[HN Gopher] Men rescued from Pacific island after writing SOS in...
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Men rescued from Pacific island after writing SOS in sand
Author : hooboy
Score : 63 points
Date : 2020-08-05 00:35 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| contingencies wrote:
| What is interesting is that they set out from Puluwat[0], which
| was the site at which one of the pacific's last master navigators
| was interviewed by modern anthropologists in _We: The Navigators_
| [1]. See the _Wa_ [2] local vessel page I co-authored to front
| page featured article status on Wikipedia for more details,
| including the amazing expanse of traditional voyaging.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poluwat [1]
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/758833.We_the_Navigators [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa_(watercraft)
| kdtop wrote:
| I'm just glad Gilligan didn't run through the markings and mess
| it up!
| supernova87a wrote:
| Is it me, or does it rather instead look like they arranged tree
| branches + leaves to make the word, not dug in sand?
|
| And on another note, when you see things from an island scale,
| you can see that even at the size they drew those letters, it
| might've been missed. The world is big...
| loco5niner wrote:
| I imagine those tree branches are "in" the sand though...
| lgrebe wrote:
| Good news. Thanks for that!
| koudelka wrote:
| How often is the best earth-facing satellite imagery updated?
|
| It'd be really cool to sic handwriting recognition on it to
| continuously look for "SOS".
| jiofih wrote:
| The best ones have a turnaround of hours. I imagine it could
| get expensive quite quickly as the area to do that search would
| be absolutely massive.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Sentinel satellite data is open, I'm not sure if the resolution
| is good enough though.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| At 10m resolution and ~5day revisit time, it might be
| possible to optimize for satellite detection. Smoke is
| relatively easy to spot in satellite imagery. This may be
| one's best bet. It's also important to note that fires
| (anything hot really) is also easily detectable. 30-40m high
| burning SOS letters would be an interesting strategy.
|
| One of the things to keep in mind is that for Sentinel-2 the
| mean local solar time at the descending node is 10:30am. That
| may also help optimize at which time any specific attempts
| are made.
| p1mrx wrote:
| It would be difficult to keep text burning for days on end.
| You're probably better off writing SOS in high contrast,
| with a regular fire nearby.
| 7952 wrote:
| Planet are looking to offer multiple times per day. Although I
| think that requires the camera to be slewed and a site targeted
| rather than being able to cover the whole earth every single
| orbit.
|
| Remember that cloud cover is really common in a lot of places.
| The UK in January averages less than 2 hours per day of
| sunlight. You need enough satellites to image everywhere
| several times per day to allow for that. And even then you may
| have overcast weather for several days at a time.
| [deleted]
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Call this a freely given and viable but hard to monetize idea -
| this is a very tractable area for software and drones. Same with
| locating people in lost wilderness areas. You have a programmatic
| way to organize coverage areas, you have access to above-human
| audio and video capabilities, and it reduces the resources/time
| ratio that is critical in rescues.
|
| This was the tragic and avoidable story that convinced me this
| was possible - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/us/missing-
| hiker-geraldin...
|
| There was a limited geographical footprint and coordinated,
| modestly sized fleet of quadcopters with mics and/or thermal
| imaging could probably cover 20 square miles/day. Same couple be
| applied with optical/higher altitude drones for people lost at
| sea. You could supplement sensors with basic face/voice
| recognition in less remote settings. You could supplement with
| something like Planet in more remote/ocean settings.
|
| Does something like that exist already?
| ohazi wrote:
| The "search" part of search and rescue is a solved problem.
| There's no reason to go into the wilderness without a PLB in
| 2020.
|
| PLBs cost around $300 [1], they have five+ year batteries, and
| they don't require a subscription. If you need to use it, you
| turn it on, it grabs a GPS lock and transmits your coordinates
| for about a day, during which at least one satellite will see
| your signal and downlinks all over the planet will log your
| location. It may still take some time for rescue services to
| get to you, but finding you will no longer be the primary
| concern.
|
| If $300 is still too much, you can usually rent or borrow one
| for the duration of your trip. Just throw one in your backpack
| and consider yourself lucky if you never end up needing it.
|
| The nature of emergencies means you don't know what you're
| going to run into. You could be lost, you could have a broken
| leg, you could have been bitten by something lethal, you could
| be treading water 100 miles offshore. You could have provisions
| for a month, or you could need a medevac ASAP.
