He survived for 113 days in the wilderness, not too bad. He was unprepared, yes, but it also seems he knew that what he was doing was risky, and he seems to have been ok taking that risk. I'm not quite sure - why judge him negatively?
A lot of people judge him negatively because of what happened post his death: a non-fiction book about him, a feature film, hundreds of imitators, a cult of "hard survival". This lead to people dying, getting malnourished, government funds being spent on rescuing them.
However, he never knew and never will know any of that happened. All he cared about is the journey, how is he possibly responsible for inspiring unprepared people to go into the woods? It's not like he's a still-living lifestyle blogger who goads people into doing this. He's not a hero but he's not deserving of all the flack he gets.
> He survived for 113 days in the wilderness, not too bad.
That's one way to frame it. The other way is simply to say that it took him 113 days to starve to death. Lest anyone have the wrong impressions from the book/movie, he didn't die because he ate poisonous berries that messed up his digestive system. He simply burned more calories than he consumed.
I'm not one of those who think negatively of him. He himself wrote something to the effect of not having regrets and being grateful he went on this journey when he knew he was probably going to starve to death. Who am I to criticize him for it? He lived the way he wanted to, and when it was clear it was leading to his death, he was at peace with that.
surviving 113 days in the wilderness isn't that great of a feat. if you were prepared, and had done a bare minimum of research and planning beforehand, you could manage not to die.
it wasn't that what he did was risky, it's that what he did was unnecessarily risky. if he wasn't so stupid about it, it would have been a lot less risky. taking on a challenge is admirable, but taking it on without any respect for the difficulty of the thing you're attempting is dumb.
This is just internet forum backseat driving. I'm sure the average hard-boiled HNer could've outlasted him with their innate wilderness intuitions -- probably have even watched a few survival videos on Youtube --, but Chris' story is also about a guy who wanted to march away from the trappings of society. I wouldn't be surprised if he died at day 113 even if he was 2x or 4x as prepared. He would have just went deeper quicker.
But pearl clutching about the risks someone else decided to take is incredibly petty. And odds are, as a fellow HN jockey who posts every day like myself, you aren't taking nearly enough.
I hunt and tramp (hike) and there's inherent risk, and risk that can be removed or minimised, and the risks he took that killed him were unnecessary ones.
Yes, he took "unnecessary" risks. I understand his goal was not to "minimize unnecessary risks". If that's your goal, fine. It's mine, too. It wasn't his goal.
Yes, but he didn't exist in a vacuum - someone had to find his decomposing body, someone had to remove it, someone had to clean the public shelter he died in.
Filmmakers dramatize and re-interpret events all the time.
There is no 'real-life story' other than a moron who went into the deep wilderness without even a map. And were he to have taken even basic precautions, would be alive and well.
I'll try it from a different angle. Included in the things he took with him were 5kg of rice and a gun with 400 rounds - that's some level of planning. Now, he didn't have a plan so he didn't take a map. Why would he take a map? He had a vague idea of what he wanted to do, and part of it was seeing if he could survive off the land. He couldn't; so be it. He could've been more prepared and increased his chances of survival, but the point that resonates with some people was that he tried. He got off his arse. He wasn't beholden to the expectations of his parents or his money or the usual life. I have a friend who loves the idea of going on adventures and makes endless technical lists and buys gear, then barely goes anywhere. He has lots of maps...
When Alex Honnold free-soloed El Capitan, the exact point was that he didn't have a rope. He had a desperate urge to challenge himself with bigger and more difficult tasks.
This is like asking why a parachuter would need to bother to pack their shoot correctly before going on a jump.
Or why a race car driver would bother to wear a seat belt.
'Having a map' might be the #1 thing he could do to ensure his survival, as he probably would have been able to walk out were he to have done this.
He apparently was not suicidal, and probably didn't intend on dying. His 'preparations' were not really 'preparations' so much as they were the actions of a stupid, glib or over-confident fool thinking that he was prepared.
