Associated Factors in Survival

Abstract

Although the emphasis in this book is on survival psychology it is impossible to disentangle completely a person’s behaviour from their physiology. The physical traumas, privations and deficiencies which can undermine the body’s strength and efficiency all have psychological consequences. In everyday life fatigue, hunger, thirst, loss of sleep and so on will each affect a person’s behaviour. Ordinarily these incidents are infrequent and mild but in the survival context they are commonplace. Their effects are more extreme and their consequences for behaviour more critical. These factors play too important a role in the psychology of survival to be ignored so the more common ones will be discussed below.

You didn’t have facilities to take a bath, sometimes you had your clothing on for three or four weeks at a time, and in the colder weather you never took your shoes off … Sleeping on the ground constantly, rain or shine … sometimes in the middle of the night when shells were coming in and you were cold and wet you shivered so badly you never thought you would stop … You were very, very tired when you were moving up in the middle of the night to — you never knew where you were … You were hungry because you didn’t have hot food. A lot of times we didn’t even have a pack, they were too cumbersome, so we just stuck things in our pockets. — Ed Lackman, US machine-gunner WW II.