Hi aarwolfe,
There have been plenty of well documented occassions for survival methods and techniques to be employed whilst knowing exactly where you are and knowing where you need to be. Not knowing where you are and not knowing where you should be heading is perhaps one of the most important hurdles to overcome in the psychology of survival because being lost creates mental barriers to firstly formulating and the secondly implementing a plan of action even if that plan of action is just to sit down and wait to be rescued. Being slightly lost in many circumstances leads to be being completely lost because of the inability to understand and accept that navigational mistakes have been made and the requirement to correct those navigation errors promptly. Being completely lost now has the ability to turn a jaunt in the woods into a serious survival situation. Even from the story published in USAToday the adult leader instructor has still not accepted any responsibility for his mistakes.
All was going as planned until Saturday, when they met two hikers. The men reported that the trail "fizzled out" and advised Logan to turn around, he said. The group decided to head toward a railroad bed listed on their maps.
A tell tale sign of panicked adult instructors was the fact that the scout group had been hiking for half an hour in the dark.
After hiking under a moonlit sky for half an hour, the group pitched tents in a grassy bog
For someone who is lost, night time navigation is not a good idea in the dark as people tend to get even more lost, especially for those whose daytime navigational skills are suspect together with the added problems of tripping up in the dark, falling over cliffs etc. The scout leaders were indeed panicking. If they weren't they would have set up camp much earlier and not in a grassy bog after dark.
On Sunday, after breakfast and a worship service, the boys talked about their frustration at being lost and having to struggle through dense brush. Logan said the leaders helped them "understand that panicking in the wilderness is very dangerous."
The boys weren't lost, they were following the adult instructors. It was the adult instructor who were lost.
I'm glad that they were all found save and well.
And if your attitude to survival can be summed up by "Don't Get Lost", then I think you're missing the whole point of this forum.
By not being lost your chances of a successful survival outcome have just been improved exponentially.