"...real-life scenarios often cannot be prepared for or mimicked. "

"...urban dwellers in particular may have a more difficult time tuning into their surroundings when they become lost in the wild. Urbanites who've grown accustomed to the ease of GPS navigation, for example, could have a harder time determining north from south."

"Laurence Gonzales ... blames our culture of abundance for maintaining our 'vacation state of mind'..."

"Keech questions how much responsibility authorities should carry 'when people choose to travel into remote, unpopulated and unknown terrain—especially in harsh weather conditions?'
...'(and) '...there is not yet any foolproof remedy for human error and a lack of luck.' "

From "What Makes Someone a Survivor?"
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/Americas/2009/May/What-Makes-Someone-a-Survivor---.html

Susan:

In your post you stated “‘...there is not yet any foolproof remedy for human error and a lack of luck.'" I feel compelled to respond that in my opinion there is a remedy,, regrettably that remedy is death.

Please accept my apology if I offend, but if the urban dweller goes into a part of the world they know they shouldn't be in, during adverse conditions, I personally say that is when the Darwin factor kicks in. We humans have services and people that directly block that "thinning" from happening by rushing out in the middle of the night, in a snow storm, to rescue the people who should have known better. Children, on the other hand, just don't know better. Children should be sought after and don't necessarily know when things are in over there head or when things have gone from "fun" to "life threatening"

I should add that I am one of those that rush out to help. Having done SAR in Alaska, Maine and Rescue in Mass, I was and will always bee one of those willing to help those that just don't think things through.

Taking advantage of technology is great as long as there is a genuine benefit and you don't grow critically dependent on it. IMO that's all that needs to be said there and it's really self-explanatory.

What Tyber just pointed out is equally true but on a somewhat different level. These days, a lot of people don't seem to be ready to take any kind of responsibility for what they do. It's also fair to say that many trust technology way too much, hoping some gadget they bought will reliably keep them out of harms way.

Every individual has a different set of skills and abilities that determines just how far they can push themselves and still stay reasonably safe. Just like a responsible individual would not wander around a crime-infested neighborhood late at night so it goes without saying that a good many city dwellers have no business going into the wilderness alone.

Of course, everybody loves adventure so people often bite off more than they can chew. But that's not what SAR really is about. It's there to save people who went out and despite good preparation ran into serious trouble. The problem is, today SAR is often abused by folks who hit the great outdoors totally unprepared in every sense of the word and expect to be rescued by the push of a button the moment they do anything dumb. Technology is partly to blame as well, especially with devices like SPOT that are basically marketed as a method for quick, easy pushbutton rescue.

Anything that relies on a power source is not entirely reliable so tech falls to the bottom of that list. And in a crisis I would not want to rely on anything that comes with an 80-page manual.

Knowledge and mental toughness (attitude + determination) are the most important, I believe.

Luck is nice but inherently unpredictable and elusive (for instance, those in peril weren't lucky enough to not be in peril, to begin with).

The Gonzalez book was fascinating. I was especially struck by his observation that young children have survived situations adults haven't because young kids are more likely to heed their instinct to hunker down and stay in one place, helping rescuers to find them. They don't overthink.

But some kids have had fear of strangers so drilled into them, they've hidden from rescuers. And older kids may not do as well in a survival situation because they've already begun to overthink (i.e. getting more lost while trying to get un-lost).

I agree with Tyber. The first thing that popped into my head as to remedy was death. We can tend to be Lemmings sometimes, but eventually the crowd gets wise to the notion that those who walk toward the big dark hole don't come back and are never heard from again.

Batteries, dynamos and solar cells are a convenient alternative, but I also agree that it is unwise to rely on anything that requires electricity to run. For that reason I have resisted buying any of the LCD type compasses, and keep at least three light sources with me at all times.

The more you know of how to utilize items commonly found to accomplish the necessary tasks that get you by, the better your chances. Of course, it is still handy to be lucky, but not something you should ever plan for.

At the risk of going political yet again, SAR services get abused far too much. Considering it was all but non-existent a hundred years ago, I believe too many people nowadays either simply don't have a friggin' clue what they are getting themselves into, or consider SAR a safety net and don't prepare adequately for the risks.

Yes, the notion that salvation is just a 911 call away is a dangerous one.

And more dangerous the further out people go into the wilderness.

Isn't the urban environment more dangerous?

