benefits of any action someone could take. And even now, we still have plenty of those who break those rules. Most suffer the consequences, but not all.

We are already seeing the decay of the rule of law now, as conditions get worse in the world for people. And we see it at both the social level as well as on the national scale. From the rise in violence as people’s mental health begins to collapse under the strain, to the increasing rates of theft as a result of dramatically rising costs of living and income inequality. To zoom out a bit, we see it beginning on a governmental level as well. Back in February of 2022, just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia and China made an official joint statement about moving to usher in a “new era” in the world, the end of Western hegemony, and the move away from a “rules-based” order in the world. Tensions between many nations are rising, and in response to things like climate pressures, resource scarcity, and economic turmoil, they are beginning to lash out. This is just the start of a much more serious catastrophe for modern civilization.

Let’s take a look at order based on rules. The rule of law is kind of like a dam holding back a river to create a reservoir. It is an artificial construct seeking to contain a natural force. People’s natural tendency to look out for their own self-interest is like the raging river that has been curtailed into a calm and functional reservoir by the force of the dam. The dam is the only thing keeping the natural force in check. If that dam were to fail, and it will, people would return to their natural instincts swiftly, and the chaos of the resulting flood would not be a good thing. It will take quite a bit to break the hold that law and order has on the human psyche, but once it is demonstrably gone, well, society will immediately default back to “might makes right” very quickly.

Here I am referring to “might makes right” more as the law in nature, when things are not artificially restricted. Fights for dominance, food, mating, territory, whatever. All are handled on a physical level, and solely by the participants. There are no third parties to a dispute, and if there are then they are seeking to take their own advantage from both of the others. In a post-collapse world, at least in the early days of it, you either fight to eat or to avoid being eaten, and the top contender prevails. Meals are had and meals are missed, and the natural world keeps moving. There is no outside mediating influence that restricts the animals based on concepts like “rights” or “laws.” The only laws in effect are those of physics and nature alone.

In that case, there is no calling for help, and no one to answer that call. You are the help.

And so. The term “shedding” is simply about removing from your mindset the established conditioning that makes you depend upon those things which no longer exist. Not so you can selfishly take advantage of the absence, but so you will be able to clearly see the world and others in it as they really are, rather than how they should be. A simple example is how we see people today. For the most part, we react casually to the presence of others, and we almost ignore them, viewing them as neutral at worst, and good until proven otherwise. In a post-collapse world, assuming the worst needs to be the norm in every situation.

Morality and Collapse

Morality isn’t like a collection of absolute truths that exist in the natural world, they are artificially imposed by humanity upon society. These moral truths which we agree upon, based on our innate sense of right and wrong, are the glue that binds humanity together for the functioning of civil society. In a way, they are what help us all survive and thrive in society. Specifically, morality exists as a way to promote the peaceful co-existence of both individual people and the various human cultures and nations as a whole. Having a shared moral code unites individuals and builds community in the process, it helps groups stick together and function harmoniously, free from the threat of unnecessary violence. In our intricately connected and globalized world, broadening our collective horizons to understand the experiences of others, and working together to achieve goals on a worldwide level has helped us survive and prosper.

However, times have begun to change. Outside forces from climate change to resource scarcity are beginning to press hard on the global civilization we have built. Much of that civilization and globalization depended on cheap energy in the form of abundant fossil fuels. Now, not only is that source of cheap energy running out, but the greenhouse emissions from such use are bringing about hard times and hard choices. Maintaining cooperative relationships is easy when things are good and everyone benefits, but what happens when times get tough and there is no longer enough available for everyone to continue to benefit equally? What happens when the limits to growth are reached, then exceeded, and suddenly the carrying capacity of the planet is simply overwhelmed?

Collapse is what happens. But first, there is tension, conflict, and wars to survive that precede it. The moral rulebooks start to get thrown out the window as nations fight to survive, and eventually, such dire straits turn individuals against each other. The only real rule that remains is to survive at all costs. In this way, we can see that morality is neither absolute nor adhered to absolutely. By creating and upholding moral “rules,” communities increased their chances of surviving and thriving as the world was growing. But as civilization enters decline, those rules will begin to fade and be erased by the needs of people to stay alive. Most will actually retain their morality in mind, but will bow to the pressures of biology to survive by any means necessary. And when the only means left are the immoral ones, they will be employed.

