PDA

View Full Version : Survival and Paranoia



spartanmachine
7th July 2003, 07:25
How far do you feel you should go for survival/self-defense before it turns into paranoia?
How do you maintain balance to keep your desire for awareness and actions to help defend your life and the lives of those around you from turning into paranoia?
How far should you go and what barometer would you use to tell if you've gone too far?

A. M. Jauregui
7th July 2003, 09:34
How far do you feel you should go for survival/self-defense before it turns into paranoia?

Personally not very far. I have downloaded the FEMA guilds, have a few books on survival skills, have a licensed gun, and know how to defend myself fairly well.

How do you maintain balance to keep your desire for awareness and actions to help defend your life and the lives of those around you from turning into paranoia?

Just have a plan for what to do in different scenarios then put it out of my mind and live life as I normally would.

How far should you go and what barometer would you use to tell if you've gone too far?

When more then a few people comment that a person is hard core, over the top, etcetera.

TenguAteMyPuppy
7th July 2003, 10:44
I'm naturally paranoid, it seems. I usually won't say much of anything to people I meet for the first 6 months to a year I know them(sometimes longer), unless I have good reason. I'll just sit around and listen for "interesting" things to come up in a conversation. Years of habit, I have no plans to break it.

It works out pretty well.

David T Anderson
7th July 2003, 12:12
Paranoia by definition is unreasonable and disfunctional. If you are doing something that doesn't really address any threat that's likely to present itself, but you feel you _must_ do it anyway, that is getting into the borderline.

For example, in the inner-city residential neighbourhood I live in, house break-ins are pretty common [in fact I confronted a guy coming in my bedroom window one day a couple of years ago]. So..what to do? I think it's reasonable to make sure my doors and windows are locked, my basement windows barred, and I have a security screen on my front door and a 'DoorClub' on the seldom-used side door. Given my area, I think these are reasonable and prudent measures. OTOH, I don't keep a guard dog in the house [I'm not crazy about dogs as a pet] and I don't sit up nights with a gun in my hand waiting for burglars.

When I go out in public, I do my best to stay aware of what's going on around me. When I sit down in public, I keep my back toward the safest direction and my face toward the most active area...it's simple to do and as long as you pay a bit of attention nobody is going to take you by surprise. To do more than this would be unreasonable, give the relative peace and safety of the place I live. I don't use 100% of my awareness keeping an eye on my surroundings and ignore what I'm drinking/eating, or the people I'm with. I don't obsessively eyeball everybody that comes by wondering if they have a concealed weapon or mean to attack me...and of course I stay the hell away from public areas that contain obvious dangers.

In short, if your level of caution or 'preparedness' is appropriate to the threats you have reason to expect, given intelligent consideration, you aren't really being paranoid. But if you are armed and ready against threats you can't really justify and can't live a happy and fulfilling life because you are always 'preparing'....something is out of whack and you should be doing some serious thinking about the matter.

Shitoryu Dude
7th July 2003, 14:33
You should always be prepared for the crap to hit the fan, You should be able to answer such basic questions as: "what will I do if I'm driving across the middle of nowhere and my car breaks down and the first people who show up to help me are straight out of the movie Deliverance"

You have gone too far if you are planning for such events as being abducted by ninja assassins, alien anal probes, or being forced to fight in a kumite deathmatch for world conquest.

:beer:

Mike Williams
7th July 2003, 14:46
Originally posted by Shitoryu Dude
You have gone too far if you are planning for such events as being abducted by ninja assassins, alien anal probes, or being forced to fight in a kumite deathmatch for world conquest.

Oh b*ll*cks. All that training for nothing.

Cheers,

Mike