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What are your best tips for getting through a difficult survival situation?

– M. Night Shyamalan

We all face daily struggles but sometimes we find ourselves staring at a truly life changing situation. Appearing on Answers for the first time, US film director M. Night Shyamalan asks a big question about sticky situations: what are your best tips for getting through a difficult survival situation? What knowledge can we share to prepare us to come out the other side of a tight corner? If you have some advice, let him know.

M. Night Shyamalan is producer, director and writer of several films. He directed feature film “The Happening,” “Praying with Anger,” “Wide Awake,” “SixthSense,” “Unbreakable,” “Signs,” “The Village,” and “Lady in The Water.” To read more about him, check his Answers profile.

But he’s not alone in his discourse of sticky situations:  it seems the Answers community have been through a few and come out the other side. LuStar asked a question:

If you’re stranded out in the wilderness alone far from civilisation and you don’t really have electronic communications, what would you do in order to survive?

Luckily Drukawski was on hand to come to the rescue:

1.) Ensure I am healthy and uninjured, if I have any cuts, bone breaks, or whatever take care of that first
2.) Establish a shelter that’s out of the elements, away from game trails and ideally both water and food are no more than 20 min in any direction
3.) Figure out a way to stay warm or keep cool depending on the weather (fire, insulate my clothes, etc)

Read the rest of Drukawski’s top tips, including the must-read survival books, here.

Of course M. Night is not the first high profile person to ask a big survival question on Answers.  Two years ago the eminent scientist Dr. Stephen Hawking asked:

How can the human race survive the next hundred years?

Semi-Mad Scientist won the Best Answer award 25385 over other users with his reply:

Political and social chaos has been with us for a very long time. Given the revolutions of the past and present, class warfare, and scheming of those seeking power, the human race has shown a remarkable resilience and managed to survive thus far.

The new factors in the equation of the balance of mankind and the rest of nature are the technological advances that have changed how political and social chaos can develop, and the advances in industry that have the potential to inflict serious environmental alterations. Threats of nuclear war, biological catastrophe, and climate change now bring into question as to how humanity can continue to survive.

Read more on what Semi-Mad Scientist thinks the larger question is…

So we’ll leave it to the expert himself, Dr Hawking, to have the final say on this massive subject. He replied on video to his own question:

– Yahoo! Answers team