Survival Mini-Series: The Will to Survive

First off, thanks for hanging in there and being patient while life took over. I know it’s been a long time since I last posted, and I apologize. I saved this topic for last, because I think it’s one of the most important aspects to surviving a bad situation. Without the will to survive/live, the rest of your plan or training won’t amount to jack or shit. In this post, I’ll talk about what the will to survive is, how to foster a healthy mental attitude to grow your own will to survive, and share some stories that are good examples of this phenomenon.

According to Dr. Lawrence Wilson, “The will to survive is the will to stay in one’s body and keep the body healthy and alive.” In other words, it’s the mental strength to endure despite tough odds and crap situations. It’s this will to keep on living that will help get you through the survival situation. You have to have a reason to keep on keepin’ on, or else you’ll give up, and then it’s game over.

There was an entire module of training in my Air Force survival on this very topic. Plus in the survival manual they hand out to flyers deploying to a hostile environment, there is a section dedicated to it as well. It’s a real thing, and there are steps you can take to help strengthen your own will to survive.

First and foremost, know that the will to survive is a mental muscle that ties in with physical conditions (it can also tie into spiritual factors if you are religious/spiritual). There are certain things you can do to help prepare and exercise this mental muscle, like prepare. Remember the Boy Scout motto of be prepared? You have to know your own limitations before you find yourself in a survival situation, and the best way to find those limitations, are to practice, exercise, and implement. You need to practice survival techniques. I’ve mentioned this before in other posts, but if you only rely on theory, you’re going to be hurting when it comes to time to try it for real. Practice building primitive shelters. Practice building fires with different materials in different weather patterns. Gathering and purifying water, or foraging for food. These are skills that you will need to survive, and if you know deep down that you can rely on your own skills to procure and produce these things, it will take some of the stress off and give you the confidence you need to make it out there mentally.

The next part is exercise. You do not want to be in poor health when you find yourself in a survival situation. It’s only going to get worse as the days go on, and if you aren’t in the good health beforehand, it’s going to make things tougher. That stress and hurt is going to wear on you physically. Once the physical stress sets in, it starts eating away at your mental strength and keeping that will to survive gets harder to maintain. So eat right and exercise, and it will pay dividends if you find yourself in the suck.

The final part of this equation is implementation. Having a strong will to survive is an active process. While the first two steps are physical factors that feed into the will to survive, this step is all mental. If you find yourself in a bad situation and you have to survive, there are things you have to actively do to keep your mental strength where it needs to be. You need to focus on the reasons you have to stay alive. While all of these may not apply, hopefully you can find one or two that work. Focus on your family, friends, loved ones, your faith in a higher power (if you are spiritual/religious), or even get stubborn and get to the point that you won’t let Mother Nature kill you. Heck, maybe your will to survive is fed by fears that your family and friends will find your stash of porn on your computer. Maybe you have dogs at home that need you to survive and you’re their only hope. Perhaps you just need to see the results of the next World Cup before you pass on. Whatever it is that keeps you wanting to live, grab a hold of it and don’t let go. Keep that idea in the forefront of your mind and don’t let it waver. If you with others, you all need to work together to keep one another up and willing to fight on.

It’s going to suck. Survival isn’t fun. If you’re having fun surviving, then you’re camping. So you need to do everything humanly possible to endure that suck. Because once the will to survive goes, it doesn’t matter if you have a freshwater natural spring and a pizza joint right next to your survival location, you won’t make it. I’ve started watching television program called Naked and Afraid. It puts two survival experts together in a harsh environment without any clothes and only one survival tool apiece to help them. The pair then has to survive for 21 days. It becomes obvious when the participants lose their will to survive. They become depressed, they panic, and they usually end up tapping out and going home.

An amazing story of survival goes to hiker, Aron Ralston who fell down a slot canyon in eastern Utah and got his arm trapped by a heavy boulder. Ralston spent five days pinned by the boulder until he decided that he needed to initiate his own rescue. Through an incredible will to survive, Ralston used a pocketknife to cut his own trapped arm off at the elbow and hike out to safety.

Another amazing story of survival is the story of Steven Callahan. In 1982 Callahan set sail alone in a sailboat from the Canary Islands. During a bad storm, his boat sank and he found himself having to survive in a small inflatable life raft. Most of his supplies were gone, and he spent 76 days adrift in the Caribbean. He survived by keeping his mind occupied. Callahan divided his mind into two people, a captain and a crewmember, and accounts from his logbook show the two personalities. It kept him mentally alive and willing to survive. 

So how does this apply to writing? Simple, it’s this aspect of survival that you can really get deep into a character’s POV and let it shine. This will turn your reactive character into an active character that people can connect with. Focus on their will to survive and show the reader why they want to live. What’s driving their will to keep on fighting? Is it family? Vengeance perhaps? Who knows, but take the opportunity to show off some mad characterizations skills.

Don’t forget to vote on what you want me to cover in the bonus blog post. You can vote here!  I’ll pick the top three topics and share some wisdom. If you don’t see a topic listed in the poll, go ahead and vote other and shoot me a message on what you’d like to know about.