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So, what do we as a community take from this?

It is always easy to 'monday morning quarterback'

and find fault.

A public figure dies from a gunshot wound and his family become

gun control advocates. A movie star's child contracts a

rare 'orphan disease' and they become spokespersons.

How many here are active in orienteering? Think maybe a 17 y/o

with even the rudiments of that activity would get lost?

We offer Driver's Ed in school, say no to drugs and countless

programmes to give the next generation a fighting chance on our

streets. But 'where the sidewalk ends' seems to be society's

boundary of responsibility too.


That was basically my point. The problem with our society is that people don't take responsibility for their actions. Anyone that ventures out into the wild does so at their own risk. You can't just fool around in the bush expecting to call 911 and get rescued the moment anything goes wrong. And at 17, I think a person ought to be mature enough to understand the risk. So we're back to PPPPPP.

What can we do? I'm no survival expert by any means but I've tried to share what I know with my friends and hiking buddies. I've recommended this website often in the past and introduced a fair number of people to good survival documentaries like Ray Mears and Les Stroud. I have no problem borrowing any book from my fairly sizeable survival library to people I trust. Heck, I might write my own book one day, aimed exactly at the general public/a.k.a. city folks. smile

But at the end of the day, preparation is still down to the individual. The problem is, some people see the outdoors as a playground where they can get away from the society and do whatever they want. Even if it means getting drunk, running around the woods stoned out of their mind, playing Rambo or attempting to climb a major mountain peek in the toughest winter wearing light hiking shoes and a pair of jeans. Until people sober up, accidents will happen - accidents that could easily be avoided with just a little common sense.