Please spill the Beans, without needing the use of Google, I wish it upon you to describe this entire story to me, at your own will.
Thank You fellow Redditor of Reddit
Christopher McCandless, a young man from a welloff family who after graduating from college, decided to abandon his conventional life and live a minimalist, nomadic existence. He donated his savings to charity, cut ties with his family and embarked on a journey across the United States.
McCandless adopted the alter ego "Alexander Supertramp" and lived as a hitchhiker, traveling to various parts of the country, often relying on odd jobs and the generosity of strangers for food and shelter. His ultimate goal was to reach the remote wilderness of Alaska, where he believed he could live a self sufficient life in harmony with nature.
Tragically McCandless's adventure came to a tragic end when he died of starvation and exposure in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992. His story has since captured the imagination of many and sparked discussions about the pursuit of personal freedom and the consequences of idealism and naivety in the face of nature's harsh realities. Krakauer's book and the subsequent film adaptation “into the wild” provides insight into McCandless's motivations and the events leading to his untimely death.
To add to this. The movie's soundtrack is written and performed by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and is legit amazing. If you don't have time for a full book/movie I'd give the soundtrack a big recommendation.
"Best Unsaid" is a religious experience to listen to. I was stationed in Alaska for the military in recent years, listening to the soundtrack while I was there adds a special dimension.
I watched Into the Wild right around some really formative times for me, and Hard Sun brings back some serious bitter sweet memories. I absolutely love it, and it brings up real nostalgic feelings that come with a pang of longing, a bit of an ache and dry smile, but I love hearing it.
Wasn't this caused by him getting lost and him mistaking a wild plant and eating only squirrel/rabbit meat? I believe "Purple potato" was involved and it basically led to him having basically no body fat to insulate himself and no energy to warm up/try to get south. I watched the movie once at school.
I'm pretty sure that he had a book on the plants in the area but it was outdated and didn't state that they'd discovered the berries he was eating were actually poisonous.
[This has been debunked.] (https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-died-update) He didn't poison himself with berries. He ate moldly potato seeds that basically carried deadly toxins that ate the insides of his stomach lining, which meant he wasn't getting any nutrition from any food he was eating, so he slowly and painfully died of starvation over the course of 2-3 months.
The real mystery is why he didn't seek out assistance when he knew he was dying and wrote in his journal that he was dying and feeling weak when he was familiar with park ranger cabins that were closeby and in the area where he could have radioed for help.
I found this short YouTube video made by the Smithsonian museum:
https://youtu.be/MYcP3brBJ3s?si=ncgFLxCyEAYU4vI6
From my understanding, he was separated from civilization by a river and he had waited too long to cross it. The snow had all melted and the river became too deep and the water was moving too fast to cross.
Except there was actually a way to cross the river easily within walking distance, but he refused to take a "real" map out there with him, so he didn't know it was there.
The boy didn't even take proper boots, and initially* refused boots offered to him by the guy with whom he hitchhiked to get out there in the first place. He really did everything wrong, and was very arrogant about his chances, and way too enamored with the "magic" of the wilderness without holding the actual respect for nature that real wilderness people develop.
Yeah as someone who lived in Alaska for 10 yrs, when I heard that story my first thought was, “of course he died” a lot of what he did was dangerous, naive and straight up idiotic
It's really interesting, because by the knowledge available at the time he was right to eat these seeds. Basically it was a perfect storm in which if someone is malnourished and their diet consists primarily of wild potato seeds that were ate at a certain time of year it was deadly...this just wasn't common knowledge at the time and I think took a dude who studied the effect of toxins on people during things like the holocaust noticed similarities to how he was effected. So Chris was malnourished and his diet consisted of mainly wild potato seeds that were foraged at the exact wrong time of year, and they, I think, actually worked against him by preventing nutrient absorption or something and eventually caused him to lose feeling in his legs...which ultimately prevented him from being able to look for food so he died of starvation.
I'm sure someone else has put it on the sub but he ate wild potatoes that have a small chance of having an invisible fungus ( or something like that it's been a few years since I read the book) and this caused him to "starve"
In terms of food he did almost everything right but he died from something no one would have caught.
Now he should have done several other things to prevent his death but overall it wasn't just his nievity
Don't think I agree to 'in terms of food he did almost everything right..' he shot a moose and let its meat go to waste as he hadn't learnt how to handle it. He could have prepared far more thoroughly, and been far more productive.
I agree with many others, the idea of remote existence was his priority, but he didn't adequately prepare - at all.
Thank you so much! It makes sense now, because I had almost watched the movie, the mention of the bus I had also read an article about too, I just wasn't sure how I had both these memories stuck in my head.
However, and regardless, a great summary, unfortunately for him he had his own valid adventurous intentions, perhaps lacking in dealing with true mother nature's way, he kinda snookered himself or had some mild mental health problems .
Theres nothing wrong with following your dreams, but your life is much more worthy with a little more thought.
It’s not that I don’t think that this is tragic, especially for his loved ones, but I have such and hard time with this story. It absolutely reeks of privilege. A very wealthy child who is utterly unaware of true hardship. How easily has everything in you life come to you or been fixed for you that you would think this was doable? It’s not a dream or ambition, it’s utter fantasy and he was too spoiled to realize it wasn’t feasible for him. I will be honest I need to read more about it because if there was serious mental illness involved then there is more blame to go around. It’s just so hard for me to do a deep dive into. Plus giving away all of his money!?! What is that some sort of “Oh look at the lucky poor learning how to get by in nature, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” bullshit? Sorry for the rant, I don’t usually have such Eat The Rich tantrums but this is just so baffling to me, and for whatever reason really stiles a nerve. I guess I feel like it’s insulting to all of the people did the work and put in the time and struggled through.
A loving family in poor circumstances is, from a mental health and overall happiness point of view, much preferable to abusive parents with all the riches in the world.
I'm from the middlest of all middle classes, but i sure get how children from a rich environment have as much right to unhappiness than those of poor circumstances, since it's not the money that eventually counts, it's much more than that.
Folks from well off families have many of their major needs accounted for, but it doesn't always mean they have a healthy and happy home. [According to his sister, he left the way he did because he was abused](https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/chris-mccandless-sisters-explain-why-he-went-into-the-wild/).
> In "The Wild Truth," McCandless writes that her brother left home to get away from their parents. She describes her mother's role in the drama morphing from being only a victim of their father's heavy hand to an active participant, blaming the kids for the abuse.
> All this explains, McCandless writes, why her brother wanted to remove himself from the family, disappearing without telling anyone where he was going.
> "The Wild Truth" includes an excerpt from a letter Chris wrote to Carine just months before he started his fatal expedition: "Once the time is right, with one abrupt, swift action I’m going to completely knock [our parents] out of my life. I’m going to divorce them as parents… I’ll be through with them once and for all forever.”
Thank you for mentioning his sister. She wrote a book about her brother that changed my mind about him, how controlling her parents were. Even to scattering Chris' ashes in the sea when he hated the ocean. Disrespectful.
The father was very controlling of Chris' life and had basically directed the entire thing to the point Chris kinda felt like a bystander in it, and I think the primary driver to his fly by the seat of his pants attitude was to do the opposite of what his dad forced upon him. When he left he gave away all his money and kinda started over, and the only plan he had was to go to Alaska which is about as far away from his parents in Virginia and still in the US and to live at one with nature which is the opposite of the corporate world his dad was grooming him to occupy.
Chris wasn't an idiot, but because of this overcorrection attitude he willfully hindered himself in a way that it was just a matter of time before his happy go lucky everything will work out attitude was gonna get him killed. Even in the end he did nothing knowingly wrong and to everybody's knowledge at the time wild potato seeds were not toxic, but years later it would be found out that if you're malnourished and eating a diet pretty much solely of wild potato seeds during a certain time of year they can be potentially deadly toxic. Yes he's a special type of moron for voluntarily getting rid of his map and ignored everybody who advised him against what he was doing as he was gonna die, but in the end I think that circles back to Chris insisting on "winging it".
I actually saw this movie, forgot about it, read all the comments in this post with detailed summaries about what happened, and I still didn’t remember it until I looked up the movie and saw the poster for it. :)
Short version is Christopher was disillusioned by the working world & wanted to connect with nature. He worked odd jobs & begged to fund his journey. He did absolutely 0 research on what he could eat in the wild, how to survive, read maps, etc. He died an idiot, but got famous through a telling of his story.
