Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 1

when that organization had evolved into a marvelous machine for turning young men into old memories. 120

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 2

What the heck am I doing here? I couldn’t answer the question then, but I can now: I was chasing my father, 168

Answer 2

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 3

My Irish Catholic German mother had so many babies—who could keep track of them all? I pretty much ran wild. 178

Answer 3

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 4

man on a snowmobile is warned not to go up a hill because it will probably produce a fatally large avalanche. 184

Answer 4

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 5

I began to wonder if there wasn’t some mysterious force hidden within us that produces such mad behavior. Most people find it hard to believe that reason doesn’t control our actions. We believe in free will and rational behavior. The difficulty with those assumptions comes when we see rational people doing irrational things. 190

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 6

The farther one goes The less one knows. —Tao Te Ching 207

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 7

but every survival situation is the same in its essence, 260

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 8

The first lesson is to remain calm, not to panic. Because emotions are called “hot cognitions,” 261

Answer 8

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 9

researchers suggest that African American jazz musicians refused to let themselves get hot (get angry) in the face of racism. Instead, they remained outwardly calm and channeled emotion into music as a survival strategy in a hostile environment. 263

Answer 9

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 10

Only 10 to 20 percent of people can stay calm and think in the midst of a survival emergency. They are the ones who can perceive their situation clearly; they can plan and take correct action, all of which are key elements of survival. Confronted with a changing environment, they rapidly adapt. 268

Answer 10

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 11

Shit does just happen sometimes, as the bumper sticker says. There are things you can’t control, so you’d better know how you’re going to react to them. 297

Answer 11

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 12

there are also the things you can control, and you’d better be controlling them all the time. 301

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 13

Face reality. Good survivors aren’t immune to fear. They know what’s happening, and it does “scare the living shit out of” them. It’s all a question of what you do next. 307

Answer 13

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 14

survivors “laugh at threats…playing and laughing go together. Playing keeps the person in contact with what is happening around [him].” 316

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 15

takeoff is optional but landing is mandatory. 337

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 16

Lessons about survival, about what you need to know and what you don’t need to know. 341

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 17

About what you know that you don’t know you know and about what you don’t know that you’d better not think you know. 342

Answer 17

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 18

Plato understood that emotions could trump reason and that to succeed we have to use the reins of reason on the horse of emotion. 343

Answer 18

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 19

The intellect without the emotions is like the jockey without the horse. 345

Answer 19

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 20

Fear puts me in my place. It gives me the humility to see things as they are. 353

Answer 20

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 21

the system we call emotion (from the Latin verb emovere, “to move away”) works powerfully and quickly to motivate behavior. 359

Answer 21

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 22

Emotion is an instinctive response aimed at self-preservation. 368

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 23

The oldest medical and philosophical model, going back to the Greeks, was of a unified organism in which mind was part of and integral to the body. Plato, on the other hand, thought of mind and body as separate, with the soul going on after death. Aristotle brought them back together again. 372

Answer 23

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 24

neuroscientist, Damasio is as qualified as anyone to define the brain, and he calls it an “‘organ’ of information and government.” He put the word “organ” in quotes because it’s not exactly an organ either. 386

Answer 24

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 25

information about the environment, information about the body, and information about the good or bad consequences of interactions between the two. 388

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 26

Doing almost anything generates new links among neurons. 397

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 27

Genes make new proteins in order to store information, and they make new proteins in order to bring that information back as a memory. This process is called “reconsolidation,” 398

Answer 27

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 28

The Synaptic Self, put it, “the brain that does the remembering is not the brain that formed the initial memory. In order for the old memory to make sense in the current brain, the memory has to be updated.” 400

Answer 28

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 29

This is one reason why memory is notoriously faulty. 401

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 30

The jockey is reason and the horse is emotion, a complex of systems bred over eons of evolution and shaped by experience, which exist for your survival. 407

Answer 30

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 31

The jockey can’t win without the horse, and the horse can’t race alone. In the gate, they are two, and it’s dangerous. But when they run, they are one, and it’s positively godly. 409

Answer 31

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 32

That horse can either work for us or against us. It can win the race or explode in the gate. So it is learning when to soothe and gentle it and when to let it run that marks the winning jockey, the true survivor. 415

Answer 32

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 33

If an experienced river runner is pitched into the water, he will turn on his back and float with his toes out of the water, riding on the buoyancy of his life vest. An inexperienced one, like a drowning swimmer, will reach up to wave or try to grab something. Raising his arms causes his feet to sink. 425

Answer 33

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 34

Adrenalin is a trade name for epinephrine, and adrenaline is a synonym for it, but neither is used much in scientific circles. Epinephrine and norepinephrine, which come from the adrenal glands, are in a class of compounds called catecholamines, which have a wide range of effects, including constricting blood vessels and exciting or inhibiting the firing of nerve cells and the contraction of smooth muscle fibers. But it is norepinephrine (not adrenaline or epinephrine) that is largely responsible for the jolt you feel in the heart when startled. 441

Answer 34

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 35

the amygdala as “the centerpiece of the defense system.”) 451

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 36

Fear in the cockpit, as Yankovich put it, is a knife fight in a phone booth. 456

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 37

STRESS RELEASES cortisol into the blood. It invades the hippocampus and interferes with its work. (Long-term stress can kill hippocampal cells.) 482

Answer 37

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 38

most people are incapable of performing any but the simplest tasks under stress. 484

