While the wilderness training on the 90-acre grounds of the Mountain Scout Survival School has traditionally attracted outdoor enthusiasts, the musician was among several of the 18 attendees who weren’t learning to drink water out of a vine or set traps for rabbits just for fun.

Those are skills D’Alessio, 49, the father of a 6-year-old girl, fears will become essential in the coming years — as the impacts of climate change continue to worsen.

Survivalist school instructors across the country say there has been an increasing interest in their wilderness and urban-disaster preparedness courses from Americans worried about climate change.

“It was never like that before,” said Shane Hobel, founder of the Mountain Scout Survival School.

While the costs of survival school training vary across the country depending on levels and duration, Hobel charges $125 per person, $230 per couple and $460 per family for his Wilderness 1 class.

But Hobel estimated that increased interest in his courses is fueled by "50 percent climate change and 50 percent the 'political stuff.'" Whichever their particular nightmare scenario, there is a shared concern among some of his clientele that the foundation on which modern society rests is increasingly fragile.

“What we’re seeing through these impacts is what climate change is going to do: the drought out West, the forest fires out West, the heat wave that we’re experiencing, the hurricanes that are getting stronger and moving differently, the hurricane seasons that are extending in length,” said Jason Smerdon, a professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

Travis Johnson, founder and senior survival skills instructor at Northwest Survival School in Ione, Washington, doesn’t need to imagine those future scenarios.

Taking a batch of students into the mountains for advanced training last month, Johnson said they would be hit with the stench of the wildfires plaguing other parts of Washington as they descended to base camp.

Johnson said he’s had a 60 percent increase in enrollment this year over previous years, and the 25-year veteran of the craft credited that influx to climate change.

"It's counter to what is actually most effective in light of impacts of climate change, which is having prepared and resilient and connected communities," Smerdon said of the impulse to live off the grid?

"That’s something that comes up in urban classes — especially in wildfire-prone areas out West," said Tony Nester, head instructor at Ancient Pathways, which teaches desert and wilderness survival in Arizona and Colorado Springs, Colorado.

At the very least, D’Alessio said he gained confidence from his first foray into wilderness survival training

"Now I feel like, 'Oh, my God, I can set up a mud hut,'" said D’Alessio, who is planning future daddy-daughter excursions to the Mountain Scout Survival School