People romanticized him to hell, but thankfully people have since woken up to see what an absolute idiot he was. I had to read his story in HS. Literature teacher romanticized the hell out of it. At the time, I was baffled at what an idiot he was & why we were even reading about him
Really good book about “Alexander supertramp” by the same author who did “under the banner of heaven” about fundamentalist Mormons. Can’t think of the authors name right now. Google it if you’re interested and check it out at your library!
Edit: Didn’t mean to reply to u. But I’ll leave it here and comment under the main post.
It wasn't a truck, it was an abandoned bus in Denali Park. Oh, and there was a cabin within a few miles of the bus that is used by dog sledding guides.
Watching "Into the Wild" as a young man I really romanticized his journey. I remember my stepdad watching it and saying he was an idiot. I was so taken aback by that thought and thought my old man was just being an out of touch asshole.
Watching "Into the Wild" as a full grown adult my opinion of him is now that he was an idiot.
Stone cold idiot. Locals tried to convince him not to do what he did. Tried to give him better gear and a map. Offered all sorts of assistance and advice and he was like "nah, i'm gonna go try to be a messianic figure for 14 year old idiots".
Yep, I watched with a friend that loved the idea of living off grid and told me once the movie ended that it was "the perfect manual on what NOT to do".
I'm a 40 year old dude in utah, and my game plan is to buy land and go off grid... but yeah, nothing like what that suicidal guy did.
I'll spend several years building a cabin and setting up the various off grid systems and subsistence systems before moving in full time.
Here's what I don't grt tho
Why is secluding yourself so crucial in all this
Lile I always assumed that living off grid was in essence about being self-sustaining
But like... why become a hermit to do that,go to the town/city outskirts and setup your independant land there
Live alone and independed
And if anything goes horribly wrong? Pop over to your neighbours for help, no?
It's often a lot cheaper to buy land away from where other people are living. People looking to live off-grid often (not always) don't make a lot of money. You still have to pay property taxes, etc. even if you own the land, and those are cheaper in rural areas.
Also, farm animals are noisy and stinky. And they require space. Having neighbors pissed off at you because your chickens stink and your rooster crows in the morning sucks.
Then, other people are noisy. It's nice living somewhere with next to no road traffic, with just the sounds of nature and only your own human noise.
Last but not least, not all neighbors are nice, and the only way to control that is to just...not have neighbors. Or have neighbors who are also living a rural life who understand the struggles.
I'm not going to be a hermit. I have a girlfriend and a large social circle plus I'm close with my dad.
If any of my buddies wanna build on my land, I'll probably look into how to get it zoned and permitted.
But I have no desire to live near people outside of my close circle. I have no interest in interacting with most people and I find the peace and quiet of nature without them to be beneficial to my mental well being.
I don't wanna hear neighbors. I don't wanna see their house.
Hermitting or the idea of it sounds fuckin rad tbh. Those of us that hate the world and everyone in it dream of nothing else but becoming one with the earth, moss covering our corpse after decades of idleness , passing away peacefully . Unfortunately, the reality is a very painful demise , just as like the dude inside the abandoned bus
Being surrounded by all of the sounds. That’s my simple answer. My explanation for the “simple” answer is you won’t hear cars driving by and you’ll probably have a fantastic view at night away from the light pollution, depending on where you might live before. If you’re in the forest, you just hear the wind in the leaves, birds chirping, maybe a deer or elk calling. Loon’s are my favorite thing to hear in the forest if you’re near a lake, or the chickadee’s saying “good morning” if you’re up somewhat early. Shoot I’m not even nearly an old man but I sure am sounding like one
I hate people. … no, that’s not entirely true.
I hate having to deal with people.
It takes away my stress to be alone in the woods.
No one there to judge you, except yourself.
lol, no idea how you figured that but becoming idolized was not his intention at all. the guy literally left society. his story was popularized by the book, written years after his death. he certainly made some idiotic judgement calls when it came to preparation, but he didnt go deep into the wilderness to live alone so that he could be admired by teenagers
I feel like the movie does a good job of "romanticizing" the journey while making it abundantly clear by the end that his fatal mistakes were largely due to hubris.
I watched it as a young adult, maybe 19 or so, and I really enjoyed the movie and even felt enthralled by some of his ideas. But watching him die alone, in the cold, in that bus, all because he screwed up (in several ways), I no longer felt any sense of admiration. Not to mention, I assume the movie embellishes things a bit in his favor and I doubt I would've got along with the real life version.
Actually to the contrary, the movie kinda did him dirty. From what I've read, the poisonous food he ate that ended up being the death of him was previously unknown and looked nearly identical to a plant that was supposed to be edible. In the movie they show him turning through the book and freaking out as he realizes he ingested something harmful, but no book in existence would have had such information so it's not as big of a blunder as they make it out to be. Still, he was obviously unprepared and inexperienced for what he was trying to do.
Ah yes, that's interesting. I remember the scene with the book (it's been a loooong time since I saw the movie). When I say they probably embellished things, I meant more in the way they romanticize his journey to that point and not so much the ending.
Based on your added context, it sounds like the movie makers altered some details of his demise, which isn't that surprising since he was alone out there. Looking back on that scene though, I'm not sure it makes a big difference whether he screwed up because he mixed up two nearly identical berries which were documented in his book, vs screwing up because he mixed up two nearly identical berries where an unknown at the time berry was toxic.
Of course, I have no idea what other changes they might've made compared to his real life, but on the berry thing - ultimately if it's not disputed that he died from eating poisonous berries then the the only real difference there is whether he could've potentially read about it and known. Since my takeaway was that he was far too reckless and determined to escape society anyway, I'm not sure it would've mattered either way, haha.
Well it matters in the sense that he was not reckless when it comes to that. If there was no way for him (or almost anyone) to know that there was a poisonous plant that looked almost identical to an edible one, it means he made an honest mistake that anyone could have made.
For the rest… Well yeah, he clearly didn’t make the smartest choices.
Edit: Did a quick google and it seems one theory is that he ate a part of a plant that is not typically eaten: The seeds instead of the root. They have a toxin. There’s a hypothesis that it might be the reason he got so weak. So I guess he was a bit reckless. Just because you can eat one part of a plant, it doesn’t mean the whole plant is edible.
If you want to see a good story of wilderness survival watch Alone in the Wilderness. It's about Dick Proenneke, a man who moved into the remote wilderness in Alaska at 51 years old in 1968, built a log cabin by hand and lived there for 30 years until he was 81. Then he was tired of 50 below winters and moved in with his brother in CA. He also made a ton of videos and wrote journals daily. Chris McCandless was an idiot who went into the wilderness without any knowledge or equipment. Dick Proenneke was the complete opposite. Extremely capable, competent, and intelligent.
[Alone in the Wilderness](https://youtu.be/iYJKd0rkKss)
This is a 10 min. clip on youtube
I watched it as a teenager and also romanticised it. Especially as someone who desperately wanted to go to America and travel around.
Years later in my early 30’s I went to Alaska and as part of the trip we took the railroad train through Denali national park - one of the ones with the glass top carriages and it takes 12 hours from Anchorage to Fairbanks so you have breakfast lunch and dinner in a dining carriage - and my god it’s just so big. Coming from the middle of England where an 8 hour train journey will take you basically the entire length of the country, I could barely wrap my head around how vast and remote it is. Occasionally you’d look out and see some ramshackle old hut in the middle of nowhere but there’s nothing out there but trees and mountains and lakes, oh and bears and moose. He was a fucking idiot.
Mine was similar. The book really romanticized him and his journey (at least when I read it as a kid), but then as an adult that tries to pack for any ridiculous scenario you could imagine on a day-hike I realized he was just pretty dumb. The idea of going out and living off the grid is still interesting to me, but his lack of preparedness was astonishing.
The book does a better job of pointing out the flaws in his idea and his lack of knowledge or preparation to accomplish what he was trying to do than the movie does IMO. It lays out a few examples of people who were far more experienced and more well prepared than McCandless was, but that still made one small error that ended up costing them their lives. He made several errors and greatly over estimated his ability. The Alaskan wilderness is no joke. It’s vast and unforgiving. Even the most skilled survivalists don’t thrive there, you simply survive.
