I know that training is a more obscure topic, that is more difficult to talk about than lists of items to buy, but it's critically important.

While people that build a disaster kit are already thinking, which puts them ahead of the sheep, chances are that they are in no way ideally prepared mentally. Lots of you probably don't want to hear that, but it's true. As an example, look at what the military does to already trained soldiers to prepare them for elite combat units.

The secret to most of the military's schools is not as much what they teach, but more "stress inoculation". The instructors have a saying... "You don't rise to the occasion, you fall to your level of training." It's difficult to think clearly when you haven't slept more than 3 hours a night in the past few weeks, you've barely eaten as much food in a day as you would have eaten in a single meal before, and then you need to perform to save your life.

The reason the military includes "stress inoculation" in so much of its training is that civilians experience very little stress in the everyday world. They might have "girlfriend left me" stress, but not "people are trying to kill me" stress. And in general, civilians never experience the daily wearing down that accumulates by never being able to escape the lack of sleep, lack of food, and constant fear for your life.

I understand that you can't all just hop on the bus down to Ranger school, but do what you can. The things you need to do to survive need to be so ingrained in you that you can do them literally half asleep. Read books, and practice what you learned. Take professional firearms training, or at a minimum get DVD training from the professional schools. Practice setting your tent up in the dark, or do a 5 mile ruck march with your bug out bag, or go camping and live off your bug out bag for a few days (take a buddy with a full set of gear - be safe).

People watch Man vs. Wild, or Survivorman, and think it's easy to survive with just a knife and a water bottle. Those guys have been doing it a long time, prepare ahead of time (e.g. reading what bugs in the area they can eat), and know that they only need to survive a few days, then it's back to McDonald's.

Training builds skills, confidence, and the "no quit" attitude required to win. Hard training helps inoculate you to stress by showing you that limits are mostly mental. Do everything you can to prepare yourself mentally for the vast array of challenges that can face you.