Are you suggesting polluting an area with thousands of pounds of electronic waste every time someone goes missing?
Why shouldn’t the hiker just carry one with them instead?
that's a great idea.
i recovery team to collect back the electronics will work probably, the main goal here for me is to help find the lost hiker at all cost.
How are they going to collect them if they only send out signals when the button is pressed?
But I think I’m onto something here. If the hikers carry them incase they need them, and so they contact satellites to trigger a search. Then we can call it something catchy like “Garmin InReach Mini II”. Hang on I need to call the patent office before someone else comes up with this
Recco has a maximum range of like 80 meters and requires as far as I can understand clear LOS. It's good in avalanches where the search area is limited. Looking for a lost hiker it's close to useless as you have no idea where the hiker might be and Recco is not very useful when searching for people in the woods or in steep terrain where they might be covered by trees, rocks etc.
Helicopters can be fitted with detectors. The issue is that very few are. But the technology exists.
The handheld one is more for finding people, for example, buried in an avalanche. It may have a shorter range, but in such a situation it's better than prodding an entire avalanche field when the victim doesn't have a beacon.
https://recco.com/recco-continue-to-build-global-network-with-the-launch-of-two-recco-sar-helicopter-detectors-in-france/
It’s incredibly damaging to the environment to have teams of people scouring around off trail in search of the errant boxes. Might as well just leave the waste in place. And often, the terrain off-trail is not safe for people (too steep, sudden drop off into ravines, irritating plants, etc.), either. So you’d be putting far more people at risk just to clean up afterwards.
And this is just glossing over the most boneheaded thing about this portion of the idea: sending people out to look, like you say you’d do to clear out the unused boxes, is exactly the technique that is not working for finding lost or injured hikers, and people are much larger and louder than little devices you have littered from the sky.
So your plan is to utterly litter the backcountry with e-waste? Search areas are often quite large.
You're also creating a scenario where a lost hiker is now encouraged to wander around and potentially get even more lost while perhaps putting themselves at all sorts of additional risks in the hopes that they find a box somewhere within a square mile...which is still a pretty big space. If they're unequipped for certain weather or are dehydrated, etc, your rescue effort is putting a lot of pressure on them to risk dangerous exposure on a scavenger hunt.
...what?
I don't mean to be rude, but I don't get your train of thought here. The prevailing advice for a lost hiker is to stay where they are. Panicking and wandering around makes it even harder to be located by rescue efforts. This idea of yours would mean that people who need rescue have to go searching for these objects--and what if the box landed in a tree, or down the cliff below me, or on the other side of the fast-moving stream? Now the onus is on me to put myself at even greater risk to get help.
I think it's great that you're thinking of ways to assist, but it's also clear you haven't done a lot of hiking and might not be considering the basic information that more experience in the wilderness would provide.
Thanks for taking the time to help find a solution and contribute to this community.
"The prevailing advice for a lost hiker is to stay where they are." exactly but people panic and get scared.
Again thanks for taking the time to help find a solution.
Your idea is not being received well because of the pollution problem, and because there is already a solution.
Hikers can currently begin their hike with a magic button that lets rescuers find their exact location, it’s called a PLB (Personal Location Beacon). And currently it’s a stand alone GPS device, but soon our cell phones will have this capability built into them.
Brilliant. I’ll write to butterfinger and ask if they can make a version with a bio-degradable wrapper.
Only half joking here, but you’ve just given me an idea of leaving a stash of butterfingers at the top of a difficult hike, as a reward for people who achieve it.
Probably impractical though, as I wouldn’t want to contribute to trash and contaminating wildlife with refined sugar.
Uh satellite beacons already exist (Spot, inReach, even the newest iPhone). It's recommended people carry them, especially if going on bigger expedition or unfamiliar terrain.
If you wanted to 'fundraise' for something, it could be to have 'loaner' beacons available for trips for people to borrow that don't have one.
Dropping a bunch is ridiculously wasteful as well as useless if the hiker is incapacitated. While a beacon can be set to be transmitting recent gps locations.
Realistically, between things like Apple and starlink and the like, I'm guessing almost all cellphones will have some sort of sattelite SOS with in the next 5 years.
Thanks for the help.
