Ryan -------there are whole buch of books available out there for you to start reading and learning from. The RCAF has(had) one available to the public for eons. The BC government put a good one out also and the vast majority are not expensive. It's an area of aviation where you are basically on your own. There are some companies that will provide reading material or perhaps even conduct a course, but you'll find that they are in the minority. Your next best resource together with the above is your peer pilots. If they've been around a while they will probably have a book(s) themselves that they carry with them each flight and are pools of very good advice..
DO NOT get the idea that if you read these books or perhaps, attend one of thse courses and do everything required on your part, that it guarantees you might be found in that 'nowhere' that you mention. We operate pieces of machinery and sometimes they let us down and not necessaily because we did anything wrong. There are situations where your Flight Plan or Flight Note has to be filed and described to one person at an isolated location. At that point you are depending on that one person to do their job should you become overdue. If they don't do their job, then Ryan is on his own and he better have prepared for it well before-hand and have thought out that possiblity. Every precaution that you might have taken before that flight, you did 'by the book', but is all negated if one hour after your take-off, that one person locks his office door and takes-off into the bush on a Nodwell to work for a week. The ELT you checked before your flight doesn't want to work now, so what do you do? What do you do 6 days later when you realize that nobody knows you are overdue?....stay with the a/c or leave? You know where you are exactly and you know that there is a settlement 60 miles away and your food is near exhaustion......do you walk?......do you stay, having run out of food and Mother Nature got nothing to give you? You're ok physically, but you are fast realizing that if you stay you will probably die there, but do you break that 'Tenet" of survival that says you always stay with the a/c?
The above a a VERY brief account of an experience of mine. So find those books from your nearest library and start reading. If you get a chance to take a course, then do so. Realize at the same time that others may not do their jobs or maybe can't because of weather, etc and you may have to spend a lengthy time all by yourself debating what to do or saying things like "damn, I should've brought that with me. First place I'm going when I get back is the Army & Navy". So depend on Ryan as much as possible because others may let you down AND that may not be their fault either. For a young pilot starting-out you have asked a very valid question and expressed a very valid concern......so you've already taken a step in the right direction.....don't EVER stop asking.
