Since the first time I read this, I've wondered what they could have done to survive once the car got stuck. The only thing I came up with is to set fire to the car and hope the smoke would get someone to come look.
Its easy (well easier) with motorcycles, as you can readily get fuel out of the tank, assuming you have some fire source. But for a car? Not sure.
Mind, for this specific case, you have to appreciate that these folks were rather far from the beaten path. They were certainly far away from the local ranger stations and what not. Ideally someone may have seen it and reported it, but I wouldn't necessarily guarantee it. They were in a pretty large valley where this happened.
And, as an anecdote, my friends and I were stuck near there for 3 days one year. But it was in the mud, in the nearby dry ("dry") lake, and we were near a road. Never in any danger. But it was a fun extraction.
Heck, forget the foreign country part. I'd be a lot more prepared for somewhere like Death Valley if I drove there from the East than if I flew there and rented a car.
Just what I would try, not really sure if you could get it hot enough. Maybe a lithium battery would add enough oomph?
I thought about using the upholstery or plastic panels from the dash etc. but that's probably all flame retardant on any modern car.
I don't know if the advantage was enough, but basically the conclusion was that they found the car first. And this type of story keeps on happening (like the car in Washington state a few years ago where the only person who died wandered away from their car), to the extent there's a real lesson to stay still.
Considering they went missing in June/July, and the car wasn't found until October, I think that's unlikely.
As a general rule, absolutely, but in this case it wouldn't have been enough on its own.
It would have been about a 4 mile walk with an elevation gain of about 1000 feet. Admittedly not easy with little kids, but they ultimately did make it 8 miles in the other direction.
I can only guess they had absolutely no idea where they actually were - but perhaps thought they knew where they were. That is the only explanation for continuing forwards on foot rather than turning back. If you're looking at the wrong place on a map, especially an inadequate map, it's easy to think you're going the right way when they are 'dead' wrong.
Though they were in a bad situation in any case, with hindsight, they should have headed back down to West Side Road--not that there would be much traffic at that time of year. And even tried to cross the basin to Badwater if possible.
The Geologist's cabin is about 4500 feet higher than the valley, so you'd expect the high temp to be about 100, but in the shade with adequate water (which there is at the Geologist's cabin), it's probably not life threatening.
That said, since it seems there wasn't much investigation until the car sighting in October, it's unlikely even that would have been enough.
If you're simply stuck in an otherwise functioning vehicle, in something easily digged like sand... just get unstuck and go back from where you came. You can use the carpets/floor mats from within the vehicle if needed to get yourself out of sand in a pinch. It's just a matter of getting dirty and manual labor. I get stuck in desert sand pretty regularly, and only abandon the vehicle that got me into the isolated mess as a last resort, i.e. if it's irreparably broken or totally out of fuel.
An automobile can very easily deliver its occupants to fatal-as-pedestrian situations. As a former mechanic and gearhead, I'd strongly recommend becoming mechanically inclined and able to improvise repairs on your vehicle if you intend to do such things. And select the vehicle such as to maximize success on that front.
Standard operating procedure is to intentionally deflate tires for sandy terrain... fully inflated all-seasons tend to just spin.
I own a desert cabin on an unpaved road, and once drove the ~12 miles from town with a flat by deliberately keeping the flat side in the soft sandy shoulder for the entire pavement portion (~11 miles) of the trip. There was very little drama, and the wheel with the flat only got its paint scuffed up by the sand. Of course I drove slow to not beat up the bodywork with tire carcass, but it was perfectly mobile despite being a drive wheel on an open diff.
But WRT to ze Germans, they presumably got flats after making the idiotic choice to drive off-road in a rugged desert terrain in an unprepared minivan. Don't do that.
The more fundamental problem I suspect is that they may not have been thinking clearly given all of the empty alcohol bottles that were found. In the van, there was an empty bottle of beer and an an empty bottle of Bourbon. There was another beer bottle 2 miles from the car. Near their remains were found, there was an empty 2 liter bottle of wine and another empty bottle of beer.
I recently got a BMW 128i quite stuck in some sand at a sandy beach parking lot. I didn't have any reasonable tools and my tool-less efforts to get unstuck got me even more stuck.
Were I stuck in the desert with the BMW, limited water, no shade an no tools, it probably would have been a pretty serious problem. Things can go from manageable to unmanageable quite quickly sometimes.
