What does getting lost in the wilderness do to your brain and psychological state? The saying goes that whenever you leave civilization behind and go out into the woods, you inherently accept that you become part of the food chain. Risks of the outdoors aside, I was curious what getting lost in the jungle or wilderness does to someone's psyche, and I have read up on this phenomenon. Summarizing, and going by the info available now, it seems that Kris and Lisanne may have chosen the least successful strategies if they did in fact simply got lost. They may have done so under the pressure of stress and anxiety, but nevertheless avoided the most successful strategies of staying put the moment they realized that they were lost. And they most likely also didn't backtrack; travelling back by the same route that had brought them there. Which at the time of their first emergency phone call was most likely still possible, as they couldn't have strayed too far from the main trail yet by then. The fact they were together and not alone was also playing to their advantage psychologically. Despite their rational and disciplined structural use of their phones, the girls didn't seem to have marked their trail; no broken branches were found by search troops, no red plastic attached to trees, no markings or indications of their route otherwise. Which is quite surprising to me. - Anyway, this is the information I found on this topic, an interesting read I thought. Out of all the factors related to wilderness endurance, your brain can most impact your chances of survival in the wild, both positively and negatively. When people's minds become overwhelmed with the task of staying alive, they can fail at doing just that. And out of all the factors that can make your brain go in overdrive with panic... getting lost in the wilderness is in the top regions of causes. Ideally, your mind helps you remember survival skills you may have been taught once, or read or heard about; it helps you strategize the importance of making a shelter for yourself, make fire and find food. Your intuition and rational judgement can help you find the right spot for a shelter or a fire, or tell you when to stay put or move on. But when your brain puts you under intense stress and anxiety, all motor functions can get warped and this can actually decrease your survival chances. Although there is a physical component to getting lost, it remains mostly a state of mind. Typically, it unfolds slowly over time until the evidence finally builds up to the point where it is undeniable. How is it possible to go from knowing where you are one moment to being totally disoriented the next? In most cases this is an unlikely scenario, unless a kidnapping, sudden blow to the head or a case of sleepwalking is involved. Getting lost is much easier for traditional hikers, since any straying from the trail is a prime opportunity to get into trouble. On the other hand, competent bushwhackers are almost continuously focused on their location, and by their very nature they're much more skilled with route finding. Panic is a typical reaction when suddenly finding oneself in totally unfamiliar surroundings, often followed by frantic wandering about. This reaction is the result of the body’s natural defense system, commonly called the “flight or fight” response. Without any physical threat, flight becomes the only logical alternative and your brain screams “RUN.”
Studies have shown that people universally feel agitated, upset and anxious when they find out they are lost. The heart quickens in the chest. A thin sheen of sweat covers the skin, producing a clammy feeling and chills. Breathing becomes labored. A frantic feeling overcomes you, as if mortal danger is imminent. You instantly get a sense of impending doom. Every rock, tree, bird and chipmunk looks threatening. Lost is a cognitive state. Your internal map has become detached from the external world, and nothing in your spatial memory matches what you see. You are stricken with fear and you also lose your ability to reason. Neuroscientists call it a "hostile takeover of consciousness by emotion." 90 percent of people make things a lot worse for themselves when they realize they are lost—by running, for instance, because they are afraid. They fail to notice landmarks, or fail to remember them. They lose track of how far they’ve travelled. They feel claustrophobic, as if their surroundings are closing in on them. You feel like you’re separating from reality, like you’re going crazy. Once our brains recognize that we face a threatening circumstance, the hypothalamus starts producing a fight-or-flight response. It sits in the mid-region of the brain base and triggers the adrenal glands to release hormones including adrenaline and cortisol. When in a situation of intense stress, adrenaline boosts your heart rate and blood pressure, causes the liver to release stored energy in the form of glucose and sends blood to your large muscle groups. Cortisol tempers the bodily functions that aren't necessary when you're in a seriously dangerous and stressful situation, such as digestion and growth. During fight-or-flight situations, your pupils dilate, and your visual scope focuses in, decreasing the number of things you notice. It impairs fine and complex motor skills as well, giving more energy to larger movement, such as lifting or running. People actually function at peak performance under the right amount of stress because of these physiological effects. For a little while.. Because too much stress sends us sliding down a slippery slope that can end in a mental and physical freeze-up. Continual release of stress hormones leaves you physically and mentally exhausted when you should be conserving energy. After the initial stress eases, your parasympathetic nervous system kicks back in to regulate those functions that the cortisol constricted. This entire process saps your strength, especially when it happens over and over again. Prolonged cortisol exposure can also promote depression. Once your mental state deteriorates, so goes your will to live. In some life or death survival conditions, that determination can save you. So fear does funny things to our bodies. It is one of the most primal instincts embedded deep into our evolutionary DNA, but fear and adrenaline also make you revert back to instinctual behavior. Fight, flight or freeze — it comes down to those simple reactions. There can be no question that becoming lost is normally accompanied by high emotional arousal, and almost every lost person has confessed to having been upset during their ordeal, some (particularly with children) to the point of nausea and stomach pain. What are the effects of general arousal and fear on the lost person's behavior? Arousal causes sweaty palms and a rush of adrenaline. Not enough arousal and the person feels drowsy and has diffuse and unfocused thought processes. But when arousal is too intense, thoughts tend to scatter in irrelevant directions, making the person unable to concentrate on solving even simple problems. Also, too much arousal can interfere with the recognition of familiar objects, people, or places. Fear stimulates a heightened concern for self preservation, mobilizing the body for flight through the secretion of adrenaline and increased blood supply to the legs. It's no wonder, therefore, that the lost person's impulse is to move rather than stay put — this is exactly what his body is telling him to do. Fear interferes with higher mental functioning, such as concentration and problem solving, and may cause a regression to more “primitive” modes of thought.