It is better to be ready for that day than to end up being surprised by it and falling victim to the assumption of a moral world where such no longer exists. Shedding that moral dependency now is a good way to start. Self-defense is a good example. Most people in the world today do not really devote time to even thinking about that, much less to learning how to manage it. The threats, while they do still exist, have become rare enough in civilized society to be almost a non-issue in everyday life. People do not leave their homes to go out for groceries prepared to fight armed murderers and robbers when they arrive at the supermarket, because that’s just crazy, right? And then, in the few (but rising) cases where such things do happen, people are shocked and taken by surprise, untrained and ill-equipped to handle the situation or function during it. And that is because their mindset was one of “That’s crazy, things like that just can’t happen in this day and age!”

In a functioning and civil society, going around expecting horrible things all the time is not the norm, and is actually detrimental to one’s ability to function in that society. So can focusing too much on all the bad things that may happen. But what you need to look at is whether that society will continue, and if it does not then what will the world be like without it? That is what you are getting ready for, and you must be mentally prepared to survive in that world, just as you are able to survive in this one. Because in a post-collapse world, bad things are the norm, and it is the occasional good thing that will be the surprising occurrence.

Have you heard that story about the two wolves? The general idea is that each of us has two wolves that exist within us, and the one we feed the most is the one that becomes the strongest. In the case of the right mentality for survival in a post-collapse world, it’s about which mindset we choose to feed. And so we have to look for ways we can strengthen the resilient mindset that will help us when the SHTF.

The Resilient Survivor

Our civilized society has taught us that pain should always be avoided at all costs and that anything difficult is bad. The general idea is that if you have to struggle to achieve something then you have already failed. People are raised from childhood to avoid struggle, participate rather than compete, flee from all conflict and, when it cannot be run from, call for help from others when things get too rough or don’t go their way. For functioning and contributing members of a collective society, perhaps that is better…for the whole of the community. But it is certainly not a good worldview to have when you find yourself on your own in a world in which civil society has ceased to exist.

If you intend to better yourself and develop a resilient mentality for a societal collapse event, you need to push these types of ideas out of your way. The world is not a safe place. Other people are, in fact, out to get you or what you have. No one is going to help you except for you. That is the way you will need to look at the world because that is how the world actually is in the absence of societal conditioning and the authority of law.

For some people, this may be amazingly difficult. Your upbringing may have been one that prepared you for life in a peaceful and fair world, but you have been done a disservice in the area of getting you ready to live in a post-collapse wasteland. If you’ve been raised dependent on others, supervised at all times, encouraged to trust everyone, and made to always feel safe, then you may be facing an uphill battle, but it is still possible to build the sort of resilience you will need.

Resilience is both the process and the outcome of successfully adapting to challenging life experiences. It’s about having practical mental and behavioral flexibility, as well as the ability to adapt to shifting demands, both internal and external. Basically, it is mental “toughness,” your ability to withstand adversity and continue on despite the difficulty.

So, let’s look at what it means to be a resilient survivor. There are a few core principles that are shared by all those who have such a level of mental fitness, and I have outlined them here.

Embrace the Change

From the very beginning of a disastrous situation or occurrence, the resilient survivor stays aware of everything going on in a pragmatic way. They will immediately recognize and acknowledge the reality of what is happening around them, and they accept it. Even if they feel themselves wanting to sink into denial and shock, they resist that impulse and trust that what their senses are telling them is indeed the reality. None of that wailing and screaming about how “This just can’t be happening!” Right away, before any of those panicky impulses can kick in, they are already accepting that, yes, this really is what is happening, and they start to look for ways to deal with it. They take stock of the pertinent details and do not dwell on the emotional aspects. If there are outside circumstances to be blamed, they do not waste time raging at whatever is responsible for the catastrophe. Instead, they quickly come to terms with the fact that they are the ones who have to change the circumstances they find themselves in, or else they will die. No doubt emotions will rise to the fore and try to overwhelm them, but the mental discipline kicks in to help them get inside themselves, calm themselves down, and get a grip on what they are facing from a practical and emotionless perspective. There is no time to spare for the horror of whatever may be happening, the important thing is how they will deal with it to survive.

