Would You Rather: Survival Scenarios

Every scenario here puts you somewhere you should not be, with no preparation and no equipment, and you have to get yourself out of it.

The variable that actually decides these is not danger but time. A desert kills you in roughly three days and a snowbound cabin might take three weeks, which changes what counts as a good decision by an enormous margin. Adrift at sea is the one where personal effort is close to worthless and the outcome is decided almost entirely by currents and shipping lanes. A city with no power is the only entry that still contains other people, which makes it simultaneously the easiest option and, depending on how long the situation lasts, by far the most unpredictable one on the list.

The bracket is thirty-two scenarios wide, described plainly enough that you can picture your own version of each without being told what to imagine.

Most voters find they are consistently choosing between two things without ever noticing: whether they would rather have a chance of rescue or a chance of self-rescue. Those are different temperaments and this bracket sorts people into them fairly quickly.