Members of my family had shared our locations via an IPHONE feature some time ago. This was initially done for my brother’s road trip a few years ago and we had never turned it off. Generally speaking my family is pretty tight knit and I don’t see it as an invasion of privacy like I think many would. If my parents want to watch me drool over tools at home depot, or guns at the gun store I don’t really care. My wife and I had also shared locations because we work opposite schedules and it was easier to pull the feature up and see where we were than too send the text “What job are you at?” I had never considered this feature for use in a time of crises.
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were involved in a rollover accident. We were on our way to watch a military exercise that was advertised. I was curious if I could catch anything on my HAM radios and we thought it might be cool to watch some military members jump out of an airplane. For once we had the day off together and it sounded like a fun date. Unfortunately we would never make it.
While traveling to the location we were involved in a horrific car accident. I will describe the car accident in a much later blog after we are done healing from it and the civil litigation is done. After we self-extricated from the vehicle we made all of the usual phone calls to our loved ones and respective places of work. I called my father to come to the scene initially for a ride to the hospital, which later would turn into him making sure we could get some of our property from the vehicle, identify where it was towed to and stuff like that. We ended up being transported by EMS to the ER. Where the accident occurred there was no exit off of the freeway visible, and it was open fields of farm land. I could describe to my dad what we had passed and where about we were but nothing with absolute certainty to help him locate us. It occurred to me during the phone call with my dad that we had shared our locations via the IPHONE and I told my dad “Just view the Find My IPHONE feature and find me that way.” I had never considered this feature as usable, or something I would even use in a time of crises.
Had my father not known where we were transported, he could have again just tracked my IPHONE and figured out which hospital we were taken to. Had I been unable to send long text or talk on the phone but perhaps could have sent a short text such as “Track phone, come to me.” Far too often we as preppers prepare for widespread crises and ignore the probability of a much smaller scale “Family” crises and plans for what we do then.
Now that I have utilized it, it definitely has its place in our daily preparations. Had I been on one of my many hiking trips or random adventures into areas unknown, it provides a method for my family to at least locate my phone. Chances are I am with my phone as well. While this feature is dependent on service and the signal of the cell towers, if something were to happen, this at least provides a starting point for the search. Sharing this feature with individuals involves a tremendous amount of trust between everyone. When utilized it provides a powerful tool to aide in locating loved ones.
Four Horsemen Adventures and Preparedness 