Worth listening to

Great course. Well structured and presented, with genuine pointers to help in critical incidents, and everyday life

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Essential listen for would-be survivalists

A short & entertaining course on how to psychologically prepare for crisis & execute an effective plan of action. It's part practical advice plus a ton of helpful anecdotes from people who have survived different kinds of crises, which are entertaining to listen to but could also save your life should you find yourself in similar circumstances.

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Great course, obnoxious trigger warning

The course and professor Nancy Zarse are both great, but The Great Courses has added an obnoxious trigger warning before EVERY single lecture. Why? Why not only add the stupid trigger warning once? Do they really think people are this fragile?

Other than that, I highly recommend the course to anyone interested in developing a survivalist mindset.

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1 person found this helpful

Work to Do

Good series of tools to make yourself more resilient when encountering unprecedented events and emergencies. Zarse delivers an interesting series of anecdotes and professional observations about how to mitigate risk and respond well. I enjoyed the presentation throughout and I will definitely be trying to be more mindful of my emotions when encountering challenging situations.

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Of some use.

Wonder if this was sponsored by recruiters for US military and police force? Got about 3/4 through and that was enough. Some useful titbits but the subtext was a bit much for me.

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Underwelming

Lacks practical usable information. 5 hours of not very much. More like a pep talk than survival instruction.

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Good but not quite what I expected

This was interesting but I thought there'd be a little more specific information on what an average citizen might to do to survive in certain situations. Was really mostly interesting stories of people in dangerous jobs surviving terrifying ordeals along with advice on making sure you are prepared mentally and physically for any unforeseen danger. I don't feel I learnt anything valuable on survival. However I guess the clue is in the title.

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good, with defects in logic

First, I hate it when in a lecture the lecturer says " Let's take the movie X as an example". I don't watch movies often, and don't like De Niro at all. And frankly, I think most movies are stupid. I think the lecturer cheapens herself here by making commonplace examples. The real life ones are of course another thing entirely.

Also, her logic is often commonplace and fallacious, even though, ironically, she think it's other people who are fallacious: she arrives at the dim conclusion that " people who are more afraid of plane crashes more than car crashes, use availability heuristics, because of what is more memorable". Or some rubbish like that. Now, her argument is weak and commonplace: just because one is more afraid of plane crashes than car crashes, doesn't mean it is a fallacy, or some kind of faulty logic. This I can quickly illustrate: anyone with a brain thicker than two short planks, would assume that if they go trough a plane accident, it would most probably be far more fatal than a car accident, for some quite obvious reasons: on a plane, you are strapped on a huge bullet zooming in the sky at what, 15 times more the speed of a car travelling at speed? this means that it would be unlikely that you'd make it alive, unless you can also beat the force of gravity, since your body is going to be exposed by several forces acting at once, whereas in a car you are on the ground: you might make it alive, or you might get out of the car with a just a few bruises, or whatever. Does that seems the same thing? although car crashes are more COMMON, it does not mean car crashes are more FATAL, which is what people are afraid of, with good reasons.

I myself do not fly. I think there is something bizarre in knowing that the above is a real possibility (how many times it has happened before? what makes you think it could not happen to YOU? ) and yet think " well, I am going to fly anyways, because all these people, after all, are flying too, and some of them did so hundreds of times". If anything, is THIS heuristic that is fallacious.

Also, the lecturer continuously mentions "internal locus of control" and asks you if "you look at the world positively or negatively" I don't remember now the exact words, but her argument is that if you are one of these fools who says "I can do anything", then you are on the right track.

Her thinking is very commonplace and bland....she should take the courses available on logic and argumentations, because most of her arguments are bland, weak, and common.

The course is still worth having, if nothing else because the topic is interesting, although the lecturer is not (I don't mean the delivery, etc, I just look for information, not entertainment). You don't have to expect a course to be perfect to still learn something. I just hope that this valuable topic will be taken up by a lecturer who took the time to educate himself in the practice of reasoning.

And please, enough of these dumb examples about movies like The Matrix, etc....let's mention examples from the literature, or even better from real events, Robert De Niro puts me to sleep and I don't like these stupid movies at all.

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