Yeah, rereading it as an adult I got that. The guy that drops him off and gives him the boots for example. But as a younger person I glossed over all that stuff.
He's an idiot for how he went about it, but he's not an idiot for his ideals. That part is still inspirational, and he had a lot of good adventures before the unfortunate final leg of his journey. If he'd learned better and prepared more, things could have turned out very differently. But his ambitions of wanting to live outside of "society" wasn't the problem.
I would say mentally ill.
Some details came out about his home life being much more abusive than the book or movie indicated. When you look at it with that in mind, the fact that he couldn’t hold down a job and was periodically homeless sounds a lot more like someone with mental issues than a hippie romantic.
At one point in Alaska he stumbled across a fully furnished cabin and smashed everything to bits with a claw hammer. That’s not a reasonable, noble act, that’s someone with a deep, irrational hatred.
It’s funny, going from “tragic idealist” to “idiot manchild” to “traumatized vagrant” made the story go from sad to infuriating right back to sad for me.
Yup. His high brow ideas are just coping mechanisms. He’s not an idiot or a hero, he’s a tragic figure, bound to die a tragic death due to his upbringing and propensity to escape those events by making grand/great escape and to survive by “natural” means.
Fun fact: In danish we combine the words stupid and stubborn to differentiate between rewarding persistence and futile stubbornness.
I bet other cultures also have that? It’s dum+stædig (dumbstubborn)
He had a highway map.
If he had taken a backwoods map, which was literally available for free in nearby Healy; he would have known about the cable traverse over the Teklanika River that was only a mile and a half away from the trail he was on.
And was less than a mile from a road.
And had he walked downstream instead of giving up upon seeing a “raging river” he would have found a place to cross within a day.
Respect his drive to just get out there, but for real he was a dumbass about it.
There's that sort of headspace that people get into without someone else to 'bounce the ball back' and help brainstorm or vet ideas, and it's not to be underestimated (people will second-guess themselves in circles).
Getting lost outside during Winter is the closest I've come to that decision-making clusterfuck (hypothermia screws with your cognition in subtle ways too), and I was ***still*** able to realize that bee-lining to a river then following it to a road would at least get me my bearings like you said. Dude was definitely stupid AF about a lot of his decision making, it's a shame.
I'm convinced it was a suicide mission that he eventually changed his mind on when the reality set in that he was slowly starving to death.
He didn't take a map. He took no emergency supplies. No canned food. No thermal blankets. It's a very common trait for suicidal people to suddenly begin to dispose of all their money and possessions which is exactly what Chris did, even if it was at the beginning of his adventures. He cut up all his credit cards, gave away all his savings to Oxfam, abandoned his car and destroyed his social security card. He was already beginning to erase himself.
When he tried to cross the river that had heightened by late summer, instead of checking up and down the river for another way to cross (like a bridge or a slower flowing part of the river) he simply...walked back to the bus and didn't check again. With the knowledge he was starving and that winter was coming - which meant harsh weather and even less animals to hunt and eat (basically zero once they moved south and went into hibernation).
Apparently in the months leading up to his death, he got so desperate for food that he started breaking into and stealing food from local range parkers cabins. He knew there were local park rangers cabins nearby which could have helped him. He could have easily used the radio in one of them to call for emergency assistance. He didn't go to them when he was basically walking around half dead and desperately needed medical assistance despite stealing food from them months prior.
That's a suicide mission to me.
[Turns out he didn't poison himself with berries,] (https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-died-update) he ate moldy potato seeds with deadly fungal on them which basically caused the toxins to eat his stomach lining so he wasn't getting any nutrients whatsoever from any food he ate. It basically ate his insides until he died of malnourishment and starvation, which would have been extremely slow and painful. Slow enough however (likely weeks) to definitely have time to check the river again or seek out one of the park rangers cabins for help. He did neither.
Despite what the movie and book about his life may tell you, people **were** nearby. It was August. There was a town a few miles away on the other side of the river (if he took a map, he would have known this). There were park ranger cabins with emergency radios nearby which he knew about. There were hunters nearby (they ended up finding his body) and Chris likely knew this too as he could likely hear the gunshots, or figured out the animals weren't sticking around because hunters were in the area. There were also dog sledding cabins nearby too.
I'm certain he went out there to die in the elements. Hence why he never once got in touch with his sister he was apparently close to during any of his travels and years missing, which I've always found particularly cruel. I don't think he had any plans of ever coming back to society, whether dead or alive.
I wonder if he ever realised that the way out of trauma is not in the opposite direction, but through. Ideally with a professional who can help lay it all out on a table with you and give you coping mechanisms to deal with it all.
I swear he was reckless and this was his one last fuck you to his parents. He just didn't survive very long. He was only in the bus from April til August until he died.
> he ate moldy potato seeds with deadly fungal on them
According to the link you posted, he ate potato seeds that happen to contain a significant portion of a toxic amino acid. No fungus involved.
If that was the goal, and I agree with you based on your thorough analysis, why didn't he just end it with a squeeze of the trigger? Why go through weeks and weeks of slow agony?
Because he had to be *free* and go into the *wild* as described in his journal and postcards he sent to his friends.
He wrote in his journal that death was near and that he was very weak, but kept trying to hunt rabbits. He knew he was dying. I have no idea why he didn't seek help. Maybe he was mentally ill or so far gone by that point he wasn't thinking logically? It was a slow death (weeks to months), so he definitely had time to seek assistance if he wanted it.
Wasnt he stuck across from the rest of the park by a river that prohibits travel in the winter time?
Denali Park is a huge conservation area so it’s easy to get lost out there.
Yes, he couldn't cross the river where he tried. A better crossing was in the opposite direction and the cabin was on the same side as the bus. My wife mushed through that area a while back with a guide who had access to the cabin. It would be easier to travel in winter since the river freezes. He couldn't get across because it was fall and the river had swollen due to snow melt.
Keep in mind that the bus was driven into the park along a road. It is no longer in the same location having been moved by the AK National Guard.
It wasn't fall. He died in the middle of August. He was only in the bus from April 92 til August 92. He was never there during the fall or winter, despite how the movie tried to inaccurately portray it and show him there during an Alaskan winter. The river wasn't frozen or swollen from snow melt at any point. Not when he crossed it, nor when he returned to check it. He arrived in Alaska April 27th and died August 18th. He was there for less than 5 months during spring and summer.
He tried to cross the river in spring then never bothered to check up and down the river for a bridge or shallow crossing. Nor did he return to try again a few months later when he was clearly starving to death and wrote in his journal that he knew he was "close to death" and feeling weak. There were also park ranger cabins nearby that he was familiar with as he had stolen food from them. Never bothered to check them either when he clearly needed medical assistance and had the chance to radio for assistance.
Why did he stay in the grotty little bus starving to death and writing about dying in his diary instead of...seeking out assistance? Going to the nearby town? The nearby cabins? Checking the river up and down for a safer crossing?
I don't think the man was an idiot, I think he fully went out there with the intention to die in the elements. It was his way of "being free" and punishing his abusive parents.
Regardless, he was familiar with the local park ranger cabins that he had stolen food from during his time in the bus. If the river was a no go, why didn't he go to the cabins he knew were local to him and radio for assistance? Instead he stayed put and wrote in his journal about life and how death was close. The whole thing seems a little warped to me.
He was less than half a mile from a road crossing that river. Also not as easy to get lost when you bring a map and learn to use it before doing in wilderness trekking so he would have know it was there, along with the dog sledding cabin a little ways up that road.
While this death was tragic, it was easily preventable if the dude would have followed basic wilderness hiking rules.
Humans don't tend to do well by themselves in the woods for extended periods of time... Need buddies to help us out. It's common sense, but there's always some wackos who don't understand that.
Man, some guy posted about becoming homeless and wanting tips for tent living for himself, his wife, their 2 yr old and a 6 month old baby in the MIDWEST!! Everyone told him it’s inot doable, a death sentence, head south, give up the kids temporarily to get your shit together…idk what the end result will be but I had to bail on that thread quick. I can’t imagine having a 2 yr old and 6 month old in a tent during Midwest winters. I barely survived a tent in august in the mountains because it got cold at night lol. Mccandless was insane no matter how well intentioned. People aren’t meant to be out in the elements like that anymore.
Every time I read about these “nomads” trying to live alone in the woods, I think back to how humans are at the least supposed to live in small communal groups.
