If you get lost

Hiking folklore offers a simple direction: go down to water, climb higher, or follow the river. Universal advice sounds confident precisely because it takes no account of the actual terrain.

A river can lead into a gorge, a swamp, a waterfall, or further away from people. Climbing to a summit also uses up strength and can put you on a dangerous slope.

If you have lost the route, stop first.

Carrying on turns a known last position into a long unknown line.

A useful order:

• calm down;
• check the phone, the map, the compass and the last landmarks;
• try to go back only along a clearly recognisable short stretch;
• pass on your coordinates or a description of the place;
• save battery;
• make yourself visible;
• stay where you are if the place is safe and help has already been called.

You should move on if staying is dangerous: fire, flood, cold, no water, or an immediate threat.

Before a trip or a hike, someone is told the route and the expected time of return. A map and compass stay useful even when you have a satnav, which is capable of running flat exactly after its owner has told everybody about the advantages of modern technology.

You can get lost in a city too, especially with no signal and in an unfamiliar language. Reliable reference points:

• an address;
• the name of a station;
• official transport;
• the police;
• a hotel;
• an open public place.

Following a stranger to a less crowded place just because he is pointing confidently is not compulsory.

Navigation is not the ability to always know where to go. Sometimes it is the ability to stop going nowhere in particular in good time.

Sources and further reading

Reason, J. (1990). Human error. Cambridge University Press.

Feynman, R. P. (1986). Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle. In Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (Vol. 2, Appendix F). U.S. Government Printing Office.

National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2025). Digital identity guidelines: Authentication and authenticator management (NIST SP 800-63B-4). https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-63B-4

World Health Organization. (2021). LIVE LIFE: An implementation guide for suicide prevention in countries. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240026629

Helbing, D., Farkas, I., & Vicsek, T. (2000). Simulating dynamical features of escape panic. Nature, 407, 487–490. https://doi.org/10.1038/35035023

Semmelweis, I. (1861). Die Ätiologie, der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers. C. A. Hartleben.

Snow, J. (1855). On the mode of communication of cholera (2nd ed.). John Churchill.

Federal Trade Commission. (n.d.). Scammers use fake emergencies to steal your money. https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/scammers-use-fake-emergencies-steal-your-money

What stops you halting is the arithmetic of what you have already spent. Turning back means admitting that two hours of walking went the wrong way. Going on preserves the hope that the road will open up beyond the next ridge. That is why people get furthest from their last known position precisely after realising they are lost. For the people who will be searching, meanwhile, a stationary person is easier to work with: he stays inside a circle that has stopped growing.

With a phone the logic is the same. The battery goes on the map, on calls and on hunting for a signal while all of it is still useless — and then there is not enough left for one call describing where you are. That one call is worth more than the whole rest of the evening on the phone.