The advantage of sand is you can easily shuffle it around even with bare hands. It takes time and labor, you'll get filthy and sweaty, but just keep making little mounds under the tires like four ramps with the floor mats under the tires. Use the jack one corner at a time to make these mounds under them. It'll gradually make progress in the direction you desire, gravity assisting.
I often help tourists out of washes near my desert cabin, being surrounded by airbnbs, it's a comically regular occurrence around there.
They tend to get frustrated and give up very quickly, after what efforts they made only worsened things by fixating on digging out the tires (?!?!?), neglecting to realize the underbody is completely beached on the ground. But it requires actually getting down on the ground and filthy to even see the real problem at the underside, sometimes requiring substantial digging just to get at that.
One thing that is genuinely problematic though; VW/Audi likes to use a weird half-scissor jack that's basically useless in sand/gravel/dirt, anything loose. It just scoops the ground like a shovel instead of lifting the car. The ubiquitous Japanese compact scissor jacks are far superior.
I think when people ask this question, what they actually mean is, "what would be a smart thing to do if I were in this situation?" In the interests of answering that question with the best advice currently available:
- Tell someone where you're going, how you're planning to get there, and when you should be back. It should be someone whose judgement you trust. I know, this is a chore, it's more fun to just take off on a whim for a weekend. But really, this is the number one thing that can get you found.
- Today we have really cool Garmin InReach devices that work (nearly) everywhere in (nearly) all conditions. They aren't terribly expensive. You can push a button for an SOS and a nearby agency may receive your coordinates. I'm using some qualifiers here because heavy cloud cover or snow can interfere with the devices, they can run out of battery, there can be miscommunications for your coordinates (I've personally seen this happen), and the team dispatched to your location may not be terribly motivated for any number of reasons. InReach devices are not well-loved by SAR teams because of their tendency to get activated accidentally or because a hiker "got too tired to keep going" (neither of which is a good enough reason not to respond to any new InReach alert as a potentially life-threatening emergency).
- Learn you some wilderness first aid if you can, it's probably the single best tool in your box for getting you out of bad situations. You'll get better at recognizing some common ailments and potentials for injury and you'll have a better sense of what to carry. I did not like the REI/NOLS WFA class, but it's better than nothing and is available in many popular outdoor areas.
- Recognize when you're in the shit, stop, and reassess as calmly as possible. This has got to be the most frequently recurring pattern I see in accident reports and debriefings. So many people, even ones that should know better (maybe especially ones that should know better) get tunnel vision as things start to get progressively worse. Different sports have different phrases for it, in mountaineering it's called summit fever. The road is muddy, the sky is gray, and your car is starting to bog down? STOP. Take a few beats. Eat a candy bar. Get out, stretch your legs if appropriate. Whatever, the point is to do something different for a minute so you have time to reflect on your situation. Reassess: have things been getting worse for the last few minutes? What happens if they continue to worsen? Why do you think they'll get better if you keep going forward? Then, make a decision.
- When lost, the current advice from NASAR and most organizations is to stop moving and stay put, but this can be really situational. Some situations may call for continuing to move towards something that looks like civilization, but there are also lots of areas where trying to do this ends up getting you into serious trouble. Once you deviate very far from your intended plan, the chances of finding you fall off a cliff (heh... little black humor there). Generally, your best chances of being found are on a trail, in a clearing.
Yep, Admiral Cloudberg's analysis of plane crashes has this as a recurring theme, practically every time there isn't a mechanical failure, the crash is "controlled flight into terrain".
Another thing to mention is have GPS and maps. It is good to have backups whether hiking GPS and/or paper maps and compass. If using phone, keep it charged and have battery charger.
Finally, be prepared for the conditions. Carry the essentials while hiking. Carry lots of water in desert. Carry water in car. The Germans would have been in much better shape with lots of water in car.
You, you might get lucky when the ranger says "hey, wasn't that same car there 3 months ago? Let's check it out!" and recovers your desiccated body.
I would consider a signal mirror a last resort as using one means you can't take shelter and will cook all the much faster. Smoke is more of an option but I would much prefer to save my gasoline for running the AC than for burning a tire. If I had some other fuel source fine, but it's such a low probability scenario it's not something I'm going to prepare for. My safety standards out there is never to be farther from asphalt than I can hoof it back if need be.