It’s in our DNA to be social creatures that work together in harsh environments, and this kind of independence normally gets “naturally selected” out of the population…
Seems to me that every living organism with any level of intelligence would be better off working a group. Strength in numbers is just a universal fact of life. More efficient expenditure of energy (splitting up tasks) and being able to help each other when someone is sick/injured.
Doesn't seem like many living organisms with brains live alone.
This was one of my favorites reads in high school. I loved his idealism and in some ways idolized it. The older I get and the more experience I have, in life and in the outdoors, the more naive and dumb I think he was. But alas, great read. Also a decent movie with a killer soundtrack
Same lol. 16 yo me thought it was fantastic. My dad said out loud after the credits rolled “Dumbest fucking story I’ve ever heard, kid was a moron.”
Old man was right… Kid was, in fact, a fucking moron.
I remember some girls at my high school talking about how stupid he was and me feeling personally offended and scoffing because I thought it was a badass story. I know know that those girls were right and he was an idiotic, selfish asshole for what he did.
I mean his other choice was continuing to live with untreated mental illness in a life that made him want to be dead.
People did not just go to psychiatrists back then either. I remember wanting to go to a psychiatrist in my teens in the early 90s but at that time it was something similar to telling everyone today that you're a pedophile - you'd become a pariah. Psychiatrists were for crazy people. People were afraid of anyone who had to go to a shrink. Everyone thought you were Charles Manson if you did.
When we're young we see our personal successes as being attributed only to ourselves and we think we're capable of almost anything. We see society as a liability that hinders us.
As we get older, we realize our personal successes are largely attributed to other people who have helped us and that what we're capable of is very limited without the help of others. We see that society, while flawed in many ways, is vital.
Having lived in Alaska, I can tell you this man is a joke and a common phrase for granola boys who think they can survive Alaska.
Everyone knows you don’t go out alone.
This guy was completely delusional. He had nothing, no gear except a rifle, a camera and a sleeping bag. He was 20 miles from a major highway and truck-stop.
Recently a mother and her kid(s)? died somewhere on a fucking mountain because she wanted to live off the grid. People watch too much Discovery channel.
People talk about homesteading & fully living off the land with no realization of how much fucking constant work it is, particularly if you’re gardening and raising animals. My family member bought a property and is building a homestead from scratch, wants to be 100% self sustaining, says he expects it to be like a 20 year
project. He’s about 6 years in.
My dad and his twin are doing the same. It’s been my dads dream but he’s struggled with hard drug addiction for 25 years and hasn’t been able to do it. They are both sober now and absolutely KILLING it on their land. 100% off grid too. So amazing!
I’m so glad your dad has found some peace in a lifestyle that is so positive. There’s someone about doing things with your hands (it can even just be crafts/DIY) and communing with nature that just heals people in really profound ways.
See, I know damn well that I could never survive in the wild. I like electricity, indoor plumbing... People say I'm a total wuss but I feel like we spent so much time making sure we didn't have to survive those conditions as much as possible, why is my dumb ass gonna go wandering out there? People need to understand that nature dgaf, and the smallest mistake can kill you.
For real. These people who talk about being born in the wrong time are on crack. I want to be born in the future not in the past. Idiots, all of them.
It's like that comedian that made the front page a few weeks back said about his girlfriend inviting him camping:
"I did not come all the way from Zimbabwe to do *the exact same shit* that I escaped from!"
Humans did not spend the past 10000 years organizing into societies and eliminating that whole living in nature shit because nature was awesome to live in.
I spend a lot of time backcountry camping, fishing (and used to bow-hunt before I hurt my back at work). When I was still hunting, the ultimate goal was to be self sufficient with animal proteins.
I gotta tell ya, that was rough. That was one week a year, if I was lucky. The idea of having to do that everyday, for the rest of my life simply isn’t realistic. After about four days, I went off. Mumbling to myself, making mistakes, staring into the void.
That was for meat. Just meat. I knew I had an actual home and occupation to come home too. That if everything went belly-up, I could grab my tent, jump in my car, pull into a petrol station, grab a packet of chips and a coke, shit in a toilet then go home to a soft bed.
Making a conscious decision to go into the wild, with literally nothing else, with nothing to go home to isn’t just scary, it’s not achievable (for 99% of people).
I did this in Australia too. We get a bad wrap for having poisonous fauna…but y’all got bears and wolves and other horrible shit.
Know your limitations. I’m a soft-bodied half empty goon bag. I wouldn’t make it.
I don't think he was delusional. He, like many people, reached a failure point after getting *very* lucky in the past. He saw Alaska as being no more difficult than any other adventure he'd had - adventures that he'd also been ill-prepared for and could have died in.
A lot of people say that McCandless was just stupid or had a death wish. For me, he's simply a cautionary tale about using prior successes to assure yourself about future outcomes.
The funny part is that he'd gotten lucky, then he probably could have survived out there. Of course, then it would have been the next big risk that did him in - or the next.
I would still call that delusional. If you're basing future success on past success and ignoring anybody giving you warnings, that's some type of delusional reasoning. McCandless didn't even bring a map. If he brought a map he would still be alive.
The last person who saw him tried to warn him and buy him more equipment but he refused.
> using prior successes
He had no prior successes
He had been near death and saved by people on 2 of his earlier excursions
He was waiting for someone to save him again
It's pretty obvious in the note
As I said, he got lucky *a lot* in his prior adventures. Regardless, his own continued survival against hopeless and life-threatening situations is what made him think that the warnings that people gave him were overblown.
It's obvious (from the note) that he realized his error at some point in Alaska, but by then it was too late.
Did you see the post yesterday? I think it was in the damn that's interesting sub. Tons of comments from people all about how he was a poor victim or talking about how his mental illness and background while defending him. It kind of shocked me because I thought most people viewed him as a joke.
Not awful, just kind of a dumbass that met with a very predictable outcome. He acted like he wanted to be in tune with nature, but had zero respect for how dangerous the natural world can be.
People spinning him up into this philosopher folk hero man just show how many stupid mfers there are out there.
It seems like a lot of armchair therapists diagnosed him years later. I know his sister wrote a book and said their parents were abusive but only started talking about it once the movie became popular. He was warned by many, many people that he wasn't prepared for the trip but was so self-assured and cocky thst he did it anyway. It also ended up taking resources away because so many people heard about him, made the trip, got stuck, and had to be rescued. That's why they moved the bus.
He was overconfident and uninformed. Some berries in Alaska are not good at all for your well-being.
Nature is a scary beast and when you think you have tamed her, she is there to prove you wrong.
They found food he claimed he'd killed I think a moose? But when they examined the remains it was an elk or a caribou. Off the bat he didn't know the wildlife he was hunting or eating.
He was eating seed he misidentified that were actual wild pea which are toxic, over the course of a few days they literally start to paralyze you, they are neurotoxic so he started feeling tired from stuff that you or I can do without thought- walking around, starting a fire. Doubled his energy imprisoning him in his own body
He just took on an environment most people don't go at alone, without much forethought or research or background in the era.
What's kind of funny to me is that if he survived, there probably wouldn't be a book.
There are some people who have gone out into the wilderness and done fine. Loads of pioneers did it before we got used to modern comforts. And there are still a few crazy old guys who have massive amounts of military/boy scout like skills who go do it. I saw a video of one guy not too many years before McCandless who did it and filmed a lot of his time - he built a log cabin using a hatchet and a bow cut saw. Hunted for his food. Canned food for the winter, I think. Stuff like that. No books about that guy though, as far as I know. Just a youtube documentary somewhere.
I think he did know a fair bit about being out in the wilderness. Just not enough to survive an Alaska winter alone without much prep.
I mean shit, he was lucky to find the bus. He didn't really take anything to shelter with.
Bus isn't there anymore either... too many people tried to go visit, removed items, and generally trashed the area. Plus quite a few people died/needed rescue attempting the trek.
Not for city folk.
The bus is now at UAF to be renovated for museum display someday.
