Teach your family SOS before they ever need it

Quick answer: SOS is three short signals, three long, three short, then a pause, then repeat. Send it with a flashlight at night or a whistle in the woods. Learn it at the kitchen table, practice it in the backyard, and never use it as a game anywhere a stranger might hear it.

What SOS actually is

Most people think SOS stands for "Save Our Souls." It doesn't. It stands for nothing. Early in the last century, radio operators picked those nine signals because they were easy to send and hard to mistake for anything else. The "Save Our Souls" part came later, as a way to remember it.

That matters because it means you don't have to know a single letter of Morse code. You only need a pattern.

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Dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot. If you can count to three, you've got it.

Step one: learn the timing

Timing is what separates a signal from random blinking. Morse runs on one unit of time.

• A dot is one unit.
• A dash is three units.
• The gap between signals inside a letter is one unit.
• The gap between letters is three.
• The gap between words is seven.

For a flashlight, make that unit about a second. Slower is better. A rescuer a half-mile away, tired and scanning a dark hillside, needs to see each flash clearly. So a dot is a one-second flash, a dash is a three-second flash, and the pause before you start over is a slow count of seven.

Say it out loud while you tap it on the table. "Dit dit dit. Daaah daaah daaah. Dit dit dit." Kids pick up the sound faster than the look of it.

Step two: the whistle

A whistle carries farther than a shouting voice and doesn't wear you out. A hoarse, scared kid can still blow one. Buy a pealess plastic whistle, the kind without the little ball inside. The ball can stick when it's wet or freezing. Pealess ones just work.

For the whistle, you can send full SOS, short blasts and long blasts, the same way. But the simpler standard is the one to teach children, because it's simple under stress:

• Three blasts is the universal call for help.
• Six blasts in a minute, a pause for a minute, then six again, is the pattern mountain rescuers use.
• Three blasts back means "I hear you, I'm coming."

Pick the three-blast rule for the family and stick to it. Under stress, nobody remembers a complicated system. They remember "three."

Clip the whistle to the zipper pull of each kid's jacket, not the pack. A pack gets dropped, left at a rock, or lost in the creek. A jacket stays on.

Step three: the flashlight

Any flashlight works. A headlamp works too, though you'll have to tilt your head for each signal, which is awkward but fine. Your phone's light will do in a pinch, but treat it as the backup. You'll want that battery for the call.

Here's the sequence:

1. Stand somewhere visible. A clearing, a ridge, the edge of a lake. Not inside the trees.
2. Point the light toward where help would come from: a road, a trail, a house across the water.
3. Send three quick flashes, three long, three quick.
4. Count seven slowly. Start again.
5. Keep it up for a few minutes, then rest. Batteries are finite and so is your arm.

If the light has a strobe mode, skip it. A strobe is easy to mistake for a vehicle or a tower. Steady, deliberate flashes read as human.

One firm rule: never aim a flashlight at an aircraft's cockpit. It can blind a pilot. If a plane or helicopter is overhead and you're in real trouble, point the beam at the ground in front of you and sweep it. And never, under any circumstances, use a laser pointer to signal. Aiming one at an aircraft is a federal offense and a genuine danger.

Step four: make it a family drill

Don't do this once and call it done. Skills fade in a month.

Start at the kitchen table. Every kid gets a flashlight and ten minutes. Turn off the lights. Let them send SOS to you across the room, and then you send it back. It takes about three tries before it clicks.

Next, go to the backyard after dark. Stand at opposite ends of the lot. Mom or Dad signals, kids answer. Let them sit in the dark long enough to notice how far a small light travels. Most kids are surprised.

Then add the stay-put rule, which matters more than the signal itself. A lost kid who stays where they are is far easier to find than one who wanders. So the drill ends with a script: "If I'm lost, I stop. I stay. I blow three. I flash SOS if it's dark."

Run it again before every camping trip. Two minutes in the driveway is enough.

What goes wrong

False alarms. Don't blow whistles or flash SOS at a trailhead, campground or lake to "test it." Someone will hear it and act on it. Rescuers get called out for real, and so do neighbors with good intentions. Practice at home or in a field with nobody around, and tell the neighbors if you're going to be out back.

Calling for help when the phone works. The signal is a backup. If you have bars, call 911 first. Give your location, stay on the line, and signal as a second layer. And if you're helping someone hurt, the steps in What to do in the ten minutes before the ambulance arrives cover what to do with your hands while you wait.

Forgetting daylight. Flashlights are nearly useless at noon. In daytime, use the whistle, bright clothing spread on the ground, or a signal mirror if you carry one. Three of anything, three whistle blasts, three bright items in a row, tells a searcher this is deliberate.

Dead batteries. Check the flashlight in the glovebox every spring and fall. Put it on the same day you change the smoke detector batteries, so you don't have to remember it separately.

The full kit

It costs very little. A whistle for each person. A flashlight in each car, and one in the tent. A card in the glovebox with the pattern written out in case anyone blanks. And a rope you know how to use, which is a different skill altogether. Six knots, and the order to learn them in is a good place to start.

If you want to go further, learn the alphabet. Start with S, O, E, T, A, N, I, M. Eight letters will let a father and son send each other "I'm okay" across a campsite. It's a fun trick, and kids will chase it for weeks.

But SOS is the one that counts. Teach it this week, at the table, with the lights off. Then hope nobody ever has to use it, and be ready if they do.