Fear is undoubtedly the first and strongest emotion to try and seize control, but the resilient survivor locks that down fast. Instead of being ruled by it, they begin making use of it. It will be mitigated and changed into a more useful energy, perhaps anger, and it will be used to motivate them to take action while also helping them focus on the task at hand and be sharp about it. In short, they keep calm. A resilient survivor knows that passion and emotion can rule over the rational mind, and so they stay on guard against such an internal assault. Focusing on what needs to be done to the exclusion of all else, one task at a time, is the mental weapon to be used here.

Believe in Yourself

The resilient survivor always goes forward believing in their success. They have full faith in themselves, and their knowledge, skills, and abilities. There is no “can’t” in their vocabulary. They will collect their resources, plan meticulously to avoid mistakes, exercise extreme caution, and perform every task to the best of their ability. Such principles reinforce their belief in themselves and secures within them the personal faith that if they do what they are supposed to do then they will succeed. They will always think in terms of “Yes, I can.” This keeps at the forefront the deep conviction that they will survive, and that gives them the mental strength to do what needs to be done.

The resilient survivor can still hold the belief that they could probably die, but they don’t get preoccupied with such possibilities, and they do not let it prevent them from going on. This point can be difficult for some people to grasp, especially those who endlessly obsess over all of the things that could go wrong. Those types believe that any possibility of doubt invites certain disaster. Resilient survivors will address negative information, such as being injured, and accept those facts without giving up. They will not let the possibility that they can’t do something stop them from going ahead and trying anyway. They surrender to the reality that they could fail, or die, and they embrace it as a possibility without fixating on it. This is what keeps them moving forward, even into what looks like certain failure, and this determination elevates their chances to survive. They know what may happen, but they recognize that they won’t know what will happen until it does.

Resilient survivors believe in themselves completely, and they never give up. They aren’t easily frustrated or discouraged by setbacks. If mistakes are made, or failures occur, they simply reanalyze the situation with the new information gained by previous failures, and then try the whole thing over again. They know that situations are constantly changing, new information is gained from any action, successful or not, and if they just keep at it they will win in the end. Indeed, they don’t always win, but it is that belief that they will which drives them to keep trying.

Stay Flexible

True resilience is a balancing act of what seems like conflicting ideas. Resilient survivors must exhibit both caution and boldness in planning and action. They have to maintain a high confidence in their training as well as the eagerness to learn shown by a beginner. It is critical that they be intimately in touch with their emotions, while also able to compartmentalize them when the situation demands it. They must focus on doing even the smallest tasks well, but also keep in mind the bigger picture. They have to be able to fix iron determination on a goal but stay capable of changing and adapting when they need to. It is a mountain of seemingly contradictory practices, but they are always able to walk the line with constant flexibility in switching back and forth.

Even as things are falling apart around them, they will see opportunities in the situation as they present themselves. There is no pining for what they have lost or lamenting its lack, resilient survivors embrace the world they find themselves in fully and live in the reality of it. They will continue to persevere over and over again, even when they face repeated failure. In short, they fulfill the requirement to “Adapt, or die.”

By Any Means

Resilient survivors are coldly rational about using the world around them, getting what they need from it, and doing whatever they have to do in order to survive. Objections or agreement to actions are based solely upon the actual physical factors involved and what they mean for success or failure. They do not think in terms of what is right or what is wrong, but instead stick to what works and what does not work. When a choice presents itself along multiple avenues, it is the safest and most likely to succeed that will be chosen, without reservation or moral conflict.

They do not turn their survival over to others and depend on them for it, but instead stay responsible for their own selves at all times. That doesn’t mean that they do not act as part of a group or community, far from it as such a community greatly increases chances of survival. What it means is that they stay independent of needs or expectations in reliance on others. They do not blindly hope for things like being rescued from situations, but instead focus on rescuing themselves. There is no sitting idly by expecting someone else to solve the problem.