-Fear of getting lost. One of the oldest studies of fears, reported a century ago by G. Stanley Hall, revealed that the “dread of getting lost is common” in children and adults alike (Hall, 1897). The author described many examples of such fear, such as one woman who was “haunted by the thought of losing the points of the compass in some wood. . . accompanied by a sickening sensation.” More recent studies confirm that many people fear getting lost, especially in wooded environments. It is common for lost children to hide from searchers, to ignore their calls, and to stand petrified at the approach of a helicopter — not simply because they've been taught to avoid strangers, as is often believed, but because every strange stimulus under such conditions is a source of terror.
Studies have shown that people universally feel agitated, upset and anxious when they find out they are lost. The heart quickens in the chest. A thin sheen of sweat covers the skin, producing a clammy feeling and chills. Breathing becomes labored. A frantic feeling overcomes you, as if mortal danger is imminent. You instantly get a sense of impending doom. Every rock, tree, bird and chipmunk looks threatening. Lost is a cognitive state. Your internal map has become detached from the external world, and nothing in your spatial memory matches what you see. You are stricken with fear and you also lose your ability to reason. Neuroscientists call it a "hostile takeover of consciousness by emotion." 90 percent of people make things a lot worse for themselves when they realize they are lost—by running, for instance, because they are afraid. They fail to notice landmarks, or fail to remember them. They lose track of how far they’ve travelled. They feel claustrophobic, as if their surroundings are closing in on them. You feel like you’re separating from reality, like you’re going crazy. Once our brains recognize that we face a threatening circumstance, the hypothalamus starts producing a fight-or-flight response. It sits in the mid-region of the brain base and triggers the adrenal glands to release hormones including adrenaline and cortisol. When in a situation of intense stress, adrenaline boosts your heart rate and blood pressure, causes the liver to release stored energy in the form of glucose and sends blood to your large muscle groups. Cortisol tempers the bodily functions that aren't necessary when you're in a seriously dangerous and stressful situation, such as digestion and growth. During fight-or-flight situations, your pupils dilate, and your visual scope focuses in, decreasing the number of things you notice. It impairs fine and complex motor skills as well, giving more energy to larger movement, such as lifting or running. People actually function at peak performance under the right amount of stress because of these physiological effects. For a little while.. Because too much stress sends us sliding down a slippery slope that can end in a mental and physical freeze-up. Continual release of stress hormones leaves you physically and mentally exhausted when you should be conserving energy. After the initial stress eases, your parasympathetic nervous system kicks back in to regulate those functions that the cortisol constricted. This entire process saps your strength, especially when it happens over and over again. Prolonged cortisol exposure can also promote depression. Once your mental state deteriorates, so goes your will to live. In some life or death survival conditions, that determination can save you. So fear does funny things to our bodies. It is one of the most primal instincts embedded deep into our evolutionary DNA, but fear and adrenaline also make you revert back to instinctual behavior. Fight, flight or freeze — it comes down to those simple reactions. There can be no question that becoming lost is normally accompanied by high emotional arousal, and almost every lost person has confessed to having been upset during their ordeal, some (particularly with children) to the point of nausea and stomach pain. What are the effects of general arousal and fear on the lost person's behavior? Arousal causes sweaty palms and a rush of adrenaline. Not enough arousal and the person feels drowsy and has diffuse and unfocused thought processes. But when arousal is too intense, thoughts tend to scatter in irrelevant directions, making the person unable to concentrate on solving even simple problems. Also, too much arousal can interfere with the recognition of familiar objects, people, or places. Fear stimulates a heightened concern for self preservation, mobilizing the body for flight through the secretion of adrenaline and increased blood supply to the legs. It's no wonder, therefore, that the lost person's impulse is to move rather than stay put — this is exactly what his body is telling him to do. Fear interferes with higher mental functioning, such as concentration and problem solving, and may cause a regression to more “primitive” modes of thought. 
Ralph Bagnold, a pioneer of desert exploration in North Africa during the 1930s and 1940s and founder of the British Army’s Long Range Desert Group, recalled being seized by "an extraordinarily powerful impulse" to carry on driving, in any direction, after losing his way in the Western Desert in Egypt. He considered it a kind of madness. "This psychological effect … has been the cause of nearly every desert disaster of recent years," he wrote. "If one can stay still even for half an hour and have a meal or smoke a pipe, reason returns to work out the problem of location." When you’re lost, fight (or rather, freeze) is better than flight, at least until you’ve made a plan.
Dr. Holly Parker, a practicing clinical psychologist at the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford, MA said about this: “Feeling flooded with anxiety and fear can certainly happen if someone gets lost hiking, and there are ways that fear can work against people. Anxiety and fear narrow the focus of attention, meaning that a lot of details can be missed. They can also bias how people come to understand what's happening.” Parker says that research shows that fear and anxiety can lead people to interpret a situation in a negative, threatening and anxiety-provoking way, causing them to assume the worst case scenario. “This can create a situation in which the complete picture of the person's situation or problem isn't seen, and so the full range of decision making options may not be available to them. Panic can cause people to forget the survival lessons they were taught, so trying to remain calm and allow time to more fully think through lessons taught and the options available is key, rather than reacting,” she said.
Dr. Cynthia Divino, executive director for the Boulder Institute for Psychotherapy and Research, said the brain reverts back to a primitive response when flooded with adrenaline. The primeval brain takes over, and the logical brain slows down. “When we encounter a situation that we perceive as life threatening, our fight, flight or freeze response ignites. When this happens, most of the blood flow from our brain goes to the hindbrain and midbrain (or emotional brain). The part of our brain that can think logically (our frontal lobe) essentially turns off as the blood flow shifts to our hind-brain,” Divino said. “We find that we can't think clearly and are consumed by fear. With our fight, flight and freeze response taking over, we revert to primitive instinctual responses which are often very poor choices in that particular situation.”
