Running into a problem - How do I teach someone that its good to be prepared before going out in the woods? The problem is no one expects it to happen to them - after all, they've hunted/ canoed/ hiked mt. baldy/ spelunked/gone to the ruins/ sailed the cliffs -- dozens of times before and they've never gotten hurt/ delayed/ lost...

Excellent question. I don't have an answer, but I've run into similar problems with trying to get employees to exercise "situational awareness" when entering and leaving our bank. They don't think it can happen to them. I would relate war stories of the less than bright things I've seen, but it might hijack your thread and no one would believe them anyway.

I really would like to have some ideas on how to get people to take prep seriously.

I've come to the conclusion that until something really bad does happen, or almost happen, people are so safe today that they can't really accept that anything bad will happen to them. The only recourse we have found is something along the lines of "do it this way all the time with these precautions or you can/will be fired." It still doesn't solve the problem, but maybe takes the edge off a bit.

the start of our school year in Florida coincides with hurricane season, and if a convenient storm was not available, I gave two "paper" labs on hurricane preparedness... one on making a plan and identifying and locating important supplies around the home (with some tips)

the other was to design a 72hour "go bucket", based on (2) 5gal buckets... one for supplies, the second for food and water..if it couldn't fit in the bucket, it couldn't go...

the preliminary classroom prep was to introduce two decision making process... the first was to explain the OODA loop for time critical emergencies...the other we used throughout the year, and may be applicable for your task ...it was introduced to us probably 15 years ago at a district inservice, and you may be aware of it

decision making using...list, cluster, and label

(1)the user free thinks without any categorization... [list] on paper a series of events or scenarios.....eg. " what problems do you forsee if a CAT 3 hurricane comes on shore with a 12' storm surge ...in the context to your home?" ... ..around 20 responses makes a good starting point

(2)overview the entire list (I would do a composite list of the entire class), and group [cluster] problems of a similar nature...eg power outage, injury, water damage etc..

(3)draw lines to the paper margin from these identified similar problems, and [label] the best name you can to your cluster groups...these would be your core focus groups

I hope this is useful to you...

Experience is a harsh teacher.

Jeanette Isabelle

This is easy. Agree to go on a weekend hike with them. Then, when they are sleeping - leave. Oh, and don't forget to take a lot of their stuff. Stay in the area and spy on them. After you get out of jail for reckless endangerment, ask them if they have learned anything in the ensuing five years.

Laugh at them. Baldy isn't exactly big and scary, since you can SEE Los Angeles most of the time. At least, that's probably their mentality.

Go hiking with him. "Twist" your ankle and really foul the hike up. Be snug and cozy in your gear. Let him/her shiver in hers. The next morning, walk out normally. Lesson proven.

Frankly, I don't think anyone with just a modicum of outdoor experience will not have had a close call or two, or will not have been close to someone else's bad experience.

I would review pertinent examples, and point out where better preparations, filing a trip plan, checking the weather report, etc., would have resulted in a better outcome. Don't expect an immediate epiphany and instant agreement with your position, but the notion of better preps will sink in if they are even a tiny bit rational.

I remember when I was a young sprout, I ran across the annual publications of Accidents in American Mountaineering, published by the American Mountaineering Club. It gave me the notion that sooner or later it was going to be my turn in the barrel. in turn I started carrying emergency gear. And, yes, it paid off.

I disagree that going hiking and leaving your charges alone or faking twisting your ankle are a good idea. Keep it simple. Take an ace bandage and triangular bandage, and bind their arm to their side. If they're right handed, bind their right arm. Then give them an afternoon of coping with that. Or switch things up, take away their daypack, or tent, or rain gear. You should be able to build some curriculum around these scenarios - improvising shelters, striking a match / lighter and heating water. They'll get it then. If not, then paracord a 20 lb weight to the bottom of their foot, and watch them walk out. Some folks just won't get it, most should.

We have card key monitored doorways, everyone swipes their card, and standard protocol is the first person through challenges others to swipe their cards. Security will have ordinary folks follow through doorways, and when they go unchallenged for a swipe, will follow the person to their office, inform them of the policy, and the potential issues for not complying. If they don't get it, they just move up the hallway to the employee's manager. Its the secret shopper technique - if the policy is important, it requires some compliance monitoring.

Ask them if they've ever run into any kind of problem, even if it turned out okay. Ask what decisions they made turned it into a non-problem. Then extrapolate the incident by adding one or two conditions that would be likely to foul up the situation: bad weather, darkness, injury, etc, and force them to think about what they would have done then.

Then use Hikermor's suggestion: "...point out where better preparations, filing a trip plan, checking the weather report, etc., would have resulted in a better outcome."

Emphasize a few incidents where people depended entirely on luck... and point out that some of those people have still never been found... even their bodies.

Sue

Good tips. My feeling is that most SAR situations** come from day hikers in over their heads - they simply didn't think they would be out that long.


( Ok I'm ignoring lost kids and senior ' wander offs' here, but more wilderness sar seems to be day hikers or spur of the moment persons.)