How to Develop Your Mental Fitness

In the face of a total collapse of civilization, we are all facing personal and collective circumstances that are frighteningly inhospitable across all aspects of our lives. Your own ability to confront and endure danger, pain, loss, and catastrophe will center on your ability to acquire a frame of mind and mental agility that will pull you through it all. No amount of gear, supplies, or other preparations will be a greater factor than that.

The unfortunate focus of modern civilized society is on maintaining and following strict guidelines in life, on sacrificing for the whole to avoid pain and loss. But for a survivor in a world without that sheltering and ordered society, you need to be able to face the pain and the loss head-on and be capable of rebounding from them. There will no longer be comfort or benefit in suffering gracefully through hardship while staying productive for society, or in surrendering when up against forces that you cannot control with the expectation that the rules behind the social contract will reach out and save you. You will have to push through fear and negative feelings to achieve your goals, and you will have to act in your own self-interest even in the face of horrible occurrences happening around you. You simply cannot afford to break down.

You have to become that resilient survivor we discussed above.

Mental fitness and resilience are not static abilities, they are dynamic personality traits which means they can be exercised and developed. Such development generally happens by learning how to handle stress more effectively, desensitizing yourself to the types of events that can cause it, and by making some fundamental changes to the way you look at problems. Here are some of the tools you can use to get started.

Stress Management

We have already established that the greatest level of stress you will encounter in a survival situation is fear. But there are plenty of others as well. These other stresses can, and most certainly will, affect your emotional state, so being aware of them will help you to better identify and then deal with them.

One of the most easily identifiable ones would be pain. Something you have to be prepared for and expect in any major event is injury. In just about any survival situation that you will encounter, an injury of some sort is going to be either a component of it or related to it in some way. Such injuries, mixed with everything else that may be going on, will result in the stress of dealing with pain. Pain can be a hard thing to ignore or get away from, but it is something that can be managed or tolerated, and that will be something you will have to be able to do. You cannot allow pain to keep you from doing what you need to do in order to survive. You do, of course, need to avoid further injury, but the pain alone cannot be allowed to stop you.

Continuing to act even when you are hurting is actually one of the things that can help you deal with that pain. Having a task and taking action allows your mind to accept the pain you are feeling without focusing on it. That enables you to deal with it and continue with your plan. So, learn to deal with pain as much as possible and concentrate on the business at hand. Pushing yourself through it when it occurs will help you build that tolerance and awareness. Most people have a great deal more tolerance and reserves than they realize.

Strong emotions can also be a major stressor after a collapse event. The pains of loss and depression about the bleak potential of the future can easily settle in deep and become hard to dislodge. Such feelings can be a difficult problem because they can affect a wide range of psychological responses. Overwhelming sadness can increase fatigue leading to an even deeper depression. You can begin to lose faith in yourself and in your chances of survival, and it just spirals down from there. Usually, some of the best ways to deal with these emotional responses are things like staying busy, adapting to your situation, staying focused on the present, and maintaining a positive attitude.

Deprivation can be a huge source of stress on both the body and the mind. Whether it comes from heat or cold, hunger or thirst, or even from being deprived of human contact, it will be a major hazard in a post-collapse survival situation. One of the most critical problems facing a survivor is the lack of water and the accompanying problems of thirst and dehydration. Unlike fear, pain, and emotional distress, deprivation cannot be tolerated indefinitely. But it can for a short while. If you stay focused and determined, remaining calm and active, you can fight these effects and turn your attention to alleviating their cause. However, in order to avoid deprivation, you have to act to treat the source of it. Quench your thirst and satisfy your hunger, get your temperature comfortable, and so on. When your body’s balance is not maintained it decreases your efficiency or ability to function, and can even lead to irrational behavior, or worse. Remember the zombies we talked about? Deprivation is one of the biggest things that caused them to give up their humanity to survive. Most of the ways to mitigate deprivation are solved by always staying prepared. Having supplies, a plan for using them, and knowledge of how and where to get more is an integral part of that.

