This type of survival training by Gomer's platoon is based on actual military survival training that originated with British pilots in World War II. At the end of the war the U.S. Air Force established the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training course, which was expanded to the Marines and Navy a few years later. The Navy and Marine Corps SERE School has known locations at: the U.S. Navy Remote Training Site at Warner Springs, California, the remote Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center (Bridgeport, California), and an annex of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.
The title is a parody on the law of nature - the survival of the fittest.