Answer 38

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 39

You see less, hear less, miss more cues from the environment, and make mistakes. Under extreme stress, the visual field actually narrows. 487

Answer 39

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 40

Emotions are survival mechanisms, but they don’t always work for the individual. They work across a large number of trials to keep the species alive. The individual may live or die, but over a few million years, more mammals lived than died by letting emotion take over, and so emotion was selected. 497

Answer 40

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 41

To deal with reality you must first recognize it as such, and as Siebert and others have pointed out, play puts a person in touch with his environment, while laughter makes the feeling of being threatened manageable. 521

Answer 41

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 42

Moods are contagious, and the emotional states involved with smiling, humor, and laughter are among the most contagious of all. Laughter doesn’t take conscious thought. It’s automatic, and one person laughing or smiling induces the same reaction in others. Laughter stimulates the left prefrontal cortex, an area in the brain that helps us to feel good and to be motivated. That stimulation alleviates anxiety and frustration. There is evidence that laughter can send chemical signals to actively inhibit the firing of nerves in the amygdala, thereby dampening fear. Laughter, then, can help to temper negative emotions. 523

Answer 42

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 43

Survival, then, is about being cool. It’s about laughing with an attitude of bold humility in the face of something terrifying. 546

Answer 43

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 44

It seemed almost as if he had two brains and they were having an argument over his body. 592

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 45

Freezing is a classic emotional response of all mammals. A bystander happened to be videotaping the crowd when a bomb went off at the Olympic games in Atlanta in 1996, and the freezing (and crouching) response of the people is a dramatic illustration of a primary emotion. 602

Answer 45

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 46

William Faulkner wrote in Light in August, “Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what that other man or woman is doing.” 616

Answer 46

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 47

a common confusion about the words “emotion” and “feeling.” William James, the father of psychology, was the first to point out that we do not run because we’re afraid of bears, we’re afraid of bears because we run. The emotion comes first—it’s the bodily response (freezing, flight, sexual arousal). The feeling follows (fear, anger, love). 631

Answer 47

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 48

risky behavior can be fun. Fear can be fun. It can make you feel more alive, because it is an integral part of saving your own life. And if the context is one that you perceive as safe, then it’s easy to make the decision to take the risk. Your body can make it for you. 636

Answer 48

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 49

There are only a few simple rules to the game but an estimated 10120 possible moves in any game of chess. 644

Answer 49

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 50

James Gleick pointed out in his book Chaos, there are neither that many elementary particles in the universe nor have there been that many microseconds of time since its creation perhaps 13 billion (1.3 × 109) years ago. Logic doesn’t work well for such nonlinear systems as chess and life. 646

Answer 50

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 51

The most remarkable discovery of modern neuroscience is that the body controls the brain as much as the brain controls the body. 664

Answer 51

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 52

When a decision to act must be made instantly, it is made through a system of emotional bookmarks. The emotional system reacts to circumstances, finds bookmarks that flag similar experiences in your past and your response to them, and allows you to recall the feelings, good or bad, of the outcomes of your actions. 671

Answer 52

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 53

Claparède’s part: his patient could learn without memory or thought. It was as if her body could learn. 697

Answer 53

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 54

her lack of memory had robbed her of the ability to adapt the response for other circumstances. 699

Answer 54

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 55

reason is regarded as the highest function. People are named after it: Homo sapiens (from the Latin sapere, to taste, as in “to taste the world”). 720

Answer 55

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 56

Those who can control that impulse to survive, live. Those who can’t, die. And that’s the simplest way to explain survival, 726

Answer 56

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 57

the training is only as good as the environment. 786

Answer 57

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 58

Everyone carries around a necessary measure of his environment and of the self. 795

Answer 58

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 59

Joseph LeDoux put it, “People don’t come preassembled, but are glued together by life.” 806

Answer 59

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 60

Like the immune system, the emotional system evolves continuously, taking experiences and situations and attaching emotional value to them in subtle gradations of risk and reward. 807

Answer 60

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 61

(Scientists estimate that the mature brain has 100 billion neurons and trillions of connections.) 809

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 62

When two neurons fire together, they become wired together. 818

Answer 62

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 63

When a strong and weak neuron—call them Al and Betty—stimulate a third neuron—call it Charlie—at the same time, the weak one, Betty, gains the ability to stimulate Charlie to fire. That’s why the ringing of a bell could cause Pavlov’s dog to salivate even when there was no food present. 819

Answer 63

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 64

Logic simply takes too long, often impossibly long, and in a child logic is not well developed enough at any rate. Instead, he rapidly and unconsciously pages through his atlas of emotional bookmarks 829

Answer 64

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 65

His training and experience taught him that it was better to die for his country than to fail. 847

Answer 65

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 66

Nothing in our learning tells us that a mountain is going to come apart before our eyes. It makes no sense. It hasn’t happened, therefore it cannot happen. 860

Answer 66

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 67

We think we believe what we know, but we only truly believe what we feel. 862

Answer 67

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 68

chocolate Lab, Lucy. Lucy sometimes reminds me of the amygdala: When anyone comes to the door, she barks before I even hear it. 866

Answer 68

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 69

the same sensory information reaches the amygdala by a faster pathway. The amygdala screens that information for signs of danger. Like Lucy, the amygdala isn’t very bright, but if it detects a hazard, or anything remotely resembling one, before you’re even conscious of the stimulus, 870