|
| If you actually have an emergency, do you want to sit around
| for a week and hope that you get noticed, or do you want rescue
| services all over the planet to have your exact coordinates
| within the hour?
|
| Ten years ago these might have been newfangled novelty gadgets,
| but today they really should be considered required safety
| equipment if you're going into an area that's remote, or where
| there's a real possibility of veering off course. If you're
| sailing a boat or flying an airplane, they're usually legally
| required now too. They may not be mandated for hikers or
| backpackers, but don't be an idiot -- you need to have one.
|
| Rescue services don't look for lines in the sand or messages in
| bottles anymore. The world spent over a billion dollars to get
| the Cospas-Sarsat program up and running, and the expected
| method for signaling distress in 2020 is by satellite. You
| should have the equipment to make a distress call if you're
| going to be in a position where it may be necessary.
|
| Don't needlessly make things harder on yourself and on rescue
| workers by thinking that it's manlier to flash a mirror at an
| airplane. That can be your backup method, but not your primary.
|
| [1] https://www.acrartex.com/products/resqlink-400
| kingnothing wrote:
| If you use a PLB to get rescued, do you then owe a big check
| to the rescuing organization like when you call for an
| ambulance in the USA?
| floatrock wrote:
| Yes, especially if the service calls a helicopter.
|
| The criticism against these is they've become so common
| that people either get overconfident and hike out beyond
| their abilities, or people call for help on minor issues
| like they didn't pack enough water or they get a headache.
| ohazi wrote:
| If the rescuing organization is going to ask you to pay for
| your helicopter flight, they're probably going to ask
| regardless of whether they got your location from a PLB
| ping or from "SOS" drawn in the sand.
|
| If you _don 't_ use a PLB, you better hope they don't try
| to charge you for the _search_ flights as well, which don
| 't need to happen if you use a PLB.
|
| But yeah, as the sibling comment mentioned, you'd better be
| serious if you decide to press the button. You're not
| summoning a taxi.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I'm not trying to take this discussion in a bad direction,
| but we're seeing a society-wide failure in the US to wear
| small pieces of cloth over our face to reduce the
| transmission of a serious illness. People frequently fail to
| prepare adequately even when given the means and opportunity.
| Search and rescue scenarios are not always for people that
| planned around getting lost and have a locator beacons on
| their person. I agree, if everyone had one, it would be ideal
| and would almost completely eliminate the need for what I
| described.
| ohazi wrote:
| I'm trying to fight the perception that PLBs are expensive
| specialty gadgets meant for professional explorers [1].
|
| They should be considered as basic and as necessary as a
| life vest, seat belt, or bike helmet. You should not be
| backpacking on the Appalachian trail without one.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065435
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Somehow I prefer this solution than ubiquitous drones with
| superior audiovisual capabilities everywhere and especially
| in the most remote regions of the planet.
| Alupis wrote:
| Or... a dude in a helicopter with FLIR? Sometimes, low tech is
| best, honestly.
|
| Of course they already have that. The problem isn't coverage
| usually, it's density of the terrain features and vegetation,
| and an unknown search radius in some cases.
|
| That, and unprepared people with no way to signal a search
| vehicle if one comes near. That's a human problem though, not a
| tech problem.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Sure. It's the unknown search radius, availability of pilots,
| human factors, as well as the greater ability of a drone to
| self (or with human intervention) track in to greater
| resolution that makes me wonder if this is doable. Get the
| helicopter with a flir camera, but also send out 50
| quadcopters or uavs as a force multiplier. If there is some
| sort of interesting infrared or acoustic signature at a site,
| just log it with GPS coordinates for human follow up.
| Alupis wrote:
| > Get the helicopter with a flir camera, but also send out
| 50 quadcopters or uavs as a force multiplier.
|
| You're going to have to contend with the disruption of 50
| quadcopters barreling their way through natural wild
| habitat, foilage and more without disturbing all of the
| animals that live there. Or simply convince people that is
| a worth-while trade-off for saving unprepared skiiers that
| went off trail and down the wrong side of a mountain
| against all warnings...
|
| That aside, I don't think there's much utility there. A
| large aerial drone like a Predator or something, ya that
| might be a big help (very long loiter times, powerful
| imaging equipment, etc). But you wouldn't need 50 of those,
| and the same difficulties will be present (body heat can
| only show on FLIR if it's not blocked by layers of foilage,
| etc). But... then you'll have to convince people it's not a
| "militarization" of rescue services!
