POWs hoping to escape, risked their lives to obtain or create what today can obtained from Walmart or Amazon for only a few bucks.
You are correct. We do have a couple of working compasses and stacks of maps, including very detailed ones of the valley I live in and surrounding mountains. We’re sort of into the map thing.
There could always be a forest fire that would force us out, can’t imagine much else.
Amen. I met a guy who fell off a big sportfisher after leaving Bimini for Fort Lauderdale. By the time the others, asleep below, noticed he was gone, miles had gone by. He spent 48 hours treading water in the Gulfstream with one arm, the other being dislocated falling from the tower over the gunnel into the water. They had just come from a big Hatteras Bertram Shootout, adn he had a bunch of poker winnings from the associated partying and card playing in his pockets. He tread water for two days, thinking he was a dead man. All the while he thought of the things he could have purchased in any West Marine or Boat US store with the cash in his pockets. Rafts, flares, beacons and so on. But he had only the paper money and no chance to get to those stores. He was plucked from the water after dawn on the third day, and lived to tell the tale to me.