-Fear of getting lost. One of the oldest studies of fears, reported a century ago by G. Stanley Hall, revealed that the “dread of getting lost is common” in children and adults alike (Hall, 1897). The author described many examples of such fear, such as one woman who was “haunted by the thought of losing the points of the compass in some wood. . . accompanied by a sickening sensation.” More recent studies confirm that many people fear getting lost, especially in wooded environments. It is common for lost children to hide from searchers, to ignore their calls, and to stand petrified at the approach of a helicopter — not simply because they've been taught to avoid strangers, as is often believed, but because every strange stimulus under such conditions is a source of terror.-Woods shock. There are various reports of high arousal having detrimental effects on the mental processes of lost persons, going back more than a century. For example, a comment in the 1873 volume of Nature mentions a kind of woods “shock” experienced by West Virginia hunters who become disoriented, apparently affecting their reasoning capacity and causing them to “lose their heads”. Similarly, one anthropologist observed members of an African tribe who, having become disoriented, were “stricken with panic, and plunged wildly into the bush”. A popular theme in search and rescue lore is seen in stories of lost persons who, in a state of shock, have walked trance-like past search parties, or had to be chased down and tackled by their rescuers. Such observations confirm that it is not only the child or the inexperienced outdoorsman who is vulnerable to the adverse effects of emotional arousal. Indeed, the extent of one's outdoor experience is not always a very good indicator as to how rational someone will behave upon becoming lost. And the longer the state of fight or flight panic continues, the worse one can get further lost.
-Strength in Numbers. One of the least studied aspects of lost person behavior is the possibility that people act differently when they're lost in the company of one or more human companions than when they're alone. As anywhere from one-third to one-half of lost person incidents are multiple-subject searches, it should be important indeed to know whether the number of persons in the party should affect the search plan. In research done on people who got themselves lost in Nova Scotia, the researcher found that the lost persons stayed together in all instances, and that they traveled about the same distance as comparable people who were lost alone. Unfortunately, there was no basis in this study from which to draw conclusions about differing emotional reactions to the experience of being lost. Nevertheless, it is the researchers strong impression, from interviewing scores of lost persons soon after rescue, that people lost with companions are much less scared and considerably more rational during their ordeal than are people lost by themselves. This seems to be especially true for children of school age, who almost never show the same panic reaction when in groups than when alone.
What happens when you're really cut off from the world - when you're totally alone? 
Dr. Tina Maschi, licensed mental health professional and associate professor at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service, explains what goes down in the human brain under prolonged periods of social isolation. Being alone goes fundamentally against how we're wired. Humans are social beings and herd driven. There is a hunch that the very size of the neocortex, the part of our brain that controls things like language and empathy and general social cognition, is directly proportional to how social a species is. Our brains are basically built to socialize. When your brain isn't doing what it was fundamentally built to do, you put the mind under unnatural stress, and bad things can happen. Being alone for longer times, in the tropical forest in our case of Lisanne and Kris, might cause you to hallucinate. Hallucinations can be triggered by a traumatic event. If you take a healthy person with no history of mental health disorders and put them under great stress, their cortisol levels (the stress hormone) would be astronomical, affecting their ability to psychologically interpret stimuli. Basically, you’re not reading what’s actually happening correctly and are just reacting to your trauma with forms, visions, or sounds that are a projection of yourself. Being alone might also cause you to anthropomorphize objects. Just like in Castaway, you might start talking to a volleyball. Ascribing human characteristics to inanimate objects is a real phenomenon seen in completely isolated people. “If you’re used to a world full of objects and you no longer see them, you begin looking for some sense of comfort,” says Dr. Maschi. “Just based on these primal emotions of anxiety and fear of death, you could create things; you could see something that’s not there.” You start to see human characteristics superimposed on the vocalizations of animals, for instance. People lost in the wilderness may also rely on a defense mechanism called compartmentalization, when one stores away emotions like anxieties and fears to focus energy on all the things that need to be done to ensure survival. Another, intellectualization, is demonstrated when rational thinking is used during times of stress to remove oneself emotionally from a situation. Instead of looking at all of the challenges and all of the things that could potentially go wrong, the girls would hopefully be able to just focus on their most pressing needs. The more internal resources, problem solving skills, and ability to not let emotions get the best of them, the more chance they had to psychologically be able to withstand the anxiety of being alone in a foreign mountains. Kris and Lisanne had each other (Strength in Numbers), but most likely one of them survived longer than the other. Making Lisanne most likely the one who had to endure the terrors of the jungle all alone in the end (if they in fact got lost, I lean more towards foul play myself but I investigate all options here). Kris was pictured with a head wound on April 8, after all (which may have shown her dead or alive, we do not know). Kris' phone also received quite a few wrong PIN codes after April 5th, meaning most likely - again, going by the Getting Lost theory - that Kris was either in a bad state, rendering Lisanne more or less alone, or possibly dead. So Lisanne must have had days where she literally was all alone in the Panamanian tropical forest.
The mistakes people make when they get lostIt often doesn't take much to get off the right trail, especially in a wooded area; a short distraction, a toilet stop off the beaten paths, a moment of tiredness and thoughtlessness. When you then continue to walk in the wrong direction, the uncomfortable feeling can creep up that things start to look indefinably different around you. But it may still take you some time to come to the actual realization that you are lost. The longer this process takes, the more hopelessly lost one can become. In Kenneth Hill’s 1998 “Lost Person Behavior,” studies show that hikers choose to do a number of things when they find themselves lost; many times, these behaviors only cause you to become even more lost. Anyone who spends enough time in the woods will, sooner or later, become lost. Nearly all of the experienced outdoorsmen that were interviewed for a large scale study, admitted to having been significantly lost or “turned around” at least once. Generally, persons who become disoriented will use at least one of these 9 methods, some of which are considerably more effective than others, and most lost people will try more than one.
-Random Travelling — the person moves randomly and confused in the woods with no particular motivation except to find safety. They usually experience high emotional arousal and follow the path of least resistance, with no apparent purpose other than to find something or some place that looks familiar. People usually don't keep this strategy up for long and eventually sit down to come up with more structured methods.