Finally, when it comes to my top sources of stress, fatigue rounds out the list. As a result of everything you will have to endure constantly, your body and mind are going to be under the constant strain of diminishing energy levels. Less sleep, more exertion, a shortage of food and water, and maintaining a constant state of vigilance will most certainly lead to fatigue. Stress from fatigue can reduce efficiency, and make you more susceptible to injuries. You must be constantly aware of the dangers of overtaxing yourself. Other stresses will already be causing you to experience strain and reduced capacity. Even though pushing yourself hard will be required post-collapse, you have to do your best to avoid total exhaustion. Your body and mind alike need rest and sustenance to recover from fatigue. Taking rest breaks during periods of extended activity will improve the use of your energy reserves and help keep them replenished. Always work smarter rather than harder, and remember that economy of effort is critical to long-term success.

Mental Visualization

You already know how to set goals and make plans. Next up is learning how to visualize them. Mental visualization is like a rehearsal in your mind, going through all of the steps and actions you will need to take in particular situations, and it’s a really great way to prepare your mind for when those situations actually occur. While a great many things can be simulated during physical training for events and circumstances, you can’t simulate being in the middle of a nuclear fallout zone, or in the path of an oncoming tsunami. This is where doing a little “wargaming” comes into play. You can even look at it as something like a role-playing game, imagining yourself in various “What if” scenarios, and then actually working through them in your mind. The more detailed and vivid your mental visualization is, and the more realistic and complex you make it, the more you will benefit from the process. It teaches you to learn to anticipate events better, helps you come up with new ideas, and helps you avoid being caught off guard should such things happen for real.

For example, take a minute and set up a situation in your mind. Imagine your school or workplace and visualize what happens when you smell smoke, and then the fire alarm begins blaring. What kinds of things might begin happening around you? What are the first things you would do? And after that? Visualize what you’d do in steps, where you would go, and so on. Set it up like a little story. You head for the main exit, but what if you imagine it being blocked or smoke coming under the door? Think about it, make a decision, and go on to the next. Keep doing this, creating imaginary problems for yourself, and then solving them as you go.

The best part is that you can do this at any time. Sitting in the waiting room at the dentist, or in line at the DMV? Get to visualizing! This is a fantastic mental exercise and helps develop both mental fitness as well as your future plans.

You can even do it with family or others in your prepper group. Make a game of it, just like the Stranger Things kids sitting around and playing some Dungeons & Dragons. Have someone come up with a scenario and storyline, and then everyone else gets to play their way through it. Having multiple people following along and participating has another beneficial effect by providing different points of view, unique ideas, and interesting thoughts about the scenario which helps to broaden the perspective of everyone involved.

Knowledge and Education

Spend the time before collapse filling your brain with knowledge. Collect survival skills like they are merit badges. Whether it’s learning how to identify medicinal plants, perfecting your land navigation skills, taking a wilderness survival class, or learning how to skin a deer, any knowledge and skill you acquire now will give you a mental boost when the time comes that it is needed. Not only will you be able to do certain things, but you will have a wide knowledge base to draw on when Google is long gone. Such capacity will give you much more confidence in your ability to rely on yourself for survival post-collapse, making you more mentally prepared in the process and less prone to fear and worry.

This one may seem like a no-brainer, especially given the weight we have already given to the importance of skills and knowledge in this book, but it bears repeating because it has a big effect on your mental health. Having a general understanding of the world and how things work, where things are and what to do about problems allows you to take advantage of your environment and circumstances rather than having them get the better of you. Confidence in your ability to move through the post-collapse world will allow you to do so faster and more effectively. Having more knowledge and learning new skills will never have a negative effect on your life, collapse or not.

Exposure Training

This can be a difficult concept for some while at the same time being a non-issue for others. In the simplest terms, the best way to truly avoid being shocked by events is to have gone through them enough before to become desensitized to them. Now, for most things, that isn’t really possible. You cannot really get much exposure to a wartime battlefield without being on one and in the thick of the combat.