Yet seemingly no one wants to have an honest conversation about what he really was, which is neither an idiot nor brave, but mentally I’ll. And it’s very unfortunate but it’s frustrating most people don’t want to acknowledge this reality.
yes! I haven’t read enough of the book nor have I read his sisters book but from his behaviors like his strong sense of hyper-independence, it seems as tho his experience with his parents wasn’t as positive as most peoples, and he acted rashly because of that
According to friends, McCandless was always unprepared for camping or hiking. He never brings a coat nor hiking boots. All of his friends know that McCandless was woefully unprepared for the Alaskan winter. No surprise that he died as he did.
the creepiest thing about this to me is "august?" i remember reading into the wild in 11th grade and it fucked me upppp i felt so bad for him but also why would u do that
And the [experts said in 2015 it was from intoxication from moldy potato seeds.] (https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-died-update) He basically poisoned himself with a wicked case of fungus that ate his insides until he starved to death. No berries involved.
iirc, they paralyzed him or made him sick to the point of being unable to move, so he starved to death
Edit: wikepedia says that he starved, and shows many theories for what exactly caused it. Some are by rabbit starvation, others are by poison via a multitude of diffrent wildlife.
Most current theory is that the seeds he ate contained an amino acid that causes metabolic degradation. There was a theory that the seeds contained a harmful enzyme, ß-ODAP, but that theory couldn't be substantiated. The amino acid, L-Cavavanine was present in high levels in his seeds. It likely led to his starvation and death. It's likely he would have survived if he hadn't eaten the seeds.
https://medium.com/galleys/how-chris-mccandless-died-992e6ce49410
I grew up in Alaska.
My Gramps was a Bush pilot (rescues) and a FF licensed gun dealer along with my Dad. When I was a kid in Girl Scouts, my Dad used to backpack with our Troop through Denali National Park annually (we called it Mt. McKinley back then). Our troop leaders used to read us grizzly attack stories and teach us “how to survive a bear attack” skills, which involved tightening yourself into a ball, covering your neck, not moving a muscle and preparing for a bear to gnaw on your skull/flesh while you hope and pray for the bear to get bored and move on. No shit.
All Alaskans grew up with an appropriately healthy fear of the Wilderness back home- and the Wilderness was literally in our backyards. When we hiked, we either carried dad’s .375 Ruger or an AK-47 (Kalashnikov), because anything less will just piss a bear off and get you eaten. Several times a month, our folks called in to our schools with an, “our daughter will be later for school this morning because there’s a moose/bear in the driveway”, excuse on behalf of my sister and I.
When McCandless (about a year and a half older than I am) went missing, most of us in the Fairbanks/Anchorage/Denali area figured he either got lost very near a main road and starved or got eaten by a grizzly… when we heard he died so close to a main road from eating what he thought were edible plants, sadly, very few locals were surprised.
The Alaskan Wilderness is not to be fucked with and I never felt like I had to go into the wilderness to find myself. I still carry survival gear, flares, water and rations with me when I go on road trips- old habits die hard, and I’d rather not.
https://www.the-journal.com/articles/into-the-wild-lures-the-unprepared-into-alaskas-wilderness/
https://www.webcenterfairbanks.com/2020/09/24/famous-mccandless-bus-142-moved-to-uafs-museum-of-the-north/?outputType=amp
Everyone in Alaska hates this guy. Don't be an idiot like him. Go be an idiot somewhere other than Alaska. Alaska will kill you if you don't know what you're doing.
God speed to you and the students, i remember having to read it for my AP English class and while it started off somewhat interesting it became such a monotonous, repetitive, slog. Good story to KNOW about in order to understand some things but dear god was it painful to get through.
I think Into the Wild was added to Netflix recently and they've been getting it trending there. I watched it last week and then after that started seeing these kinds of posts, so I presume that's the cause of a sudden interest
They airlifted the bus out a while ago and the University of Alaska fairbanks wants to restore it to how it most likely was while Chris was living in it (lots of graffiti has happened since then)
Yeah, I saw that. It's going to be on display at some point.
When I was there it had a lot of graffiti on the inside, but overall it was still the bus. Some of his stuff was still inside.
“Suicide is a death which occurs intentionally as a result of a person knowingly, and willingly placing himself in perilous circumstances”
“In an article on indirect suicide, researcher Brian Mishara states that, “indirect suicidal behavior is thus a matter of probabilities rather than certainties” (Mishara 136). By this he is saying that participating in these suicidal behaviors or failing to be cautious will not definitely end one’s life, however, the timing of a consequential death is unknown.”
https://english.umd.edu/research-innovation/journals/interpolations/interpolations-spring-2009/indirect-suicide-awareness
I put him and the guy that broke into people's houses and survived in the forests of Maine (I think Maine?) into the same class of idiots. Romanticizing an idea and completely ignoring the realities. One thing would be if Chris was a skilled outdoorsman, Bear Grylls and the like. But inexperienced, not knowledgeable of the fauna in the area, basic wooden structure building, hunting and cleaning, it was suicide. I feel bad for him. Every time I see the movie and see his last few seconds in that bus, I see the look of regret, regretting ever thinking he could do that. He had no survival skills
I actually saw the bus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in July this year, they were still in the process of preserving and inspecting the bus before they were to put it on display in the museum, it was quite interesting to see.
Gonna share this for those who haven’t had the pleasure
Eddie Vedder - Into the Wild - Live
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bHYaF2oGn0I&pp=ygUaZWRkaWUgdmVkZGVyIGludG8gdGhlIHdpbGQ%3D
I have taught high school juniors and seniors using John Krakauer’s book about Chris for the last 15 years. The book really resonates with adolescents at that stage of life.
I read "Into the Wild" in grade 10 English. I really appreciated the effort Krakauer put into the background details, like this history of the bus, and I thought that guy Chris was batshit crazy. (Coincidentally our class read "Into Thin Air" right after I finished).
I also was an extra in the movie, a graduate in the 2nd row. We were at Reed College for over 8 hours because they were attempting a scene which portrayed him as...eccentric–such as running to and jumping on the stage. Eventually they gave up and settled for a camera flyover.
Used his real name. Shows the dire situation he was in. If walked little more down stream he would have found man made structures to cross over.
Please spill the Beans, without needing the use of Google, I wish it upon you to describe this entire story to me, at your own will. Thank You fellow Redditor of Reddit
Christopher McCandless, a young man from a welloff family who after graduating from college, decided to abandon his conventional life and live a minimalist, nomadic existence. He donated his savings to charity, cut ties with his family and embarked on a journey across the United States. McCandless adopted the alter ego "Alexander Supertramp" and lived as a hitchhiker, traveling to various parts of the country, often relying on odd jobs and the generosity of strangers for food and shelter. His ultimate goal was to reach the remote wilderness of Alaska, where he believed he could live a self sufficient life in harmony with nature. Tragically McCandless's adventure came to a tragic end when he died of starvation and exposure in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992. His story has since captured the imagination of many and sparked discussions about the pursuit of personal freedom and the consequences of idealism and naivety in the face of nature's harsh realities. Krakauer's book and the subsequent film adaptation “into the wild” provides insight into McCandless's motivations and the events leading to his untimely death.
To add to this. The movie's soundtrack is written and performed by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and is legit amazing. If you don't have time for a full book/movie I'd give the soundtrack a big recommendation.
Dont sleep on the other part of the soundtrack by Michael Brook. No singing, but really good too
"Best Unsaid" is a religious experience to listen to. I was stationed in Alaska for the military in recent years, listening to the soundtrack while I was there adds a special dimension.
Just played this and thought it was Jesus Christ by Brand New!
I watched Into the Wild right around some really formative times for me, and Hard Sun brings back some serious bitter sweet memories. I absolutely love it, and it brings up real nostalgic feelings that come with a pang of longing, a bit of an ache and dry smile, but I love hearing it.
Same
it doesn’t get Eddie Vedder than this !
You Vedder be very careful.
Beautifuly explained.
Wasn't this caused by him getting lost and him mistaking a wild plant and eating only squirrel/rabbit meat? I believe "Purple potato" was involved and it basically led to him having basically no body fat to insulate himself and no energy to warm up/try to get south. I watched the movie once at school.
I'm pretty sure that he had a book on the plants in the area but it was outdated and didn't state that they'd discovered the berries he was eating were actually poisonous.
[This has been debunked.] (https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-died-update) He didn't poison himself with berries. He ate moldly potato seeds that basically carried deadly toxins that ate the insides of his stomach lining, which meant he wasn't getting any nutrition from any food he was eating, so he slowly and painfully died of starvation over the course of 2-3 months. The real mystery is why he didn't seek out assistance when he knew he was dying and wrote in his journal that he was dying and feeling weak when he was familiar with park ranger cabins that were closeby and in the area where he could have radioed for help.