He literally turned down the offer of 'reasonable gear' from someone thinking that he wanted to have a more 'natural experience'.
"Hey maybe you ought to wear a seatbelt of you're going to go for the land speed record"
"No thanks, I'm good, I want it to be more 'natural'"
This is the framing point of stupidity: mountain climbers, BASE jumpers, race car drivers take risks of course, but they're not stupid about it. The risks make sense in the context of what they are doing.
This is not the story of a man seeking enlightenment, it's about an otherwise entitled moron (not many kids have big college funds to 'give away') who stupidly and unnecessarily died.
"Let's give away money and go play on the highway" is what the book should have been called.
You said it wasn't a story worth telling. History says it was told by published article, book, and then a movie. And it's obviously of note enough that people from around the world make a pilgrimage there, that they've removed the bus, that the bus removal is international news and that people will still visit the site where the bus was!
It obviously resonates with some people and not with others. Some get it, they understand the motivation, it means something to them. It's OK to not be one of those people.
It 'proves' that narratives can be created out of anything.
It 'proves' that an idiot, thinking he was taking 'basic precautions', but really was taking none at all, walked blindly to his own death, can be twisted by authors and narrative makes into some kind of 'insightful' story.
It 'proves' that populism is for fools who can't take the time to just see what is in front of them.
"A man decided to fly an airplane without any training or knowledge whatsoever and died on takeoff - here is the story of his enlightening journey"
> surviving 113 days in the wilderness isn't that great of a feat. if you were prepared, and had done a bare minimum of research and planning beforehand, you could manage not to die.
Sorry but this just isn't true. There's too many variables to account for, the season, terrain, availability of large game, availability and proximity of water. Even in the best circumstances, outdoor survival isn't easy. There is one particular show (forgot the name) where contestants are put into an area on their own and tasked to survive as long as possible. The areas are specifically chosen for their viability. Even then very few people, even those with experience, make it past 90 days.
Successful survival is a conglomeration of many skills, hunting, navigation, sheltering, foraging, cooking, weather adaptation, emotional regulation, food preparation and preservation, shooting, injury prevention and care, etc. Of course preparation is an important factor, but your statement suggesting that just about anyone can do it given some basic research is a huge stretch.
Here's one from my local area - the climbers shouldn't have been up there, the incoming weather was predictable, they thought they could beat it, they didn't, and as a result, a rescuer was killed by an avalanche trying to save them - but they were all killed by avalanches also.
> Because he was a 24 year old putz who’s grand life philosophy was basically the same as every 24 year old suburban white dude: the world sucks, I should run away to a simpler time.
As a white dude who grew up in suburbia and was recently 24, where are you getting this because I nor any of my suburban white friends think that?
That's a common meme of the last 40.000 years. Olders love criticizing younger generations. Don't worry it happens in urban areas, in the jungle and at kings court.
Human nature, my elders criticized my 30 years ago, and now I do the same.
I'm quite sure Phillip II also complained about the foolines of his son Alexander, even when he was tutored by Aristotle.
In brief, elders complains of youngers, but the truth is the world progress with each generation. Try to left a better world than the one you have encountered, it still has some nasty bugs to resolve.
If old people have been criticizing young people for acting dumb for thousands of years, maybe that means old people are always wrong, or maybe it means young people always tend to act dumb.
I think a lot of old people look back on their youth, realize they were dumb, then look at the contemporary youth and see that they're dumb too. Those youth eventually mature, see that they were once dumb, and see that contemporary youth are still dumb. This hypothesis doesn't preclude a general trend of progress; rather it says something about the biological development of human brains. Despite what our modern laws might say, 18 year olds typically still have a lot of growing up to do. There's plenty of evidence that suggests brain development continues well into one's mid 20s.
> It doesn’t matter how smart teens are or how well they scored on the SAT or ACT. Good judgment isn’t something they can excel in, at least not yet. The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so.
McCandless died when he was 24. Notice that a lot of people in this thread, sympathetic or critical of him, are referring to him as a 'kid'. There's probably some real truth in that characterization.
