The underlying point of this forum is that our chatter is designed to get us all to think and preplan for these "unforeseen" eventualities. If you ever are caught unawares in a desert, you take your training and whatever you have at hand, and survive.

Deserts show a huge amount of variability. Right now the Sonoran Desert is a beautiful place to survive and water will not be that hard to find in many localities. June is a different matter. Shelter is ridiculously easy to find in some spots, like the Four Corners region, with sumptuous rockshelters all over the place, and very hard in others, like the alkali flats of Utah and Southern Arizona.

Basically, if you can get to a water source, and you can create fire, you will survive.

Realistically, people don't just wake up and find themselves beamed down onto an arid plain. Plan for eventualities in advance and prepare for the worst case. I always carry lots of water in my car, even if I am just planning to scoot from LA to Phoenix along I 10.