Now that you’ve organised your duress words it is important to consider what actions you want taken when a duress word is received. Finding the right balance between a simple phone call and declaring war against a foreign country can be difficult, but is an important step to get right. Aim too high and your safety line back home may be hesitant to act (in which case you need a better safety line), too low and you may be found too late lying in an icy bathtub sans two kidneys.

The action that you choose to take should take into account the possible situation that you are in. For instance, if you have agreed to call every 30 minutes and miss a call in, phoning back is not a useful safeguard if the battery in your phone has died. For this reason it can be beneficial to split communication methods so as to not allow for a single point of failure. For instance, you may choose to write three blog posts within 24 hours to inform your safety line that you are still alive (for now) and even give away information on your whereabouts (photographs are especially good, doubly if they include Geocodes). Unfortunately this mechanism is susceptible to attack, and could also become unavailable if the country you are visiting happens to ban your website (again a potential single point of failure). You may even be travelling in an area where they don’t have internet access or mobile phone coverage.

Depending on where you are travelling and how much you want to mitigate risk you may need to invest in a good satellite phone (or two), an EPIRB satellite beacon or simply forego the holiday and spend the time in your fallout shelter, shotgun in hand watching the door. You do have a fallout shelter, right?

Better yet, why not utilise the system that has been used throughout time and take a buddy with you. At least then if you both lose your kidneys you get a wonderful shared experience to end your vacation.