How can two persons orient themselves without a compass in an environment without sun, stars or remarkable landscape features?
A character of my story is in the following situation: He is in the middle of a forest and has lost his way out. He wants to be sure to keep straight on and not to move in a circle.
- He has no compass
- The sun and stars do not exist, just diffuse light.
- A second person is with him, they have no special equipment (I could give them some things that they have in their pockets, but no large gadgets).
- He is a scientist and very clever.
Is there a way my characters can make sure that they walk straight on for several kilometers under this conditions?
EDIT: I asked this question yesterday and since then I got a lot of nice answers, thank you.
But I decided to describe the setting a little bit better since some answers do not quite fit and there are a few questions in the comments.
My story takes place in a fantasy world. In this world sun, moon and stars do not exist. The light comes uniformly from all directions (not from the underground), so one can not use it for orientation. Weather-phenomenons also are distributed isotropically. Furthermore there is no magnetic field so a compass would not work.
The forest itself is very homogeneous. There is only one sort of trees, they are about three meters high and not very close together. There is no underwood, only grassy forest floor. The underground is flat, there are no hills or troughs and no rivers. I described it in my story as 'like the sea, always the same but always different'.
I hope the setting and the reason why even my clever charakter got lost and has problems to find a way out is a bit clearer now.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/33531. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
A method that doesn't take any equipment:
Choose two trees where one is in front of the other by some amount, and walk so that they always line up. When you get to the closest of the two trees pick two more that line up past the second. Every time you get to one of your trees mark it by peeling off some bark, breaking a branch so it hangs down, or something so that by looking back you'll be able to see where you came from.
This will help in case you somehow get disoriented and lose your chosen trees.
You'll have to stop at night, so putting several stakes into the ground to mark the direction you want to go before dark will help you find the next two trees when it gets light again. You'd also be able to look back and get a pretty good idea of where you want to go.
This will not get you moving in any particular direction, but it will take you in a straight line so eventually you'll get to the edge of the forest.
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