General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIf you get lost, you can use a txt msg to help other's find you...
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even if your cellphone has no bars.
It's because unlike a call, your cell phone will hold a text message in memory for 72 hours while it searches for a tower or a receiver.
If you keep moving and at some point you might get lucky and your cell will find a tower.
One woman back a few years ago got lost with her boyfriend got stranded in their car in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
He went to get help, and never made it back.
She decided after a couple days to try and make it herself, having already trying to send a txt with no success. After she started moving, her cell found a tower and sent the txt. They used it to find her.
I'll try and find the story...
It's true though and good to know just in case,
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Jenoch
(7,720 posts)other than what you posted, but I do know that if you are lost in a wilderness situation, and someone will miss you, most of the time you are better off staying put in one place.
AmyStrange
(7,989 posts)-
It's near where the Donner party died... and you really don't have to move too much.
It's a good thing to know anyway regardless,
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Jenoch
(7,720 posts)I'm in Minnesota, and if you're lost and you have reason to believe you have been missed and someone will be looking for you, you're better off finding shelter and staying put. Wandering around only makes it more difficult for rescuers to locate you.
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I have to agree with you about getting lost in Minnesota and staying put, it is what you should do,
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Ian David
(69,059 posts)AmyStrange
(7,989 posts)AmyStrange
(7,989 posts)-
It gives a much better explanation on how their cells helped find them and why sometimes cell towers can pick you up sometimes even if you don't move. So if you get lost keep you're cell on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim
Although the Kims had a cellular phone with them, their remote location in the mountains was out of range of the cellular network, rendering the phone unusable for voice calls. Despite being unusable for voice calls, their cell phone would play a key role in their rescue. Cell phone text messages may go through even when there appears to be no signal, in part because text messaging is a store-and-forward service. Two Edge Wireless engineers, Eric Fuqua and Noah Pugsley, contacted search and rescue authorities offering their help in the search. On Saturday, December 2, they began searching through the data logs of cell sites, trying to find records of repeaters to which the Kims' cellphone may have connected. They discovered that on November 26, 2006 at around 1:30 a.m., the Kims' cellphone made a brief automatic connection to a cell site near Glendale, Oregon, and retrieved two text messages. Temporary atmospheric conditions, such as tropospheric ducting, can briefly allow radio communications over larger distances than normal. Through the data logs, the engineers determined that the cell phone was in a specific area west of the cellular tower. They then used a computer program to determine which areas in the mountains were within a line-of-sight to the cellular tower. This narrowed the search area tremendously, and finally focused rescue efforts on Bear Camp Road... "
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AmyStrange
(7,989 posts)-
nor as close to where the Donner tragedy happened as I thought, both are at least 100 miles south of the area in which Kim got lost. Which was just about 50 miles north of the California/ Oregon state lines. Nearer to (or in) the Cascades rather than the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Sorry,
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ETC (Edited To Change): "though" to "thought" in the first sentence