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Turns out, lost people really do walk in circles
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 9:53 am
by mekender
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32494981/ns ... e-science/
If you're lost in the woods and you feel like you're walking in circles, you probably are.
Without landmarks to guide us, people really do go around and around, a new study has found.
The finding emphasizes the importance of being prepared if you're going to set off into the wilderness or even into a maze of city streets.
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"Just walking in a straight line seems like such a simple and natural thing to do, but if you think about it, it's quite (a) complicated thing going on in the brain," said Jan Souman, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tubingen, Germany.
"After these experiments, I would never go into a big forest or desert without a compass or GPS anymore."
Souman's project started when a German popular-science television show approached his group with a viewer question: Why do people walk in circles when they're lost?
At first, Souman wasn't sure if that common sensation was actually true. When lost, he suspected, people might veer to the left or right. But he didn't expect them to actually walk in true circles.
Trying to walk straight
To find out, he instructed nine people to walk as straight as possible in one direction for several hours.
Six walkers forged through a flat, forested region of Germany. Three trekked through the Sahara desert in southern Tunisia. (A sandstorm stopped further testing in the desert). All walkers wore GPS receivers so that the researchers could analyze their routes.
The results, published today in the journal Current Biology, showed that no matter how hard people tried to walk in a straight line, they often ended up going in circles without ever realizing that they were crossing their own paths.
But there was a twist.
Circular walking befell only the four forest walkers who had to walk in overcast conditions and the one desert walker who walked at night after the moon had set. Those who could see the sun or moon managed to travel fairly straight.
Go read the rest...
Re: Turns out, lost people really do walk in circles
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 6:26 pm
by McClarkus
I went to about 7 survival schools taught by Tom Brown - also known as the "Tracker". His line of thinking is that people are mostly right or left handed, and that also translates to the legs / feet. One side is usually moved with more confidence and hence is a bit stronger than the opposite. This results is a slightly, very slightly, longer stride on one side than the other - thus the curved path......
Re: Turns out, lost people really do walk in circles
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 7:01 pm
by Erik
I was always taught to take landmarks. You spot a tree up ahead, and go to it. When you are almost there, you spot a rock another 100metres ahead and you head for it, then you see a treestump another 50metres ahead, and you head for it. That way you keep having landmarks in a straight line, and you wont go in circles.
If you're in a desert, you should be able to see a rock, or a sand dune, or something else, even if there is no sun, moon or stars visible.
Or you could just sit down and wait for the clouds to go away
Re: Turns out, lost people really do walk in circles
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 8:45 pm
by BadgerAZ
McClarkus wrote:I went to about 7 survival schools taught by Tom Brown - also known as the "Tracker". His line of thinking is that people are mostly right or left handed, and that also translates to the legs / feet. One side is usually moved with more confidence and hence is a bit stronger than the opposite. This results is a slightly, very slightly, longer stride on one side than the other - thus the curved path......
I think Tom Brown is right. Nobody has a perfectly even stride, and if you run the numbers it turns out that a person with an average stride of 30 inches and a left stride only 1/2-inch longer than the right will naturally walk in circles 3.26 miles in diameter.
A = off-center angle of each stride = arctangent(0.5" / 30")
S = number of steps required to complete a circle = 360/A
C = circumference of the circle = S * 30" [in inches] = S * (30"/12") [in feet] = S * (30"/12")/5280' [in miles]
D = diameter of circle = C / pi
Therefore (plugging in for all the variables),
(((360deg / arctan(0.5" / 30")) * (30" / 12" per foot)) / 5280' per mile) / pi = ~3.26 miles
You can take the equation above, plug in your own stride numbers, drop it into the Google search box, and work out your own numbers. These things are hardly exact, of course, because no one walks that precisely or on perfect ground.
---
Aside: I attended the Tom Brown 9-day wilderness-survival class in 1985. Interesting guy, definitely eccentric but also extremely knowledgeable in his core competencies. The tracking instruction was the best I've ever had.
Re: Turns out, lost people really do walk in circles
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 2:10 am
by Drone 7 of lots more
And let us remember that while two wrongs do not make a right, three lefts do.
Re: Turns out, lost people really do walk in circles
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 2:23 am
by Mud_Dog
Just gonna toot my own horn here, I used to kick ass at land nav. Pretty sure I still do, I have a good sense of direction unless I'm indoors.
By biggest problem was to remember to sidestep left around obstacles whenever I sidestep right, but I worked that out in training. Also like Erik, I'll focus on a landmark as I'm moving along.
Of course, I do agree with the OP since most people don't have land nav training.
Re: Turns out, lost people really do walk in circles
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 5:18 am
by arctictom
Most folks are not of much use in wild country, dam few can avoid getting lost for more than a few minutes with out a very clear trail. People walk in circles , don't pay any attention to what is around them and virtually always do the wrong thing around wild life, make too much noise, stand still when they should run, or run the wrong way, its just amazing. I watched people coming back from a survival trip complaining about being hungry with fish, berries , various tubers , etc etc around them food every where and they were hungry .
This is one of my major issues with modern man , we can do every thing except survive.
My grandfather had a saying around this "some folks are just not going to make it, and helping them just makes it worse for every body"
Re: Turns out, lost people really do walk in circles
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 4:02 pm
by Jericho941
I've heard that it's because one leg's naturally shorter than the other.
EDIT: Guess not.
The blindfold experiment dispelled one theory — that people might walk in circles because one leg tends to be longer or stronger than the other. Instead, Souman suspects that little mistakes in brain add up until the sense of what's straight turns into something round.
Re: Turns out, lost people really do walk in circles
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 6:34 pm
by workinwifdakids
I think a better way to consider this would be working in 3s. Here's what I mean:
Consider your present location, get a short-range landmark within sight, and walk to it. Now, instead of picking another, STOP! Make sure your new landmark lines up with your first landmark and where you are, and then proceed. By using three-in-a-row like that, it should start to alleviate that problem. Would that work in the desert? Perhaps, depending on landscape, but our good plans shouldn't be changed based on being in the middle of a barren and featureless desert full of shifting sand dunes.
Re: Turns out, lost people really do walk in circles
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 6:48 pm
by Erik
Problem with the three in a row is that it's can be a bit hard to find your old landmark. Lets say you are at a big rock, and you head for a tree. When you get to the tree and look back, the rock is going to look different from a distance, and you might pick the wrong rock as reference. The only way to avoid this is to regularly look back to keep track of your old position, and that might lead you to loose the new one instead. It's also hard to focus on going forward if you're constantly looking back.
That's why I was taught to take the next landmark *before* I get to the one I'm heading to. That way I line up my current position with my landmark and find another landmark in that direction. By aiming for a landmark you will be on a fairly straight line to it, and if you pick your new landmark when you still have maybe 100ft left, you have a good lineup. Ideally you should take a new landmark as far away as you can see, so in an open country it can be miles away, in a forest it might be only 50metres. Either way, pick your next landmark as soon as you can see it, not when you reach your old one.