Answer 69

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 70

the amygdala is wrong a lot of the time: There is no danger. But in the long course of evolution, it has been a successful strategy. 875

Answer 70

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 71

information from the senses takes a neural route that splits, one part reaching the amygdala first, the other arriving at the neocortex milliseconds later. Rational (or conscious) thought always lags behind the emotional reaction. 876

Answer 71

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 72

some ability may remain for the neocortex to do the following: First, to recognize that there is an emotional response underway. Second, to read reality and perceive circumstances correctly. Third, to override or modulate the automatic reaction if it is an inappropriate one; and fourth, to select a correct course of action. 884

Answer 72

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 73

many people (estimates run as high as 90 percent), when put under stress, are unable to think clearly or solve simple problems. They get rattled. They panic. They freeze. 892

Answer 73

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 74

The two neurological systems of explicit and implicit learning are quite separate. Implicit memories are unconscious. Implicit learning is like a natural smile: It comes by way of a different neural pathway from the one that carries explicit memory. 900

Answer 74

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 75

Malcolm Gladwell, writing in the New Yorker, put it succinctly: “Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little.” 906

Answer 75

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 76

THE ILLINOIS RIVER in southwestern Oregon has thirty-five miles of class III to IV rapids with a class V, moss-covered gorge in the middle. That section is known as the Green Wall. 922

Answer 76

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 77

The environment had changed, and he adapted. Using his reason to manage emotion and emotion to inform reason, he survived. 933

Answer 77

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 78

a survivor expects the world to keep changing and keeps his senses always tuned to: What’s up? The survivor is continuously adapting. 940

Answer 78

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 79

John F. Kennedy once remarked, “There’s always some son of a bitch who doesn’t get the word.” 944

Answer 79

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 80

They were still operating on a model of the old environment. The results were fatal: 948

Answer 80

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 81

That is the difficulty with logic: It’s step-by-step, linear. The world is not. 957

Answer 81

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 82

the brain uses for handling complicated problems is to create mental models, stripped-down schematics of the world. A mental model may tell you the rules by which an environment behaves or the color and shape of a familiar object. 960

Answer 82

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 83

The fact that you have a mental model of the red paperback copy of Moby-Dick allows you to screen out nearly everything you see until, at last, a red book blossoms in your field of vision. But if you’re wrong and it’s a blue hardback edition of Moby-Dick, chances are that you won’t find it even if the title comes into view. 965

Answer 83

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 84

It’s the reason that many card tricks and magic acts work: You see what you expect to see. You see what makes sense, and what makes sense is what matches the mental model. 969

Answer 84

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 85

You believe the magician does the trick, but in fact you do it yourself. 979

Answer 85

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 86

Unless something is successfully transferred from working memory into long-term memory, it is lost. 995

Answer 86

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 87

The limited nature of working memory (attention) and the executive function, along with the shorthand work of mental models, can cause surprising lapses in the way we process the world and make conscious or unconscious decisions. 999

Answer 87

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 88

Normal Accidents, he wrote that “We construct an expected world because we can’t handle the complexity of the present one, and then process the information that fits the expected world, and find reasons to exclude the information that might contradict it. Unexpected or unlikely interactions are ignored when we make our construction.” 1014

Answer 88

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 89

Mental models can be surprisingly strong and the abilities of working memory surprisingly fragile. 1020

Answer 89

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 90

Stress doesn’t take long to confuse you. 1052

Answer 90

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 91

MENTAL MODELS, emotional bookmarks, and the ability to keep the right things in working memory played a powerful role in determining who lived and who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. 1059

Answer 91

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 92

“Thirty-five percent of the observers failed to notice the woman with the umbrella, 1081

Answer 92

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 93

It was an attitude open to an unfamiliar world, accepting of whatever was there. There was no model and there were no expectations. 1084

Answer 93

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 94

The order “Tell me what you see” produces curiosity. The order “Count the passes” produces a closed system, a narrowing of attention directed at a particular task, which fills up working memory. 1084

Answer 94

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 95

Magic confirms the idea that you see what you expect to see, and that under the right circumstances, working memory can’t be distracted from its task. 1088

Answer 95

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 96

Psychologists who study survivors of shipwrecks, plane crashes, natural disasters, and prison camps conclude that the most successful are open to the changing nature of their environment. They are curious to know what’s up. 1090

Answer 96

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 97

(56 percent) didn’t notice the gorilla. 1093

Answer 97

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 98

Everyone says that the mind plays tricks, but deep down, most people don’t believe it. 1098

Answer 98

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 99

Some people update their models better than others. They’re called survivors. 1114

Answer 99

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 100

Sometimes an idea can drive action as powerfully as an emotion. 1129

Answer 100

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 101

Complexity, M. Mitchell Waldrop points out that “All complex adaptive systems anticipate the future…. Every living creature has an implicit prediction encoded in its genes…every complex adaptive system is constantly making predictions based on its various internal models of the world…. 1133

Answer 101

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 102

To the brain, the future is as real as the past. The difficulty begins when reality doesn’t match the plan. 1137

Answer 102

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 103

You bookmark the future in order to get there. It’s a magic trick: You can slide through time to a world that does not yet exist. 1140

Answer 103

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 104

we all make powerful models of the future. The world we imagine seems as real as the ones we’ve experienced. We suffuse the model with the emotional values of past realities. 1150

