7.1 — Lost: The First Decision

Most people who get into serious trouble after becoming lost were not harmed by being lost.

They were harmed by what they did in the following twenty minutes.

The moment

You realise you do not know where you are.

And what happens next in almost everybody is a specific sequence: a jolt of alarm, then an urge to keep walking, then a conviction that the path is just ahead, then an hour of increasingly fast movement in an increasingly wrong direction.

That hour is the problem. **A person who stops at the moment of realising is typically a short distance from a known point. A person who walks for an hour is frequently kilometres away, in unfamiliar terrain, tired, and much harder to find.

STOP

The standard acronym, used in search and rescue training, and it is the whole of the first decision.

S — Stop. **Sit down. **Physically stop moving. This is the entire intervention and it is the hardest part.

T — Think. When did I last know where I was? What have I passed? How long have I been walking? What do I have with me?

O — Observe. **Look around properly. **Landmarks, the sun, the slope of the ground, water, tracks, sounds. Turn all the way round.

P — Plan. **Decide before you move. And decide whether to move at all.

Give it twenty minutes. Almost nothing gets worse in twenty minutes and almost every bad decision in this scenario is made in the first five.

Stay or move

The decision that determines everything, and there is a clear rule.

Stay if

Somebody knows where you were going and when you were due back.

This is the decisive condition. If a search will be triggered, staying put is dramatically the better option — searchers work from your intended route, and a moving person is far harder to find than a stationary one.

You are injured.

It is getting dark.

The weather is deteriorating.

You are with children or with anybody who cannot travel well.

Or you have no idea which direction to go.

Move if

Nobody knows where you are or when to expect you.

You are certain of the direction to safety and it is reachable.

Or you are in immediate danger where you are — rising water, exposure, a hazard.

And the default

For most people, in most situations, staying put is correct.

Because most people who get lost were on a known route, told somebody, and will be missed.

**The instinct is to walk. The evidence says stay.

If you stay

Four priorities, in the order of 1.2's rule of threes.

Shelter and warmth first (7.2). Exposure is the fastest killer in almost every lost-person scenario, and it is faster than most people expect — hours rather than days.

Make yourself findable (7.3). Bright, high, open, noisy.

Water, once shelter is handled.

And do not wander to look around and lose your spot. If you must explore, mark your route so you can return.

Then wait. Which is psychologically the hardest part and it is the correct action.

If you move

Five rules.

Mark your route. **Arrows of stones, broken branches, cairns, marks on trees. So you can return, and so searchers can follow.

Leave a note where you were, if you have anything to write with and on. **Time, direction, condition, intentions. This is enormously valuable to searchers.

Move slowly and deliberately. Injuries in unfamiliar terrain are what convert a manageable situation into a serious one, and haste causes them.

Follow water downhill (7.4). **Streams join rivers, rivers lead to people. This is the single most reliable navigation rule without instruments and it is what got Juliane Koepcke out of the Amazon (1.5).

And travel in daylight only. Stop with enough light to build shelter.

The psychology

Because the mental part is what actually decides outcomes (1.5).

Accept the situation fast. The people who do worst spend hours in outrage and disbelief.

Do the next small thing. **Gather wood. Improve the shelter. Find water. A person with a task is not a person waiting.

Do not spiral about the consequences. **The missed meeting, the worry you are causing, the cost. None of it is workable now.

And expect the evening to be the worst. **Almost everybody reports the first night as the low point. It passes.

Children

Different rules, and worth knowing if you have any.

Teach a lost child: stay where you are, hug a tree, and make noise.

Children hide from searchers. This is well documented and it is counter-intuitive: frightened children hide from strangers calling their name, including from rescuers.

So the instruction has to be explicit: if you are lost, people will come looking for you and you should shout back at them, even if you do not know them.

And give them a whistle when you go anywhere wild. It is the single most effective thing, it costs almost nothing, and children who cannot shout for long can blow one for hours.

Before you go anywhere

Six things, and the first is worth more than the rest combined.

Tell somebody: where you are going, your route, and when you will be back.

And agree what they should do if you are not back — including a time at which they call for help.

Take: water, a warm layer, something waterproof, a torch, a whistle, a lighter, and food.

Take a paper map, or at minimum look at one and know the general shape of the terrain — which river, which ridge, which direction the road is.

Download offline maps.

Keep the phone charged and in airplane mode to preserve battery, checking periodically for signal.

And know that a phone with no signal can still give you a GPS position, which is worth recording periodically.

What to do with this page

Stop, Think, Observe, Plan. **Sit down for twenty minutes. It is the whole first decision.

If somebody knows where you were going, stay put. That is the default and the instinct is wrong.

Mark your route if you move, and leave a note where you were.

Teach children to stay put and shout at strangers.

And tell somebody your route and your return time. It is the single thing that converts a serious situation into an inconvenience.

Next: 7.2 — water, shelter and warmth, in the order that keeps people alive.