| closeparen wrote:
| I don't think there is any such principle as "if rescuing
| the human might disturb some animals, just let him die."
| leesalminen wrote:
| Seriously. That's a really extreme position to take.
| Saving a human's life clearly and objectively outweighs
| temporarily disturbing wild animals with increased noise.
| Is this seriously even a debate?
| Alupis wrote:
| Tough choices have to be made in Rescue teams all the
| time. Another comment pointed out above that SAR teams
| routinely abandon searches when it becomes too hazardous.
| Trading one or more human lives for another isn't worth
| it in many cases.
|
| We do value human life more than animals. This is non-
| debatable for sure.
|
| However, at some point the costs of pursuing a rescue
| might be outweighed by other factors - one of which might
| be destruction of wild habitat and/or animals.
|
| Like mentioned, we could drain lakes to find lost
| boaters, but we don't. We could cut down forests to find
| lost hikers, but we don't. There is some line we won't
| cross - so we have to find it and debate that particular
| point if we want to introduce potentially disruptive
| technology into natural habitats.
|
| As an aside - it pains me inside to hear stories like
| this[1]. A rescue (not the type we're discussing, but
| still applies), caused 100% by human negligence. The
| result? The gorilla was shot dead... for... being a
| gorilla. Was that fair or humane?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Harambe
| hluska wrote:
| I've got to compliment you. This is one of the better
| conversations that I've had online in a very long time.
| You're a big part of why this has been so enjoyable.
| Thanks for the fun and for raising so many good points.
|
| I was a lot more certain before I started reading you and
| now I'm not sure. Big respect and thanks again.
|
| If you're interested, here's an absolute nightmare
| scenario that actually happened. People were completely
| unprepared for what they were walking into. It had every
| chance to end in tragedy, but somehow it worked out okay.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/missing-
| chil...
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I will push back on you a bit there. Most people can only
| cover a couple of dozen miles a day, depending on the
| person and the terrain. A lot of the time, they realize
| they are lost and will yell or try to make themselves
| found. Maybe a high foliage environment would be a better
| target for directional mics / acoustics.
|
| I think the search and rescue efforts as they stand are
| pretty disruptive (helicopters, teams covering grids) so
| I don't think this is incrementally much worse.
|
| The "unprepared skiiers" (or hikers, sailors) you mention
| are someone's child and often someone's parent. They are
| loved and mourned, and it's a bit easier to get lost than
| is generally appreciated.
|
| A sea rescue is a different ball of wax than a forest
| rescue, and I was freely mixing both situations. In the
| sea setting, Plant Labs or a aerial drone like a predator
| (like commercializing existing military tech, eg, GPS) is
| more appropriate, perhaps.
|
| The biggest obstacle here is staging these for use and
| being available in a timely manner, on the order of
| hours.
| Alupis wrote:
| > Maybe a high foliage environment would be a better
| target for directional mics / acoustics.
|
| I don't think this works as well as you might hope. When
| in dense foliage, it's difficult to hear sounds that are
| not that far away. It's a fantastic noise insulator. For
| this reason, survival classes usually teach signalling
| with reflective surfaces, like mirrors, watch faces,
| metal object/knives, etc. If you can sweep a helicopter
| with a reflection several times, they'll notice and
| rightfully think it's man-made. Plus, you can't hear
| someone screaming over a helicopter anyway.
|
| > I think the search and rescue efforts as they stand are
| pretty disruptive (helicopters, teams covering grids) so
| I don't thin this is incrementally worse.
|
| Certainly they are, but I do think drones close to the
| ground would be incredibly more disruptive, and
| potentially dangerous to curious wildlife.
|
| > The "unprepared skiiers" you mention are someone's
| child (and often someone's parent).
|
| You are not wrong. I think I was getting at, that most
| rescues are unglamorous, and usually caused by sheer
| stupidity of the people that were lost. Boats running out
| of fuel because they didn't prepare properly, or the
| skier example of ignoring all warnings, etc. It's not
| often that people were prepared, and the rock beneath
| their feet gave-way and now they're trapped.
