Yes. Maps always have up as north. So just hold a map in front of you, and forward direction is north. Easy.
North is W
West is A
South is S
East is D… unless you hit Q or E and rotated the camera, in which case you’re fucked.
…help… Im fucked.
Just walk up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, then jump and shoot someone.
It worked! I teleported to prison!
OK but no you know where the sun rises and sets if youre in a familiar place atleast
Do I look like the person who would get lost in a familiar place?
Actually, don’t answer that.
No. I keep trying to go but its always too far!
It hurts me that people don’t realise you know where the sun rises and sets (roughly), anywhere, by looking up and roughly knowing what time it is. Other than midday, then fair enough.
If it’s before noon: Go away from the sun.
If it’s after noon: Go toward the sun.
If it’s night… Wait for morning, and go away from the sun.
Instructions unclear, I’m at the north pole
If you’re at the pole, just walk due south.
*Advice not applicable if you are north or south of a given latitude.
stuck somewhere where the sun doesn’t set for like a month
Do… Do I wait?
Haha, yes there’s that extreme. However that effect is a gradient. You start to notice it north of the 60th parallel (Canada where the bulk of the population lives) but it’s only slight. In winter the sun is just slightly south of the middle of the sky.
Here in Campbell River BC we are at the 50th parallel, and on Saturday at Noon (we are out of DST now so we are talking true noon) the sun was to the direct south, 45 degrees to the horizon. It rises and sets… but to the SE, S and SW.
The moon would like a word
There’s no idiom for which way the moon rises and sets 🤷🏻♂️.
Well it tends to rise and set in the same direction as the sun because the earth spinning is what causes them to rise and set.
If it’s night and you can see both the Southern Cross and the Pointers it’s pretty trivial to determine south; if you’re in the northern hemisphere you get it even easier with Polaris to mark north.
My initial thought when reading your comment was a response about differentiation of both hemispheres, but the way you wrote it was actually quite clever, so kudos for that! :D
East is sunrise. West is sunset. The sun will also always be slightly south and even more so in the winter (unless you’re in the southern hemisphere then it’s slightly north).
If your local area has some kind of landmark like a big tower, or a big lake, learn where that is relative to you and use it as a reference point. For me, I live near a big lake and it’s always south of me. It might be easier for you to ask yourself “which way is the lake?” instead of “which way is south?” or whatever your landmark and direction happen to be.
This is the best part about growing up in Colorado. The mountains are west. It’s like having a cheat mode compass enabled all the time.
Or… the sun is south at noon. Where is the sun at noon? That’s south.
Lol this guy over here using the stars to navigate.
You should probably mention which regions this advice is limited to, to avoid confusing people from outside those regions who see your advice and misapply it.
Same but reversed in the SLC area, mountains mean East. Having lived on both sides, West is definitely better
East? I thought you said Weast.
No I said yeast.
Boyle is that you?
No I said geese
M for Mancy
Your phone is a compass
I don’t know why, but the phone compass is always so shit.
I think it depends on how you hold it.
That’s what I said
The brainrot is strong in that one.
What are you on about? Try making sense next time.
What, doesn’t everyone have a haptic compass belt?
Should’ve just put one motor on each nipple and to direct you if north is left or right.
No but I do have something haptic in the back.
That one’s for chess moves.
I mean their profile pic is them outdoors on a paddle board, so first impressions is yea maybe you do know cardinal directions? Anyone who spends extended time outdoors should.
If I learned anything in geography class than that west is on the left
And North is in space
Go west. Life is peaceful there. Go west. Lots of open air.
how do people not orient themselves?
Everytime I grt lost I just return home to get my compass and get on with my day
Legitimately, how do you? Without prior knowledge of the direction you are facing and the sun is right above you or you can’t see it.
Cardinal directions have always been hard for me and I’m only now just starting to use them out of job necessity.
Left and right takes a second most of the time, ask me to look north and it’s going to be a long while.
