ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the historical development that has allowed the formulation of several survival strategies. Since Darwin, strategies such as fight and flight that favor survival and evolution have underpinned much of the philosophy of human behavior. Human mentation and language probably developed only over the past 50,000 years or so and helped otherwise vulnerable humans to hone their evolutionary survival skills in the wild. The survival strategies to be described already had historical precedents in the steps to their recognition as important means of survival. Strategies of survival were previously suggested to explain diverse stress responses. Survival strategies were introduced and applied to secondary traumatic stress disorder or compassion fatigue. Horizontal double lines separate opposing or complementary pairs of survival strategies, such as fight and flight and competition and cooperation. In life there may be frequent prevarication or switching within survival strategy pairs.