Surely you are much more likely to get shot or stabbed, die in an auto accident, fall out of a window, fall down the stairs, slip of your roof trying to get a good digital TV signal, get electrocuted, drown in a swimming pool, get run over by a bus, crash into the ground in an airliner, die at the hands of a middle eastern Terrorist, die in a house fire, have a heart attack in a McDs, KFC, BK, get a deadly communicable disease etc, than get attacked by a big grizzly bear out in the multimedia badlands of the untamed scary scary Wilderness.

Though saying that some of the townies don't even realise it gets dark out in the wilderness and aren't used to the peace and quiet, which kinda freaks them out.

But if a townie has to spend more than a few days out in the woods because they got lost they suddenly become a news media 'survivor'.

Long gone are the days when anyone could just head off into the hills for the day with just some cheese sandwiches, a flask of tea and a map and compass without being accused of not being prepared like Tom Weir in his 1970s TV series

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MZX3EMICP8&feature=related

Great Stuff all the TV shows can be viewed here ;

Ah the nostalgia

I joke that I "straddle the fence." I am a techno geek, (my job in heavly in the Virtual Server IT world) but I still can light a fire with two sticks and a bit of twine. I use technology, but I don't trust it.. Bateries die, chips fry and well if you don't have the skills, you die. (humm coinable frase there)

SAR is often used as the "easy out" Having done SAR in Alaska and had to go after my fair share of Goat hunters that scrambled down a clif or a ledge and not thought, "how do I get out of this" does get anoying.


IN ressponce to Am_Fear's posting, I would say that the old days of going out to the wilderness for a day hike with a ham sandwich went away as the average persons time in the woods on a regular basis went away.

When I was a kid we would go into the back 100 acers and have a snack play paint ball or whatever.. but we also spent tons of time in the woods, hiking, camping, getting lost,, finding road you never knew were there, and hiking home. More than once did I have what I called "discovery trips." Now-a-days people don't go into the woods, they look at them online, through there car windows, or in post cards (do people send them anymore?) But they don't go in, get there shoes dirty and walk around in the woods.

Some how the woods went from inviting fun place to be, to the dark scarry place.

Me personaly, I will stick with traveling both sides of the fence, learning and honing my outdoor skills, and still working the ways of the digital age. I carry GPS, analog watch and compass, with the knowledge to use all three.

When I was in high school the three foriegn languages available were french,german and spanish.
The CURRICULUM stated french was the language of culture, german science and spanish for our nieghbors to the south.

Many of my classmates found themselves one year from graduation in Vietnam trying not to become bui dai. Some of those guys now speak fluent vietnamese, which is incredibly usefull at convenience stores in Little Saigon today.

Society dictates the curriculum of survival, be it wearing a suit to an interview, avoiding eye contact in 'bad nieghborhoods'
or telling park visitors to camp only in areas known by bears to be convenient food resources.

Members of that society who 'screw up' in wilderness are suddenly
responsible for their own well being in a society that regulates behaviour for job interviews, driving in bad nieghborhoods and camping.

Society has failed, not the individual. And when Boy Scouts only make the news over civil rights issues, people carrying pocket knives are deemed dangerous and 3 helicopters hover overhead for 4 hours watching a black bear running through a California nieghborhood something isn't right.

We are a SOCIAL animal. We admire the 'rugged individual' the successfull maverik entrepenuer, the avant guard artist. We just don't let our daughters bear their children.

I carry my gps on any trip we take and my wife asks me all the time why I look at it when we know where we are, but I check it every so often for reference, just to make sure its still right and I'm right as to which direction we are facing and so I know where we were the last time I looked should something fail so I can find ourselves easily on the paper maps.
Are there any places where you actually can get so far out that you can't get 911 anymore? Maybe a few places out west but here on east of the USA there isn't that much land anymore. I drove up past the state park camp area today and on one side of the road was camp sites the other side 300k houses, that doesn't seem much like camping to me. I want to take my kids outdoors but I want to find places that are remote as my idea of camping isn't seeing big houses across the road, or people getting drunk in the camp site next to you or coughing on the cigar smoke from the person "camping" on the other side of you. I'm not finding many places that are actaully out there. Even the state forests are mixed among farm land so you have to have your gos and map to e sure as to not trespass on the farmers land and even still you have to be in designated camp sites.