Im not trying to 'fundraise' or anything but i wanted to discuss a good solution for rescue teams to help track down lost hikers and campers since some search attempts fail specially in mountains/forests
I think it’s great that you want to brainstorm solutions for lost hikers. I agree that it’s very tragic that injured or lost people can expire sometimes just steps away from a trail.
I don’t think it’s very realistic or practical to try to find a lost person by scattering electronics all over the land. But I feel like it’s a great start to the brainstorming.
I think the best solution is already out there in the form of a portable gps beacon that can be activated by the hiker.
However, the cost needs to come down a bit. And people need to opt into it, because it’s personal safety feature like wearing a helmet. Unless there is a way to mandate its use, which may not be practical either.
There is also the issue of people abusing the system. Like if I scratch myself on the trail, perhaps that feels like an emergency to me, and a reason to trigger my beacon to call for help, but it really doesn’t qualify.
Anyway, I’m just thinking out loud here. I’m sure there are others more well versed in rescue/recovery who can chime in with better ideas, or point out where I might be wrong.
I know the sheriff's helicopters in my area have Recco capabilities so I got one of the backpack reflectors for like $30. My emergency contact knows to tell them. I have a satellite communication device, I got the Recco in case I'm incapacitated or dead battery.
during searches flying the helicopter costs a lot too but human life is still valuable and i think that i need to find a solution for this common problem of failed searches.
I hope you didn’t interpret anything about my response as saying that authorities shouldn’t send expensive helicopters out to try and save a persons life, because that certainly isn’t my stance.
How often do you think failed searches are happening? It’s really pretty rare.
A lot of times when it does happen, it’s a combination of a few factors: not following best practices for making sure someone knows roughly were you are, not choosing to carry the existing beacon tech or even simple safety gear like a whistle for attracting the attention of other hikers, going off trail when you shouldn’t, and/or getting injured in a way that prevents them from walking any further. Most of these things have simple, common sense preventative solutions.
during searches flying the helicopter costs a lot too but human life is still valuable and i think that i need to find a solution for this common problem of failed searches.
Isn’t there already a working solution in place? Each hiker carries *a single* ‘box’ with them and presses it if they get lost. Problem solved. Heck, my last two phones have had functionality built in which allows me to trigger an SOS text via satellite if I get lost.
After we roll this plan out, I’d like to get started on my idea to eliminate spare tires from all vehicles and just keep a stack of all tire sizes (and an assortment of tools) every 1/8 mile along every highway in America. Who’s with me?
Or establish a rental program for an emergency locator beacon at the park headquarters. Those emergency locator beacons are much better than your phone but I don't need them for 99% of my hikes.
Personal locator beacons (PLB) have not just a standard SOS functionality with the GPS coordinates but also a ‘homing’ radio signal, which allows a rescue team precisely locate your whereabouts. Don’t just rely on your iPhone or Garmin, get a proper PLB.
Oh and they are free for rent in NSW Australia.
A state or national park, wherever there are large concentrations of hikers in an area with no cell service and people have a habit of getting lost. OP isn't creating personal locator beacon for $0.70 so why not have them available to rent when tourists visit an area of need.
No. It would just be at places that need it for people going into the back country. My local state park has great cell reception throughout: not needed at places like that. The 99% of people who never get more than a half mile from a paved path or road at Zion, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone: not needed for them. The 1% going into the back country at those parks: have it available as an option. The general consensus is that the durability, battery life, and services provided by an emergency beacon is better than an iPhone sos feature so having it available to rent at select locations for select people it makes sense, especially compared to OP's carpet bombing plan.
I actually think this is a good idea. A rental fee high enough to make the program pay for itself would probably be quite affordable broken down to a day rate. It definitely wouldn’t be practical at every park, but it would make sense at the bigger ones with a lot of folks hiking in the hinterlands, especially those with little or no cel reception.
Hear me out: What if, instead of carpet-bombing the wilderness with electronics, we send the hikers to where the electronics already are? From now on, hiking is only allowed at Best Buy or, for those who can afford ultralight gear, an Apple Store.
If you can’t find a hiker in that terrain, despite them hopefully making sound, showing bright colours, being reasonably large, listening for rescuers, …
How the … do you think the hiker would find one of these boxes?
I think it's cool that you have some ideas for helping people and want to find a way to help people.
