As I read this thread and learn of the attitudes people have towards SAR operations, I can't help but wonder about two things:

1. Won't ethics play a big part at the moment we have to decide whether to rescue someone? What I mean is this: even if we are aware that someone is in over his head, the moment he calls for help because his life is in jeopardy, are we going to be able to resist the urge to save a fellow human being? To simplify this matter, some stupid guy who doesn't know how to swim jumps into the pool, much against our advice. He begins to drown. Do we save him? Or do we say, see, we told you so? I think as human beings we have been built to feel a great deal of pressure to save one another, and for us this feels like a matter of right and wrong.

Or is this a matter of, if you pay for it we'll gladly do the SAR, even putting ourselves at a reasonable amount of risk?

2. Some people are beginning to suggest this reckless spirit of adventure may be what set modern humans apart from other hominids:

Quote:
From the archeological record, it's inferred that Neanderthals evolved in Europe or western Asia and spread out from there, stopping when they reached water or some other significant obstacle. (During the ice ages, sea levels were a lot lower than they are now, so there was no English Channel to cross.) This is one of the most basic ways modern humans differ from Neanderthals and, in Pääbo's view, also one of the most intriguing. By about forty-five thousand years ago, modern humans had already reached Australia, a journey that, even mid-ice age, meant crossing open water. Archaic humans like Homo erectus "spread like many other mammals in the Old World," Pääbo told me. "They never came to Madagascar, never to Australia. Neither did Neanderthals. It's only fully modern humans who start this thing of venturing out on the ocean where you don't see land. Part of that is technology, of course; you have to have ships to do it. But there is also, I like to think or say, some madness there. You know? How many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you found Easter Island? I mean, it’s ridiculous. And why do you do that? Is it for the glory? For immortality? For curiosity? And now we go to Mars. We never stop."


An article (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technolog...hominids/42117/) quoting from the New Yorker.

Isn't this just the same thing as those hikers who, relying on little more than a GPS, etc., get themselves into trouble?

Or I suppose there is a difference between someone who takes the effort to acquire all the knowledge and tools before setting out on a dangerous journey (e.g., today's astronauts) vs. someone who decides to take a detour while driving through an uninhabited part.

Da Bing