Back in the day when smoke signals were a common method of communication over long distances, how did they get a warning or help message through without everyone else seeing it?
This is an interesting question and almost as interesting as smoke signals themselves. In cowboy and Indian movies they depicted the Indians as sending complicated shape shifting alphabet messages, however this isn’t the way it really was (it did look good on TV though).
Basically each tribe had its own code and other tribes couldn’t interpret their messages. To get a message over a very long distance they would set up a chain of fires and each one would pass the message to the next, to the next until it reached the destination.
Chinese soldiers on the Great Wall of China also used smoke signals to let other lookouts along the wall know of any impending attacks.
If you want to know more about smoke signals and specifically how to send your own smoke signals take a visit to How Stuff Works and you will soon be communicating with smoke!!