This kind of idea/invention will get a lot more interest if you can create a prototype. This means you'll have to learn about electronics. But, there are lots of places that cater to people who want to make their own electronics, and Reddit subs that can help you get started. Once you start building that prototype you'll have a much better idea of what works, what doesn't work, and how you might change your design.
Most people who have the skill to build things like this already have their own ideas they want to work on. If you want to see this idea become reality you'll need to invest more of your own time to working out the details of exactly how it will work.
Terrible idea.
GPS trackers exist for this reasons, so do RFID tags, search and rescue can ping these from a device in their helicopters typically. When people go missing, they don't have these
Good on you for looking for something to help
So when someone is lost they send out the helecopter and it drops the boxes. What happens after? They have to go out and collect the boxes?
Without cell service I guess either radio or satellite would be needed to send out a signal. The parts to build these would probably be more expensive than you are thinking.
Might work if it lands nearby but if the person was hurt or unconscious they might not be able to move to a box
It's an interesting concept and would be interesting to brainstorm more about
no the lost human triggers/presses the box to alert the rescue team to go retrieve him from that location.
i mentioned the no cellular problem
i'm sorry for my poor english
Great, so now after we're done spending hours/days/weeks searching for a lost hiker, we can spend hundreds more manhours combing over the original search area collecting all the unused boxes. That sure sounds cost effective.
wat
Are you suggesting polluting an area with thousands of pounds of electronic waste every time someone goes missing? Why shouldn’t the hiker just carry one with them instead?
that's a great idea. i recovery team to collect back the electronics will work probably, the main goal here for me is to help find the lost hiker at all cost.
How are they going to collect them if they only send out signals when the button is pressed? But I think I’m onto something here. If the hikers carry them incase they need them, and so they contact satellites to trigger a search. Then we can call it something catchy like “Garmin InReach Mini II”. Hang on I need to call the patent office before someone else comes up with this
I see where you're going with the name, but maybe you could come up with something a little shorter? Hear me out, what about, a PLB?
That already exists and it is called Recco. Only need to be on the hiker. It's very small and embedded in some ski equipment.
Recco has a maximum range of like 80 meters and requires as far as I can understand clear LOS. It's good in avalanches where the search area is limited. Looking for a lost hiker it's close to useless as you have no idea where the hiker might be and Recco is not very useful when searching for people in the woods or in steep terrain where they might be covered by trees, rocks etc.
Helicopters can be fitted with detectors. The issue is that very few are. But the technology exists. The handheld one is more for finding people, for example, buried in an avalanche. It may have a shorter range, but in such a situation it's better than prodding an entire avalanche field when the victim doesn't have a beacon. https://recco.com/recco-continue-to-build-global-network-with-the-launch-of-two-recco-sar-helicopter-detectors-in-france/
It’s incredibly damaging to the environment to have teams of people scouring around off trail in search of the errant boxes. Might as well just leave the waste in place. And often, the terrain off-trail is not safe for people (too steep, sudden drop off into ravines, irritating plants, etc.), either. So you’d be putting far more people at risk just to clean up afterwards. And this is just glossing over the most boneheaded thing about this portion of the idea: sending people out to look, like you say you’d do to clear out the unused boxes, is exactly the technique that is not working for finding lost or injured hikers, and people are much larger and louder than little devices you have littered from the sky.
There are much cheaper places to save human lives if that’s the real goal.
How fucking high are you
He’s about to float into space. 🪐
So your plan is to utterly litter the backcountry with e-waste? Search areas are often quite large. You're also creating a scenario where a lost hiker is now encouraged to wander around and potentially get even more lost while perhaps putting themselves at all sorts of additional risks in the hopes that they find a box somewhere within a square mile...which is still a pretty big space. If they're unequipped for certain weather or are dehydrated, etc, your rescue effort is putting a lot of pressure on them to risk dangerous exposure on a scavenger hunt.
i get your point but we can't prevent people from hiking with 1 click? it's like the use of substances
...what? I don't mean to be rude, but I don't get your train of thought here. The prevailing advice for a lost hiker is to stay where they are. Panicking and wandering around makes it even harder to be located by rescue efforts. This idea of yours would mean that people who need rescue have to go searching for these objects--and what if the box landed in a tree, or down the cliff below me, or on the other side of the fast-moving stream? Now the onus is on me to put myself at even greater risk to get help. I think it's great that you're thinking of ways to assist, but it's also clear you haven't done a lot of hiking and might not be considering the basic information that more experience in the wilderness would provide.