|
| Yes, we have to rescue stupid people too, but I think we
| should weigh the external costs to the environment when
| doing so. We wouldn't drain a lake to find a missing
| person. Maybe that's not a fair comparison? I don't
| know... but I do know people went outdoors to experience
| nature, so we shouldn't destroy it trying to save people
| either.
|
| I guess, in short, you can make this scheme work, but I
| don't think it'll add tangible benefits to rescues, and
| it might actually be more effort to manage and operate,
| which could suck resources away from actual "boots on the
| ground/in the sky".
| hluska wrote:
| These are good points too. I like the idea of being able
| to deploy drones into areas where weather/conditions
| expose search and rescue teams to immense personal risks.
|
| I know so little about boats or the ocean that I'm
| nowhere near qualified to even have an opinion. But I
| wonder about applications in mountain ranges where highly
| experienced climbers run into constantly shifting weather
| or unpredictable avalanche threats. At some point, search
| and rescue techs have to call off searches because the
| conditions that lead to the original disaster threaten to
| lead them into the very same kind of disaster.
|
| Programmatically, that's a very difficult problem and I
| can see many problems with solving it in any sort of
| efficient way. But armed with some education about good
| emergency beacons and ways to make your team visible to
| drone rescuers, I think there's something there.
|
| The crap part of search and rescue is that teams tend to
| go out to rescue anyone who needs it. There was an
| incident near Calgary several years ago when a man
| decided to go for a hike but didn't have enough
| experience in the mountains to realize that getting down
| is significantly more difficult than climbing up. He
| didn't survive that mistake and a SAR team found him
| without incident. But had weather conditions been any
| different, it's sad to think that those skilled, loving
| people could have needed their own rescue while trying to
| find someone whose lack of experience lead to a personal
| disaster...
| hluska wrote:
| I agree with what you're saying and I'll add another
| point in your favour.
|
| At points, SAR teams have to make really difficult
| choices. Consider rescue operations in mountain ranges.
| Search and rescue teams have to contend with the same
| kinds of conditions that often lead extremely
| experienced, skilled teams to disaster. Ground teams, for
| example, have to deal with avalanche risks. Air teams
| have to deal with constantly shifting weather patterns.
| There's a point when they have to call off searches as
| it's often not worth sacrificing their own lives to find
| people who went into ranges on their own volition, got
| lost, ran into bad weather or got diverted, stranded (or
| worse) due to avalanches.
|
| A drone based rescue operation takes that extra risk of
| death away.
|
| Programmatically though, that leads to all sorts of other
| problems. One sad fact of mountain ranges is that while
| most climbers practice excellent hygiene and etiquette,
| there are others who leave ropes, gear and debris behind.
|
| But combined with education on good disaster beacons and
| ways to make your team highly visible to computers, I
| think you're onto something.
|
| This is an excellent idea and if I had solved the money
| problem, I'd take it and run. Alas, I haven't so I hope
| someone else sees this idea and goes with it. It sounds
| like something that SAR communities would be interested
| in. Depending on how interested you are in a follow up,
| it might be worth putting this concept forward to groups
| like the Alpine Club of Canada or any of the communities
| where SAR technicians hang out.
|
| Good idea friend and I like how you articulated it!! Good
| luck!!!
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| > _Or... a dude in a helicopter with FLIR?_
|
| Just FYI, in California CHP provides this capability to many
| areas free of charge, if requested by the county in charge.
| And CHP's pilots are very, very good.
| SiVal wrote:
| I'd like to see all phones and phone towers fitted with an
| emergency ping ability and an emergency ping protocol, since
| almost everyone carries a phone these days.
|
| If you needed help, you'd enter a text describing your
| situation (a default text would be used if you could only click
| a "HELP!" button), put the phone in a special mode that would
| shut everything down to conserve battery power but would send
| out a stronger-than-usual radio "ping" every 60 seconds or so
| (depending on battery). To save energy, the ping would not
| include the text. The repeated pings would be optimized to just
| shout into the ether, to get attention from the greatest
| distance possible.
|
| Any receiver would recognize that it was an emergency ping and
| could respond with a protocol response ping that requested more
| info. The response would be sent at a predefined time delay and
| frequency that would be determined by the outgoing request ping
| that had been received so the phone would only have to listen
| to one frequency and for a brief time to save battery. The
| phone could rotate its outgoing pings to different frequencies
| but would always know when and at what frequency to listen for
| a response based on the outgoing ping it sent.
