Tom Hank’s worst film (IMO) ever, Castaway was on TV last night and although I didn’t watch it I got to wondering how long it would be before anyone in his situation would be rescued.
I suppose what I’m really asking is, are there many small islands which still remain unvisited by humans?
This is a hard question because some of the most remote islands in the world like Pitcairn island are inhabited by a small group of people. Simply being remote isn’t going to do it. There are well over 100,000 uninhabited islands in the world and maybe several times that. It takes a combination of traits to not be found for a long time. For example, there are about 6000 islands off the coast of Maine alone but there is a lot of boating activity in the summer. If you got lost at the right time you might not be found for many months. Alaska is the same way but there is the issue of survival when it gets that cold. The best bet for a warm island is in the South Pacific but I don’t know which one has the right traits for the situation. There are thousands of them.
The island depicted in the film is very small, especially given the area taken up by an uninhabitably steep volcanic cone. So it’s no surprise that there’s no permanent human population there- probably the island couldn’t feed more than a few people, far less than a sustainable breeding population. And if it’s far enough off any regular sea or air lanes, there might be no reason for anyone to ever come near it. I’d say the premise is plausible.
Although Pitcairn itself is inhabited, the other islands associated with it are not. Ducie is tiny and located 340 miles east of Pitcairn. It’s seldom visited, although I don’t know that it would go five or six years without a visit as in the movie. There are probably other small islands in the South Pacific or Indian Ocean that go fairly long periods without a visit by anyone.
Is it not safe to assume that should anyone go missing as Hanks did, then after searching the larger islands the smaller ones should be looked at?
Or is the area to large for such a search?
It’s been a while since I saw the movie, but I thought part of the premise was that the plane was off course and went down far from where it was supposed to be.
In addition, the island had no fresh water source. Tom Hanks was forced to survive on coconut milk and collected rainwater, which was barely sufficient to keep himself alive.
Yep. Tom Hanks even figured out for himself that the search area was “twice the size of Texas.” In addition: After his rescue, his wife remarked that his island wasn’t even within the search radius, since nobody believed he could have drifted that far and survived.