Fieldwork safety protocol#
Week 4 — before the first case clinic
This is procedure, not caution#
Three real safety traditions converge on the same rules independently. This course didn’t invent them — it borrowed what already works.
Three real traditions, one protocol#
- Paranormal-investigation safety guidance — never alone, sobriety as both a physical and observation-reliability requirement, a named contact with an expected return time
- Urban-exploration ethics — the buddy system compared explicitly to scuba diving’s “never dive alone,” assigned roles, a deadline-based check-in
- Academic fieldwork risk-assessment policy — a formal risk assessment before any fieldwork, and a distress protocol alongside the physical one
What academic policy adds that the others don’t#
A plan for what happens if a team member is shaken by what they saw — not only if they’re injured. This course’s disengagement rule sits closer to that register than to a dramatic on-screen “get out now.”
Consent is a filter, not a formality#
No site is observed without the course’s sign-off that it’s currently sanctioned. Nobody is placed anywhere they wouldn’t otherwise go.
The buddy system, justified rather than asserted#
Not because two people are mechanically safer than one — because a log backed by only one observer’s word corroborates nothing, and a log that can’t be corroborated can’t be classified.
Next week, this stops being abstract#
A case where a trapped observer cannot self-extract. Only a second person, standing outside, can end the observation. Corroboration and rescue turn out to be the same requirement.
The disengagement rule#
The moment an observer no longer feels able to leave a site at will, the observation ends — immediately, without waiting to finish a count or confirm a pattern.
Nothing you might see in the next ten seconds is worth trading for the certainty that you can walk away.
Before next week#
Sign the consent and buddy-pairing paperwork. No fieldwork runs without both on file.