-Route travelling — the lost person decides to travel on some trail, path, drainage, or other travel aid. The route is unknown to them and they are uncertain regarding the direction they're headed, but they hope that eventually they will come upon something familiar. When this hope is quashed, as it often is, they rarely reverse their direction on the route to go the other way. If the trail peters out, for example, they may revert to random travelling, as described above. This is usually an ineffective method of reorientation.
-Directional Travelling — the person travels in a specific direction, regardless of the terrain. Certain that safety lies in one particular direction, the lost person makes his way cross country, often ignoring trails and paths leading the “wrong” direction. Sometimes, in fact, a person will cross railroad tracks, power lines, highways and even backyards in their conviction that they're headed the right way. Unfortunately, this strategy (which is rarely effective) often gets them into the thickest part of the woods, making them especially difficult to find. Most typically, it is seen in some hunters who have come to exaggerate their outdoor skills to others and to themselves, believing there is some sort of shame in becoming lost.
-Route sampling — the person tries out several routes from an intersection. Here, the person uses an intersection of trails as a “base,” proceeding to travel some distance down each trail in search of something familiar. After “sampling” a particular route without success, they return to the intersection and try another path, repeating the process until all routes at that intersection have been sampled. Three possibilities then arise: (1) they may repeat the sampling procedure, but now travelling farther distances on each route; (2) they may choose instead to proceed down the likeliest trail until they come to another intersection, where they can repeat the strategy; or (3) they may decide to try another tactic altogether. It can be effective when combined with backtracking (see below).
-Directional sampling — the person samples short distances in various directions leading away from a landmark. This is similar to route sampling, except that the lost person does not have the advantage provided by an intersection of trails. Rather, the person selects some identifiable landmark as a “base,” such as a large tree or outcropping. From there, they go in selected directions, always keeping the base in view, looking for something that will help them figure out where they are. When they're just about to lose sight of the base, they return to it and sample another direction, repeating the process until all possible directions seem to have been tried. Often, however, they do lose their base before the sampling procedure can be completed. At that point they tend to move around in the woods somewhat randomly until they find a landmark suitable for serving as a new base, and the directional sampling strategy may be started anew. (This method is recommended by Brown, 1983, and Fleming, 1994.)
-View enhancing — the person climbs a tree or hill in order to see landmarks. Unable to find anything familiar after travelling around in the woods, the lost person attempts to gain a position of height in order to view landmarks in the distance. The person attempts to enhance his view by climbing a hill, ridge, or tree. A knowledgeable adult with a topo map or at least some survey knowledge of the area, surrounded by dense vegetation, might attempt to reorient himself by climbing a hill (sometimes a tree, if this can be done safely) and matching visible terrain features with those on his map. Indeed, many experienced outdoorsmen report view enhancement as a favored method of reorientation.
-Backtracking — the person follows his town tracks back to safety. Once they got lost, the person reverses himself and attempts to follow the exact route that brought them into the woods. This can be a very effective method if the lost person has the skills and patience to employ it. Unfortunately, lost persons seem reluctant to reverse their direction of travel without good reason, believing perhaps that it would just be a waste of time and safety might be over the next hill or around the next bend in the trail. If a person becomes confused on a route that has numerous branches, he can backtrack to each intersection and employ a route sampling tactic to determine the correct fork. If the person is in the bush — and competent at reading tracks — he should be able to follow his own sign back. However, this can sometimes be a very difficult task.
-Staying put — the hiker stays in one place until help arrives. Every woods safety program stresses the importance of “staying where you are” when becoming lost, which can be considered an excellent — if somewhat passive — strategy for reorientation, so long as the lost person can reasonably expect a search to be organized on his behalf in the very near future.
-Folk wisdom — relying on adages like following streams downhill or orienting oneself by using the North Star. The most common of these is the advice that “all streams lead to civilization,” a principle that, if followed in Nova Scotia, will more than likely lead the lost person to a remote and bug-infested swamp. Local residents rarely have much survey knowledge of the regions with which they're familiar, but they often have excellent route knowledge obtained from their travels. That is, they are familiar with routes, trails, or pathways connecting one location to another. In particular, they know what to expect to see as they traverse a particular pathway and, more importantly, they know which direction to turn when a route branches or intersects with another. They know what to expect to be seen along the route, in a serial fashion, rather than some abstract “map” that can be perceived at one glance. Usually tragedy starts with a simple navigational error.
Backtracking and staying put are the most successful ways to deal with being lost, but so few hikers actually stay put or backtrack. Sadly, very few people apply this method of getting out of the woods safely. While it is true that most lost persons are found in a stationary position (especially after the first 24 hours of the search), this is usually because they are fatigued, asleep, or unconscious. In my review of over 800 Nova Scotia lost person reports, I found only two cases in which the subjects had intentionally stayed in one place in order for searchers to find them more easily. One was an 11-year-old boy who had received Hug-a-Tree training at school, while the other was an 80-year old apple picker who settled down comfortably within 5 minutes of being lost, just 100 metres from where she had entered the woods. Survey of experienced outdoorsmen revealed that they are aware that staying put is the recommended course of action, but in reality they don't want to stay in one place for any length of time, especially during the day. Instead they rather climbed on a hill or in a tree for a better view of where they were. Interestingly, people who had experienced several or more occasions of having been lost were significantly less likely to “follow a stream to civilization” as a useful strategy, possibly because this advice had already proven false in their previous Lost situations. So interestingly, matching this to the case of Kris and Lisanne, it looks (going by the Lost theory and the facts available) that:
-The girls didn't stay put.
-The girls most likely didn't backtrack: by the time they made their 16:39 first call, they were in all logic still on the one ongoing route past the small waterfalls: simply turning around and walking the route back - ideally in daylight - would have brought them back to the Pianista top and after that Boquete.
-The girls didn't leave many trail markers for search teams to follow: no broken branches to follow their trail, no pieces of red plastic (as seen in a nighttime photo on day 8) marking their actual route. No signs carved in trees or on the ground.