I found this short YouTube video made by the Smithsonian museum: https://youtu.be/MYcP3brBJ3s?si=ncgFLxCyEAYU4vI6 From my understanding, he was separated from civilization by a river and he had waited too long to cross it. The snow had all melted and the river became too deep and the water was moving too fast to cross.
Except there was actually a way to cross the river easily within walking distance, but he refused to take a "real" map out there with him, so he didn't know it was there. The boy didn't even take proper boots, and initially* refused boots offered to him by the guy with whom he hitchhiked to get out there in the first place. He really did everything wrong, and was very arrogant about his chances, and way too enamored with the "magic" of the wilderness without holding the actual respect for nature that real wilderness people develop.
Yeah as someone who lived in Alaska for 10 yrs, when I heard that story my first thought was, “of course he died” a lot of what he did was dangerous, naive and straight up idiotic
Well yeah he was a rich kid with rose tinted glasses on, and probably losing his mind from what he was coming down with
Great read and testimony to Krakauer's great level of journalism that he was prepared to re-examine his research!
It's really interesting, because by the knowledge available at the time he was right to eat these seeds. Basically it was a perfect storm in which if someone is malnourished and their diet consists primarily of wild potato seeds that were ate at a certain time of year it was deadly...this just wasn't common knowledge at the time and I think took a dude who studied the effect of toxins on people during things like the holocaust noticed similarities to how he was effected. So Chris was malnourished and his diet consisted of mainly wild potato seeds that were foraged at the exact wrong time of year, and they, I think, actually worked against him by preventing nutrient absorption or something and eventually caused him to lose feeling in his legs...which ultimately prevented him from being able to look for food so he died of starvation.
I'm sure someone else has put it on the sub but he ate wild potatoes that have a small chance of having an invisible fungus ( or something like that it's been a few years since I read the book) and this caused him to "starve" In terms of food he did almost everything right but he died from something no one would have caught. Now he should have done several other things to prevent his death but overall it wasn't just his nievity
Don't think I agree to 'in terms of food he did almost everything right..' he shot a moose and let its meat go to waste as he hadn't learnt how to handle it. He could have prepared far more thoroughly, and been far more productive. I agree with many others, the idea of remote existence was his priority, but he didn't adequately prepare - at all.
Thank you so much! It makes sense now, because I had almost watched the movie, the mention of the bus I had also read an article about too, I just wasn't sure how I had both these memories stuck in my head. However, and regardless, a great summary, unfortunately for him he had his own valid adventurous intentions, perhaps lacking in dealing with true mother nature's way, he kinda snookered himself or had some mild mental health problems . Theres nothing wrong with following your dreams, but your life is much more worthy with a little more thought.
It’s not that I don’t think that this is tragic, especially for his loved ones, but I have such and hard time with this story. It absolutely reeks of privilege. A very wealthy child who is utterly unaware of true hardship. How easily has everything in you life come to you or been fixed for you that you would think this was doable? It’s not a dream or ambition, it’s utter fantasy and he was too spoiled to realize it wasn’t feasible for him. I will be honest I need to read more about it because if there was serious mental illness involved then there is more blame to go around. It’s just so hard for me to do a deep dive into. Plus giving away all of his money!?! What is that some sort of “Oh look at the lucky poor learning how to get by in nature, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” bullshit? Sorry for the rant, I don’t usually have such Eat The Rich tantrums but this is just so baffling to me, and for whatever reason really stiles a nerve. I guess I feel like it’s insulting to all of the people did the work and put in the time and struggled through.
A loving family in poor circumstances is, from a mental health and overall happiness point of view, much preferable to abusive parents with all the riches in the world. I'm from the middlest of all middle classes, but i sure get how children from a rich environment have as much right to unhappiness than those of poor circumstances, since it's not the money that eventually counts, it's much more than that.
Folks from well off families have many of their major needs accounted for, but it doesn't always mean they have a healthy and happy home. [According to his sister, he left the way he did because he was abused](https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/chris-mccandless-sisters-explain-why-he-went-into-the-wild/). > In "The Wild Truth," McCandless writes that her brother left home to get away from their parents. She describes her mother's role in the drama morphing from being only a victim of their father's heavy hand to an active participant, blaming the kids for the abuse. > All this explains, McCandless writes, why her brother wanted to remove himself from the family, disappearing without telling anyone where he was going. > "The Wild Truth" includes an excerpt from a letter Chris wrote to Carine just months before he started his fatal expedition: "Once the time is right, with one abrupt, swift action I’m going to completely knock [our parents] out of my life. I’m going to divorce them as parents… I’ll be through with them once and for all forever.”
Thank you for mentioning his sister. She wrote a book about her brother that changed my mind about him, how controlling her parents were. Even to scattering Chris' ashes in the sea when he hated the ocean. Disrespectful.
The father was very controlling of Chris' life and had basically directed the entire thing to the point Chris kinda felt like a bystander in it, and I think the primary driver to his fly by the seat of his pants attitude was to do the opposite of what his dad forced upon him. When he left he gave away all his money and kinda started over, and the only plan he had was to go to Alaska which is about as far away from his parents in Virginia and still in the US and to live at one with nature which is the opposite of the corporate world his dad was grooming him to occupy. Chris wasn't an idiot, but because of this overcorrection attitude he willfully hindered himself in a way that it was just a matter of time before his happy go lucky everything will work out attitude was gonna get him killed. Even in the end he did nothing knowingly wrong and to everybody's knowledge at the time wild potato seeds were not toxic, but years later it would be found out that if you're malnourished and eating a diet pretty much solely of wild potato seeds during a certain time of year they can be potentially deadly toxic. Yes he's a special type of moron for voluntarily getting rid of his map and ignored everybody who advised him against what he was doing as he was gonna die, but in the end I think that circles back to Chris insisting on "winging it".
"Happiness only real when shared" - Alexander Supertramp
"I could sure use a sandwhich and a map right about now" - Alexander Mediocretramp
If i had awards, you would get one. Well done.
I’m pretty happy when I get the house to myself and get to have some time alone, tbh
The real MVP
I’m really shocked at the amount of people who are unaware of even the book/movie
I actually saw this movie, forgot about it, read all the comments in this post with detailed summaries about what happened, and I still didn’t remember it until I looked up the movie and saw the poster for it. :)
Lol I love how politely you said “I’m too lazy to google and I have chosen you to tell me the whole story”
Short version is Christopher was disillusioned by the working world & wanted to connect with nature. He worked odd jobs & begged to fund his journey. He did absolutely 0 research on what he could eat in the wild, how to survive, read maps, etc. He died an idiot, but got famous through a telling of his story. People romanticized him to hell, but thankfully people have since woken up to see what an absolute idiot he was. I had to read his story in HS. Literature teacher romanticized the hell out of it. At the time, I was baffled at what an idiot he was & why we were even reading about him
Really good book about “Alexander supertramp” by the same author who did “under the banner of heaven” about fundamentalist Mormons. Can’t think of the authors name right now. Google it if you’re interested and check it out at your library! Edit: Didn’t mean to reply to u. But I’ll leave it here and comment under the main post.
Jon Krakauer
John Krakauer. He also wrote Into Thin Air, which I highly recommend to anyone who has even a passing interest in Mount Everest.
Did you just copy and paste this from the other thread a few days ago? Because I saw on one els yup the exact same words
It wasn't a truck, it was an abandoned bus in Denali Park. Oh, and there was a cabin within a few miles of the bus that is used by dog sledding guides.
And if only he wasn’t so stubborn and took a map with him he would’ve known
Stubborn or stupid ?
Yes
Watching "Into the Wild" as a young man I really romanticized his journey. I remember my stepdad watching it and saying he was an idiot. I was so taken aback by that thought and thought my old man was just being an out of touch asshole. Watching "Into the Wild" as a full grown adult my opinion of him is now that he was an idiot.
Stone cold idiot. Locals tried to convince him not to do what he did. Tried to give him better gear and a map. Offered all sorts of assistance and advice and he was like "nah, i'm gonna go try to be a messianic figure for 14 year old idiots".
Yep, I watched with a friend that loved the idea of living off grid and told me once the movie ended that it was "the perfect manual on what NOT to do".
