It's probably worth pointing out that Belgian (and Dutch) woods are relatively safe: it would be difficult to get truly lost. The wooded areas are never more than a few km from civilization. I wonder if there is a spot that is more than 10 km from the nearest road/house/suburb. Also, there are (almost?) no acutely dangerous animals. The only thing we were watching out for were wild boar, but there weren't that many of those around back in the 80's/90's. These days there may be more wildlife to watch out for.
When we went on a 'dropping', there were no cell phones nor gps receivers. Just 'stafkaarten' (topographic maps) and a compass. It's easy now ;)
There were always incidents like cases of hyperthermia, being chased by wild pig, running into things blindly etc. But the 1000's of kids partaking always ended up ok at the end.
From who? Wow. I can’t read the article because I used up my free, so I don’t know if this is mentioned, but ee sounds paramilitary, and not just orienteering skill. What is the reason behind this?
https://boyscouttrail.com/content/game/night_infiltration-42...
The above blurb does it poor justice though. Imagine a boy-led troop with around 60 scouts on a camp out and nearly zero adult involvement outside of transportation. We had a leadership group of boys in highschool (usually 16 & 17 year olds) and they performed the roll of sentries (~6 boys) and they had flashlights. These represented sniper rifles. Each sentry got one shot (straight line...they can't wave it around) before having to loudly count to 10 representing reload time. I'm from the American south where hunting is big, so it wasn't uncommon for full on camoflauge from nearly all participants...even those rediculous suits you see snipers wear in movies. There is one hidden individual making a quite noise every 20 seconds or so (you'd have to be pretty close to hear it). There are two teams and each scout (X or O team) tries to sneak their paper message (X or O on it) to the hidden individual if they can find them. At the end of the game, the team with the most messages wins.
This is always at night and very dark in pretty thick woods. Running is absolutely forbidden as so many scouts have twisted ankles or even broken collar bones by running at night. If you get "shot" by a sentry, you have to go back to base to get another message (like respawning) and I think there is a wait period. If someone in your group finds the hidden agent, they'll naturally want to get the word out to all their fellow group without letting the other team notice, but it can sometimes be difficult. A fascinating and super fun game. In all the years I played as a non-sentry, I only found the hidden agent on my own a few times and with help a few more times. There were games when I never even found him and had to ask afterwards and was blown away by the location sometimes (inside a thorn thicket wth). It was always an amazing experience though. We played on a very large area too depending on forest density. The thicker the foliage, the smaller the need for additional area. Keep in mind that this is a pretty dangerous game from an injury frequency perspective. I'd also recommend the buddy system is used to prevent someone from getting injured and lost (think unconscious). I'd also only recommend playing in areas with no predatory animals (I wouldn't play this in New Mexico where bears and cougars exist).
We had midnight droppings during the week-long school outings as well. It's been a long time, but I think a teacher would indeed stay back 50m to observe but not intervene.
So much fun. I don't think I ever heard anything about parents having issues with it.