The sad reality is that no one expects the worst to happen to them, however statistics show a completely different picture. This custom Google News Alert I use, auto emails me every day, news article links on the multitudes of injuries and deaths that occur in the great pursuit of the outdoors culture. There is much sobering reading there and I often use some as an example when we are out with others who may not think that they need to be prepared.

This is what I refer to as "Short Hike Syndrome". Too many people go out for what was to be a short hike then end up in survival situations that they never expected. Too often though, the end result is not pleasant...

I like the ideas of this post. A little play along can be very eye-opening.

Unfortunately, even when something does go wrong, some people will see not see the light.They'll think of it as a fluke, or the result of some stupidity of bad luck that could never happen to them. Be prepared for that.

You can't teach motivation. A student must find it on their own. Today, there is no excuse to be unmotivated about survival after the teacher lays out the reasons and while there is access to Google. If an unmotivated person is coming on a trip with me, I'll make a mental note of the weak link and plan accordingly. I'll try not to waste energy by arguing with the person or by putting the person down.

Even prepared people forget stuff. I would start with don't sweat the small stuff, meaning the 10 essentials is pretty much acknowledged as, "You are a HUGE idiot for not carrying this on you". You're saying this person is somewhat of an outdoorsman, so by reminding them they have a decent history of adventure their experience is wide but shallow, attack their level of preparedness compared to their level of experience.

Sarcasm I think would work well here. "Wow, you got a lot of experience, too bad if you get into trouble and have less prepared people with you, you're all gonna die b/c you let your ego control your gear." "Gee nice to know, you've learned nothing about being prepared while spending so much time outdoors. how do you start a fire w/o a bic?" and on and on and on.

It is hard to make people aware of the danger of being stranded in the wilderness because most people believe that it will never happen to them. Many also underrate how much there is to learn in these subjects areas. I cannot count how many people I have come across who carried compasses, but realty did not understand how to use them to travel. We are fighting complacency, a real lack of understanding of the subject matter, and a poor outdoor education system.

It is also very hard because as a society (actually two societies; USA & Canada) we underrate the teaching of wilderness training, survival training, and the need for wilderness navigation training. As a profession teaching these subjects pays quite poorly and are often ignored in curriculum development in our schools. Since there is no real system of standards and you learned very little about it in schools; maybe its not really important. TV seems to make to look easy or so dangerous that its is not worth trying.


It is a hard task to make someone aware of the chances and dangers of getting stranded in the wilderness. Everytime you travel into the wilderness however well prepared you are there is a chance of being stranded. It will happen eventually. When in doubt read Trina Jackson's Article and see how she fared when both trained and reasonably prepared.

Over the last 18 years of teaching wilderness survival and navigation my best students have always been the ones who have already been lost once. My best classes are ones that had one of these students in them, to pass on their real world experiences one on one to the other students.

I must be missing something. I just do not understand how a compass is so difficult to use.

No one taught me how. Someone did have to teach me the four directions (Never Eat Sour Watermelons), but once I learned that, the rest was easy to figure out.

Sometimes I don't even need a compass. Assuming the sun is visible and not high noon.

Jeanette Isabelle

I think compass work is simple in concept but takes a bit of learning and practice to become a useful navigation tool.

Since I was a kid in Scouts I could probably set and follow a bearing, like in a simple orienteering course (go 100 paces @ 220 degrees). But it wasn't until this year that actually understood enough to use a compass in conjunction with a map for actual backcountry navigation. To learn this, I worked my way through the Mountaineers' Wilderness Navigation book.

I just got back from a backpacking trip and it was a very rewarding experience to be able to use the compass and map to figure out exactly where we were when we were unsure of our location (we thought we were further along the trail than we actually were and I was getting concerned we'd missed a fork in the trail and were heading in the wrong direction).

While I am definitely still a beginner, I know I wouldn't have been able to do that had I not put the effort into doing that book work first.

Its not difficult to use, the trouble lies with the confusion that Mag North (the direction the compass needle points to, which itself moves in relation to the other Grid and True Geodetic Norths), Map Grid North (depends on the local map datum variation to the True Geodectic North) and True Geodetic North (which itself moves slightly due to the earth precession as it spins through space) all point in slightly different directions depending on where you are on the planet. (you can also have extremely large variations the nearer you get to 82.7°N 114.4°W in the Northern Hemisphere)

It's really all about taking actions to minimise and stop the build up of errors to stop folks heading over a cliff.

BTW you would be surprised how many folks don't know how many degrees or milliradians (derived angular military Mils) are in a complete circle. Some even use Grads for Navigation but these compasses are a little more difficult to find.

The US army manual I read back in the mid 1980s didn't know the difference between the different North's either, which was quite a shock because that made a 13-14 year old British Army Cadet a superior navigator than the majority of the folks in the US army at the time.

I'm thinking of a mini- class on a psk, { Personal survival kit} where you ( literally) lay it out on the table for them then, have the items there to build it.

< items to include, bags, matches, whistle etc>

to bring up an old topic - if I could just get students to bring a pack - or even just a basic ten kit the size of a Stephen King book...man it would be so much easier....