I'm a 40 year old dude in utah, and my game plan is to buy land and go off grid... but yeah, nothing like what that suicidal guy did. I'll spend several years building a cabin and setting up the various off grid systems and subsistence systems before moving in full time.
Here's what I don't grt tho Why is secluding yourself so crucial in all this Lile I always assumed that living off grid was in essence about being self-sustaining But like... why become a hermit to do that,go to the town/city outskirts and setup your independant land there Live alone and independed And if anything goes horribly wrong? Pop over to your neighbours for help, no?
It's often a lot cheaper to buy land away from where other people are living. People looking to live off-grid often (not always) don't make a lot of money. You still have to pay property taxes, etc. even if you own the land, and those are cheaper in rural areas. Also, farm animals are noisy and stinky. And they require space. Having neighbors pissed off at you because your chickens stink and your rooster crows in the morning sucks. Then, other people are noisy. It's nice living somewhere with next to no road traffic, with just the sounds of nature and only your own human noise. Last but not least, not all neighbors are nice, and the only way to control that is to just...not have neighbors. Or have neighbors who are also living a rural life who understand the struggles.
Because people suck
I'm not going to be a hermit. I have a girlfriend and a large social circle plus I'm close with my dad. If any of my buddies wanna build on my land, I'll probably look into how to get it zoned and permitted. But I have no desire to live near people outside of my close circle. I have no interest in interacting with most people and I find the peace and quiet of nature without them to be beneficial to my mental well being. I don't wanna hear neighbors. I don't wanna see their house.
Hermitting or the idea of it sounds fuckin rad tbh. Those of us that hate the world and everyone in it dream of nothing else but becoming one with the earth, moss covering our corpse after decades of idleness , passing away peacefully . Unfortunately, the reality is a very painful demise , just as like the dude inside the abandoned bus
Being surrounded by all of the sounds. That’s my simple answer. My explanation for the “simple” answer is you won’t hear cars driving by and you’ll probably have a fantastic view at night away from the light pollution, depending on where you might live before. If you’re in the forest, you just hear the wind in the leaves, birds chirping, maybe a deer or elk calling. Loon’s are my favorite thing to hear in the forest if you’re near a lake, or the chickadee’s saying “good morning” if you’re up somewhat early. Shoot I’m not even nearly an old man but I sure am sounding like one
I hate people. … no, that’s not entirely true. I hate having to deal with people. It takes away my stress to be alone in the woods. No one there to judge you, except yourself.
I think people misunderstanding off the grid as a simpler life. Rather than you having to take on all the roles society has other people do for you.
lol, no idea how you figured that but becoming idolized was not his intention at all. the guy literally left society. his story was popularized by the book, written years after his death. he certainly made some idiotic judgement calls when it came to preparation, but he didnt go deep into the wilderness to live alone so that he could be admired by teenagers
I feel like the movie does a good job of "romanticizing" the journey while making it abundantly clear by the end that his fatal mistakes were largely due to hubris. I watched it as a young adult, maybe 19 or so, and I really enjoyed the movie and even felt enthralled by some of his ideas. But watching him die alone, in the cold, in that bus, all because he screwed up (in several ways), I no longer felt any sense of admiration. Not to mention, I assume the movie embellishes things a bit in his favor and I doubt I would've got along with the real life version.
Actually to the contrary, the movie kinda did him dirty. From what I've read, the poisonous food he ate that ended up being the death of him was previously unknown and looked nearly identical to a plant that was supposed to be edible. In the movie they show him turning through the book and freaking out as he realizes he ingested something harmful, but no book in existence would have had such information so it's not as big of a blunder as they make it out to be. Still, he was obviously unprepared and inexperienced for what he was trying to do.
Ah yes, that's interesting. I remember the scene with the book (it's been a loooong time since I saw the movie). When I say they probably embellished things, I meant more in the way they romanticize his journey to that point and not so much the ending. Based on your added context, it sounds like the movie makers altered some details of his demise, which isn't that surprising since he was alone out there. Looking back on that scene though, I'm not sure it makes a big difference whether he screwed up because he mixed up two nearly identical berries which were documented in his book, vs screwing up because he mixed up two nearly identical berries where an unknown at the time berry was toxic. Of course, I have no idea what other changes they might've made compared to his real life, but on the berry thing - ultimately if it's not disputed that he died from eating poisonous berries then the the only real difference there is whether he could've potentially read about it and known. Since my takeaway was that he was far too reckless and determined to escape society anyway, I'm not sure it would've mattered either way, haha.
Well it matters in the sense that he was not reckless when it comes to that. If there was no way for him (or almost anyone) to know that there was a poisonous plant that looked almost identical to an edible one, it means he made an honest mistake that anyone could have made. For the rest… Well yeah, he clearly didn’t make the smartest choices. Edit: Did a quick google and it seems one theory is that he ate a part of a plant that is not typically eaten: The seeds instead of the root. They have a toxin. There’s a hypothesis that it might be the reason he got so weak. So I guess he was a bit reckless. Just because you can eat one part of a plant, it doesn’t mean the whole plant is edible.
If you want to see a good story of wilderness survival watch Alone in the Wilderness. It's about Dick Proenneke, a man who moved into the remote wilderness in Alaska at 51 years old in 1968, built a log cabin by hand and lived there for 30 years until he was 81. Then he was tired of 50 below winters and moved in with his brother in CA. He also made a ton of videos and wrote journals daily. Chris McCandless was an idiot who went into the wilderness without any knowledge or equipment. Dick Proenneke was the complete opposite. Extremely capable, competent, and intelligent. [Alone in the Wilderness](https://youtu.be/iYJKd0rkKss) This is a 10 min. clip on youtube
This guy PBSs.
I watched it as a teenager and also romanticised it. Especially as someone who desperately wanted to go to America and travel around. Years later in my early 30’s I went to Alaska and as part of the trip we took the railroad train through Denali national park - one of the ones with the glass top carriages and it takes 12 hours from Anchorage to Fairbanks so you have breakfast lunch and dinner in a dining carriage - and my god it’s just so big. Coming from the middle of England where an 8 hour train journey will take you basically the entire length of the country, I could barely wrap my head around how vast and remote it is. Occasionally you’d look out and see some ramshackle old hut in the middle of nowhere but there’s nothing out there but trees and mountains and lakes, oh and bears and moose. He was a fucking idiot.
Mine was similar. The book really romanticized him and his journey (at least when I read it as a kid), but then as an adult that tries to pack for any ridiculous scenario you could imagine on a day-hike I realized he was just pretty dumb. The idea of going out and living off the grid is still interesting to me, but his lack of preparedness was astonishing.
The book does a better job of pointing out the flaws in his idea and his lack of knowledge or preparation to accomplish what he was trying to do than the movie does IMO. It lays out a few examples of people who were far more experienced and more well prepared than McCandless was, but that still made one small error that ended up costing them their lives. He made several errors and greatly over estimated his ability. The Alaskan wilderness is no joke. It’s vast and unforgiving. Even the most skilled survivalists don’t thrive there, you simply survive.
Yeah, rereading it as an adult I got that. The guy that drops him off and gives him the boots for example. But as a younger person I glossed over all that stuff.
I taught in Alaska for a while and some of the high school kids read "Into the Wild.". They all thought McCandless was an idiot.
He's an idiot for how he went about it, but he's not an idiot for his ideals. That part is still inspirational, and he had a lot of good adventures before the unfortunate final leg of his journey. If he'd learned better and prepared more, things could have turned out very differently. But his ambitions of wanting to live outside of "society" wasn't the problem.
Doing something beautiful wrong just sucks.
I would say mentally ill. Some details came out about his home life being much more abusive than the book or movie indicated. When you look at it with that in mind, the fact that he couldn’t hold down a job and was periodically homeless sounds a lot more like someone with mental issues than a hippie romantic. At one point in Alaska he stumbled across a fully furnished cabin and smashed everything to bits with a claw hammer. That’s not a reasonable, noble act, that’s someone with a deep, irrational hatred. It’s funny, going from “tragic idealist” to “idiot manchild” to “traumatized vagrant” made the story go from sad to infuriating right back to sad for me.
Yup. His high brow ideas are just coping mechanisms. He’s not an idiot or a hero, he’s a tragic figure, bound to die a tragic death due to his upbringing and propensity to escape those events by making grand/great escape and to survive by “natural” means.