What they máy have done however (but we cannot verify this), is the sort of behaviour that is more often seen with lost hikers: looking for elevated terrain in the hope of finding GSM network; instinctively following the trail of a river in the hope that it would bring them to civilization. What you should do when you are lost, is to track the information you have available to you that is useful for finding your way back to home or camp. Do you know which way to turn at all of these intersecting trails you're travelling? If this question occurs to you, you will more likely take steps to memorize the sequence of turns than the person who merely enjoys the scenery, and to look back over your shoulder as you exit each intersection. “When I got lost, I thought, ‘Oh my god, I have become that guy,” said Troth. “The first instinct is to run back, run up a hill or just go anywhere. I think this is worse for guys — it’s the same reason we won’t stop and ask directions. If you stop and stay put, you have to admit you are lost.” Embarrassment - especially for experienced hikers - also keeps them from staying in one spot to wait for rescuers. “I think it is embarrassing to get lost, but it happens to everyone whether you are a beginner or an expert,” said Jennifer. “At our hiking company, we plead with the people who take our classes to stay put if they get lost. But, it’s a pride thing. We want to prove we can survive, and it’s a hard thing to admit when you are lost and need help.” And not carrying a compass is also a big error. Always carry a compass and map, and know how to use them when you go out walking in the wild. Every member of a hiking party should have these essentials, and all should be involved in the navigation, whether sticking to the trails, or going beyond them. In no circumstances should you be without your compass in the wild. It should be the first thing you put on in the morning, even before your underwear, and the last thing you take off in the evening. And do not forget to take it with you when taking an emergency midnight toilet stop too. People think often that they can rely on their inner sense of direction, but in reality it often fails them. especially when they get disorientated. Circling happens where there are no prominent landmarks (a cell phone mast or a tall tree, for example) or spatial boundaries (a fence or a line of hills), and where all the vistas look similar. Without a fixed reference point, we drift. And scientists even think that there is not even an innate “sense of direction.” In 2009, Jan Souman tracked volunteers using GPS monitors as they attempted to walk in a straight line through the Sahara Desert and Germany’s Bienwald forest. When the sun wasn’t visible, none of them managed it: Errors quickly accumulated, small deviations became large ones, and they ended up walking in circles. Souman concluded that with no external cues to help them, people will not travel more than around 100 metres from their starting position, regardless of how long they walk for. All of the “sense of direction” you get from having experience with the environment you are in, or by having a map or compass to rely on. In the absence of landmarks and boundaries (this includes the desert landscape, forests and walking in the fog) our head-direction cells and grid cells, which normally do an excellent job at keeping us on track, can’t compute direction and distance, and leave us flailing in space. This knowledge won’t help you if you’re lost, but it might persuade you to pack a compass or a GPS tracker before you set out, and above all to pay careful attention—the wayfinder’s golden rule—when you go into the woods. Orientation is a learnt skill by the way and not some untaught intuition thing. Those who are best at finding their way back in the wild, are the ones who pay closest attention to environmental clues, such as landmarks indicating a change of direction along a route, and the ability to remember the course of the routes one has traveled. On the one hand you can have Survey knowledge, which is map-like in that the person is able to accurately determine the relative positions of landmarks and connecting routes within the terrain. Such knowledge is sometimes referred to as a “mental map.” On the other hand, route knowledge comes from having experience with specific roads, trails, or other pathways and being able to use such knowledge to travel between locations. Such knowledge does not require knowledge of direction or even distance between locations, but rather that the person merely stays on the correct route. People sometimes overestimate their knowledge of the spatial layout of an environment, perhaps mistaking route knowledge for accurate survey knowledge, which may make them vulnerable to becoming “turned around” (lost). Trying to find a short cut is one of the most frequent causes of getting lost in the wild, by the way. Read this New York Post article on ; wood shock' and getting lost in the woods if you haven't got enough of this topic yet.
What to do when you got lostMost experts agree that hikers should above all stay calm and stay put. By acting on adrenaline only, hikers can make their situations spiral into dangerous waters. “Our minds often take their cue from our bodies, so if we can calm the body, we can calm the mind,” said Dr. Parker. “Grounding exercises take advantage of that by essentially grounding you back into the present, rather than getting pulled away mentally by overwhelming emotions.” Parker suggested trying to ground the mind by naming as many states, as many colors, sports teams, holidays, movie titles, spices, types of trees, etc., as you can. “Try this for a few minutes and notice how your anxiety goes down. Then when you feel more centered and calm, return to thinking about possible solutions for your situation,” she said. Dr. Divino agrees. Even a simple deep breathing exercise can help reduce the panic or emotional response. “What people can do is start taking slow, deep breaths. This shuts off the fight, flight, or freeze response and blood flow will return to the part of our brain that is most likely to get us out of the situation quickly,” Dr. Divino said. “It helps if people have knowledge of what to do in these situations beforehand because they can more confidently return to what they know or have read.” Survival expert Annie Aggens, director of Polar Expeditions with Northwest Passage and Polar Explorers says sometimes lost means “LOST.” If you’ve run out of options and no plan seems to be working, she said the best thing you can do is help searchers find you. “I’ve been lost, and it is hard to keep the panic down,” she said. “You need to keep a really cool head. If you can’t think your way out of a situation, then stop, think, organize and plan. Start making markers in the direction you are travelling to help searchers find you.” Strips of cloth and arrows made from wood or rock can be placed in visible areas. If an aerial search is ongoing, take a belt and shake a tree branch. “A weirdly shaking tree branch will be noticeable if they are searching from the air,” Annie said.