Answer 104

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 105

the longer it takes to dislodge the imagined world in favor of the real one, the greater the risk. 1153

Answer 105

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 106

In nature, adaptation is important; the plan is not. It’s a Zen thing. We must plan. But we must be able to let go of the plan, too. 1154

Answer 106

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 107

People who survive cancer in the face of such a diagnosis are notorious. The medical staff observes that they are “bad patients,” unruly, troublesome. They don’t follow directions. They question everything. They’re annoying. They’re survivors. 1158

Answer 107

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 108

Tao Te Ching says: The rigid person is a disciple of death; The soft, supple, and delicate are lovers of life. 1159

Answer 108

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 109

in a classical drama, the tension comes from the fact that the hero is farthest from his goal when he triumphs. 1170

Answer 109

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 110

They saw what they wanted to see and disregarded what they knew: 1184

Answer 110

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 111

people tend to take any information as confirmation of their mental models. 1187

Answer 111

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 112

suddenly they all felt their hair stand up. Rob knew about St. Elmo’s fire, as sailors call it. 1201

Answer 112

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 113

(lightning can travel as fast as 54 yards per microsecond). 1210

Answer 113

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 114

When the World Trade Center collapsed, a man tried to swim from New Jersey to Manhattan to help. He was picked up by a ferryboat captain. 1215

Answer 114

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 115

they were all wearing what the YOSAR (Yosemite search and rescue) crew call “death cloth”—cotton. 1221

Answer 115

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 116

we’re always Homo but sometimes not so sapiens. People are emotional creatures, which is to say, physical creatures. 1232

Answer 116

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 117

Joseph LeDoux concluded that, “people normally do all sorts of things for reasons that they are not consciously aware of…and that one of the main jobs of consciousness is to keep our life tied together into a coherent story, a self-concept.” In other words, everyone is the hero in his own movie. 1233

Answer 117

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 118

Once an emotional reaction is underway, there can be an overwhelming impulse to act. 1238

Answer 118

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 119

Nature doesn’t adjust to our level of skill. 1242

Answer 119

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 120

Zen teaches openness. Survival instructors refer to that quality of openness as “humility.” 1245

Answer 120

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 121

It’s nothing personal, then, when the brain plays tricks. Nothing personal, either, when you die, as Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, said. 1250

Answer 121

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 122

Mike’s Sky Rancho, a famous Baja motorcycle hangout high in the mountains, with precious little electricity, no phone at all, and an ancient swimming pool that looked like a poisoned waterhole. 1270

Answer 122

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 123

if we don’t look out for each other, we’re no better than coyotes. 1277

Answer 123

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 124

The word “experienced” often refers to someone who’s gotten away with doing the wrong thing more frequently than you have. 1351

Answer 124

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 125

Charles Perrow who coined the term “system accidents” in the 1980s, 1446

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 126

unusual thesis: That in certain kinds of systems, large accidents, though rare, are both inevitable and normal. The accidents are a characteristic of the system itself, he says. 1459

Answer 126

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 127

efforts to make those systems safer, especially by technological means, made the systems more complex and therefore more prone to accidents. 1460

Answer 127

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 128

most of the time, nothing serious happens, which makes it more difficult for the operators of the system (climbers, in this case). They begin to believe that the orderly behavior they see is the only possible state of the system. Then, at the critical boundaries in time and space, the components and forces interact in unexpected ways, with catastrophic results. 1465

Answer 128

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 129

When a system is tightly coupled, the effects spread. In a loosely coupled system, effects do not spread to other parts of the system. 1483

Answer 129

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 130

I Ching says. The cause is in the nature of the system. It’s self-organizing. 1487

Answer 130

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 131

Classical physics ignored all that and used idealized systems to explain the world. But that left most of the real world unexplained. 1492

Answer 131

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 132

Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist at MIT, was modeling weather systems on a computer in the early 1960s when he accidentally discovered that a tiny change in the initial state (1 part in 1,000) was enough to produce totally different weather patterns. That became known as the Butterfly Effect, “the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York,” as Gleick wrote in Chaos. 1499

Answer 132

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 133

Chaos theory views such systems, which seem chaotic, as actually arising out of a simple, orderly set of mathematical functions. 1508

Answer 133

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 134

second law of thermodynamics, which says that everything is heading toward more disorder? 1515

Answer 134

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 135

Like chaos theory, complexity theory postulated “upheaval and change and enormous consequences flowing from trivial-seeming events—and yet with a deep law hidden beneath.” 1518

Answer 135

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 136

Small collapses are common on the sand pile. Large-scale ones are rare. But collapses of all sizes do happen with an inevitability that can be described mathematically as inversely proportional to some power of the size (with earthquakes it’s the 3/2 power, which curiously is the same power as the one used to determine the time that planets take to go around the sun: the square root of the cube of the size of the orbit). 1542

Answer 136

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 137

Large accidents, while rare, are normal. Efforts to prevent them always fail. 1547

Answer 137

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 138

NASA will investigate and explain all the details of how it happened, but knowing those details will not prevent the next accident. Indeed, the safety precautions they take may make it more likely. 1550

Answer 138

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 139

doing bold things isn’t about engineering risk to zero. Shit happens, and if we just want to restrict ourselves to things where shit can’t happen…we’re not going to do anything very interesting.” 1558