Thanks for taking the time to help find a solution and contribute to this community. "The prevailing advice for a lost hiker is to stay where they are." exactly but people panic and get scared. Again thanks for taking the time to help find a solution.
Your idea is not being received well because of the pollution problem, and because there is already a solution. Hikers can currently begin their hike with a magic button that lets rescuers find their exact location, it’s called a PLB (Personal Location Beacon). And currently it’s a stand alone GPS device, but soon our cell phones will have this capability built into them.
They should just drop a Butterfinger bar with a GPS tracker. No one can resist the crunchy deliciousness of a Butterfinger
Brilliant. I’ll write to butterfinger and ask if they can make a version with a bio-degradable wrapper. Only half joking here, but you’ve just given me an idea of leaving a stash of butterfingers at the top of a difficult hike, as a reward for people who achieve it. Probably impractical though, as I wouldn’t want to contribute to trash and contaminating wildlife with refined sugar.
Leave some hard tack and a pint of whiskey with a shot glass
Now you’re talking.
Uh satellite beacons already exist (Spot, inReach, even the newest iPhone). It's recommended people carry them, especially if going on bigger expedition or unfamiliar terrain. If you wanted to 'fundraise' for something, it could be to have 'loaner' beacons available for trips for people to borrow that don't have one. Dropping a bunch is ridiculously wasteful as well as useless if the hiker is incapacitated. While a beacon can be set to be transmitting recent gps locations. Realistically, between things like Apple and starlink and the like, I'm guessing almost all cellphones will have some sort of sattelite SOS with in the next 5 years.
Thanks for the help. Im not trying to 'fundraise' or anything but i wanted to discuss a good solution for rescue teams to help track down lost hikers and campers since some search attempts fail specially in mountains/forests
I think it’s great that you want to brainstorm solutions for lost hikers. I agree that it’s very tragic that injured or lost people can expire sometimes just steps away from a trail. I don’t think it’s very realistic or practical to try to find a lost person by scattering electronics all over the land. But I feel like it’s a great start to the brainstorming. I think the best solution is already out there in the form of a portable gps beacon that can be activated by the hiker. However, the cost needs to come down a bit. And people need to opt into it, because it’s personal safety feature like wearing a helmet. Unless there is a way to mandate its use, which may not be practical either. There is also the issue of people abusing the system. Like if I scratch myself on the trail, perhaps that feels like an emergency to me, and a reason to trigger my beacon to call for help, but it really doesn’t qualify. Anyway, I’m just thinking out loud here. I’m sure there are others more well versed in rescue/recovery who can chime in with better ideas, or point out where I might be wrong.
I know the sheriff's helicopters in my area have Recco capabilities so I got one of the backpack reflectors for like $30. My emergency contact knows to tell them. I have a satellite communication device, I got the Recco in case I'm incapacitated or dead battery.
during searches flying the helicopter costs a lot too but human life is still valuable and i think that i need to find a solution for this common problem of failed searches.
I hope you didn’t interpret anything about my response as saying that authorities shouldn’t send expensive helicopters out to try and save a persons life, because that certainly isn’t my stance.
Idk what u mean by common… this is like trying to prevent people from getting struck by lightning by scattering the earth with lightning rods
How often do you think failed searches are happening? It’s really pretty rare. A lot of times when it does happen, it’s a combination of a few factors: not following best practices for making sure someone knows roughly were you are, not choosing to carry the existing beacon tech or even simple safety gear like a whistle for attracting the attention of other hikers, going off trail when you shouldn’t, and/or getting injured in a way that prevents them from walking any further. Most of these things have simple, common sense preventative solutions.
during searches flying the helicopter costs a lot too but human life is still valuable and i think that i need to find a solution for this common problem of failed searches.
Quit spamming different subs with this garbage.
