Hard Water Ninja

I inserted the word water into the title because I think people will get the wrong idea.  Something about 'hard ninja' Just screams ninja walking around with a boner.  Anyway, let us discuss what it is to be 'hard' and for you all playing the Ninja home game I am not talking about boners... I digress. The 'hard' I am talking about is the 'no shit fortitude' that no matter what 'throwing stars of death' life tosses your way you are going to make it.  If you have seen a Clint Eastwood movie pretty much every character he plays is 'hard'.  Now I am not saying everyone should go smoke 3 packs of cowboy killers a day and walk around talking in a low throaty voice like Clint. But take note, Clint is a bad ass.  The other type of hard is say, Alice from Resident Evil (seriously they should pay me moneys for pimping their movies, are you listening Constantin Film Produktion ?) Now this chick is hard, but in the way that, she has a 'never say die' attitude.  She presents it differently than Clint does. Clint: I'm a bad ass with years of ass kicking under my belt. Alice: I am hot chick who can kick your ass if you make me and look good doing it with a red dress and big black boots... don't be a zombie.  Here is the crux of the whole idea of being hard.  You have to have decided, way before the shit goes down, that you are going to make it.  You aren't going to cop out, break down and start crying about "Its over man!" *insert Bill Paxton voice here* or "I can't go any further". Screw that!  You are the type that is going to walk through a horde of the undead with a sledge hammer and make survival happen.  Not, hope and pray for someone to rescue you.  Note to all my readers, the sledge hammer is an excellent tool for zombie killing, it never runs out of bullets.  Sure you might loose a few team mates along the way, and that sucks balls.  But, you aren't going to stop and start balling your eyes out about it right then and there amid the ensuing slaughter of the apocalypse.  Being hard also means having a damn survival instinct.  Knowing when it is time to run for your life or start swinging a cricket bat at the problem. This is probably one of the best instincts to have and sadly I think too few people actually have that anymore.  So, I will give you a one question quiz just in case you are one of those people who isn't sure if they have a survival instinct.  To make it even easier it will be multiple choice. 

Question #1 You see a huge grizzly bear in front of you what do you do?
a. Play Dead
b. Yell really loud and pray a park ranger hears you before the grizzly mauls you to death
3. Run like your pants are on fire and see if you can make it far enough away that it won't want to maul you any more.
d. Pick up your trusty cricket bat and charge the bear screaming your war cry at the top of your lungs.
5. Except your fate, the Lion King taught you that this is the circle of life and being eat isn't as bad as some people make it out to be, shit happens.

Which one did you choose?
I'll even helped you out. There are two right answers to the question, A and D if you chose any of the odd ball numbers or the fact that park rangers are to busy trying to catch people growing pot in the forest to come help you... You have no survival instinct.  By the way the average running speed of a Grizzly is 30 mph, and to put that in perspective the fastest human on earth ran the 100m sprint only got up to 23.4 mph and we all know none of you out there are getting up to that speed and not for the distance necessary to out run a grizzly, end of story.
Why were those two answers correct you might ask.  Well playing dead has been shown to work and at least you won't die out of breath, ie grizzly bears can run at 25-30 mph for two miles on average this means if you are a biped you are dead.  So some might ask why is D a correct answer, no I wouldn't always suggest this and the reaction of the bear could go either way but at least you have a fighting spirit and you can take that to the bank (and grave) if the bear decides to stick around and go fists to cuffs with you and your cricket bat.  If not the bear is going to run away thinking the tiny biped that is screaming like a little girl and swinging a stick is probably rabid and bears don't like rabies.
To rap this whole mess up.  Being hard is making the decision that you are going to survive through any conflict no matter what.  I repeat "no matter what."  Yes it will be difficult.  But, you have decided to grab your balls or ovaries and man/woman up and get through it.  Watching a few zombie and ninja movies will probably help you to.