Metal Detecting Safety: How Three Simple Words Could Save You When Lost
Imagine you’re out metal detecting on a crisp Saturday morning. You’re focused on the beep of your detector when suddenly—you slip, twist your ankle, and can’t get up. You’re off trail, no cell towers in sight. Panicking, you pull out your Android or iPhone and fire up what3words.
What Is what3words?
what3words is a global addressing system that divides the entire world into a fixed grid of 3 × 3 m (10 × 10 ft) squares—57 trillion of them. Each square has a unique three-word address, for example “intent.bagel.orchid “ . Created in 2013 by Chris Sheldrick and Jack Waley-Cohen, the goal was to build a human-friendly, voice-optimized location system that works anywhere—whether in cities or wilderness.
How Widespread Is It?
- Global coverage: Every square on Earth is mapped—urban or remote
- Language support: Offered in ~50 languages, localizing words to regional usage frequency .
- Emergency use: Adopted by 4,800+ US Emergency Communications Centers through integrations like RapidSOS and CAD tools; actively used by over 250+ public‑safety teams.
- Agencies in states from Tennessee (Nashville DEC) to North Carolina’s New Hanover County and Alabama’s Baldwin County employ what3words in live rescues.
- Used daily by major agencies—LAFD, Dallas, New Hampshire, Austin—reducing search time and pinpointing lost hikers, boaters, festival goers what3words.com.
How to Use It In an Emergency
- Download the free app (iOS/Android).
- Open it and tap Locate Me (arrow/compass). It shows your three-word address—accurate to a 3 × 3 m square—even offline.
- Call 911, say: “My what3words address is barn.dog.jazz”.
- Dispatcher enters it into their system and sends rescue directly to you—no guesswork or “last place we saw you” confusion
Why It Works in the Woods
Street addresses fail in forests, fields, or off-road trails. GPS coordinates are accurate but hard to relay verbally. what3words bridges that gap with simplicity and precision. Even if your data’s down, the app’s GPS works offline—just open it and read the words
Caveats & Best Practices
- Mishearing or mistyping words can mislead rescuers—there have been cases of rescue teams going miles off-course due to duplicated/confusable words
- Use Country‑Clip in advanced settings to restrict words to your region.
- Ideally, text the link directly from the app (where supported) to bypass transcription errors.
Why 3 Words Really Matter
- Memorability: People recall words much better than long numbers.
- Universal: Works in areas with no formal address—critical for rural rescues, festivals, waterways .
- Integration: Embedded in navigation (Google Maps, Waze), vehicle systems (Mercedes, Subaru, Jaguar).
Back to You—Stranded in the Forest
You tap ‘Locate Me’, and the app reads ///signal.tango.anchor. You dial 911: “I’m out in the woods with a broken ankle, and my what3words is signal tango anchor.” Within minutes, first responders have a map pinpointing your exact square. Thanks to what3words, your rescue doesn’t require guesswork—it goes straight to you.
Let me share another use I have personally used with this app. I was in front of a property recently and didn’t know the owners. I called the non-emergency phone for the local sheriff office and I asked if they could give me the owner name by using what3words. She could and did. Your mileage might vary on that, but I was able to then look them up with whitepages app and contact them for permission to metal detect. SCORED!!
Final words
what3words simplifies complex dishes like GPS into an easy recipe of three words. In emergencies—especially in remote settings like your metal-detecting adventures—it can be a literal lifesaver. But it’s essential to use it correctly: download the app, test it, and when things go wrong, remember those three words—they’re your best hope for a fast, efficient rescue.
Stay safe out there—and always bring your three-word lifeline.
Dennis Wynne is a 73 year old successful Texas treasure hunter who has spent the past 52 years learning about history through his metal detecting exploits. Dennis has traveled extensively throughout the Texas and other states traveling down the dirt trails of early settlers and forgotten places of history which he studied and learned how to find the hidden places of the past.
He has spent countless hours doing old school research in libraries combing through old newspapers and books searching for leads to places long forgotten in his quest for historically significant places to search with a metal detector. He has has spent days and nights along the old Spanish military roads, alongside of river crossings, watering holes and battle sites, searching for relics from the past. He has found and detected thousands of undiscovered early homesites in his 52 years of detecting and continues to do so every chance he gets.
He is the author of 2700 Historical Sites Across Texas (currently in revision) which is 1200 pages plus of information about ghost towns, historical figures, and more. He is a founding member of the Cowtown Treasure Hunting Club in Fort Worth, Texas, and as a cache hunter he has recovered 5 caches of hidden treasures. He has shared that he is very close to recoveries on numbers 6 and 7 as well.
Dennis has invented an amazing accessory for the metal detecting community that will be in the marketplace soon.…..it is called the Grab-n-Stand and is a device that will assist a detectorist in getting down to recover a find, as well as getting up. We will be doing an article on the Grab-n-Stand soon and let you know our thoughts about it. Find out more at his website Wynsar.com. He also does consultant work assisting other treasure hunters with finding caches or other treasures. You can contact him via the website wynsar.com.
Don’t go in! lol