the Kims used a route recommended by both Mapquest and Yahoo!Maps
Yahoo:posted by scrump at 2:28 PM on December 6, 2006
When using any driving directions or map, it’s a good idea to do a reality check and make sure the road still exists, watch out for construction, and follow all traffic safety precautions. This is only to be used as an aid in planning.
MapQuest:
These directions are informational only. No representation is made or warranty given as to their content, road conditions or route usability or expeditiousness. User assumes all risk of use. MapQuest and its suppliers assume no responsibility for any loss or delay resulting from such use.
I'm generally pretty calm and logical in crisis situations, but after nine days stranded with minimal heat and water, in a state of extreme stress and growing panic and weakness? I'd be a blithering idiot.At the risk of pounding a dead horse into glue, not if you had sufficient water and food. Even if you only had a week's worth, you could stretch it to two weeks and nourish yourself enough to keep your mental faculties alert.
Like me, you're a man who has done rescues, lived in wild areas and knows what it takes to make your way in that environment and protect those you love.Before this starts turning into a beer commercial with a John Mellencamp soundtrack, allow me to disavow any such portrayal.
"In each episode of 'Man vs. Wild' Bear [Grylls] strands himself in popular wilderness destinations where tourists often find themselves lost or in danger. As he finds his way back to civilization, he demonstrates local survival techniques..."*He gives many valuable survival tips on the series' website.
"James Kim, the San Francisco man who has been alone in the Oregon wilderness since Saturday, has been leaving clothing and bits of maps as a trail for searchers to track, authorities said today.posted by ericb at 4:34 PM on December 6, 2006
'Little signs are being left by James,' said Lt. Gregg Hastings of the Oregon State Police. Various items, including a wool sock, a girl's skirt and part of an Oregon state map, have been found by crews lowered into the canyon where Kim is believed to have walked after leaving his wife and two children to get help.
The items, Josephine County Undersheriff Brian Anderson said, were 'laid out in a well-defined area' as if in patterns for someone to follow along."
"Viewers see him attempting dangerous maneuvers while describing the reasons for his choices, as well as the proper technique for achieving success. His actions are never rash, though at times he takes risks to demonstrate something particularly interesting....With only a few basic instruments, Grylls demonstrates survival techniques and teaches skills like finding water in the desert, climbing out of quicksand, catching fish without a pole, and fighting hypothermia after falling into a frozen lake.Enough on whether or not either television program is worthy or realistic.
The idea is to provide help to adventure tourists who might find themselves stranded in inhospitable circumstances and would otherwise die or create a search-and-rescue nightmare. Throughout Grylls' adventures, he relates recent real-life tragedies of people stuck in similar situations.
He even subjects himself to unnecessary pain to demonstrate a technique, like when he jumps into an icy lake to show viewers how to escape the frosty waters (breathe slowly, exit where you entered, take off your wet clothes asap).
Throughout each gnarly adventure, Grylls is able to narrate his experience surprisingly well. While in the lake, he treads water for a bit while describing the most common reasons people die when they fall into freezing water. If it weren't impossible to stage some of the show's scenarios, it would be hard to believe that Grylls didn't get frequent help from his production crew. But our fearless host did survive three years in the British Special Forces, where he broke his back and lived to scale Mount Everest."
"In the episode I filmed with Bear I came to like him as a person. He is genuine, tough and smart. After that episode we communicated many times and he assurred me that he'd gotten control over the content. I told him I hoped so as the stuff in the first episode was damaging his reputation. In fact I had seen many discussions in the various forums about how dangerous the material was and how fake and contrived the show was.
I TIVO'd the desert show and the "Jungle show". With all due respect to Bear, this is the most dangerous program on TV."
"Searchers told NBC News that they located Kim on Tuesday and at one point they were able to make direct contact with him. They explored ways to lower a medic to the area, they said, but it was not immediately clear whether that attempt ultimately failed or was too late to save Kim."
The original impetus for the program in the U.S. was the loss of Congressmen Hale Boggs (D-LA) and Nick Begich (D-AK) in the Alaskan wilderness on October 16, 1972. A massive search effort failed to locate them. The result was a U.S. law mandating that all aircraft carry an emergency locator transmitter.Hey mandatory pilot activated beacons on car, what a concept ah ?
Life is risky, man, doesn't matter what kind of foolish stuff you don't do. I would think that a life spent actively avoiding risk would be one relatively dull.There is a profound difference between taking a calculated risk and engaging in foolhardiness.
"A San Francisco man who got stranded with his family in the snowy wilderness had taken a wrong turn in the car down a logging road that is normally blocked by a gate, but vandals had cut the lock, authorities said Friday....The gate had been locked for the winter Nov. 1, after the end of deer hunting season, so that 'people don't mistakenly go down that road,' said Patty Burel, spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Land Management."posted by ericb at 8:42 PM on December 8, 2006
« Older Firefox really is amazingly extendable, but perhap... | Baker to the rescue... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by peep at 1:17 PM on December 6, 2006