I already have everything I need

Take the inventory at the smallest scale. Right now, in this hour: water, a door that locks, something to eat later.

Not the year. The hour.

The mind on a bad day works at the scale of the year, where almost nobody is fully covered, and the panic it returns is accurate to that scale and useless at this one.

Shrinking the frame doesn't pretend about what's missing. It gets you through the next sixty minutes on something other than dread, and sixty minutes is the only unit anyone actually lives in.