“If you were stranded on a deserted island, what’s the one thing you would bring?”. This question is used as an ice breaker when we want to get to know someone. Primarily because it shows us where their priorities lie. Do they care about survival, entertainment, or companionship? Of course life on an abandoned island would be easier with a knife or matches, but what good is surviving if you’re not really living? Thus many people choose to bring along some form of entertainment in order to pass the theoretical time.
While this answer allows us to distract ourselves from our problems, it does nothing to solve them. So the final option, which is usually considered cheating, is to choose companionship i.e. technology to talk to our loved ones or an animal to keep us company. Even though it’s a theoretical scenario, many of us still can’t bear to imagine complete isolation, thus we find a loophole in our answer. But the truth is that there’s a deeper reason why we ask this question. We’re curious as to how people plan to survive on their own. Because in reality not many of us would.