(Continued from Part 5. This concludes the article.)
Scent and Touch
Smells and tactile input generally won’t provide a lot of significant intelligence by themselves, but there may be instances where they could be useful. For example, the smell of smoke can be detected from a long distance away, especially if you’re downwind from the source. If you’re patrolling and you smell smoke, make a note at the location using OsmAnd and include the current wind direction – that way if you don’t have time to check it out immediately it can be added as a ‘to be investigated’ item on a later patrol. Some other examples include:
- You’re investigating a recent fire and you detect a strong odor of an accelerant like gasoline or kerosene, so you can probably assume it was arson and not an accident.
- Decomposition is another strong odor that can carry quite a distance and may indicate the presence of bodies.
- A chemical smell might indicate a nearby chemical leak/spill or contamination in water.
- The smell of food cooking usually indicates the presence of people.
- The smell of exhaust fumes can indicate the presence of an internal combustion such as a vehicle or generator.
- The smell of gunpowder can indicate that a firearm has recently been fired somewhere nearby.
- The scent of strong body odor or feces can alert you to the presence of people.
As far as I know, there isn’t a commercially available scent recorder, so you’ll need to make geotagged notes in OsmAnd as Favorites to document what you encountered; don’t forget to include atmospheric conditions such as wind speed and direction, temperature, etc., as these can impact how and where odors travel.Continue reading“Field Intelligence Collection – Part 6, by J.M.”