Answer 139

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 140

The power law applies: The bigger the accident, the less likely it is. 1566

Answer 140

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 141

I saw how easy it was to cross that invisible dividing line between what has been adapted for us and what demands that we adapt to it. 1587

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Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 142

Our instructor had drummed a phrase into our heads: When in doubt, don’t.” 1612

Answer 142

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 143

a theory called “risk homeostasis.” The theory says that people accept a given level of risk. 1613

Answer 143

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 144

If you perceive conditions as less risky, you’ll take more risk. If conditions seem more risky, you’ll take less risk. 1614

Answer 144

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 145

When antilock brakes were introduced, authorities expected the accident rate to go down, but it went up. People perceived that driving was safer with antilock brakes, so they drove more aggressively. 1616

Answer 145

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 146

Experience is nothing more than the engine that drives adaptation, 1625

Answer 146

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 147

You need to know if your particular experience has produced the sort of adaptation that will contribute to survival in the particular environment you choose. And when the environment changes, you have to be aware that your own experience might be inappropriate. 1626

Answer 147

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 148

There are three main difficulties with descent: attitude; an emotion involving goal seeking; 1638

Answer 148

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 149

humor. The deescalating emotional response. 1641

Answer 149

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 150

The trap lay in the fact that they were only halfway to their real goal. They were celebrating when they had the worst part of the climb ahead of them. 1641

Answer 150

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 151

it is part of the natural cycle of human emotion to let down your guard once you feel you’ve reached a goal. 1642

Answer 151

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 152

Their focus had been sharp in the goal-seeking phase. Now it grew blurry. 1648

Answer 152

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 153

Stress can trump all the other effects. 1652

Answer 153

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 154

Last, there is the fact that descending is technically more difficult than ascending. 1654

Answer 154

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 155

Descent, like the act of walking, is a controlled fall. 1656

Answer 155

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 156

Scott Sagan puts it in The Limits of Safety, “things that have never happened before happen all the time.” Unfortunately, as Perrow comments, “It is normal for us to die, but we only do it once.” Which is too bad, for it might be the ultimate learning experience. 1658

Answer 156

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 157

Al Siebert, a psychologist, writes in The Survivor Personality that the survivor (a category including people who avoid accidents) “does not impose pre-existing patterns on new information, but rather allows new information to reshape [his mental models]. The person who has the best chance of handling a situation well is usually the one with the best…mental pictures or images of what is occurring outside of the body.” 1688

Answer 157

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 158

Everyone, to one degree or another, sees not the real world but the ever-changing state of the self in an ever-changing invention of the world. 1691

Answer 158

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 159

Dan Meyer, director of the North Carolina chapter of Outward Bound, first published the Accident Matrix in 1979 in the Journal of Experiential Education. Jed Williamson refined it. Contributing causes of accidents are arranged in the Matrix under three general categories: Conditions, Acts, and Judgments, which combine in a dynamic and synergistic sequence to generate accidents. 1701

Answer 159

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 160

“Conditions” refers to any potential forces that can hurt you, such as those resulting from a slip on a steep icy slope. The main “Act” that set the sequence in motion was to pull the protection and move while roped together. The “Judgment” was the belief that the climbers could self-arrest, which in the Matrix might be phrased as “overconfidence” or “exceeding their abilities.” In other accidents, “Conditions” might be falling rocks, swift and/or cold water, or weather. 1705

Answer 160

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 161

Peter Leschak, the firefighter, put it, “Sounds like a no-brainer, but in the heat of battle, simple concepts can wander off into the smoke and be forgotten.” 1710

Answer 161

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 162

meta-knowledge: the ability to assess the quality of our own knowledge. It’s easy to assume that perception and reason faithfully render reality. But as Plato suggested and modern neuroscience has proved, we live in a sort of dreamworld, which only imperfectly matches reality. 1716

Answer 162

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 163

Experienced climbers may be reluctant to challenge others with experience, and the same is true in any other pursuit. Going into a risky operation, doctors won’t challenge doctors. 1739

Answer 163

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 164

The design of the human condition makes it easy for us to conceal the obvious from ourselves, especially under strain and pressure. 1746

Answer 164

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 165

trying to land the model instead of the plane. 1749

Answer 165

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 166

Be here now. It’s a good survival rule. It means to pay attention and keep an up-to-date mental model. 1764

Answer 166

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 167

The second rule was: Everything takes eight times as long as it’s supposed to. That was the friction rule, which wilderness travelers will do well to heed. 1765

Answer 167

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 168

There is a tendency to make a plan and then to worship the plan, 1766

Answer 168

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 169

the harder we try, the more complex our plan for reducing friction, the worse things get. 1771

Answer 169

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 170

It all looks so…inviting. And I began thinking how easy it is to die. 1813

Answer 170

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 171

Tao Te Ching puts it: Heaven and earth are inhumane; they view the myriad creatures as straw dogs. 1818

Answer 171

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 172

many drowning victims he’d studied, 75 percent were visitors and 90 percent were white males in their forties or fifties. 1822

Answer 172

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 173

One of the things that kills us in the wilderness, in nature, is that we just don’t understand the forces we engage. We don’t understand the energy because we no longer have to live with it. 1836

Answer 173

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 174

The environment we’re used to is designed to sustain us. 1839

Answer 174

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 175

Epictetus wrote, “Be silent; for there is great danger that you will immediately vomit up what you have not digested.” 1846

Answer 175

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 176

“come to grief because they have not paid attention to facts about the world that would ultimately defeat their plans…. 1852

