[mvexel]

I read this after seeing a previous link to it on HN. One of the most haunting tales of folks getting lost in remote places[1]. I live in the West and love to explore remote places. But being from Western Europe originally, it took me a while to fully appreciate what "remote" means. You're dozens of miles away from water, cell service, human settlement. You're on your own. Be prepared. Bring an InReach and know how to use it. (Or, these days, an iPhone, if you can accept the limitations.)

[1] Another haunting one is the Chretiens in 2011 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/seven-...

[heipei]

As a German myself I think I can confidently say that most of my country-men don't have the slightest feeling for what "remote" actually means until they have actually been to some of these places outside of Europe. "Remote" to a German might mean that it takes more than 30 minutes to the next highway. "Remote" means that cell reception drops to 3G, or that there's only one gas station in a 20km radius. Lots of folks I knew always talked about going to the outback in Australia as their first major trip abroad, because "it's so remote". It's hard to convince them that there's "remote enough" and "way too remote". I know plenty of places, specifically in Canada and the US, where driving for ~ 60 minutes from a major city will get you somewhere remote enough that you won't spot another soul. This is hard to grasp for us Germans since there's basically no place in the whole country where you're truly by yourself. My two cents.

[rob74]

For me (fellow German) the first eye-opener was after arriving in LA and driving East along the I-10: first you drive for ~70 miles through the LA sprawl, then that peters out, then you reach Palm Springs, and then, after you have left that behind too, nothing (except for desert). The contrast between an agglomeration with 12.5 million people and the vast empty space right next to it is really fascinating...

[robotnikman]

Yep, I travel through the Sonora desert on a regular basis to visit family, most of the drive is just rocks and bare landscape. I always make sure to bring plenty of water on those drives in case the car breaks down or something.

It really is a feat of engineering when you think about it that highways were built and maintained over such vast distances and through some really inhospitable terrain. When driving that road I sometimes ponder what it was like building it.

[thaumaturgy]

Did you get a chance to drive around Nevada much? It's nearly as large as Germany, but has only two metropolitan areas, and outside of those ... very nearly nothing at all. There are signs warning that there's no petrol available for 160+km.

Also some of the best night sky in the country, and some areas are eerily still and quiet.

[omnibrain]

When we drove from Zion to Las Vegas in the evening it was fascinating, that we started to notice the "glow" of Las Vegas from ~100km away.

[ethbr0]

To me, with regards to density, the US is 4 slices.

A) East of the Appalachian Mtns

B) Appalachians to Mississippi River

C) Mississippi to Rockies

D) Rockies to Pacific

Of those, (C) is one or two orders of magnitude more remote than the others.

On the east coast, it's hard to be more than 30 minutes from a Starbucks. In South Dakota, it's easy to be 2.5 hours from the nearest one.

[jcranmer]

I'd adjust your definitions somewhat.

Broadly speaking, you have the Northeast Corridor, which is more or less a continuous conurbation from DC to Boston.

Outside of that, the Eastern US generally follows European models of density, with clear densely-populated urban regions (Chicago being the largest city, but more minor cities like Indianapolis or Dayton correspond well to minor urban centers in European countries, population wise), in a field of rural areas where there's basically a quantum of civilization anywhere the land is flat enough to actually support it. There's kind of omnipresent human presence in the rural areas of, say, Ohio (not unlike rural Netherlands, say), while the mountainous regions like West Virginia sees strips of small towns nestled in every river valley while the ridgelines are largely empty (like a lot of the Alps).

The boundary between rural-but-populated and rural-but-unpopulated in the US is not so much the Mississippi River, but the 100°W longitude line, the High Plains (or roughly a line running from Oklahoma City through Wichita and Omaha up to Winnipeg along I-29 and I-35). From here, there's basically nothing until you hit the Front Range and the beginning of the mountains.

Once you hit the Front Range and you look west, you're in a kind of combination of the previous two zones. There's again large urban centers. In some of the big valleys--Columbia, Snake, Central, and Willamette--you see basically a small slice of European-style omnipresent human presence in rural areas. But outside of these areas, the area is largely thoroughly unpopulated, more so than even the High Plains, due to either being a desert, mountainous, or both.

[actually_a_dog]

That's why they say "In America, 100 years is considered a long time; in Europe, 100 miles is considered a long distance."

[kolanos]

The Nevada section of US-50 is a particularly extreme case:

> In the stretch of highway between Fallon and Delta, Utah, a span of 409 miles (658 km), there are three small towns: Austin, Eureka, and Ely. This span is roughly the same distance as Boston, Massachusetts, to Baltimore, Maryland, or Paris, France, to Zürich, Switzerland.

