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Apparently not one of these veterans thought to bring a PLB (http://www.amazon.com/s/?field-keywords=plb).

I was going to post the same thing. My family uses the SPOT messenger. Whenever one of my brothers embarks on a dangerous trip, he takes it with him. Recently my brother kayaked through the Grand Canyon alone in the winter. Every day he would "check in" and we could see where he was camped and how much progress he made down the river that day.

I used a SPOT tracker when motorbiking through Africa, the company provides a Google map page that updates every 2 min. Family back home loved watching that page.

Afaik the emergency button (not the one to your family but to support services) would only work in the US, couldn't imagine a helicopter picking me up in Mauritania.

Great idea - I have never used one. There was a recent 'This American Life" podcast where the marine version of this saved a family on a sinking vessel in the middle of the Pacific.

I bring a tiny dual band ham radio (Baofeng uv5r) plus antenna. At 4 Watts it might not be powerful enough - though

Known as an "EPIRB" [1]. That was a great episode on the Kaufmans [2]; definitely worth the listen.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_radiobeacon

[2] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/525

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