If you're desperate, there are number of things you can do when you are bordering on, for example, Sonoran Desert. You are bordering on definitely a survival situation at that point and one thing about water that you should know is it is never good to ration your water because the effects of dehydration are compounding. It is always good to remain fully hydrated even though you are starting to panic and you don't where your next water source is. If you are running low and sipping a little bit of water and never becoming fully hydrated, it is not going to do you much good. That water is not going to do you much good, not as good as it will if you drink the water and actually rehydrate. There are definitely survival things that you can do in the desert to access water. One of them would be trying to create condensation with a tarp over a piece of plastic. That's a desperate measure. You can get some moisture out of a prickly appearing cactus. You would have to be careful not to digest it because digestion, of course, takes moisture from your body. That is something to consider right there. There are some other things you can do in a desert that would speed up your process of rescue because in this point you need to be rescued. You may be lost and are not going to work your way out of it. One of the things when I always carry with me is a signal mirror. With a signal mirror, with practice, you can signal just about any aircraft in the sky. That is a great emergency tool. You can also see how bad is your bed head is in the morning. If I carried one survival contingency tool with me in the desert, it would be a signal mirror.
