A very interesting video from Ian McCollum (aka ‘Gun Jesus’) detailing the time a trip to the range put a chunk of shrapnel in his chest.
There’s a lot in here about the importance of medical training and equipment when you spend a bunch of time out in the desert shooting hundred year old machine guns. However, whats really interesting is something that is sort of oblique to the main issue – how do you direct help to your location when you’re “in the middle of nowhere”?
The range I shoot at is an established shooting range in the sense that if you called 911 and said “Im at the So-N-So Range” they would know where that is and how to get there. But, what about when you go off the beaten path? At that point, you’re going to have to try and meet folks halfway by getting your bleeding butt to some sort of common rally point that the medics actually can find.
While I try to maintain a pretty decent degree of situational awareness I am surprised to say that when I go hunting I never take a moment to notice what mile marker I’m parking at when I disembark and make my way into the timber. It occurs to me that I need to take note of the sort of information that would come in handy if I had to call for assistance if I got hurt out in the sticks. It would be nice to be able to tell the dispatcher “Yeah, its along Highway 200, just after mile marker 27 theres a logging road heading east. Im parked four miles up that road.”
Of course, I also usually carry a couple signalling devices (flare/smoke) so that “close” becomes “close enough”.
It’s always a good idea to have an exit strategy and to ‘begin with the end in mind’. Which means when heading out into the sticks I need to start thinking about “what if”. Obviously I carry a certain amount of gear in case things go sideways, but I need to start being more cognizant of where I am and how I would direct others to that location. While I know how to use UTM coords, I wonder if the 911 people would have a clue.
Regardless, an interesting video to watch and a reminder that shooting guns can sometimes turn dangerous and therefore it’s always a good idea to have some gear (and training) to stay on top of things in case someone gets a hole punched in them.
Speaking of Gun Jesus, have you guys seen his Kickstarter? The man wrote a book that he hoped might garner $25,000 in sales. He failed to take into account his internet notoriety and he leaped past the $25,000 to almost $270,000…and thats with three weeks still left on the kickstarter.
When taking cross country trips and working in remote locations, I try and teach those with me and practice with myself knowing what road I’m on and which mile marker we are located.
With the new technology of cell phones (when there is service) and Garmin, one can punch up longitude and latitude and hopefully those fine folks in the rescue biz can find us if need be.
I’ve always been under the perhaps mistaken impression that 911 operators could somehow locate your phone in an emergency?
They can locate which tower the signal is coming from, perhaps, but that still leaves a lot of ground.
Actually its a lot closer than that Zero. The 911 system is capable of triangulating locations. However if there is no cell service or limited coverage than the phone may not be able to ping at least 3 sites thus preventing triangulation. On a side note you can also be tracked by the cell towers your phone pings as you’re traveling.
Even better, if your cell is nearby a crime scene, the cops are now getting cell records to look for you to see if you were a witness, or involved. Your phone will become a tattletale.
Wouldn’t it make more sense for the phone to SMS your latitude and longitude coordinates to the 911 system? I thought maybe that’s how it worked. Cell triangulation seems like an antiquated method in this day when most phones also have GPS capabilities.
Perhaps the problem isnt on the phones end of things, but rather on the 911 side of things. Thousands of different 911 systems in use across the US, it seems likely that many are antiquated or ‘legacy’ systems that don’t have provisions for receiving text messages.
Peter,
With the newer technology they might being doing that as well. I’ve seen phones in airplane mode still able to use the maps, because the are supposedly using GPS sats.
There are two systems in use currently. One uses triangulation from the cell towers — which is rather imprecise at best — while the newer “Enhanced 911” system queries the phone for its GPS info.
The problem with E911 is that phones are not all that reliable when it comes to establishing location via GPS. All of the limitations that a dedicated GPS unit experiences are present when a phone is trying to locate itself, though the cellular connection and its access to tower triangulation can provide at least that much location information.
If you live/work/travel in a very rural location, supplement your phone’s location-identification capabilities with flares, reflectors, signal panels, smoke and a strobe light.
A very enjoyable video – they seem very good at the medium. I know the ranges I’ve been at have the coordinates posted clearly for air evac. One aspect to that is knowing the optimal place for them to land – a safety orange placard or even a safety vest can help them find it. As for cell phone pinging – I would not want to rely on that in any location. I enjoyed their notation of the minor to critical wound care kits – I tend to be heavy on the critical but a single bandaid? Not so much…
Great video with a good refresher lesson. While I don’t have a mini trauma kit on my ankle, there is a kit in my truck with my get home stuff and another, larger, one at home. I’ve learned the value of having the right tools from doing over 23 years of emergency response & first aid/CPR/AED.
You’ve reminded me I need to work on a project.
The local party stores sell small 5#-propane sized balloon inflators filled with helium.
Scuba divers and military helicopter aircrew routinely carry even smaller “pony” tanks, for water emergencies.
It strikes me that if I could get the local gas vendor to put helium in a pony bottle, with one of the Party World balloon inflator valves attached, that plus a baggie of orange balloons, and perhaps a short length of orange ribbon, and a length of cord (fishing line, Kevlar, etc.) would do yeoman service to float an orange balloon or three up above the piney woods carpet, letting search a/c home in on your location rather more quickly than anything else.
Otherwise, everything below tends to look rather uniformly green, with patches of brown.
Somewhat pricey and fiddly, not to mention esoteric, but one helluva lot better than trying to convey to a citified govt. minion which logging trail to follow to your location beyond the black stump.
“I’m about 4 miles south of Lake Whatsis on the southwest side of it, and there’s a bunch of orange balloons with an orange ribbon floating above the forest tree canopy right overhead..”
Permanent daytime “flare”.
QED