What type of person survives a catastrophe?

[Queequeg]

Rereading Maus.

It's really interesting.  Art, the author of the work, has an extremely fraught relationship with his Holocaust survivor father, here called Vladek Spiegelman.  In mid-80s Queens Vladek Spiegelman is described by his own son as a "stereotypical miserly old Jew"; he takes paper towels from public bathrooms to save money on toilet paper, and he leaves the gas on in his apartment all the time so that he can save money on matches. 

However, it's clear that he's also extremely intelligent.  He's well off (he has several hundred thousand dollars in his bank account after years of retirement and years of ill-health), and just incredibly talented.  He also has a phenomenal memory.  In the mid-80s, he is able to narrate to his son extremely vivid details of his memory of pre-war and wartime Poland.  He is very shrewd-at one point another Jewish family pays him for his advice, and at another he's the only survivor of his train of 200 prisoners because he gives English lessons to a Polish prison Kapo.  While he seems not incredibly pleasant in the then-present late-70s, he comes off as something of a genius during the War.  He's simultaneously capable of keeping himself and his sickly, traumatized, neurotic wife alive. 

At every level there's an element of luck.  If Vladek was a decade younger or two decades older he would not have made it, and at more than a few moments he only survives due to pure chance.  Vladek makes a point of his belief that survival of the war was "completely random", but it seems likely that Vladek's incredible memory and ability to develop skills gave him some kind of advantage. 

Anyone have any literary/personal counterpoint?  I don't know that many personal Shoah or other similar catastrophe survival narratives, would be interested if anyone strongly disagreed/agreed.

[Savonarola]

I recommend "Number Our Days: A Triumph of Continuity and Culture Among Jewish Old People in an Urban Ghetto" by Barbara Myerhoff as a literary counterpoint.  She studies, as an anthropologist, a community of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe.  A number of the members of the community are Holocaust survivors, and while they have a common culture they are from different backgrounds, different abilities and vastly different beliefs.

[Admiral Yi]

Read somewhere, can't remember where, that the most important trait was ruthlessness, the willingness to do whatever it took to survive.

[Queequeg]

Read somewhere, can't remember where, that the most important trait was ruthlessness, the willingness to do whatever it took to survive.

Vladek seems to have that to a degree.  Vladek's father, an extremely religious, diligent man in good health for his age, jumped a barbed wire fence to get to his daughter and her several children when they were selected to go straight to an extermination camp, saying "who would take care of the children?"  It's one of the saddest moments in the book. The word that really comes to mind when I think about how he survived is guanxi.  He's just capable of being anybody to anyone, can call on all kinds of social connections, and can pick up skills very quickly.  It's pretty incredible. 

[Ideologue]

he takes paper towels from public bathrooms to save money on toilet paper

Man, that is a fantastic idea.

[Ideologue]

he comes off as something of a genius during the War.  He's simultaneously capable of keeping himself and his sickly, traumatized, neurotic wife alive. 

Hmm.  In the short-term.

Anyway, obviously in a top-down event like the Holocaust, those with skills to trade and certain shrewdness will have higher odds of survival.

In events where the danger is more diffuse or cannot be bargained with, like an artillery barrage, a hurricane, or the American economy, it does come down more to luck.

[Admiral Yi]

Man, that is a fantastic idea.

One night I was at the boozer and a young dude rides up on a bicycle, takes the lid off the ash tray (one of those outside ones that looks like a European sidewalk post), scoops up fistfuls of butts and putts them in a plastic bag.  Rides off.

[Ideologue]

I don't think that's exactly the same concept.

[jimmy olsen]

It depends on what kind of catastrophe.

Just for example, when the Titanic sank the survivors were principally women and children. When the Lusitania sank, the survivors were young men and women in good shape. The difference was that the Titanic took more than an hour to sink, while the Lusitania went down in minutes.

In a sudden crisis it's everyone for themselves, in a drawn out one there's time for social norms to assert themselves.

That's a huge difference in what is essentially the same type of disaster. Asking "what type of person survives a catastrophe" is simply too broad a question, there are far too many variables.

[Josquius]

It's all maths I guess. Wonder if there has ever been a paper about it.
There's the same base random Chance for everyone but with various multipliers and additions: speak German, +0.5%; ruthless +2%, etc...

[CountDeMoney]

It's all maths I guess.

Stop that.  Stop that this instant.

[Scipio]

Read somewhere, can't remember where, that the most important trait was ruthlessness, the willingness to do whatever it took to survive.

Thankfully, my wife has this in spades.

[garbon]

he takes paper towels from public bathrooms to save money on toilet paper

Man, that is a fantastic idea.

Better is to get at the holder where you can unsecure the rolls.

[Eddie Teach]

It's all maths I guess.

Stop that.  Stop that this instant.

Good luck with that.

[The Brain]

Define catastrophe. garbon survived purple hair but he's not really a person.