Also known as the "Loneliest Road in America".

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_50_in_Nevada

[defrost]

   Eyre Highway runs east from Norseman in Western Australia for 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) across the Nullarbor Plain to Ceduna, South Australia.

   It then crosses the top of the Eyre Peninsula as it continues eastwards for 470 kilometres (290 mi), before reaching Port Augusta.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyre_Highway

[rippercushions]

Siberia has entered the chat

The Kolyma Highway (aka Road of Bones) runs through over 2000 km of basically nothing, including the coldest place on Earth outside Antarctica.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway

And they're building another 2300 km:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anadyr_Highway

[julian_t]

My wife and I drove that a few years ago on our NY-to-SF trip, and it was a truly memorable experience. And somewhere out in the desert you'd see a tiny wooden house left by a settler; we knew there was another town a few tens of miles further on and that we could be rescued if we broke down, but those early settlers... I can't get my head around that.

[strken]

When I was 11 years old my (Australian) family took a trip to remote Western Australia. Because remote tourism was popular in Germany at the time, we heard a different variation of "German tourist does naive thing" in most the towns we visited. Occasionally it was American tourists instead. I think this was more reflective of the number of people from each country that came to the bush than any national trait, but the stories themselves were educational.

Highlights included going down the Tanami Track in a rental van during the wet season, taking nothing but a case of beer onto the 2000km 4wd-only Canning Stock Route[0] and getting bogged then rescued by a passing convoy, and walking down a seriously remote track for six hours with nothing but a day pack and a change of clothes then asking where "the next kiosk" was.

We were from a more built up area of Australia, so we had a good idea of what it was like in the really remote parts and prepared: two spare tires, spare bits and pieces like timing belts and radiator hoses, HF radio and an epirb, redundant water containers, checked in with the local police station to let them know our expected arrival dates, all the good stuff. It was still very strange being in a part of the world where people would stop if they saw you pulled over but not waving or signalling to them, because you might be in trouble and they knew there'd only be one or two cars a day. We were from an area of Australia where if you had a compass and followed any direction for a day or two on foot you'd eventually come to a road, but out there you could drive for a day and not see anything.

[0] The longest stock route in the world, and probably one of the worst roads in Australia, insofar as you can call it a road.

[monkeycantype]

About a year after the Berlin Wall came down I spent months riding a bicycle around Germany, an Australian - I have never quite got over the experience of the condensed scale of Germany, that I could find a clump of forest to wild camp in (perhaps not legally) and when i woke, hop on my bike and in minutes buy breakfast. I could choose any road, and always found some where for lunch, and wasn’t once run off the road by a semi trailer

[saul_goodman]

Hehe. One time I was in a ride share from Berlin to Essen.

"Where are you from" I respond with something mid-western. "How far from New York or LA is that?" "I can drive a day in any direction and still be in the middle of nowhere".

It was cute to see the confused looks on everyones faces. I get it though, you drive a couple hours in any direction in Europe and you are likely to be in another country or a body of water.

[8f2ab37a-ed6c]

I don't remember appreciating how barren and distant a place can be until I drove from Vegas to Death Valley, seeing absolutely nothing but grey soil and dust around me for hours, no hints of civilization outside of a dingy gas station once in a blue moon.

Whenever people say "we're running out of room on this Earth" I encourage them to pick any of the less populated states in the US and just drive down a highway away from a city.

I'm sure you can have an even more surreal experience of the sort in any former USSR state or China, given their size.

[blamazon]

> I'm sure you can have an even more surreal experience of the sort in any former USSR state or China, given their size.

Mongolia is great for this, travelers can basically camp wherever they want and the nomadic locals are so friendly. They often invite travelers to stay in their yurts, be fed, and experience what their lives are like. It's so incredibly welcome after days of isolated tent camping, an experience that transcends language barriers.

[mlyle]

> Whenever people say "we're running out of room on this Earth" I encourage them to pick any of the less populated states in the US and just drive down a highway away from a city.

I don't think many people think we're running out of physical space to house humans... but rather whether we're running out of productive land with ample resources.

[lazide]

In my experience, they really mean ‘there are too many people in the way of where I want to live’.

It doesn’t even directly have anything to do with resources or productive land, as when you really look at it, those are not usually limited either in any real sense (though might be more expensive than preferred due to relative economic competitiveness!).

