1. Start where you are, or anywhere else
Open the app and the map centers on you. Move it, search a place, or drop a pin somewhere you have not been yet. Hazards are shown with the distance from wherever you are looking, and you can filter the map by family — wildlife, weather, fire, water, terrain, people, infrastructure, plant.
2. See community reports and official warnings together
Two kinds of thing share the map. Hazards filed by other users, and live feeds from public agencies: National Weather Service alerts, NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections, National Park Service alerts and closures, USGS earthquakes and stream gauges, avalanche forecasts from Avalanche.org member centers, and iNaturalist species observations. The app never blurs the two, and it tells you when a feed is unavailable rather than showing an empty area as if it were safe.
3. Read the whole hazard path
Every report carries three levels: family, subcategory, specific hazard. Wildlife → Reptiles → Rattlesnake. Water → Ocean / Surf → Rip Current. Terrain → Rock / Ground → Landslide. There are 213 specific hazards, and an “Other / Not Listed” path for the ones nobody anticipated.
4. Find out what to do about it
Thirty-five hazards carry guidance drawn from the National Park Service, CDC, Red Cross and state agencies — what to do before, what to do if it happens, and what not to do. Some of the most useful lines are the ones telling you what to stop doing: do not rub the limbs of someone with hypothermia, do not put alcohol on a stingray wound, do not twist a tick.
5. Judge how much to trust a report
A report shows who filed it, when, how many other people have confirmed it is still there, and how precisely it was placed. What it does not show is an expert seal of approval, because there is not one. Reports are unverified. The app is built to communicate that uncertainty rather than paper over it.
6. Report what you find
Pick the hazard, confirm the location, add a severity, a description and a photo, and file it. You can file from where you are standing, or point at the spot from a safe distance. Never approach, provoke, touch or feed a hazard in order to report it — report it from a distance, or later from memory. Photos have their location and camera metadata stripped before storage, and you can hide your username on any report you file.
7. Prepare for no signal
A Trip Pack saves an area’s hazards, its map tiles and the relevant agency phone numbers to your phone before you leave service. A report you file with no connection is queued on your phone and sends itself the next time the app opens with a signal.
8. Tell people you are safe
Add trusted contacts, then tap I’m Safe or Need Help. The app writes the message — your status, your location, a map link — and hands it to your own Messages app. Nothing is sent until you send it. The message goes from your phone to your contacts and never passes through us, and we never message anyone on your behalf.