Les Jones

Misc > Odd Behavior When Lost in the Woods

In the current issue of Cryptogram, Bruce Schneier writes:

In Beyond Fear I wrote: "Many children are taught never to talk to strangers, an extreme precaution with minimal security benefit."

In talks, I'm even more direct. I think "don't talk to strangers" is just about the worst possible advice you can give a child. Most people are friendly and helpful, and if a child is in distress, asking the help of a stranger is probably the best possible thing he can do.

This advice would have helped Brennan Hawkins, the 11-year-old boy who was lost in the Utah wilderness for four days last month. He avoided people searching for him because he had been taught not to talk to strangers.

Here's the email I wrote to Schneier:

Avoiding rescuers is a common reaction in people who have been lost in the woods. See Dwight McCarter's book, Lost, an account of search and rescue operations in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In one chapter McCarter tells the story of two backpackers in the park who got separated while travelling off-trail in the vicinity of Thunderhead. The less-experienced hiker quickly got lost.

After a day or two wandering around he was going through his pack and found a backpacking how-to book that explained what to do in case you got lost in the woods. Following the advice, he went to a clearing and built a signal fire. A rescue helicopter saw the smoke and hovered overhead above the tree tops as he waved his arms to attract their attention. The helicopter dropped a sleeping bag and food, with a note saying they couldn't land in the clearing, but that they would send in a rescue party on foot.

The lost hiker sat down, tended his fire, and waited for rescue. When the rescuers appeared at the edge of the clearing, he panicked, jumped up, and ran in the other direction. They had to chase him down to rescue him. This despite the fact that he wanted to be rescued, had taken active steps to attract rescuers, and knew that rescuers were coming to him. Odd but true.

WEB ADDENDUM: I don't know if Hawkins was hypothermic, but just FYI people in the late stages of hypothermia often hide and cover themselves, a behavior known as "hide and die."

Quite often, the scene findings in cases of fatal hypothermia show evidence suggesting a struggle. The premises may be in disarray, and affected individuals may be found under newspapers or furniture. Presumably, once hypothermia has set in, they become confused and disoriented, and attempt to seek warmth in unusual places. They also suffer from "paradoxical undressing", or "hide-and-die" behaviour, thought to be due to a disturbance of the temperature-regulating function of the hypothalamus that causes a feeling of overheating (and resultant attempts to cool down such as undressing) as the body's core temperature drops.

The phenomenon of paradoxical undressing is odd. With their core temperature down in the 80s, hypothermia sufferers often undress. In urban environments, victims found in that state are often initially assumed to be victims of sexual assault. During the initial stages of hypothermia, the body conserves heat by restricting blood flow to the skin surface. One theory is that paradoxical undressing occurs in the late stages of hypothermia when blood flow from the body's core resumes to the extremely cool skin surface, causing a burning sensation. The victims remove their clothes to cool off.