Signaling means giving up on staying hidden. Make the decision once, and stick to it.
ACT
- Go up. A high point, a clearing, a ridge, a sandbar, open water. A signal sent from the bottom of a valley is lost.
- Whistle instead of shouting. Three blasts, pause, start again. Your voice gives out within minutes and doesn't carry far; a whistle carries much farther, for as long as you need, without effort.
- Draw on the ground. Big — several meters per stroke. V means you need assistance, X that someone is injured and can't move, an arrow shows the direction you took if you leave. These three symbols are international.
- By day, make smoke. At night, make flame. Keeping a fire going and choosing fuel are covered in Making and keeping a fire.
- Stay put if you've left a fixed signal. A signal abandoned without a direction sends rescuers exactly where you no longer are. If you leave anyway, hold a heading: Finding your way without instruments.
ADAPT
You have sun. A mirror carries tens of kilometers and can be seen from a plane. Make a V with two outstretched fingers, frame the target inside it, and sweep the spot of light across the V. No mirror: a phone screen, a metal lid, a shard of mirrored glass.
You're on snow or sand. Dig rather than add. A shallow trench reads perfectly from above, because the shadow it casts in low light is what reveals it.
You want white smoke: green, damp vegetation. Black: rubber, plastic, oil. Choose according to the background — white over dark forest, black against a clear sky or over snow.
You're not sure you want to be seen. Then don't do it. A signal can't be taken back. Prepare it completely, keep it ready, and only set it off once you've decided.
You're in a group. Share out the roles before signaling: one person decides when to start, another keeps the signal going, a third watches the horizon so no answer gets missed. A group signaling with several voices produces irregular sequences, and irregularity is exactly what makes a signal pass for natural noise.
You have to leave. Leave an arrow on the ground pointing the way you went, and make it big. If you can write, add the date and time you left: it lets rescuers work out a search radius instead of searching at random. Then mark your route at regular intervals — stacked stones, branches broken at head height, notches. A regular marker beats a spectacular one.
You hear or see something. Answer immediately, with whatever you have, and keep going without stopping. Many searches fail because the victim, believing they've been seen, stops signaling at the very moment rescuers are trying to confirm their position.
It's night. It's the best time for a light signal: a flame, a flash, a lamp carries far beyond anything possible in daylight. Moving, on the other hand, becomes dangerous — see Se déplacer de nuit. Signal at night, move by day.
UNDERSTAND
An effective signal rests on three qualities, and it needs all three.
Contrast: dark on light or light on dark. Regular repetition, because a distracted observer always misses the first one. Geometry, because nature produces no straight lines, no symmetry and no regular patterns — that's what makes a signal read as deliberate.
The recognized codes are few. Three of anything — three fires in a triangle, three blasts, three flashes — is the conventional distress signal in the mountains and in remote areas. SOS in Morse: three short, three long, three short — the full code is in Morse code. The alpine signal: six signals spread over one minute, a minute's pause, then again. The answer is three signals a minute. If you receive it, you've been seen: keep signaling.
A signal on the ground keeps working while you sleep. That's its decisive advantage over everything else.