|
| When it got a response from a tower, and only at that point,
| the phone would expend extra energy to transmit its location,
| the text, battery status, etc.
|
| Based on various factors, the tower would schedule future
| transmissions and automate most of the data exchange to
| conserve the phone's power, would notify responders, and would
| tell the phone to notify its owner that help was being sent.
|
| You could then put this emergency ping protocol into search and
| rescue aircraft and drones with mesh network abilities.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Cellular coverage is amazing and always improving but the
| exact areas that are problematic/have gaps are more likely to
| be search and rescue locations. Further, people don't always
| stay put after a device runs out of power, and it can't be
| assumed everyone is carrying a device on a cellular network
| (particularly children).
| floatrock wrote:
| I've heard of ski resorts using stringray-like devices to
| locate avalanche victims.
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| This does not work well in practice, yet.
|
| There is a lot of interest already in using both off-the-shelf
| and more purpose-built drone technologies in search and rescue.
| They currently have too many limitations: they cannot navigate
| complex tree canopies close enough to the ground to provide
| reliable visual contact with subjects; their flight time is so
| limited that deployment and management is a real pain for large
| search areas; and if they aren't fully automated then you get
| the same signal problems with your remote that we have with our
| much more powerful radios with the added benefit of extremely
| powerful repeaters scattered on nearby hills.
|
| This isn't to say they can't be _a_ resource in SAR. Alameda
| County brought out a brilliant array of UAV equipment after the
| Camp Fire and were able to survey large portions of the burned
| town of Paradise and then process the imagery down to almost 1
| cm resolution in their IC trailer. It really was some next-gen
| stuff and they did it way faster than the ground pounders could
| survey the same area. Down in the southwest, in specific types
| of terrain, drones are being used to quickly survey some
| popular holes that hikers find their way into. And, a drone
| scouted an orchard and found a lost subject there about a year
| ago.
|
| But you have to weigh those successes against the much larger
| number of cases where people with hundreds of hours of
| experience can still very nearly step on top of a nonresponsive
| subject without seeing them. Finding lost people is hard, and
| many of the failures to find lost people have more to do with
| the problems of getting bad information into IC, or searching
| the wrong area, or the subject being in an inaccessible area,
| or the lost person's remains getting quickly predated by local
| wildlife.
|
| Thermal imaging likewise just does not work the way that people
| think it does. It doesn't work in cold environments like the
| Sierra in winter (western or eastern), because people are
| typically wearing insulated clothing and the entire area around
| them is a gigantic heat sink. It also doesn't work in very warm
| environments or in heavily vegetated environments or rocky
| environments with sunlight -- rocks absorb and re-radiate heat
| and so do plants.
|
| I've had this conversation a few times with different
| technologists. What we _need_ is a balloon that we can put up
| with a big ol ' repeater on it. That would provide a lot more
| immediate benefit for search operations. But, it's not sexy, so
| nobody's as interested as they are in trying to fly quadcopters
| over impossible terrain 20 minutes at a time.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Thanks for the informative reply. Your point about _" What we
| need is a balloon that we can put up with a big ol' repeater
| on it"_ is particularly brilliant and I hope the right people
| are reading.
| nwallin wrote:
| I used to be an imagery analyst. You're spot on about
| infrared imaging. Normal dirt, rocks, and plants show more
| contrast than human vs environment. The only way to tell that
| the blur you're looking at is a person is if they start
| moving, and you recognize it's a human by the motion, not by
| the shape.
|
| When I was an E-3, I had a three star general ask me if the
| image I was analyzing was a picture of a MiG-29 Fulcrum. I
| had to explain to him no, sir, it's a pickup truck. Probably
| a Hilux.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Well, there are just personal locator beacons which you can
| rent and tell rescue personnel exactly where you are if you
| need a rescue.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Satellite phones with this capability are remarkably cheap
| for anyone who's undertaking activities that might call for
| this.
|
| Contracts typically have a call centre able to dispatch
| relevant local authorities wherever you are.
| Razengan wrote:
| What if you lose them or they fail to work?
| tapatio wrote:
| Carry a backup?
| ghaff wrote:
| Then you're in the same place as if you didn't have one and
| you're hopefully not making yourself utterly dependent on
| them.
