Three men left on a day boat trip between two Micronesian islands. A large wave hit their boat, overturning the 19-foot craft. They swam a few miles to the nearest land mass, an unihabited island called Fanadik, which is located a few hundred miles north of Papua New Guinea.
When the men did not arrive at their destination by the next day, relatives called the US Coast Guard. A joint Navy-Coast Guard operation to find the men was started. But there are countless tiny islands in Micronesia, and they would not have found them if the men had not used palm leaves to spell out their distress signal on the beach. A Navy plane spotted the sign early Thursday morning. A boat was dispatched from nearby Pulap, their original destination, to bring the men home.
In LOST, the series, the plane crash survivors did little, if anything to get the attention of potential rescuers.
In the beginning, there was not big attempt to light signal fires or mark the beaches with HELP signs. The only thing the passengers did was to burn the airplane debris to stop disease and wild boar attacks. It was Bernard, after several Others attacks, who decided it was time to start signal fires on the beach. But it was long after the initial crash, no one helped him.
Michael got fed up with the lack of attention of finding a way off the island to build two rafts. The first one was scuttled by his son, Walt, who did not want to leave the island and his new friends. The second raft was intercepted by the Others and sunk.
When Desmond's fixed sailboat was found, Sayid's group decided to use it to rescue Kate, Jack and Sawyer instead of trying to leave the island.
When the survivors found native long oar boats, they were only used to get to and from Hydra Island instead of trying to go deep out into the sea lanes for a possible rescue attempt.
The only time they got excited about rescue was when Widmore's freighter's shore party hit the island. Only Ben warned them about what was going to happen to them. But once Penny's boat rescued the O6, instead of trying to get the U.S. Coast Guard or UK/Australian officials to help return to the island, the O6 group decided to lie to the world - - - which doomed rescue for those left behind.
It is one of those odd plot points in the series that the survivors were not aggressive in their desire to escape the island and go back home. One would think that escape and survival would have been of paramount importance to the main characters.