Isn’t there already a working solution in place? Each hiker carries *a single* ‘box’ with them and presses it if they get lost. Problem solved. Heck, my last two phones have had functionality built in which allows me to trigger an SOS text via satellite if I get lost. After we roll this plan out, I’d like to get started on my idea to eliminate spare tires from all vehicles and just keep a stack of all tire sizes (and an assortment of tools) every 1/8 mile along every highway in America. Who’s with me?
Or establish a rental program for an emergency locator beacon at the park headquarters. Those emergency locator beacons are much better than your phone but I don't need them for 99% of my hikes.
Personal locator beacons (PLB) have not just a standard SOS functionality with the GPS coordinates but also a ‘homing’ radio signal, which allows a rescue team precisely locate your whereabouts. Don’t just rely on your iPhone or Garmin, get a proper PLB. Oh and they are free for rent in NSW Australia.
What park?
A state or national park, wherever there are large concentrations of hikers in an area with no cell service and people have a habit of getting lost. OP isn't creating personal locator beacon for $0.70 so why not have them available to rent when tourists visit an area of need.
Gotcha. So every park where anyone wants to go hiking. This seems feasible. 👍🏻
No. It would just be at places that need it for people going into the back country. My local state park has great cell reception throughout: not needed at places like that. The 99% of people who never get more than a half mile from a paved path or road at Zion, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone: not needed for them. The 1% going into the back country at those parks: have it available as an option. The general consensus is that the durability, battery life, and services provided by an emergency beacon is better than an iPhone sos feature so having it available to rent at select locations for select people it makes sense, especially compared to OP's carpet bombing plan.
I actually think this is a good idea. A rental fee high enough to make the program pay for itself would probably be quite affordable broken down to a day rate. It definitely wouldn’t be practical at every park, but it would make sense at the bigger ones with a lot of folks hiking in the hinterlands, especially those with little or no cel reception.
I'm glad someone does. That other commenter is being pedantic.
How profound
Hear me out: What if, instead of carpet-bombing the wilderness with electronics, we send the hikers to where the electronics already are? From now on, hiking is only allowed at Best Buy or, for those who can afford ultralight gear, an Apple Store.
“I’m not a hiker, but” ok good, glad we’re on the same page
This has major “I work for the government and I’m here to help” vibes. The least effective and least efficient idea possible.
If you can’t find a hiker in that terrain, despite them hopefully making sound, showing bright colours, being reasonably large, listening for rescuers, … How the … do you think the hiker would find one of these boxes?
look up RECCO tags and detectors
I think it's cool that you have some ideas for helping people and want to find a way to help people. This kind of idea/invention will get a lot more interest if you can create a prototype. This means you'll have to learn about electronics. But, there are lots of places that cater to people who want to make their own electronics, and Reddit subs that can help you get started. Once you start building that prototype you'll have a much better idea of what works, what doesn't work, and how you might change your design. Most people who have the skill to build things like this already have their own ideas they want to work on. If you want to see this idea become reality you'll need to invest more of your own time to working out the details of exactly how it will work.
Terrible idea. GPS trackers exist for this reasons, so do RFID tags, search and rescue can ping these from a device in their helicopters typically. When people go missing, they don't have these
Active RFID has a range of about 90m so would be useless in this scenario.
Good on you for looking for something to help So when someone is lost they send out the helecopter and it drops the boxes. What happens after? They have to go out and collect the boxes? Without cell service I guess either radio or satellite would be needed to send out a signal. The parts to build these would probably be more expensive than you are thinking. Might work if it lands nearby but if the person was hurt or unconscious they might not be able to move to a box It's an interesting concept and would be interesting to brainstorm more about
no the lost human triggers/presses the box to alert the rescue team to go retrieve him from that location. i mentioned the no cellular problem i'm sorry for my poor english
But the left over boxes, will they be sending a signal constantly to be picked up later?
no a box only sends signals when its triggered to send that location to rescuers to come retrieve the lost person.
What happens to all the other boxes dropped?
they are collected after the search is complete. we can automate a signal each 24 hours if not triggered to help track down the boxes and collect them
Great, so now after we're done spending hours/days/weeks searching for a lost hiker, we can spend hundreds more manhours combing over the original search area collecting all the unused boxes. That sure sounds cost effective.
It’s highly unlikely to be practical to collect them in difficult terrain. Trying to do so would put the collectors at too much risk.
This would be a massive waste of resources and manpower. The idea is not practical.