HOPE“Doing these things not only makes you feel like you are doing something constructive, but it helps you maintain hope. If you lose hope, you go to a very dark place. Find a place to settle down and make it homey. Make it comfortable, and if it’s safe, make a fire. “Above all, don’t give in to panic and go running off into any direction. The most important thing to do is keep a cool head.” Unfortunately, our natural physical reactions are not always the best course of action. Fleeing from your initial position can simply lead to getting even farther away from your last known position, which can get you REALLY lost, plus uselessly depleting any energy reserves that just might come in handy while trying to stay warm under a tree. The most obvious take home message about getting lost in the wild is “Do not panic.” This can be easier said than done sometimes. Immediately stopping upon realizing you are not where you think you ought to be is the most important thing you can do to make sure that a bad situation does not get worse. This leaves you as close as to the last point where you were not lost, giving you the best chance of retracing your steps. After stopping, the second thing to do is drop your backpack and sit down. Take time to reflect on your predicament. Look at your map. Think. This is often the most difficult step, especially these days since we live in a culture where always doing something is the norm. Research revealed a link between positive thinking and emotions and successful survival. That's because it opens up global thinking capacities in the brain, allowing for more innovation and creativity. In the wilderness, once your initial needs are met, you will require new ideas and prioritization of tasks to keep yourself alive for the longer term. But how can you think positively when you're in such a jam? Among the many tips offered, here are some from survival handbooks: Stay busy to keep your mind occupied. Repeat to yourself affirming statements about surviving. Recognize your negative emotions and address them. Do not blame yourself for getting into the situation. And before heading out, check some tips on what to bring along, in order to be prepared for the unexpected.
Getting lost appeals to a deep, ancient fear in usPower-pixie also shared a good article on getting lost It explains that getting lost appeals to a deep, ancient fear in us humans. It is a recurrent motive in folklore and fairytales and links to the grim reality that getting lost in nature often was a death sentence throughout human history. "During the 18th and 19th centuries, getting lost was one of the most common causes of death among the children of European settlers in the North American wilderness. "Scarcely a summer passes over the colonists in Canada without losses of children from the families of settlers occurring in the vast forests of the backwoods," the Canadian writer Susanna Moodie noted in 1852." One 19th century description of a wood that takes children reads: "The utter loneliness of the path, the grotesque shadows of the trees that stretched in long array across the steep banks on either side, taking now this, now that wild and fanciful shape, awakened strange feelings of dread in the mind of these poor forlorn wanderers." And even in these modern times, with cell phones, GPS and digital compasses, surveys find that many people steer clear of forests because they feel vulnerable and worry that they won’t be able to find their way out again. Staying put is textbook rule one, but people are often seized by "an extraordinarily powerful impulse" to carry on moving, in any direction, after losing their way. But when you’re lost, fight (or rather, freeze) is better than flight, at least until you’ve made a plan. The compulsion to move, no matter what, is likely an evolutionary adaptation: In prehistoric times, hanging around in a place you didn’t know would probably have ensured you were eaten by predators.
Hugo Spiers, who studies how animals and humans navigate space, inadvertently became his own test subject during an expedition to the Amazon basin in Peru. He asked the guards at his camp if he could go for a walk in the jungle. Don’t go too far, they told him: "So I didn’t go far, but it’s the jungle, and ten metres into the jungle is enough to be completely disorientated. I was lost in this jungle for two hours. They sent a dog out to find me. I wasn’t the first person to have a dog sent out. It was terrifying. My brain just wanted me to run. Just run. Just keep moving. I was very aware that that was not the right strategy. Keeping moving in the jungle is not going to save your life. So I tried to calm down and think carefully and not react at high speed and look at my environment, and I realized I was going in circles, exactly like in the movies. I was using a machete to mark big trees, laying down a thread, to know if I’d come that way before. That was starting to work. I’d mark a tree with three slashes and if I ended up back at that tree I knew I’d gone in a circle. I was nearly back at the camp when they sent the dog out, but it was a huge relief. It just made me very aware that being really, really lost is quite terrifying. It’s not a normal thing."
Jonathan Mosher wrote in 2019: "Being an experienced hiker means very little if you don't understand big mountains. Everybody knows the song "going downhill leads to roads, water, and people". This advice on your day hike in the Midwest is fine when lost. It's STUPID advise when your high up in mountains. Mountains look much different from below, especially climbing up on a safe trail. Always try to backtrack and find the trail, or stay put on safe easily manageable ground. Thinking you can just "find a way down" many mountains is super dangerous. People will see a scree gully and think: "Oh, there's a trail". Which leads to a ledge and a cliff, they walk the cliff for 400 feet, which leads to a small downclimb, which leads to another ledge, which leads to a gully, that leads to a 20ft downclimb, etc, etc. You don't know it yet, but you've just entered Mother Natures death maze, where nobody is going to look for you unless they're in a helicopter. And you've just twisted the knob of the lock without remembering the combo. These people are usually found by helicopter or get lucky. Others get hungry and thirsty and desperately continue on doing more and more dangerous things, until they give up on some unknown ledge 6 miles from where they started, pass out, fall off cliffs into places searchers can't see."
Sonny Gunz wrote in 2019: "I think serial killers love the lone hiker... National parks are the last places we have without cameras every 6 inches. Always carry protection, that way at least it gives you a shot at surviving a deadly encounter."To which some people replied: "They dump bodies in and around national parks. See Ted Bundy. Almost every victim was taken and then later dumped at national, or state parks. Several others did this too." - "I agree 100% people hitch all the time in parks a serial killer can spot one a mile away give them a ride pull over to take some pics and murder them stuff the body in a shallow grave and the elements will destroy all DNA evidence." - "Serial killers love desolate places where they can find people who are alone. For instance the highway of tears in British Columbia, which is a long highway that runs through miles of desolation. A crazy number of young girls, mostly indigenous people, have gone missing while hitchhiking there." - "I used to work as a mountain guide in Spain for a number of years, and I can vow for it that one certainly can bump into some pretty weird lone wolves (people) in very remote and unexpected places in mountain wilderness.. So if that happens in places like Spain, chances of the same happening in [countries with wild nature like] the States must be far greater. Some of these loners that I bumped into in some very remote areas in Spain, had lived alone out there for as long as 30-40 yrs...totally disconnected from so-called civilization. I bumped into two of whom I was glad I didn't meet them alone, and one of them hung around an area where at least two people had gone missing over a number of years. On the other hand, there are so many things that can happen (go wrong) during a hike, even a seemingly easy route. Nature is nature, and one should never step into wild nature with anything less than total precaution, respect and readiness for any eventualities."