The frequency with which you experience an event or environment can lessen your sensitivity to it. It is a well-established type of non-associative learning that results in a lessened response to something after repeated exposure to it. When you have been exposed to death and dying regularly, you can become desensitized to it, affecting the way you feel when it occurs around you again. Firefighters become much more comfortable than the average person when in an environment surrounded by flames, such as a forest fire or a burning building. Because of that, they can more easily remain calm and deal with the situation appropriately while avoiding panic or foolish mistakes. Same for soldiers with lots of combat experience being able to keep their heads during a riot or mass shooting event. They have “Been There” and “Done That.” It holds much fewer surprises for them, and they have already become acclimated to such environments and events.

Exposure therapy has been used to treat phobias, fears, or other mental health disorders, helping people become desensitized to the thing that causes them distress. It can help you train your brain to remove the anxiety or fear that accompanies a panic-triggering situation, such as encountering a bear while hiking, or finding a huge snake in your toolbox. Such therapy might start with something like the above-mentioned mental visualization, imagining the situation in detail, and then progress with actual exposure to it in reality. Over time this can remove some of the trauma, minimizing the fear you experience each time which desensitizes you to the situation. That way, sometime in the future, you won’t panic when you come to experience it in real life.

The post-collapse world is going to be a very traumatic one. Mass casualty events will no longer be the shocking surprise that shatters the peace, and horrible acts of violence or destruction won’t be cause for shock. It sucks to say that, or even to think of being in a world like that, and the very fact that we do not react well to such thoughts is a symptom of our sensitivity to them.

In today’s world of zero-conflict life and trigger warnings placed on book covers, people have become more sensitive to bad things than ever before. And, with the buildup of all the catastrophes the world faces, it couldn’t come at a worse possible time.

Some of you reading this may already be cops or soldiers, firefighters or criminals, kids who grew up in neighborhoods plagued by violence and gang warfare, or adrenaline junkies who seek out the next big thrilling danger to expose themselves to. In that case, you are well on your way to having a great base for being able to cope when it is the entire world that is like that. But many of you are not.

Now, before you react to that thought negatively, stop yourself. It just means that you are currently better and more well-adapted to succeed and thrive in civilized society than many of those I mentioned above really are. Certainly better than the criminals are. The only problem is that those very things that help you now can inhibit you later. When things have become less civilized.

The idea of exposure training is to get you outside of your current adaptation. To free you from those factors which will limit you in a post-collapse environment. And luckily it doesn’t have to come from crazy things like battlefields and gang warfare. Any experience that exposes you to danger, fear, shock, and hardship now will increase your mental fortitude for surviving in a disastrous scenario. Go skydiving. Whitewater rafting. Learn some martial arts and get to real sparring in the ring or on the mat. Expose yourself to the things you fear, and the fears will begin to fade and become something that you can deal with. Get intimately familiar with the effects of adrenaline coursing through your veins and your body’s reaction to it.

In short, get as far outside your comfort zone as you can, and learn to live outside of it for a time. The benefits to your mental fitness for survival, your confidence, and even your self-esteem will be invaluable. Become the resilient survivor today that you will need to be tomorrow.

Conclusion

Maintaining a strong level of mental fitness is for certain the most important aspect of your survival. While out there in whatever the world becomes you will be dependent on yourself and the abilities you possess alone. There may be others with you to help with that burden, but each of them will also need to practice extreme self-reliance. You will have to overcome many challenges that you are not accustomed to or even familiar with. Modern civilized society, with all of its technological marvels and social constructs, has conditioned us for instant relief from all of life’s discomforts. Things such as hunger, pain, thirst, darkness, boredom, cold, and of course the presence of violence. You will need to adapt yourself to tolerate those things and more. When the Shit begins to hit the Fan around you, stop and maintain your composure. Harness and control your fears. Stay calm, observe the environment and resources around you, and recognize the dangers to your life and how you can combat them. Analyze the situation, set your priorities, and plan a course of action. Keep cool, calm, and collected. Then, after all of that, you act.

Your level of mental fitness will determine how well you do all those things, and the economy of action with which you exercise your other skills and resources to survive. Get that edge now, while you have the luxury of time to do so. You will not have such luxuries when the time comes to rely on yourself.