which US environment do most people have to use surival skills, I say northeast woods

[hunter63]

I can recall an episode where Les was using a boat flare to start a fire...like 3 dud's....then blew the tinder every where?

[WalkingTree]

People not stopping...isn't that what they made paintball guns for?

[hunter63]

People not stopping...isn't that what they made paintball guns for?

No,.... paintball guns are for anyone you see texting and driving.
See a car with a lots of splotches....avoid at all costs.

[WalkingTree]

In the zombie apocalypse, I want a flare gun though. Always wanted a car full of no-goods to mess with me, so I could fire the flare gun into their car. A couple of shots even. That'll fix 'em.

[Rick]

My luck their window would be rolled up and the flare would bounce right back into my lap.

[hunter63]

That's why the put electric windows in the truck...duh..But yeah gotta aim good.

[kyratshooter]

You shoot at the front window with a slow moving projectile like a flare and it will most likely wind up going in the back window.

Something about Einsteins theory or some such thing. Two moving vehicles with a space between them. You have to lead them like you were wing shooting.

Fast moving projectile like a bullet or shotgun charge not so much, unless the distance is increased.

[hunter63]

Well, I do know the a cherry bomb(m80)...... shot from a slingshot,..... will have 5 people in the car,.... climb up on the driver, to get away from it,..... when it hits the door jam instead of going out the window.
And blows a hole in the front seat cover......of a '58 Buick.

Loud too.
Just sayin'.

[kyratshooter]

Like a good Google addict I went to work and found the answer to the original query, and it was not easy!

It seems that the numbers from most sources are pure guess work and the official sites of the state SAR teams are not available on the web. I did find that in one year there were over 500 SAR incidents in just LA county as compared to the entire state of New Your having just over 200 incidents. That could just reflect on the intelligence level in the area of the subjects involved.

But there is one guy who is a professional civilian SAR trainer and consultant that has actually run the numbers for several years. He compiled the stats as an aid in finding lost people and when he is called they expect him to find something. He started compiling number as an aid to finding lost dementia patients; How far would the average 70 year old male/female walk, was he from the area, was there river, railroad, shopping mall nearby, were their dogs in the area and all the other factors that would determine which direction a dementia patient would walk, and how far.

He soon started compiling information on general outdoor activities, especially hiking. It seems hikers are a rather dim group on the average.

http://www.backpacker.com/survival/p...obert-koester/

Looking at the stats he claims the most lost souls are haunting the canyons and mountains of the western states. A lesser number the mountains of the east and the midwest and plains states not so much due to being able to see home from the woods.

The big shock was in the other numbers associated with the stats.

1. 58% were solo hikers 48% male. It seems that two heads are actually better than one and your chances of avoiding incident increase if one of the heads is owned by a female.

2. Most had no survival gear, zero gear! Now remember that hikers have a different attitude about gear then us general outdoorsmen. They have a very strict "10 essentials" and I doubt it would match up with most of us "survival oriented" folks since the most important item is a flashlight and in some lists knives are not recommended (you might cut your finger). http://www.backpacker.com/view/photo...als/#bp=0/img3

3. Most of the "lost" situations were initiated at a trail fork. Either the navigation skills were off wack and they decided to take the wrong fork, they had no navigation aids (map, compass, GPS or trail guide), or they simply did not notice their trail had forked and they ambled down the wrong lane.

This particular consultant advised that the best way to get "unlost" was to backtrack your steps until you realized where you were. In most cases forging ahead blindly, which is a normal male action, results in a body recover rather than a rescue. Backtracking requires an admission that you did something wrong and we men just can not have that!

The article is from USA Today by way of Backpacker Magazine and not some radical fringe blogspot ans they do a pretty good job when covering this type stuff. I found it a very entertaining read on this cold cloudy day.

[finallyME]

You would be shocked (maybe not) at how many hikers I have seen that only have a water bottle with them, and a small one at that. The 10 essentials would be 9 items more than they carry.

I trained my scouts to be very vigilant in looking for forks in the road, and to stop when they got to one and wait for the rest of the group. I told them that we will be lost together.

Most people don't realize that cell phones don't work in the mountains, even worse in the canyons.

Of course, I would expect that the "environment" that most need survival skills in is the big city.

[Rick]

When my wife and I hiked Red Canyon in Idaho (which is a long freakin way up by the way) on the way back down we passed two couples that had no water (as in 0). My wife and I have offed 1.5 quarts each and I was waiting to get back down to a small stream to fill up. I told both couples they needed to turn around and go back. Neither did.

[WalkingTree]

Uh-oh. Err...mmm...