The death of CNet editor James Kim after he and his family were stranded for 9+ days (Kim was found 11+ days after the stranding, dead) in a remote area of Oregon has many people talking about survival tips.
A lot of commentary from "armchair experts" is critical of his decision to leave his vehicle, or questions about "didn't he have a cellphone" or "why didn't he have a
GPS".
You can read many of the comments
here
I've posted some replies but they haven't displayed on Anderson Cooper's blog yet. Namely -- apparently many people don't travel very far afield to realize cellphone coverage is NOT ubiquitous and is in fact very spotty, even in areas where you would anticipate coverage (eg. many of our Texas State Parks!). Also,
GPS's are great, and while I do think it certainly wouldn't have hurt Kim's survival chances (he might have turned back to the car sooner, realizing the terrain and/or distance was prohibitive by following the drainage), it's erroneous also to think it would have been the savior.
GPS works best with a clear view of the sky... in ravines, canyons and any forested areas, getting a decent
GPS signal is difficult at best, impossible at worst. Further, in freezing or below freezing temperatures, batteries do not perform at all well and so even if he had a
GPS unit when he set out on foot, it would have not been as useful in the conditions he was in as it would be in, say, Texas on a 90 degree summer day. (We keep our batteries in our pockets when camping or hiking in freezing or near freezing temperatures, putting the batteries in our units only when necessary so they're warmer and thus provide a better/longer charge than they do when ice cold. Works with camera batteries, and others, as well.)
There's a lot of armchair "quarterbacking" and I wanted to solicit comments, either about Kim's death, the comments about it (linked earlier in this post), or survival tips in general.
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