There are a lot of people who have not done the "stay where you are and await rescue" and as a result have self-rescued without any fuss, and so we never hear about them. In my view it is a hard judgement call. How to tell when you are so stuffed that you need external help. Which is partly what the STOP is about - sometimes the result of that assessment will be that you find things aren't so bad and you can self-rescue. But you do need to stop and think it through and form a credible plan, and not just continue blindly or stop blindly.