The Ability to Adapt Is What Survival Is All About

It is widely believed that extinction (for the sake of this article let’s call it the inability to survive) is often caused by a change in environmental conditions.

When conditions change, often times quickly and dramatically some species, like humans, possess adaptations that allow them to survive and reproduce. Others do not, however, have the ability to adapt or the ability to adapt quickly enough to survive.

Humans evolved and the dinosaurs, for example, failed to millions of years before we even existed, and thus, no longer roam the earth as they did over 65 million years ago. Dinosaurs could not control their environment. They could not build shelters or fashions tools or weapons to meet the new challenges of the day. Humans could and can, and if we, as a species had failed to adapt tens of thousands of years ago you would not be reading this article. 

The ice age came and humans donned furs of animals, and built fires and huddled in caves or other shelters for protection from the cold. Imagine if we could not figure out how to make clothes or shelters or knew about fire, or even realized the need for clothes to cover our bodies, which lacked fur and fat layers necessarily to protect blood and organs from the cold. Our bodies cannot adapt nearly fast enough to environmental changes, but as humans with bigger brains than other mammals, we adapt using our thinking process, and then we make change to our environment to so some extent so we can survive.

Failure to use your brain or failure to recognize you need to change may lead to the inability to survive, extinction of you and yours, in other words.

If you cannot adapt to the changes in your environment then you may not survive or will find it much harder to survive. A change in your environment can be as simple as a road closure, which forces you to adapt. You have to find an acceptable alternative for getting to work or to get to wherever you are going. You do not sit in your vehicle staring at the road you cannot use, no, you immediately process the problem and come up with solutions to counter the problem, and in other words, you solve the dilemma.

You have to be able to look hours, days, weeks, months, and in some cases, years ahead so you can plan and adapt quickly or at a slower pace, as the case may be, as things change.

We have talked about the new administration in previous articles and what it may mean for Preppers and others. Will there be new laws that impact your life or will executive orders be rescinded that have affected you up to this point? You have to pay attention, so you can plan, so you can make changes.

Get your news from reliable sources, which can be taxing because of social media. If you are getting your news and information from  posts from friends and strangers alike on Facebook, for example, or other social media websites then you may not be getting the full picture or in some cases outright false information. Learn how to research and verify information, because it could save your life one day. If you are convinced that Elvis Presley’s and his alien lovers’ love child is living on a remote island writing songs then you may want to change your source of news.

The Internet connects us to people around the globe, while at the same time, it exposes us to people’s opinions from around the world, and opinions are just that, opinions and not facts.

The presidential election has proven that you cannot always believe what you see and hear online, or on TV for that matter, and if you take everything, you hear from friends and others online at face value, you may be putting your survival in jeopardy.

Once the Internet goes dark, you will have to rely on word of mouth for your information. Take the time to evaluate any source, evaluate what is being said, and use your mind. If it seems outlandish, then do not act upon it until you can validate the information from another source. Acting out of haste can be dangerous.

Adapt your preps to the seasons and to the current threat environment. If you have never thought about evacuating from your community, you may have to plan for it, for example, if the threat of a nuclear, biology or chemical attack becomes more of a realist threat. You cannot survive regardless of your preparations if one of these types of attacks were to happen in your community. You would have to evacuate, or bug-out if you want to use that term.

If a terrorist organization gets their hands on a tactical nuclear device, or has stolen containers of a nerve agent or vials of a biological agent then the threat has increased, and so then, you have to adapt to the possible change in your environment.

We have the ability to look ahead, so we do not have to adapt on the fly as it were. Use your reasoning skills to predict possibilities, they may not come to fruition, but it is better to be prepared than to be caught unawares and then have to adapt in the midst of a crisis.

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Source: prepforshtf.com