Comnfronting The Unknown

When confronted by the frightening report about Canaan, the Jews’ reaction was “It would have been better had we died in Egypt or in this desert. Why is Hashem bringing us to Canaan where we will be killed and our wives and children taken captive?” And they said “Let us appoint a new leader, and return to Egypt”
Why didn’t they try a third place, neither Canaan nor Egypt? Were there no unclaimed areas in the world? And why would it be better for them to die in Egypt, where their wives and children were likewise captives, indeed, actually enslaved?
Perhaps the truth is that it wasn’t really better for them. Objectively speaking, almost any option beat returning to Egypt. However they knew Egypt. They knew how to survive there, although survive is all they did. It was the known unpleasant versus the unknown. And the known always beats the unknown.
The lesson for us is to second-guess our own decisions; are they coming from a rational preference, or is our automatic leaning towards the known influencing us?