Answer 176

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 177

we miscalculate the scale of the places we elect to explore. 1865

Answer 177

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 178

we head off on “a mad march…without sufficient information about the terrain.” But information is one thing. Believing it is another. 1866

Answer 178

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 179

For most people it’s unthinkable to imagine what appears to be a solid mountain coming apart. But all mountains are in a state of continuous collapse. 1891

Answer 179

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 180

The exiguous nature of everyday experience creates habits of mind that shape perceptions, so you don’t see the mountain crumbling. Human life is so brief in comparison to the mountain’s. You live in a compressed time frame that does not match many phenomena you encounter in nature. 1895

Answer 180

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 181

The best way to become a believer, short of dying, is to sit very quietly and contemplate those things. 1903

Answer 181

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 182

The forces we engage are relentless. Gravity is on duty all the time. 1938

Answer 182

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 183

the rule of thumb is that you can survive three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. 1942

Answer 183

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 184

Ski resorts, for example, create the illusion of safety in the midst of wilderness. People approach them as if they were amusement parks, with little idea of where they are and what forces they may encounter. 1945

Answer 184

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 185

KNOWLEDGE OF the sort you need does not begin with information, it begins with experience and perception. But there is a dark and twisty road from experience and perception to correct action. 1985

Answer 185

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 186

“If you’re not afraid, then you don’t appreciate the situation.” 2011

Answer 186

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 187

I do more…prevention than actual life-saving.” 2037

Answer 187

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 188

early learning may be one of the most reliable kinds, forming deep knowledge and cool cognitions in high-energy states. It is learning that lasts a lifetime. 2044

Answer 188

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 189

Does anything happen to me? I take what comes… —Marcus Aurelius 2055

Answer 189

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 190

Mismatching the abilities of people in the outdoors is a sure way to get into trouble. People routinely fail to realize that they have to travel at the speed of the slowest member, not the fastest. 2073

Answer 190

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 191

PSYCHOLOGISTS WHO study the behavior of people who get lost report that very few ever backtrack. (The eyes look forward into real or imagined worlds.) 2103

Answer 191

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 192

Edward Cornell, one of the scientists who study the behavior of people who become lost, is a professor of psychology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. “Being lost is a universal human condition,” he told me. “But there is a very fuzzy area between being lost and not lost.” 2110

Answer 192

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 193

Place cells and other cells involved in navigation are constantly being reprogrammed. It’s called “remapping.” 2143

Answer 193

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 194

Blind people often get around just fine because they have excellent mental maps. 2149

Answer 194

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 195

Rats who have had the lateral nucleus of the amygdala destroyed lose their drive to get to a particular place. 2153

Answer 195

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 196

The fact of not having a mental map, of trying to create one in an environment where the sensory input made no sense, is interpreted as an emergency and triggers a physical (i.e., emotional) response. 2167

Answer 196

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 197

Admitting that you are lost is difficult because having no mental map, being no place, is like having no self: It’s impossible to conceive, because one of the main jobs of the organism is to adjust itself to place. 2182

Answer 197

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 198

anytime you find yourself thinking it’s easier to go around a mountain than over one, you know there’s trouble upstairs. 2188

Answer 198

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 199

Generally, they would be wiser and safer to stay put and get as comfortable and warm as possible, but many feel compelled to push on, urged by subconscious feelings.” 2209

Answer 199

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 200

What had begun as a small error in navigation had progressed, step by innocent step, to a grim struggle for survival. 2220

Answer 200

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 201

SYROTUCK ANALYZED 229 search and rescue cases (11 percent of them fatal) and concluded that almost three quarters of those who died perished within the first forty-eight hours of becoming lost. Those who die can do so surprisingly quickly, and hypothermia is usually the official cause. 2221

Answer 201

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 202

Until that day in Glacier, I would not have believed how easily I could get lost or how quickly I could lose my ability to reason. 2241

Answer 202

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 203

“If you ask hikers on a trail to point out where they are on a map at any given moment,” Hill said, “they are usually wrong.” In daily life, people operate on the necessary illusion that they know where they are. Most of the time, they don’t. 2244

Answer 203

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 204

a red light should go off. You’re trying to make reality conform to your expectations rather than seeing what’s there. In the sport of orienteering, they call that ‘bending the map.’” 2252

Answer 204

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 205

(Psychologists have observed that one of the most basic human needs, beginning at birth, is to be gazed upon by another. Mothers throughout the world have been observed spending long periods staring into the eyes of their babies with a characteristic tilt of the head. To be seen is to be real, and without another to gaze upon us, we are nothing. Part of the terror of being lost stems from the idea of never being seen again.) 2262

Answer 205

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 206

“woods shock,” 2276

Answer 206

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 207

It refers to a state of confusion that can beset people in the wilderness. 2277

Answer 207

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 208

“‘Woods shock’ is a term for the fear associated with complete loss of spatial orientation,” 2278

Answer 208

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 209

woods shock can now be seen as an emotional survival response associated with the failure of the mental map to match the environment. Thrashing does not save a drowning person either, but it’s just as natural. Those who can float quietly have a better chance. 2281

Answer 209

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 210

Being lost, then, is not a location; it is a transformation. It is a failure of the mind. It can happen in the woods or it can happen in life. 2288

