Robert Young Pelton: The World's Most Dangerour Places

Robert Young Pelton, author of The World's Most Dangerous Places, shares lessons from his travels to high-risk locales

September 30, 2004 — CSO — Robert Young Pelton isn't scared of much. In the course of his adventures abroad, he has survived a plane crash, typhoons, Marxist rebels, Scud missile attacks, a head-on motorcycle crash, kidnapping, killer bees and being hunted by an Algerian death squadnot a shabby resume for a guy who says he used to work in a corporate marketing department.

Pelton left the world of brand image and product launches when he realized he had much more enthusiasm for his annual vacations to high-risk locales. He made a new career turning out Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places: 5th Edition (Robert Young Pelton the World's Most Dangerous Places). Pelton's book is a guide for businesspeople, journalists, unusually brave vacationers and armchair adventurists on negotiating the pitfalls of travel into turbulent areas. Pelton's vocation is no Disneyland trip; several of his collaborators have been killed over the years. However, Pelton also proves that it is possible to laugh in the face of death, providing a witty deconstruction of the social and political accelerants that fuel the fire in the regions he visits.

Pelton spoke with Senior Editor Daintry Duffy about keeping travel and business safe in the face of the new global dangers.CSO: What risky behaviors do travelers engage in that open them up to threats?

Pelton: I think the most dangerous form of travel is business travel. You tend to be in a bubble. You go to a Western hotel in a foreign country and you eat in nice restaurants. There really isn't that much difference [between that place and home] except what you see outside your taxi window. So a traveler may not be clued in to the big headlines in the local newspaper that say a bomb campaign is under way in the city. Backpackers and people who travel more on the backstreets usually have a better idea of what's going on in that country than somebody who

So what can business travelers do to make themselves safer?Stay out of the tourist industry. The tourist industry is there to tell you the wonderful good things that are happening in the country. But, if you read Yahoo news or Google news and search under "tourist killed" or "tourist kidnapped," you might get a completely different picture of a place. So staying out of the tourist industry is a healthy way to start. The second thing is to access sources that will give you specific information about a place, not just the general warnings.For security executives who want to contract with companies for daily updates and travel warnings: How do they tell a good service from a bad one?Actually just last night, I was going over all the various warnings that security services, the government and the U.N. provide, and it's hilariousbecause they're all laced with the limitations of the organization that issues them. So in some cases, like the State Department, it's just a cover-your-ass approach: "Don't go there, and if you follow our advice you'll be safe." Some companies give you massive amounts of totally useless detail, such as a 13-year-old kid threw a rock at a vehicle that passed by this street on that day. How would you even know how to deal with that?