Survival training is largely about preventing a survival situation from arising, and attaining the neutral mindset with the bush which will allow for your survival if some unforeseen event does happen. This is primarily what Kochanski focuses on, the knowledge and skills required to prevent survival situations as it is prevention which keeps the immediacy of a survival threat at bay. Having endured a severe survival situation is quite irrelevant as in a true survival situation you will be on auto-pilot, your biology will take over - so indeed, it is the training that matters.
I do not think about breathing, I don't concern myself with the action largely due to never experiencing a shortness of breath or breathing difficulty. This lack does not make breathing any less relevant, I am always breathing. In a similar way, we are always surviving. Just because the threats to survival are largely invisible, or hidden, does not make survival any less relevant. In fact, it makes survival more of a concern, as we see in all of the apocalyptic films. One of the main themes in these stories is that the hordes of unprepared will drag us down with them because of their refusal to realize that we are always just surviving. They will not have water, food, defense capabilities, nor the skills to obtain and share these things. It is a terrifying thing for many people as it shows how far we've strayed from what really matters in life.
In my life I have to be concerned with survival. I go cutting wood alone, and in that situation only one thing has to go wrong to force a fight for survival. Similarly, the further you go into the woods, the more adverse the conditions are, and the more dangerous the activities you take part in, the more prepared you have to be.
A lot of the anti-survival comments seem to revolve around this idea that it is out of our control. 'Either you will survive or you won't, there's not much one can do about it.' This is largely a feeling of complacency when everything seems to be out of our control, and it is a survival instinct in its own right. It is the survival prep in a society which believes it is safe, and if it is not then the government will step in to help, or some scientist will develop a new piece of technology to keep the bogeyman away. You are still taking a survival prep when you put down survivalists, perhaps it is just as simple as the belief that everything will turn out ok because humans have become so civilized that danger, violence, and collapse have been prohibited. You survive because, well, 'everything always turns out awesome.'