Answer 210

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 211

The research suggests five general stages in the process a person goes through when lost. In the first, you deny that you’re disoriented and press on with growing urgency, attempting to make your mental map fit what you see. In the next stage, as you realize that you’re genuinely lost, the urgency blossoms into a full-scale survival emergency. Clear thought becomes impossible and action becomes frantic, unproductive, even dangerous. In the third stage (usually following injury or exhaustion), you expend the chemicals of emotion and form a strategy for finding some place that matches the mental map. (It is a misguided strategy, for there is no such place now: You are lost.) In the fourth stage, you deteriorate both rationally and emotionally, as the strategy fails to resolve the conflict. In the final stage, as you run out of options and energy, you must become resigned to your plight. Like it or not, you must make a new mental map of where you are. You must become Robinson Crusoe or you will die. To survive, you must find yourself. Then it won’t matter where you are. 2291

Answer 211

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 212

The stages of getting lost resemble the five stages of dying described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the psychologist who wrote On Death and Dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. 2310

Answer 212

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 213

There are great survivors and helpless victims on the curve of human ability. Most of us are neither. Most of us fall somewhere in between and may perform poorly at first, then find the inner resources to return to correct action and clear thought. 2326

Answer 213

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 214

tell me about flying, “A good landing is any landing that you can walk away from.” 2328

Answer 214

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 215

That final stage in the process of being lost can prove to be either a beginning or an end. Some give up and die. Others stop denying and begin surviving. 2334

Answer 215

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 216

One of the toughest steps a survivor has to take is to discard the hope of rescue, just as he discards the old world he left behind and accepts the new one. 2339

Answer 216

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 217

that’s what my father did in the Nazi prison camp: He made it his world. Dougal Robertson, who was cast away at sea for thirty-eight days, advised thinking of it this way: “Rescue will come as a welcome interruption of…the survival voyage.” 2341

Answer 217

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 218

do not try to bend the map. They remap the world they’re in. 2361

Answer 218

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 219

the Zen concept of the beginner’s mind, the mind that remains open and ready despite years of training. “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities,” said Zen master Shunryu Suzuki. “In the expert’s mind there are few.” 2372

Answer 219

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 220

She didn’t spend time bemoaning her fate. She looked to herself, took responsibility, made a plan. 2389

Answer 220

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 221

if she went downhill, she’d find water. He’d said that rivers usually led to civilization. 2392

Answer 221

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 222

But expecting someone else to take responsibility for your well-being can be fatal. 2394

Answer 222

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 223

Louis Pasteur said, “Luck favors the prepared mind.” 2403

Answer 223

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 224

They were rule followers, and it killed them. 2410

Answer 224

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 225

Survivors aren’t fearless. They use fear: they turn it into anger and focus. 2420

Answer 225

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 226

Like so many retired pilots, my father wore soft shoes, talked softly, and walked slowly. 2454

Answer 226

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 227

Apathy is a typical reaction to any sort of disaster, 2473

Answer 227

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 228

Once fatigue sets in, though, it is almost impossible to recover from it under survival conditions. It is not just a matter of being tired. It’s more like a spiritual collapse, and recovery requires more than food and rest. 2479

Answer 228

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 229

In survival situations, people greatly underestimate the need for rest. 2488

Answer 229

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 230

Faith is a very important thing in your will to survive.” As Peter Leschak put it, “Whether a deity is actually listening or not, there is value in formally announcing your needs, desires, worries, sins, and goals in a focused, prayerful attitude. Only when you are aware can you take action.” 2498

Answer 230

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 231

(Chance is nothing more than opportunity, and it is all around at every turn; the trick lies in recognizing it.) 2502

Answer 231

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 232

Helping someone else is the best way to ensure your own survival. It takes you out of yourself. It helps you to rise above your fears. Now you’re a rescuer, not a victim. 2507

Answer 232

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 233

And seeing how your leadership and skill buoy others up gives you more focus and energy to persevere. The cycle reinforces itself: You buoy them up, and their response buoys you up. Many people who survive alone report that they were doing it for someone else (a wife, boyfriend, mother, son) back home. 2508

Answer 233

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 234

They have a well-defined purpose. Purpose is a big part of survival, but it must be accompanied by work. Grace without good works is not salvation. 2523

Answer 234

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 235

Plan the flight and fly the plan. But don’t fall in love with the plan. Be open to a changing world and let go of the plan when necessary so that you can make a new plan. Then, as the world and the plan both go through their book of changes, you will always be ready to do the next right thing. 2525

Answer 235

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 236

People are animals with animal instincts, but they lack many of the other survival mechanisms animals possess, 2527

Answer 236

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 237

Culture creates a collective survival mechanism for the species. People survive better in numbers. They survive because they use cognition to organize, say, for a hunt, and to make things, even as cognition inhibits their animalness, including strength. 2529

Answer 237

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 238

The Tao Te Ching is broken into two parts, “Integrity,” and “The Way,” which can be thought of as the two halves of surviving anything. 2536

Answer 238

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 239

An imbalance of the brain’s functions leads us into trouble, and a triumph of balance gets us out. 2538

Answer 239

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 240

You have to learn to take a bunch of junk and accept it with a sense of humor.” 2546

Answer 240

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 241

Byron Kerns’s Mountain Shepherd Survival School is of the modern, technical sort. Mark Morey’s Vermont Wilderness Survival School in Brattleboro, Vermont, is based on ancient native skills. 2563