[defrost]

In my experience (energy and mineral resource exploration) it means that population growth from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 8 billion today coupled with increased expectations of consumption levels across the globe has come at the expense of vast tracts of unique habitats and the elimination of most species on the planet along with our waste by products threatening our own continued existence at this scale into the future.

For what purpose?

Why is 8 billion 'better' than 2.5 billion, and how many people is too many (or not enough).

There is land left for us to cover over Trantor style, but there is little left in the way of prime habitat, the river mouths and edges have been largely urbanised at the expense of wet marsh filters that keep our petri dish of a planet clean.

[lazide]

Easy to say when you exist and are one of the 8 billion, no?

Are you volunteering to help reduce the population? If so, how exactly?

[defrost]

Educating.

   Total fertility rate (TFR) is lower with longer average education for females, higher GDP per capita, higher contraceptive prevalence rate, and stronger family planning programs.

What exactly are you doing to increase | decrease the human population?

[prawn]

Also Australia. In some areas, the properties (cattle stations) are measured in millions of acres. Biggest ranch in the US is 825k acres, whereas there are dozens in Australia in the 1-6 million acre range. Driving through Australia, you are generally driving through the middle of some of them.

[LorenPechtel]

Areas like Death Valley are empty because of a lack of water.

I sometimes hike out there and often don't see another person all day. Rarely do I see a drop of water, though, even though I'm only there in the "wetter" time.

[shafyy]

> Whenever people say "we're running out of room on this Earth" I encourage them to pick any of the less populated states in the US and just drive down a highway away from a city

I don't think people literally mean there isn't enough land for more humans to stand on. It's about the resources required by Homo Sapiens.

[marssaxman]

> Bring an InReach and know how to use it.

Or... don't? There's something sublime about being outside, away from civilization, truly on your own. It's part of what draws me to wild places.

[googlryas]

You're always free to smash the beacon as you're dying of thirst or exposure after getting stuck.

[marssaxman]

First I'd have to buy one! - but I've never felt the need. I expect that bringing along a magic "help" button would change my risk perception, such that I'd be more likely to end up needing to use it.

No judgment of anyone else who wants to carry one, of course! We all have to balance risks and rewards in whatever way makes sense for our own lives.

[dieselgate]

Indeed, both sides are valid. Experienced individual/s in the backcountry is different than inexperienced and traveling with dependents. It makes me curious if satellite/gps features on modern cell phones or vehicles would aid in a situation like this

[msrenee]

I don't suggest trusting your cell phone GPS any farther than you can throw it once you're outside of town. They've gotten a lot better, but mine still went out a couple months ago on the back roads between two cities about 45 minutes apart. No big deal, I was heading to the bigger town and there were plenty of signs. Plus it's a drive I used to make all the time, just was a little rusty.

There's still a lot of places where cell service doesn't reach and unless you have a specialized unit, they will be worthless in situations like this.

[astrange]

You don't need cell service for the GPS to work, it's a GPS and should work anywhere with open skies. But you would need an offline map to use it for something, and that map had better not tell you an impassable road is drivable.

Satellite connection in the new iPhone should work anywhere in the US for emergencies IIRC.

[msrenee]

If you had the foresight to download maps for the area you got lost in, then it might help. The you still have everything that compromises the GPS signal. Proper GPS units indicate how many satellites are available and you can work out how accurate the positioning is from there. Keep in mind big landscape features can bounce the signal around.

Basically, it could be helpful in the event that you've got the maps available to you and you're already somewhat familiar with how to use a GPS and what their limitations are. Also, keep in mind how often your navigation app tells you to take an exit off the highway when you're actually on the frontage road. It's a tool, but it's not magic. Someone linked the Chretiens' story. They had a GPS unit, but not the understanding of its limitations. Relying on it was what went wrong in their situation.

I fall back to a road atlas when I need to navigate outside of town if I'm not on the interstate. It just works. Topo maps for hiking and a compass. If you know how to use them, it takes 99% of the guesswork out of the equation.

[ghaff]

"Proper" GPS units don't magically have maps, especially detailed ones, either.

And, especially for driving purposes, knowing things like the number of satellites locked on and how many feet of precision you have isn't very relevant.

I agree that in general backup topo maps and a compass are useful in any case.

But even maps are not magic. The knowledge that a "road" on a map may not be something navigable by a normal vehicle and driver or that a military base won't have a perimeter regularly patrolled by soldiers requires knowledge that a map won't give you.

[theonething]

I think bringing a personal locator beacon is a nice compromise.