Originally Posted By: hikermor
Your points are well taken, but I suspect the reason for the three minute delay would be to account for the real world delay between the bite and even a fairly immediate first aid response.

I don't go walking down a trail, with my FAK in my hand. Three minutes sounds about right for the time it would take to size up the situation, dig out material, and get to work.

I don't know. 3 minutes is a pretty long time. You get bit, freak out, run down the trail. Drop your bag, dig out the kit, drop your pants (or whatever) and start working that kit. Believe me, you'd be pretty motivated to move quick.

In EMS we have to have an AED shocking an arrest patinet in 90 seconds. that means arriving, assessing, pulling out the machine, turning it on, applying pads, charging and zap. it takes about 1 minute typically. I bet that most people would easily hit 90-120 seconds.

So I agree, 3 minutes should be the upper limits of the device. lets see a study with 30 sec, 1 min, 2 min and 3 min. Heck, I might do that in a few years!