How to Prevent Getting Lost and What To Do If You Are Lost

Bob Mayer
6 min readApr 10, 2021
Daniel Boone Lost

We can get lost in a variety of ways. I work under Daniel Boone’s precept.

While I’ve done a lot of land navigation, both day and night, and spent considerable time working off of maps during training and on deployments, there have been times when I’ve gotten ‘confused’. My experience is that once I got lost, it could easily escalate into something worse, unless I follow some guidelines.

As with all aspects of preparation and survival there are numerous variables. We should be properly prepared before any trip with the correct supplies to keep from getting lost such as GPS with applicable map tiles loaded, paper map backups (including in your car), a compass, signal mirror, whistle, signal panel and more.

Know how to us a map and compass. Remember, a compass can’t tell you which way to go if you don’t have an idea where you are. Your local REI stores runs courses on basic land navigation. There is no substitute for actually getting out there and actually doing it.

A big key is if you are off road is to know what is your ‘safe’ direction. That’s the direction where you will eventually hit a known line, whether a road, rail-line, river, etcetera which will let you know where you are. Then you also need to know whether to turn left or right on that limit to get to safety.

--

--

Bob Mayer
Bob Mayer

Written by Bob Mayer

West Point grad; Special Ops Vet; NY Times bestseller of over 80 books; for free books and over 200 free downloadable slideshows go to www.bobmayer.com

No responses yet