| Razengan wrote:
| Then it's not really the same thing as the GP's comment
| was taking about: A service that looks for you and SOS
| signals which can be constructed at the distress site
| without depending on any equipment you had before you
| were stranded.
| vosper wrote:
| They're not even expensive to buy. I picked one up for a few
| hundred dollars for hiking. I believe it's good for 10 years,
| until the battery needs replacing.
|
| I don't even do particularly intense hikes, usually not even
| overnight, but I read a few stories and realised how easy it
| is to end up in a situation where you need one. You just have
| to slip over and land badly, that's all it takes.
|
| Or maybe it won't be me, but someone else on the trail who
| needs help.
| Alupis wrote:
| The history of humans, traveling totally unprepared into
| harsh environmental conditions, thinking they'll just
| "Rambo" their way through, is stunning.
|
| The "Into the Wild" bus comes to mind[1]. So many people
| died every year, attempting to forge rivers unprepared, and
| brave the harsh Alaskan elements, that they had to remove
| this bus! It wasn't enough that people died every year, and
| that most of them had practically zero harsh environment
| experience...
|
| Nature will kill you every chance it gets. Be prepared, or
| don't go.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53106441
| prionassembly wrote:
| We choose to go to the moon!
| Alupis wrote:
| I'd argue they were abundantly prepared for going to the
| harsh moon environment.
| newman8r wrote:
| yeah I've got one too (for kayaking in the ocean and
| hiking/overlanding), the peace of mind that they offer is
| worth the cost alone.
|
| I like to go places with no cell signal, and when you're
| hours from the nearest paved road, it's nice to know that
| you can get airlifted out if you get bitten by a snake,
| etc.
| jessriedel wrote:
| A few hundred dollars seems fastastically expensive to me.
| What is possibly inside it that justifies that price?
| newman8r wrote:
| They need to be engineered to last for a long time
| between maintenance, be able to withstand the elements
| (saltwater, sunlight), and it's critical that the unit
| functions when you need it. The units are built very
| tough - mine is waterproof and also floats. The unit has
| test functions for the GPS and radio, and it has to work
| for 30+ hours continuously after it's been activated.
|
| These things are also regulated by the government and
| need to meet certain standards.
| ohazi wrote:
| Seriously, what the fuck is up with this attitude?
|
| People will spend thousands of dollars on ultralight
| gear, and then balk at $300 for a _magic button that
| summons a helicopter_ when you have a broken leg.
|
| It's literally the cheapest life insurance you will ever
| be able to buy.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's a satellite commS device. You also need a service
| for it to be useful.
|
| I do find it somewhat amusing to read a comment that a
| device that locates me anywhere on the planet and can
| communicate that information via satellite costs a few
| hundred dollars! to be vaguely amusing.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| There are really two different options here. Some
| devices, variously called EPIRBs, PLBs, and ELTs
| depending on the exact device and application, report to
| a system called COSPAS-SARSAT which is a free service
| operated by an international collaboration. You do not
| need to pay any service fee for these, although you are
| required to register them with a local authority (the
| Coast Guard in the US) so that they have contact info for
| you.
|
| These devices tend to be expensive because most of them
| are manufactured to either FAA or Coast Guard standards
| that are pretty strict and require things like a multi-
| year permanent battery, water intrusion and impact tests,
| etc.
|
| On the other hand you can get a couple of different
| consumer-pointing satellite communicators that rely on
| commercial networks, mostly GlobalStar. Spot X and Garmin
| InReach are the two big ones. Both are cheaper up front
| but require a monthly service plan. They do tend to have
| fancy features that PLBs can't offer like two-way text
| messaging, but they're not generally built to any
| particular standard for durability, so you wouldn't want
| to use them, say, at sea or in an airplane.
|
| The COSPAS-SARSAT system also generally has better
| coverage than GlobalStar but there are tradeoffs, esp.
| depending on the different capability levels.
|
| The thought that they're pricey seems like a reasonable
| thing when you compare e.g. a $400 EPIRB to the $200 Spot
| X, but the EPIRB is tested to work in water whereas the
| Spot X has janky firmware that doesn't always work great
| anywhere (I love mine but... it has rough edges).
| aspenmayer wrote:
| A simple "expensive compared to what" seems in order. I
| agree it's expensive, just not particularly so in USA or
| other high-income countries, which is a good point to
| make. However, in low-income countries where satellite
| communications are prohibitively expensive, even if you
| can alert emergency services, they may be unavailable or
| unreachable or outside the rapid response area you need
| emergency services in.
