True grits.
I think SanVito hit the nail on the head - it is the fear of the unknown. One of the oldest and most ingrown phobias that we know.
A brief anecdote; for several years I worked as a forester/ranger in a large urban forest preserve*. The place was about 5000 acres in extent, large as urban parks go, but by no stretch of the imagination could it be called “wilderness”. It was bisected by an 8-lane expressway and by railroad tracks and surrounded by suburbs. Everywhere, one could hear the roar of distant traffic, or climb a hill and spot an area landmark…the city skyline, the bay, or something. Nevertheless, it was as wilderness to some people. I cannot begin to count the times I had to help people…not just kids but sensible adults…who lost their bearings in this patch of woods and became terrified. Their worst imaginings would begin to take shape take shape…there might be wild animals! or a crazed hermit! Or they might break a leg and be immobilized…or…
In point of fact, the only thing that attacked folks in that place were chiggers and poison ivy and heat exhaustion. But whenever I was tempted to have a laugh at these city folks expense, it would bring to mind some of my own less-than-stellar adventures. I’ve been a lifelong outdoorsman, have never been lost in the back country (temporarily turned around a time or two but never seriously lost). This is not true of cities however. I have more than once become thoroughly lost in the bowels of a city (Boston, Dallas, San Diego). Too cheap to hail a taxi, too proud to ask for directions, my usual recourse is to strike out randomly on foot, in hopes that I’ll eventually emerge somewher. In doing so, I have sometimes blundered into places that were…well, uncomfortable. Always got out with everything but my pride intact. FTR, I am also quite capable of getting hoplessly lost in shopping malls, skyscrapers and airport parking garages. And the experience is every bit as frustrating and unnerving as it is for unfortunates lost in the countryside.
People in general can be very brave & resourceful when facing an adversary they know and understand. But that fear of the unknown tends to turn us into quivering terrified blobs.
- for those dopers who know the Boston environs, it was the Blue Hills Reservation
SS
Being dive-bombed by a cropdusting plane.
Running out of gas while in a rural area. If that happens in winter and you’re really in the middle of nowhere, you’re fucked.
Car breaking down. Depending on the weather, you can stick it out in the car, but if you have to leave your vehicle a bajillion things can happen. I went into the ditch in winter around midnight and my cellphone was dead. I was only about a kilometer away from the house I had left, so I walked back, but the coyote howls had me on alert. What if I had slipped on the snow on the way back and broke my ankle or something? There were other acreages on the road so I would have bellowed my fool head off or managed to get to one of them, but out on a grid road in the middle of nowhere? Ugh.
Of course, I’m talking about real rural situations in bad weather, not being just off the main road in good weather.
Being informed I have a pretty mouth . . .
:eek:
I’m not so scared now that I have GPS, in fact I kinda like getting “lost” on purpose - as long as I have a full tank of gas.
But before that…look, I’m a city girl. I was raised in Chicagoland and have lived much of my adult life in the city proper. Streets here make sense. They’re laid out in a grid. Miss your turn? Fuggadaboutit, just go up a block and turn there, then turn again and then again and you’re on the same street you just missed. No big deal.
Miss a turn in the country, and who the hell knows where you’ll end up. The next road may not go in the same direction, or it may start out going that way and then veer off, so I can never be sure of finding my way back. There are all these…curves. Roads shouldn’t have curves, man. 
Real grits. No self-respectin’ Suthenuh uses instant grits.
As for the question posed by the o.p. and as others have already indicated, people fear what they do not know. Even a GPS or map are abstractions to most people, and do not provide adequate comfort to be able to find one’s way back to safety. Having orienteered since my tender years and having a borderline obsession with cartography, I can’t really empathize, but I can understand that some just don’t get navigation tools; they have to orient and navigate by prior knowledge or guidance.
Stranger
Heh! Reminds me of a thread titled “You know you’re in trouble when…” where I said
^^^^^This. Gas stations aren’t so plentiful in the boondocks,
Car trouble. If your car is in good condition and the weather is ok, then fine. But I have been broken down in an extremely rural area when it was 110F with the heat index, and it was hard to find help and I’m extremely lucky I did. If I was in a city help would be easy to find (this was before I had a cell phone). But you sweat profusely walking a mile in that weather.
Also when my parents were younger (before they had kids) they had car trouble in the blizzard of 78 and almost froze walking to find help in a rural area. My mom kept wanting to go to sleep on the side of the road and my dad wouldn’t let her.
Aside from that there is not much to fear in rural areas. But if you need help cell reception might not be very good and people could be a half mile away.
Armed bears
It seems obvious to me that people fear rural types because of all the Deliverance-type lore about them. Face it, the inbred-toothless-violent-rapist-hillbilly trope is thoroughly ingrained into our society. People are afraid of it, this is just a fact. They’re afraid of it the same way people are afraid of black gangsters in tough inner city areas. The reason why The Bonfire of the Vanities was such a popular book was because so many people had been in the situation of driving through a scary black neighborhood in the city and being terrified. The same thing is true in the rural part of the country. People from the city are afraid of “hillbillies.” They always have been.
This. I live in a rural area, but we’re talking surrounded by woods, not surrounded by farms which is what the deliverance jokes point to.
What if I run out of gas? There are a lot of places around here where that’d mean a 5-10 mile walk each way to the nearest gas station.
What if my car breaks down? If my cell phone isn’t charged or there isn’t good coverage which is unfortunately common, I could be stranded in the middle of nowhere. Right now that’d be extra bad considering it’s currently 23F.
What if I hit something big? Say a deer or moose, or even a bear (I’ve seen a bear while driving) lumbers out in front of me and I hit it. If I’m all alone and get knocked out, how long before someone finds me?
Word. I’m thinking of roads like this. If you ran out of gas or broke down about 30 km down this road at dusk in the middle of winter when it’s 40 below, you’d die. You’d have to hope someone came along… and there’s a sign back at this highway’s junction with the Trans-Canada Highway stating that the US border post this highway goes to isn’t open at night, so that would be unlikely.
A neighbor, (Just 4 miles from my house) was snowed in for 5 weeks last winter. Not too many people even know he lives there, his farmstead is quite isolated in a scenic valley. He had food and supplies, and could have walked out, but with all the snow cover, it was just easier for him to stay home.
Anyone accidentally going down his road during that time frame would have definitely been stuck in a snow drift. I don’t know that they would have found his place, and if they had, the ‘Texas Chainsaw’ thing might have sprang to mind . . .
:eek:
Getting stranded and having a migraine without sufficient medication or access to care.
How often do y’all run out of gas or break down?
As for getting lost, you can always flip a 180 and go back the way you came, it’s hard to get truly lost on a road.
I have made some royal fuckups on foot though. I missed a finger ridge a couple of years back and hiked a few miles out of my way before I popped out of the brush and spied the saddle I was supposed to be in across the draw.:smack:
screw THAT!! I saw Jeepers Creepers!!:eek::eek::eek:
Not to break up the “hahaha anal sex jokes”, but being a woman and being alone in the middle of nowhere - whether you’re lost or not - can be pretty terrifying. The likelihood something will happen is low of course, but all that’s on your mind is that no one could hear you scream if you did, and the million messages you’ve received in your life from various media that you will be raped, and possibly killed, or just left for dead, by a stranger.
Being a woman in the middle of nowhere with your husband or boyfriend in the car? Doesn’t really help. It’s a ridiculous fear but I know I’m not the only one who has it.
Don’t worry!
If some inbred hillbilly type comes menacingly out of the corn field towards you, I will run for help!