The hind-sight 20/20 machine is an interesting friend. It is much better used when you accept that the situation that happened to someone else can, indeed happen to you. In a rock canyon sufficiently deep you may not be able to use any electronic devices. Rock does block radio signals - even to satellites. Signal mirrors only work line of sight, not only do you need a clear line of sight to the sun but also to the signal target. Camping trips often run for many days. Large rocks move when you lean on them. These are some of the unpredictable facts of life in the wilderness. Supposing you go out for a week of mountaineering with your satelite phone, epirp, GPS, cell phone, ham radio, signal mirror, whistle and of course your trusty friend and full train of sherpas. Well you won't have any solitude until a thunderstorm frightens your pack animals off and the sherpas have to leave you to track them down while you go on ahead. You and your side kick then get lost because the batteries were affected by the Thunderstorm and the GPS doesn't work anymore. You don't realize you are lost until too late so you try scrambling through a ravine to get back to the trail. While deep in the ravine you find a rushing stream making a lot of noise so you drink and your friend falls in and cracks his head on a stone and becomes a liability rather than an asset. You decide that rather than scramble up the other side you will follow the stream for a bit. Scrambiling between two large stones on the edge of the stream you lean on what should be an immovable boulder and it leans back because the spring runnoff has undermined it and it was just waiting for you. Now you are squashed at the bottom of a ravine. Too much vegetation to use any signal mirror effectively, Too much sound from the stream for the whistle to be useful. Too deep in the ravine for the Satelite phone to get a signal, or the Epirp to be heard. Too far off the trail to be found by the Sherpa's easily, once they round up the animals.

OK, so it can happen. So what did your hind-sight 20/20 machine tell you to do is such a situation? Did you replace you ultralight carbon fiber walking staff with a slightly heavier titanium one that can be used to lever the stone off your hand? Did you add some really good pain killers to the med kit so you can smile as you hack off your arm? Did you add a small geologists hammer so you could dig your hand out of the rock? Did you learn to test your hand placements with a tentative shove before risking getting stuck? Did you learn to risk a stick or other non-essential item in you test shove? If you hind-sight 20/20 machine only told you that you are so much smarter than the poor schmuck that this happened to that it could never happen to you then you have wasted the opportunity to actually learn.

Survival is about making do with what you have when you find yourself in a situation - anyone with enough will and a minimum of gear can do it. Preparing to survive is about planning, re-thinking, considering as possible truly bad situations and then trying to work out how to get through them. If your preparation for a situation is to consider it avoidable then simply learn how to drive well but don't bother putting on your seat-belt. A truely bad thing happened to Mr. Ralston - he survived. That is the essence of survival. Many lesser individuals might have perished from what he faced. Staying there and attempting to signal rescue failed him, so he did what was necessary with what he had to survive. Losing a limb is preferable to losing a life.

[RANT-ON]Staying at home is the only sure way to avoid the situation he found himself in. Then you will face the potential that you may grow so fat and lethargic that you are stuck in your bed pinned down, not by a boulder, but by your stomach.[RANT-OFF]