|
| Basically, if you can afford it, it works. If you can't
| afford it, satellite comms might not have saved you
| anyway, even if you had it.
| ohazi wrote:
| You absolutely do not need service to use a PLB. You pay
| $300 once and fill out a (free) form online with your
| extended/emergency contact info.
|
| A satellite text messenger like SPOT is not a PLB.
| jfim wrote:
| A few hundred dollars to be able to get help in a
| potentially life threatening situation sounds
| fantastically cheap to me. That's the difference between
| cost plus pricing versus value pricing.
| ghaff wrote:
| I tend to push back against the "OMG how can you be out of
| contact with people?" take. That said, these days I'd find
| it hard to justify not carrying a satellite device
| (especially if I were solo) in something approaching deep
| wilderness.
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| This is the right answer. A Garmin InReach or similar device
| _with two-way messaging capabilities_ should be regarded as
| standard equipment now for anyone going into backcountry or
| remote areas.
|
| The two-way messaging allows local rescue teams to assess
| your condition, confirm your location, and deploy the
| appropriate resources more quickly.
| senkora wrote:
| Yep. I planned to hike the Appalachian Trail this year
| (canceled due to covid), and the Garmin InReach was
| universally recommended equipment.
| implying wrote:
| If you were lost at sea / in the wilderness, would you trust
| your safety and eventual return to a machine learning model
| picking up your body heat? I know I'd want actual people in the
| aircraft.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You can do both. Predator/Reaper/Global Hawks [1] [2] working
| alongside human aircraft, deployed from land or aircraft
| carrier. If you don't trust the ML, have humans in the Vegas
| desert watching the feed. I imagine military sensor platforms
| are very good for identification of humans.
|
| > Five Reapers can provide 36 hours of combined surveillance
| coverage in Afghanistan with individual sorties lasting up to
| 16 hours; a further five vehicles increases this to 72 hours
|
| For reference Afghanistan is roughly 251k square miles in
| size. Ten Reapers to cover 251k square miles for 72 hours at
| a time. Caveat, I have not done the math what the O&M costs
| are per hour for such a drone fleet.
|
| Alternatively (or in concert?), Planet Labs supports 50cm
| resolution, and you can buy their imagery with a credit card.
| They are imaging almost the entire Earth daily (although they
| might exclude oceans? I imagine for the right price, they'll
| retask or capture a grid on demand). [3] [4] It's not heat
| sensing, but there might be signal to be found.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper
|
| [2] https://www.pacaf.af.mil/News/Article-
| Display/Article/220396...
|
| [3] https://www.planet.com/why-planet/
|
| [4] https://www.planet.com/pulse/more-spectral-bands-50cm-
| global...
| 7952 wrote:
| The sky is cloudy a lot of the time which limits the
| effectiveness of satellite imagery.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I have been involved in lower grade search efforts. This is
| not either/or, this is supplemental. If you've never been in
| a scenario, particular with children, time is of the essence
| particular with temperature or terrain hazards. Time is the
| enemy, and the goal of this would be reduce time to cover a
| search area. If you find it interesting,
| https://www.outsideonline.com/2059616/how-backcountry-
| search... is a good read.
| superfamicom wrote:
| I am happy they were found, but I often wonder if I would live
| out my "Castaway on the Moon" fantasy or make a giant SOS if I
| found myself in this predicament.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castaway_on_the_Moon
| dhsysusbsjsi wrote:
| Interestingly the international ground air code for requiring
| help is normally an X or a V.
|
| But I would still write SOS or HELP.
|
| You can imagine the scenario: "Hey Jane check out that - looks
| like a V in the sand" "Heh yeah". "Weird".
|
| or
|
| "Hey Jane does that say HELP?" "Heh yeah. Wanna check it out?"
| "Yeah let's take a look".
| staycoolboy wrote:
| I think the days of being stranded on islands are over. But what
| about oceans and being lost at sea? Would the film "Cast Away"
| make sense with today's satellite and object detection
| technology?
| jonny_eh wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370
| LockAndLol wrote:
| > The men were found about 190 kilometers (118 miles) from where
| they had set out.
|
| Wow, that's quite a detour. Pretty lucky to get spotted so far
| off course.
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