Having a compass even in a city you are familiar with, can allow you in times of emergency to quickly orient yourself. This can be important when visibility is minimal i.e. at night during a power outage, underground in a subway or in parts of the city with which you not familiar. Pete

Brad, you might want to try using a spare key to see if it comes out of the lock any easier. Sometimes the key wears from the load not the lock cylinder. If your spare works well have it duplicated for daily use. If the spare hangs up too then it's in the lock mechanism.

I usually have a god sense of direction. We went on a trip to TX once and the rental car place only had a minivan left, it had an overhead console with compass. My wife had fun covering the compass and having me guess which way we were heading and I was always right. We went to DC andother year and rode the subway. After getting off the subway in the middle of downtown DC and coming back up to the street I had to walk to a corner and locate the street signs and locate it on the map and even then it took me a while to figure out which way was which. So even with a good sense of direction there are times you can get turned around to where you loose your way. I want to pick up a small one myself soon.

Good point! I'll try that tonight. I wonder that I hadn't thought of that. I guess it's been too long since my days in Quality Control. I'll get back to you.

Seems easy to find you way in open terrain or in a city where the sites are familiar. In open terrain there are all the natural direction indicators that we have instinctually used for aeons. In a city where sites are familiar there are the patterns that we have come to recognize. Some of these are recognizeable even from unknown neighborhoods such as the skyline.

In a city in panic with the skyline damaged or obscured by - pick your event ( Storm: Quake: Terrorism) and people behaving - pick your modifier (panic: riot: dazed and confused:) most of the landmarks that you subconsciously recognize and navigate by can't be counted on and the paths you are used to using may not be passable / safe. Similar problems arise in more rural areas though the natural direction indicators are less vulnerable to some of these events. The sun still rises in the east and if that stops happening then we won't be here to witness it.

Situation that happened for real during a diff breather job on the train:

Me: Yeah I have a compass
Transit worker: Compasses don't work underground, you need an open sky.
Me: For real?
Transit worker: Yes I was Special Forces
Me: Wow.

Matt

In NYC fpr example when you get off the train and come up to the street level many times you don't know what east west uptown downtown is... I mean if you are standing on Brodaway and 42nd street and look up the block and see 43rd street as the next block than pretty much you know what your body position is. But chances are that you won't be able to see it (rain, obstruction, snow, stolen sign), or numeric streets change into names which in this case can confuse you. You can't do similar check up with the avenues becasue they are spaced to far appart. If you have a compass it's pretty much clear where you are all the time.

Matt

Was he in the SPECIAL FORCES that ride the short bus to school?

If you see him again, ask him how it is then possible to map out caves with a compass. Or, he saying because of the steel reinforcement of a subway/basement, a compass cannot be use in a manmade underground setting? Pete

No it was just plain ignorance. It had nothing to do with steel or metal in the tunels. Maybe his knowledge was based on fake assumptions or maybe he was thinking of GPS systems but in general he stated that compasses don't work underground (period). Reason compass came up in the conversation was because I had to specify location of the patient on the report so I needed to write "south/north/east/west corner of the platform".

Matt