When in a survival situation everyone will react differently based on a number of factors, including personality traits, the parameters of the situation itself and even physical attributes that you may or may not possess. Some people will make it through a survival situation with nothing but a Survival Knife in their inventory. Some people couldn’t survive with a stockpile of supplies. What separates these two ends of the spectrum? Preparedness. There are many ways you can prepare yourself for survival situations and having your friends drop you off blindfolded in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a Survival Knife is not what I am talking about.

Let’s start with the psychological aspects of a survival scenario that you may have to deal with.

Stress will be there for sure. You can be stressed for any number of reasons. All different types of stressors can cause you to feel stressed out. You can be stressed about the uncertainty or your lack of control of the situation. You could be stressed from dealing with illness or a death. You may have a hard time dealing with the huge change in circumstances you now find yourself in. You might be stressed out due to hunger and thirst. The list of possibilities goes on and on. What becomes stressful for one person is not a big deal to another person. In a survival situation you can be sure that stress will be there in one form or another. Stress is not necessarily a bad thing, stress can produce an alertness or a focus on something that is important at that time. Stress can keep you focused on removing the situation causing the stress. However, too much stress can be bad. Too much stress and you might start making poor decisions or become careless. You might become withdrawn or become an escapist and avoid doing the things that need to be done to ensure survival.

Fear is the emotional response to a situation you believe can cause you harm, injury, illness or even death. Fear, like stress, is not inherently bad. Fear can help you from making poor decisions that would put you in danger. But just like stress, too much fear is bad. It can paralyze you from acting in a moment where decisive action is imperative.

Anxiety is the apprehensive or uneasy feelings you get when faced with situations you are not in control of. Anxiety can also serve a positive purpose. It can push you towards mastering the situation you are feeling anxious about. Of course, too much anxiety can cause you not to act or act improperly. Too many feelings of uneasiness might make it hard to concentrate on the task at hand or even on the big picture.

Feelings of Anger or Frustration can come from things not working out the way you intended. You can become frustrated or angry with yourself or others for poor decisions that ended with a negative result. In a survival situation you may find yourself getting frustrated over the smallest of things. Frustration and anger can cause you to make irrational decisions or become impulsive with your decisions and actions. They can also lead you to adopt a quitting attitude.

Loneliness can be hard to deal with. Even if you normally enjoy your time away from people. In a survival situation you may have a hard time coping without social interaction. As humans we are social creatures and as such we prefer the company or interactions of other people. On the positive side, you may find that you are more self-sufficient than you thought possible in a normal social situation.

Now that you know what to expect, how can you prepare yourself to handle the psychological factors that you will encounter in a survival situation? How can you become the person that CAN make it with nothing but a Survival Knife at your side? In one word, Preparedness.

Of course you cannot prepare for every possible situation. You have to prepare yourself mentally to handle the psychological aspects you will encounter. You can achieve this with a plan, knowledge and training.

Having a plan doesn’t mean everything will go according to plan. You develop a plan to handle the most likely emergency situations. Where does your family meet, if disaster strikes during a workday? Do you have a survival kit, ready to go for every member of your family? Where will you stay if your home is no longer a viable option? Creating a plan puts some control back in to your hands and will help reduce the stressors we mentioned earlier, thus reducing overall stress during an emergency situation. Everything will NOT go according to plan but having a plan in place to cover most situations is way better than “winging it” when ”you know what hits the fan”. Don’t be like the majority of people running around like chickens with their heads cut off when disaster strikes. Have a plan.

You will have to prepare yourself with knowledge. You can’t read everything about ALL the things you might be facing in a survival situation, but you can read up on basic survival skills and get yourself some good field manuals to have on hand in your survival kit for reference purposes. Remember you might not have access to the Internet in an emergency. Start with basics like “how to make a fire with your survival knife“, how to build a shelter, how to prepare a fish to eat or how to use your survival knife and of course First Aid. Then work your way up from there. Should you study electrical engineering? Probably not, but learning some basic concepts about electricity might help you hook up a car alternator to a homemade windmill to charge batteries to store energy. Start basic and keep adding to your knowledge base. Having any level of knowledge on survival skills will further reduce stress, because you have taken some control of the survival situation before it happens.

Train, Practice, Train. Reading up on things like “how to use a survival knife” is a good start but most survival skills are physical activities. The best way for those skills to be useful to you in a disaster is to train so you know how best to achieve the desired results. Practice, practice, practice. Training and practice will give you the confidence that you have mastered something useful. Of course having the skill set will prove useful but it will also give you a sense of confidence that you are better suited to survive and that alone can greatly reduce the negative aspects of the psychological factors mentioned earlier. In other words you aren’t stressed out about how you are going to make a fire to keep warm because you can do it in your sleep.

When talking about preparation we can’t forget to mention having a supply of items that can make survival easier in an emergency situation. Depending on your thoughts about the future you might have some jugs of water in the basement next to some freeze-dried noodles, or you might be working on converting the crawl space in your basement in to a hidden bunker, fully stocked with enough food to last a year. How much and what types of supplies you stock is up to you. Having nothing means you aren’t prepared. Having some basic supplies in reserve is like an insurance policy. You decide how big your policy is but have one in place. Hopefully you will never have to use it.