What are some key words that capture the "strategies" that allowed some communities to survive and others not? I read the book Guns, Germs and...

The one key word that captures the major strategy that
allowed some communties to survive is "agriculture."  Really the major thrust of this
whole book is that the early development of agriculture (Diamond tends to call it "food
production") is what allows some societies to come to dominate
others.

A second possible key word is something that arises
in societies that have agriculture.  That is "writing."  Diamond argues that writing
allows knowledge to be passed down from generation to generation quite easily.  This
increases the amount of technology that can be developed as one generation can build on
others.

Finally, I think you could say that "competiton" is
another important strategy.  Communities that are forced to compete with other societies
(for example in Europe) tend to develop more technology and "better" systems than those
societies (like China) that are not forced to compete.