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As a tale of people in over their heads, over reliance on maps, taking the wrong road and not knowing when to quit and turn back in the American Southwest (which then turns into an international situation and doesn't have closure for 14 years) Tom Mahoud's The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans[1] is an epic and worthwhile read.

It has lots of great stuff about lost person psychology, search strategy, persistence, local knowledge, and extremely remote areas.

Highly recommended.

[1] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...




I will always upvote this link. The entire site is incredibly interesting. I believe it's made the frontpage a few times with some interesting comments IIRC.


The last time I saw it featured on HN he took his site "down" by putting everything behind a basic auth requirement...


A similar story is the Kim family's disappearance and the death of the father, James: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/STRANDED-FATHER-S-HEROIC...

He worked for CNET, and it was a big story back in 2006.




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