It's human nature to ignore or downplay risk until it actually happens - but how do you handle it in a high-consequence environment? How do you take a situation that has already been dangerous for one person and insert ten more safely? For some reason, groups of people worldwide volunteer to do backcountry rescue - in mountains, canyons, deserts, and more. In these hostile environments, ignoring risk isn't an option; so how do we manage it, embrace it, and work with it? What does it take to turn a dangerous situation into a safer one, and what does this share with other fields where life-safety is a critical feature? How is technology both helping and hindering us? Join us for an overview of mountain rescue, mission successes, near-misses, successful failures, and why exactly a bunch of mostly-competent idiots give up a lot of their free time to pull people out of nasty situations.