Cultivation of a good survival mentality is one of the basic keys to long term SHTF survival in a post-apocalyptic world. It will help you identify threats, how to utilize your resources, and how to get away from and neutralize threats.

Here are some great games you can play with your family to raise your survival mentality.

SCENARIO-BASED GAMES
Most in the prepper community are aware of the card game Conflicted. This is a game that helps you to begin to think ahead of time what you will do in a given situation. While you may never face the given scenarios what I feel the real benefit of this game is in the building of descion making muscles, using your brain to come up with real answers to questions quickly, and also reveals to you your real values and beliefs.
PAINTBALL
To combine mental and physical preparing my boys and I play paintball. Paintball is a great way to teach team tactics, quick decision making skills, It allows us to practice what we might do in a given scenario. When we play we have different objectives for each team, designed to present real possibilities on our property. It also helps us learn where weakness in our security may be, and it the real world application of the board games we play putting to use the critical and creative thinking we have been fostering.
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS (KIM’S) GAMES
The final area that will help you in SHTF or everyday is situational awareness. We hear a lot lately about situational awareness in the preparedness community. But how do you develop it? Are there things we can do to? I will never forget the time a guy that spends time around my kids school comes up to me and says what are you teaching your kids? I’m like, huh? He then proceeds to tell me that my 12 year old son had said to him earlier that day, “I can see your gun” This guy did not believe my son, who then told him where he had his concealed weapon.
I told him about another game we play called “the Play of the Jewels” or Kims game. Taken from the 1901 book KIM by Kipling it is a great game that can be played anywhere.
The basic way to play the game is to take a group of items, observe the items for a set time, then after covering the items or removing them from the players sight, try to list more observations about those items than your opponent can.
The great thing is you determine what counts as an observation and how the points are determined. As you increase in your ability you can do things like increase the amount of items, reduce the time to observe the items.
Sometimes I will test the kids when they don’t know they are playing. I will say give me your observations of the last five people you saw walk past us. Or while walking in our neighborhood I will have them to tell me the things they observed about the house we just walked past.
BODY LANGUAGE
As the kids have grown I have begun to teach them about body language. I remember about a year ago flying out of Africa from a trip, I said to my wife, “that couple is up to something” She said how do you know? I began to point out behaviors all the way from Africa through Europe and into the US. Obviously someone else had noticed because as we arrived in the US waiting at the bottom of the stairs were a couple of guys with a list of names, you’ll never guess who I saw pulled aside.

These games and tricks will go a long way towards helping your family achieve excellent situational awareness and foster the skills they'll need when SHTF.

Practicing these skills as often as possible will ensure that the survival mentality will never be switched off and that your kids will be safe when they go out into the dangerous world.

All of these skills are equally valid, so all of these games should be practiced as often as possible.

This is a great article with some great advice. To read the original content, go to Tactical Intelligence.