Answer 241

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 242

The man had skills, equipment, and experience. It was his attitude that killed him, his inability to balance emotion and reason. 2597

Answer 242

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 243

I could not change the world; I could only change myself. To see and know that world, then, was the key to surviving in it. I had to accept the world in which I found myself. I had to calm down and begin living. 2613

Answer 243

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 244

“Don’t get comfortable,” he advised. “Get confident.” 2622

Answer 244

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 245

Like making art, making fire is a deeply human act. Through it, we know our world in a way that no animal ever will. 2636

Answer 245

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 246

In Australia the Aborigines have a “labyrinth of invisible pathways,” 2655

Answer 246

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 247

It was aboriginal neuroscience, using implicit, not explicit, memory circuits to embed the map in the unconscious mind. 2666

Answer 247

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 248

Peter Leschak speaks of “Standard Fire Order #10: Stay alert, keep calm, think clearly, act decisively.” According to this directive, the best way to meet an emergency is with sharp senses (to gather information), a clear mind (to analyze the information), and bold action; add to these humor (to handle strong emotions). Steven Callahan was able to do all of those things. 2695

Answer 248

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 249

Survival starts before the accident. 2705

Answer 249

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 250

certain people, when afraid, experience “activation of the amygdala [which] will lead working memory to receive a greater number of inputs, and inputs of a greater variety, than in the presence of emotionally neutral stimuli.” 2713

Answer 250

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 251

Turning fear into focus is the first act of a survivor. 2722

Answer 251

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 252

in the heat of a crisis, the only thought you can allow yourself concerns your next correct action. 2725

Answer 252

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 253

At least 75 percent of people caught in a catastrophe either freeze or simply wander in a daze, according to some psychologists. 2727

Answer 253

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 254

The next step was to take bold action while exercising great caution, which is but one of the many delicate balancing acts necessary for survival. 2733

Answer 254

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 255

He had just saved his life by risking it, which is the essential task of every organism. No risk, no reward. No risk, no life. 2735

Answer 255

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 256

A sense of humor “is not a luxury,” Leach writes, “it is a vital organ for survival.” 2746

Answer 256

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 257

The Tao Te Ching says: He who is brave in daring will be killed, He who is brave in not daring will survive. 2759

Answer 257

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 258

To take delight in small achievements, to celebrate early victories, is another hallmark of the survivor. 2766

Answer 258

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 259

completely converted himself from victim to survivor. 2768

Answer 259

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 260

Nature loves to strip the unwary of their gear. 2818

Answer 260

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 261

Struggling to achieve that essential state of grace and poise, she began praying to keep herself focused. Survival psychologists have long observed that successful survivors pray, even when they don’t believe in a god. 2843

Answer 261

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 262

He was doing the opposite of going inside himself, where survival begins. 2851

Answer 262

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 263

he expects all advantage and all harm from himself.” He doesn’t blame others, nor turn to them. He takes responsibility for himself. Epictetus, one of the great Stoic thinkers, 2854

Answer 263

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 264

Kübler-Ross’s stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. 2858

Answer 264

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 265

Some people subconsciously believe that “to prepare for disaster is to encourage it. ‘Don’t even think about it’—for fear that it may come to pass.” 2861

Answer 265

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 266

The world won’t adapt to me. I must adapt to it. 2870

Answer 266

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 267

To experience humility is the true survivor’s correct response to catastrophe. 2870

Answer 267

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 268

She was not going to give up, and that marked her, at last, as a survivor. 2914

Answer 268

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 269

a commitment to someone outside themselves. 2919

Answer 269

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 270

Stockdale wrote, “In difficult situations, the leader with the heart, not the soft heart, not the bleeding heart, but the Old Testament heart, the hard heart, comes into his own.” Survival means accepting reality, and accepting reality takes a hard heart. But it is a strange kind of coldness, for it has empathy at its center. 2930

Answer 270

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 271

Privacy is life, but so is community. 2942

Answer 271

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 272

“It is not uncommon for castaways who have been many days at sea and suffered both physically and emotionally to lapse into what has been called ‘a sort of collective confabulation,’ in which the survivors exist in a shared fantasy world. 2964

Answer 272

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 273

A crucial moment for all survivors comes when they become convinced that they will survive. 2990

Answer 273

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 274

In the stages of dying, the last step is acceptance. In survival, it is total commitment. 2997

Answer 274

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 275

Dostoevsky wrote in Memoirs from the House of the Dead, “Man is a creature who can get used to anything, 3019

Answer 275

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 276

Survival is a simple test. There’s only one right answer, but cheating is allowed. 3020

Answer 276

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 277

Leadership, order, and routine are all important elements of survival. 3030

Answer 277

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 278

John Leach uses the term “active-passiveness,” meaning “the ability to accept the situation one is in but without giving in to it….” 3036

Answer 278

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 279

Survival depends on utility, but it also depends on joy, for joy is the organism telling itself that it is all right. 3044

Answer 279

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 280

Nearly all survivors report hearing what they call “the voice.” It tells them what to do. It is the speaking, rational side of the brain, the one that processes language, the wellspring of reason. 3052

Answer 280

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Question 281

Hunger is one of the most powerful of all emotions. The survival experts call it “food stress.” Although the body can go perhaps three weeks without food, the emotional drive is immense and becomes an obsession, a drive as strong as any fight or flight response. It can’t be ignored. 3070

Answer 281

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales