[ddoran]

I strongly recommend "The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why" by Amanda Ripley [1]. It is a terrific look of the character traits and behavior of people who survive life-threatening circumstances and those who don't.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2706211-the-unthinkable

[toufiqbarhamov]

One thing that struck me about this story was that he made some good decisions and some bad ones, but as he points out he got really lucky a bunch of times. None of his habits would have mattered if he’d been in the restaurant, if he’d have been in the wrong room, picked the wrong bed to hide under, or hadn’t moved just out of the way of a sniper’s bullet, and if a tank had fired on his room.

It’s easy to assume that a given set of habits correlate with survival, and even easier to write a book effectively engaging in survivorship bias. It’s a lot harder to get lucky many times in a row, to have the opportunity to not die. So read the book, keep your back to a wall and an eye on exists, but recognize that none of that would have helped this guy. The two big tings that seemed to have saved this guy is temperament (look at his job for indication she that job followed temperament and and not the other way around) which allowed him to remain calm, and sheer dumb luck.

[dennisgorelik]

> It’s easy to assume that a given set of habits correlate with survival

It is a correct assumption.

I survived this attack ... by not going to Afghanistan.

[jackhammer2022]

I haven't gone through your link yet, but sounds like Survivorship Bias here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

[sfilargi]

From the original story sounds like one of the traits you have to have is luck. Lots and lots of luck.