Short recollections of people who got lostThis writer details what she felt when she got lost in the wild: "I was hiking back on the stretch of the Buffalo River Trail in Arkansas I had spent most of the day exploring when unexplainably, unexpectedly and stunningly, I was lost. The trail was just simply gone. One moment, I’m trekking on it, the next moment, it had disappeared. On the weekend following Thanksgiving, most of the Ozark trees had surrendered their leaves. The Ozark Mountains and the Buffalo River Trail were smothered with the gold, red and browns of fallen carpet. I remember thinking just an hour before how the trail was only discernible by the flattened and tramped leaves from hikers before me. I had thought about how easy it would be to wander off the trail and into the primitive wild. And, I had done just that. It’s an unnerving feeling to be lost alone on an unfamiliar mountain with the sun setting, especially for someone new to solo hiking for long distances. I knew my fiancé was still over four miles away at a campground fishing, and if I wasn’t back by dark, he would worry. So I turned around and backtracked until I found the trail I had been on. I walked forward again until it disappeared. It just ended. No trail, no hint of a trail, nothing that even looked like a trail. I started to feel my breath quicken, my body temperature rise and a fog engulf my mind. I just couldn’t fathom that the trail wasn’t there, so I just started walking… randomly. I walked until it was clear to even my foggy brain that the fallen logs and brambles that tore at me were not part of any kind of trail. That growing panicky voice in my head told me to keep moving. I tried hiking up the side of the mountain, thinking this particular stretch of trail was higher. Nope, no trail. I tried hiking down and found only sheer bluffs. For a few terrifying moments, I couldn’t even find my way back to where the trail petered out, and that’s when I knew I did the wrong thing. In all honesty, I wasn’t truly, deeply, no-hope lost. I could see the highway that runs between Boxley and Ponca in Arkansas off in the distance, and I knew which direction I had to go. The thought of tromping through unfamiliar woods on a mountain that plummeted into hundred-foot cliffs while navigating the dark didn’t appeal to me, but I would’ve done it. I wasn’t completely lost, but lost enough to feel frightened, angry and stupid. How embarrassed would I be if I had to be rescued on a day hike? What would happen when the sun sank into pitch black night? What if I froze to death when the temperatures dropped below freezing? What if an errant black bear wandered along and ate my face off? Scenarios — all unpleasant and dramatic — filled my imagination. My main concern now wasn’t finding where the trail continued, but to go back to where the trail ended. I desperately searched for landmarks and stumbled back until I finally found the original trail that petered out. Out of options, I sat on a small rock overhang where the trail disappeared and just thought. I let my breath slow down, I drank some water and I just relaxed a bit. I also considered my options. In my mind, I could either stay where I was and trust that my fiancé’ or someone would come find me, or start plotting a route to head down the mountain to either the highway or to the next campground before the sun set. For a long time, I simply stared at the trail I had come from, and I knew that it had to continue somewhere. So, I stepped up onto the rock to take a look around, and holy of holies, there was the trail. Just one simple step onto a rock would have saved me 45 minutes of uncomfortable fear. I may have found my trail again, but getting lost is an alien and uncomfortable feeling in this day and age of GPS mapping and Google search. It does happen though, and what our brains go through is just as strange."
Jennifer Pharr Davis hiked over 11,000 miles on long distance hikes throughout the world. In 2011, she became the first female to claim the overall record on the Appalachian Trail by hiking the 2,181-mile trail in 46 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes for an average of 46.9 miles per day. But, she has been lost. “I’ve been lost umpteen times, and when I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in 2006, I got lost so many times that I developed a routine for whenever I got lost,” Jennifer said. “I had hiked the Appalachian Trail several times and the trails are well-marked; however, on the Pacific Coast trail, I really got lost. “My first instinct was to panic. I was fearful that I didn’t have enough water, didn’t have enough food and was worried I wouldn’t be able to find my way back.” Even Jennifer made the wrong choices based on the panic of being lost in the woods. “The situation seemed so dire because of the conditions. I kept thinking, ‘I have to get back to the trail as soon as possible,’” she said. “I just took what I thought was the shortest direction back to the trail, which was a bad decision. You have to go through rivers, briars and all kinds of obstacles, and I ended up in more trouble than I was already in.”Ernest Troth of Virginia had a similar reaction when he became lost on a day hike in Colorado. Being lost wasn’t just frightening, but embarrassing as well. “It was really hard to believe that I was lost. I've been a hiker since I was a kid some decades before, and actually said to myself, ‘I can't believe you did this. How embarrassing,’” Ernest said. “All the peaks looked the same. There was no trail, no other hikers. The day crowds I'd grown accustomed to were just now completely absent.” The instinct to panic is a natural reaction for human beings when placed in a fearful situation. Ernest wanted to run in any direction, but he forced himself to stay calm. “Planning ahead for eventualities helped a lot. I immediately implemented ‘STOP’ - stop, think, observe, plan - when I realized I was way off the trail,” Ernest said. “I spent the next half hour with map recon, compass orientation and visually retracing my route until finally the correct downhill direction seemed obvious.”
