Re:How 1,600 People Went Missing from U.S. Public Lands
by barking on Thursday March 16, 2017 @04:13PM
(#13888742)
>A 1.7 mile radius circle...two man-months at eight hours of searching a day, seven days a week
They had 200 people that first week plus it's really an arc of a circle in the direction they set out and on one side of the river only.
>Most people would get bored and move farther out before that week was over.
That could be the problem there, that and people not searching in a systematic way. The referenced stories all seem to point to people all being found relatively close to where they set out. Maybe that needs to be pointed out to searchers. Also a grid kept of what has been searched and what not so the same ground isn't revisited over and over.
Also as was pointed out, the local sheriff was in charge and had basically no expertise in this.
Re:How 1,600 People Went Missing from U.S. Public Lands
by maxerickson on Thursday March 16, 2017 @03:51PM
(#13888539)
Their plan for the run and the terrain would constrain the highest probability area quite a bit more than a circle around the ranch.
Then it would take 100,000 seconds to search a km². Rounding down by 15% or so, that's a full 24 hours.
A 1.7 mile radius circle has an area of 20 km² (again rounding down). So, by this extremely simple model, searching that circle would take two man-months at eight hours of searching a day, seven days a week. At ten times that speed, it still would take a week or so. Most people would get bored and move farther out before that week was over.
So, is that 10m² per person-second a good guess? I won't know, but looking around my living room, I doubt I could do double that rate there, so I (very, very tentatively) conclude it isn't completely bollocks.
There will be places where searching can be done much faster, but also ones where it is much slower, if only because navigating there is slow.