SOS
The SOS button raises the alarm with the people following your outing, and switches your phone into its most aggressive tracking mode.
Read this page now, not when you need it.
Pressing SOS alerts your contacts. It does not dial 112, and it does not put a rescue team in a helicopter.
If you can call, call. In Europe: 112. The app's job is to make sure the position that goes with that call is right, and to raise the alarm for you when calling is not possible.
Why it works this way
It is a deliberate design decision, and the reason is worth understanding.
Every emergency system that can be triggered by one thumb gets triggered by accident — by a pocket, by a child, by a cold glove. A system that sends those straight to a mountain rescue control room degrades quickly: the false alarms pile up, and the real ones start arriving in a queue with them.
So myJikita puts a human being in the loop. Your SOS goes to people who know you, know what you were doing, and can tell in one phone call whether this is a misfire or the real thing. When it is real, they call the emergency services — and they call with your name, your plan, your last position and the time it was recorded. That is a far better call than an automated alert.
The cost is that somebody has to be reachable. That is why choosing the right contacts matters, and why they should read Watching someone else before the day they need it.
How to send one
The SOS button is on the map whenever an outing is running. It asks you to confirm, so a single accidental tap does not fire it.
File: img/myjikita/sos-01-button.png
Shows: The SOS button on the map and the confirmation dialog.
What happens
- Your contacts are alerted immediately — a notification that stands out from an ordinary message, and your marker on their map changes to show distress. In the roster, you go to the top, above everything else.
- Tracking switches to its fastest rate, whatever interval you had chosen. A moving casualty or a drifting position is worth the battery.
- The alert is queued if you have no signal, and sent the moment there is any. This is the case the buffering exists for.
- Your position keeps being recorded regardless.
File: img/myjikita/sos-02-active.png
Shows: The map during an active SOS, and the same outing as seen by a
contact.
If you have no signal
The alert cannot leave the phone until the phone has a network. It is not lost — it is held and sent at the first opportunity, along with every queued position.
While you wait, and if you are able:
- Move to where there may be coverage, if that is safe. A ridge or a shoulder is often enough. Moving in the dark on unstable ground to chase a bar of signal usually is not.
- Try calling 112 anyway. An emergency call can be carried by any network operator's mast, not only your own, so a call can sometimes get out where data cannot.
- Send a text. SMS needs far less signal than data and will go the moment there is a sliver of coverage.
- Stay put and stay warm once you have decided. A searchable person who stays where their last position was is much easier to find than one who moves.
- If you carry a Jikita tag, keep it on you — it is findable by other people's phones and by rescue teams' equipment independently of your own phone's signal.
Cancelling
If you sent it by accident, cancel it and tell people. Cancel in the app, then send a message in the outing thread saying you are fine. Then, if anyone has already called the emergency services, call them back and stand the call down.
Nobody will be annoyed with you. Rescue services are used to it and would much rather have an accidental alert that is corrected in two minutes than a real one that arrives late.
If you are the one who receives an SOS
Go to Watching someone else and Calling for help.
The very short version: do not wait. An SOS is deliberate. Try to reach them, and if you cannot, call 112 with the app open in front of you.