alt Hacker News> Can you source a citation referring to people that had "no proper grounding in multi day off road adventuring"
Sure - West Australian newspaper pretty much any week of the year - tourists come from all over the globe to visit the vast untamed outback, rent a 4x4, head out, and get into life threatening (sometimes life ending) trouble despite having a phone connection via either mobile towers or starlink. You know, no charge, no backup, no paper maps, no experience, etc.
Whether you like it or not, ePiRBs being an easily accesible service has actually saved dozens of noobs and experienced personal from certain death by offering emergency service alerting - Fact! (and no internet required)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_...
No, I don't like it. Because it relies on someone getting a specialized piece of hardware in advance of an emergency. That's a silly notion.
You could do that, or you could do the 21st century thing, and put up enough satellites to have emergency-grade LTE coverage across the entire country. Compatible with any smartphone.