If I’m somewhere new or lost like op, it’s just cruel to say “go west”
Not trying to be facetious, but you just kind of do it. I think it might be something that you just subconsciously keep track of once you really become aware of it. I remember it seeming like magic until I was maybe 15 or so, and then I had landmarks for each direction in my mental map and could figure things out in reference to them. After a bit of that, I could mostly stay oriented when traveling by land, and now it’s not an issue even when I fly somewhere. I went to England for the first time last year, and I had the cardinal directions sorted probably by the time I’d walked from the train to my hotel.
Once you’ve got it down, you just sort of do it on autopilot.
I think it helps that I’ve been a pilot since I was a teenager. Spend some time where you can see a third of a state at a time you’ll just develop this sense. You get a bigger picture of how things are oriented relative to each other that’s sort of like, wherever you are in your home, you can probably work out which way the road outside goes, likely parallel to one of your walls. I can do that over much greater distances. If you’ve ever stood in the middle of a parking lot in a strip mall, and gone “the highway is over there, the Belk is over there, the J.C. Penney is that way, the furniture store is down on that end and I know the Red Lobster is just on the other side of it though I can’t see it from here,” I can do that with the major cities in my state.
Orienting yourself if you’ve gotten turned around is another habit to build up. Yes “the afternoon sun is in the West” but also if you’re in the Northern hemisphere, your shadow will point North at noon. I also have a pretty good picture of the highway system in my head and can orient myself by knowing the general heading of a nearby highway.
From both my time as a pilot and as an amateur radio operator I’m familiar with the various towers across the state. I’ve used those to work out my approximate location and heading both in the air and on the ground. In medium sized cities often there’s a city center with a few tall buildings that can be seen for several miles around, orienting yourself to them can help you develop a sense of direction. I’ve started doing that almost subconsciously.
Now if I were to wake up in a cave my gyros would be tumbled until I managed to get out. I don’t have an actual built-in compass. But it wouldn’t take me long to orient myself seeing how the daylight hit the cave entrance.
You track you direction throughout the day. My road runs east/west. If i leave my house and turn left, I’m going west, turn right im going east, I keep this in mind as often as I can.
I also know my general area pretty well and what direction each town/city is in relative to my home, which helps me find my direction if i lost it. I also like to remember which direction each major intersection goes as that helps me keep track as well.
The birth of the GPS. Basic navigation is a dying skill, a lot of people don’t even know what to do with a map without a big blue dot showing where you are
What? You don’t have an internal compass that keeps you oriented? For some reason I seem to be a lucky person that just knows which compass direction I’m going no matter where I am. And it’s a very weird and frightening feeling if I do get disoriented. I had some pain meds after a surgery that did that to me. Flushed them damn things down the toilet after the first 2 I took.
That sounds really nice. I’m sure I could develop the skill, but I have to check the Sun
While I’m sure there is learned effort, I do feel like there is something inside my brain that just has a connection to north somehow. Kind of like how ducks and geese know which way to travel when migrating. I can’t really explain it well.
I’m with you. Short of that one day dead noon Hawaii or the middle of a forest I feel like there are clues to approximate North and South even when I’m discombobulated.
And it’s a very weird and frightening feeling if I do get disoriented.
I know what you mean, there has been a couple of times in my life where my internal idea of direction has been turned off course and it is a very weird feeling indeed trying to reconcile the direction you internally believe you’re facing against the different direction a map or compass is telling you is actually true.
As a kid I also once spent a weekend in Melbourne feeling somewhat disconcerted due to not being able to get a sense of direction. I’d never been there before and flew in on an overcast day which never ended up letting up until I flew out so never ended up getting my bearings while we were down there (didn’t help that this was before the smartphone era so maps weren’t available at the drop of a hat).
I have a similar experience when I go a city in my state - St. Paul. If I go downtown for any reason, I always feel a bit uneasy walking about and I didn’t know why for the longest time. I finally found out that the streets in the downtown aren’t laid out on the cardinal points-- They were laid out on a slight bias due to being right up against the Mississippi river. And that makes me a little uncomfortable when looking down a block of buildings or from one street to the next at an intersection. It’s always a little bit wonky feeling.