Yossi Ghinsberg got lost in the Bolivian Amazon jungle. For three weeks in 1981, Ghinsberg, an Israeli backpacker travelling through South America, survived near drowning, venomous snakes, starvation and extreme pain. He found himself in the jungle as a 22-year-old fresh from his military service in the Israeli navy. “I was very naïve,” he says. “I wanted to be like the heroes of the books I read. That’s why I wanted to go to the jungle. I wasn’t interested in danger from the adrenaline aspect, I was more interested in the romance.” His travels took him to Bolivia, where he met a Swiss traveler called Marcus. “It happened almost like a novel. The start of the story was when I met Marcus on a trip over a lake. Then there was Karl, an Austrian who was larger than life. I believe he picked me because of my naivete. He was experienced in jungle travel and told me about this great adventure we could have through the rainforest to discover a hidden tribe. “Eventually, there were four of us. Karl, Marcus, me and an American called Kevin. We formed a group. We were four different nationalities, four distinct cultures and four different personalities. We were set for a clash.” It came after the group had been travelling through the rainforest for only a couple of weeks. Ghinsberg recalls: “The environment was harsh. There were tensions, the food was basic — we shot and ate monkeys, among other things. At first I was cursing myself for my stupidity and wanted to go back, but I adjusted.” However, the disagreements led to the group breaking up. “We built a raft to travel down the river. It was dangerous. Karl [who was acting as guide] said it was too risky to go on and that we should continue on foot. I was ready to agree with him, until Kevin suggested the two of us carry on in the raft on our own. I was shocked but agreed out of loyalty and the bond we had.” Disaster struck when they lost control of the raft as it neared a huge waterfall. Kevin somehow scrambled to shore but Ghinsberg was thrown over the waterfall. “There were moments of great despair, but falling down that waterfall wasn’t one of them,” he says. “It was a rollercoaster ride which lasted for 15 or 20 minutes. It was all I could do to keep my head above water. When I finally arrived on the shore, I had a moment of complete exhilaration that I had survived. A few seconds later came the first feeling of disaster and despair. Even then, I thought it would only be a few hours until we connected again. The toughest moment was after a few days, when I realised that I was completely alone.” Ghinsberg survived a late-night encounter with a jaguar by improvising a flame thrower — he set light to an insect-repellent spray. He ate fruit and raw eggs scavenged from jungle-chicken nests. After several days walking in the direction he imagined to be that of the nearest town, San Jose, he started to develop an inner confidence. “I discovered my own power and then I didn’t want to give it up. I didn’t even want to be rescued any more. It was intoxicating.” But his optimism did not last. “There was a terrible flood. I was almost drowned, and then on two occasions nearly sunk in a bog. The last week was the toughest because I was physically drained. I was just skin and bone. There was no food left to scavenge and I couldn’t walk because my feet were so bad. At one point, I shook a tree full of fire ants on my head just to have some pain to distract me from my aching feet so that I could continue to walk.” And then two “miraculous” events happened. “For two days I had the company of a girl. She appeared next to me. It was no less of a miracle if it was my imagination which had summoned her up, because it happened at the very moment I had broken down and given up.” The second miracle was his rescue. “It is very difficult to see it as a coincidence. Kevin had found his way back to safety and he came with some Bolivians on a boat to find me. They had given up hope, but could not find anywhere to turn the boat around. They were forced upstream to land the boat. In the whole of the Amazon, the place they landed happened to the place where I had collapsed unconscious.” Marcus and Karl were never found — it is assumed they perished in the jungle — but Ghinsberg, who now tours the world talking about his experience, is still friends with Kevin. “He was an American Catholic but a couple of years after the accident he met an Israeli girl. Now he is Jewish and lives on a kibbutz near Jerusalem.” Ultimately, his experience in the rainforest changed his life. “I became a very simple person. The simple things are the most precious to me. I don’t ascribe much significance to the things I have now. That feeling of touching death has never left me.” Here you can read about the ordeal of a woman getting lost in South Dakota in the USA.
IF Kris and Lisanne really got lost
and kept walking in the wrong direction, backtracking and stopping to assess their situation would have helped them. Staying put the moment they realized they got lost could have saved them, as research operations started on day 3 of their ordeal. They could have also made markers where they walked; tear off branches, take a stone and hit parts of the bark of the trees that you pass in a visible manner; make signs on the ground or in the trees, leave bits of that red plastic bag they had. Stack up stones along the road! None of those marks were found however by research teams :( Becoming lost is normally accompanied by high emotional arousal and fear, which, if intense enough, tends to interfere with mental functioning, specifically the application of rational thought processes toward solving the problem of getting reoriented. It is very possible that Kris and Lisanne were overcome with fear and started making a string of bad decisions: moving forward instead of staying put or backtracking; moving uncoordinated instead of thinking of the best way to make it back. Fear of the jungle and wood and especially fear of being lost will have paralyzed them most likely. Even experienced outdoorsmen may sometimes react to being lost with an extreme form of fear termed “woods shock,” evidenced as a nearly complete loss of rational thought accompanied by an apparent inability to recognize scenes or landmarks normally familiar to them. However, there are indications that when people are lost in groups of two or more, their arousal levels may be somewhat lower and they may behave in a much more rational manner than when lost alone. If they did get lost, I really hope the girls had comfort from each other and it is very well possible that it enabled them to make up strategies, such as the coordinated strict time span in which they powered on their phones to try to call emergency services and their track towards the river most likely, perhaps trying to follow it downstream in the hope of finding civilization, but actually getting more lost in the process. Perhaps one died before the other; perhaps Lisanne spent days alone in the tropical forest. Perhaps they injured themselves on river rocks. However, like I wrote before, I personally think there was more going on with their case than simply getting lost. Given the time span in which their phones were used and their camera too, and also the location in which their belongings and some bones were found and the state of the bones, I find it hard to believe that the ongoing stream of search teams didn't find them. Or that they didn't run into someone on these routes, especially near the river where Indigenous people live and houses can be found. I also can't believe that given their strategic thinking about their phone use, they didn't simply return and walk back while still on this one ongoing road down from the Pianista lookout point. Their sudden abnormal phone use and lack of documentation also doesn't feel normal to me, not even within extreme circumstances. Just because someone cán get lost in the stretch of nature behind the Mirador does not mean that they did actually get lost. I personally feel they ran into the wrong group of people and were forced further into the forest and mountains, or were moved elsewhere. But there is a very strong camp online who shoots down anything and anyone questioning the official version of events. Not that this bothers me personally, but it makes it difficult to openly discuss the inconsistencies of the They Got Lost theory.
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