How Not to Survive in the Wild

A family of mushroom pickers got lost in the Oregon woods.  They got so hungry, they considered eating their pit bull.  They had no lighters or means of easily starting a fire.  They left their coats behind.  They took along no means of constructing any shelter, including knowledge.  They had some of the mushrooms they had collected, but they couldn't eat them because they tasted "nasty".  Maroons. 

People like this really deserve much worse than they received.  They cost the people of Oregon time and money because they are basically too stupid to live.  They spent a week in a hollow log, though one report indicates they were only about 300 yards from a road.  What?  You can't hear cars and trucks going by on the road?  They saw helicopters flying overhead but were not seen because of the thick foliage.  Even though they had a knife, they lacked the common sense to cut down some brush or, possibly, find a more open spot.  Plus they were too dumb to figure out that the search aircraft were probably using their car as a focal point.  They had climbed uphill from the parking area but were too brain-dead to go downhill.  They were only about a mile from their vehicle. 

If the area was really remote and thickly wooded, wouldn't it have made sense to mark the trail with something?  Bread crumbs?  Dog poop?   

I have been turned around in the woods a few times.  It is an unpleasant experience.  Directions are confusing.  I assume a lot of the time the sky in Oregon is overcast, especially this time of the year, but over the course of a week, you can figure out your freaking directions.  I don't know much about pit bulls, but a hound can run all over the country and return to the exact spot where it was let out of the truck, even if that was the only time it was ever at that spot.  I am willing to bet that if they had turned the dog loose and followed it, they would have been back at their vehicle in an hour's time.