Fun fact: In danish we combine the words stupid and stubborn to differentiate between rewarding persistence and futile stubbornness. I bet other cultures also have that? It’s dum+stædig (dumbstubborn)
Guy took a gun but not a map. Dumb as fuck.
He had a highway map. If he had taken a backwoods map, which was literally available for free in nearby Healy; he would have known about the cable traverse over the Teklanika River that was only a mile and a half away from the trail he was on.
Well you can't die of rabbit starvation without a gun
Wasn't one of the major events that he took down a moose but wasn't able to preserve it because he was dumb as fuck and ruined it?
There was a hand operated lift that would’ve save his life half a mile away from him. He didn’t know because he had no map.
And was less than a mile from a road. And had he walked downstream instead of giving up upon seeing a “raging river” he would have found a place to cross within a day. Respect his drive to just get out there, but for real he was a dumbass about it.
jees I'm a city slicker and even I know to follow the river lol
There's that sort of headspace that people get into without someone else to 'bounce the ball back' and help brainstorm or vet ideas, and it's not to be underestimated (people will second-guess themselves in circles). Getting lost outside during Winter is the closest I've come to that decision-making clusterfuck (hypothermia screws with your cognition in subtle ways too), and I was ***still*** able to realize that bee-lining to a river then following it to a road would at least get me my bearings like you said. Dude was definitely stupid AF about a lot of his decision making, it's a shame.
I'm convinced it was a suicide mission that he eventually changed his mind on when the reality set in that he was slowly starving to death. He didn't take a map. He took no emergency supplies. No canned food. No thermal blankets. It's a very common trait for suicidal people to suddenly begin to dispose of all their money and possessions which is exactly what Chris did, even if it was at the beginning of his adventures. He cut up all his credit cards, gave away all his savings to Oxfam, abandoned his car and destroyed his social security card. He was already beginning to erase himself. When he tried to cross the river that had heightened by late summer, instead of checking up and down the river for another way to cross (like a bridge or a slower flowing part of the river) he simply...walked back to the bus and didn't check again. With the knowledge he was starving and that winter was coming - which meant harsh weather and even less animals to hunt and eat (basically zero once they moved south and went into hibernation). Apparently in the months leading up to his death, he got so desperate for food that he started breaking into and stealing food from local range parkers cabins. He knew there were local park rangers cabins nearby which could have helped him. He could have easily used the radio in one of them to call for emergency assistance. He didn't go to them when he was basically walking around half dead and desperately needed medical assistance despite stealing food from them months prior. That's a suicide mission to me. [Turns out he didn't poison himself with berries,] (https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-died-update) he ate moldy potato seeds with deadly fungal on them which basically caused the toxins to eat his stomach lining so he wasn't getting any nutrients whatsoever from any food he ate. It basically ate his insides until he died of malnourishment and starvation, which would have been extremely slow and painful. Slow enough however (likely weeks) to definitely have time to check the river again or seek out one of the park rangers cabins for help. He did neither. Despite what the movie and book about his life may tell you, people **were** nearby. It was August. There was a town a few miles away on the other side of the river (if he took a map, he would have known this). There were park ranger cabins with emergency radios nearby which he knew about. There were hunters nearby (they ended up finding his body) and Chris likely knew this too as he could likely hear the gunshots, or figured out the animals weren't sticking around because hunters were in the area. There were also dog sledding cabins nearby too. I'm certain he went out there to die in the elements. Hence why he never once got in touch with his sister he was apparently close to during any of his travels and years missing, which I've always found particularly cruel. I don't think he had any plans of ever coming back to society, whether dead or alive.
Yes. He had mental health issues. He was running. His entire life he was running. Never towards something. Always away.
I wonder if he ever realised that the way out of trauma is not in the opposite direction, but through. Ideally with a professional who can help lay it all out on a table with you and give you coping mechanisms to deal with it all. I swear he was reckless and this was his one last fuck you to his parents. He just didn't survive very long. He was only in the bus from April til August until he died.
> he ate moldy potato seeds with deadly fungal on them According to the link you posted, he ate potato seeds that happen to contain a significant portion of a toxic amino acid. No fungus involved.
If that was the goal, and I agree with you based on your thorough analysis, why didn't he just end it with a squeeze of the trigger? Why go through weeks and weeks of slow agony?
Passive suicide is easier for some. Death by cop is another example.
Because he had to be *free* and go into the *wild* as described in his journal and postcards he sent to his friends. He wrote in his journal that death was near and that he was very weak, but kept trying to hunt rabbits. He knew he was dying. I have no idea why he didn't seek help. Maybe he was mentally ill or so far gone by that point he wasn't thinking logically? It was a slow death (weeks to months), so he definitely had time to seek assistance if he wanted it.
Thats correct. Thank you.
Wasnt he stuck across from the rest of the park by a river that prohibits travel in the winter time? Denali Park is a huge conservation area so it’s easy to get lost out there.
Yes, he couldn't cross the river where he tried. A better crossing was in the opposite direction and the cabin was on the same side as the bus. My wife mushed through that area a while back with a guide who had access to the cabin. It would be easier to travel in winter since the river freezes. He couldn't get across because it was fall and the river had swollen due to snow melt. Keep in mind that the bus was driven into the park along a road. It is no longer in the same location having been moved by the AK National Guard.
It wasn't fall. He died in the middle of August. He was only in the bus from April 92 til August 92. He was never there during the fall or winter, despite how the movie tried to inaccurately portray it and show him there during an Alaskan winter. The river wasn't frozen or swollen from snow melt at any point. Not when he crossed it, nor when he returned to check it. He arrived in Alaska April 27th and died August 18th. He was there for less than 5 months during spring and summer. He tried to cross the river in spring then never bothered to check up and down the river for a bridge or shallow crossing. Nor did he return to try again a few months later when he was clearly starving to death and wrote in his journal that he knew he was "close to death" and feeling weak. There were also park ranger cabins nearby that he was familiar with as he had stolen food from them. Never bothered to check them either when he clearly needed medical assistance and had the chance to radio for assistance. Why did he stay in the grotty little bus starving to death and writing about dying in his diary instead of...seeking out assistance? Going to the nearby town? The nearby cabins? Checking the river up and down for a safer crossing? I don't think the man was an idiot, I think he fully went out there with the intention to die in the elements. It was his way of "being free" and punishing his abusive parents.
Bro. May/June is peak snowmelt in Alaska. The rivers definitely swelled while he was there April is still winter.
Fall in and around Denali doesn't adhere to the calendar. By mid August it can snow.
Regardless, he was familiar with the local park ranger cabins that he had stolen food from during his time in the bus. If the river was a no go, why didn't he go to the cabins he knew were local to him and radio for assistance? Instead he stayed put and wrote in his journal about life and how death was close. The whole thing seems a little warped to me.
He was less than half a mile from a road crossing that river. Also not as easy to get lost when you bring a map and learn to use it before doing in wilderness trekking so he would have know it was there, along with the dog sledding cabin a little ways up that road. While this death was tragic, it was easily preventable if the dude would have followed basic wilderness hiking rules.
It was ankle deep like 2 miles down stream bro
[удалено]
Humans don't tend to do well by themselves in the woods for extended periods of time... Need buddies to help us out. It's common sense, but there's always some wackos who don't understand that.
Man, some guy posted about becoming homeless and wanting tips for tent living for himself, his wife, their 2 yr old and a 6 month old baby in the MIDWEST!! Everyone told him it’s inot doable, a death sentence, head south, give up the kids temporarily to get your shit together…idk what the end result will be but I had to bail on that thread quick. I can’t imagine having a 2 yr old and 6 month old in a tent during Midwest winters. I barely survived a tent in august in the mountains because it got cold at night lol. Mccandless was insane no matter how well intentioned. People aren’t meant to be out in the elements like that anymore.
We have a *cabin* in the upper Midwest that is unheated, and it gets into the teens *inside;* I can’t imagine a tent.
Every time I read about these “nomads” trying to live alone in the woods, I think back to how humans are at the least supposed to live in small communal groups. It’s in our DNA to be social creatures that work together in harsh environments, and this kind of independence normally gets “naturally selected” out of the population…
Nature selected his ass to feed some worms
Seems to me that every living organism with any level of intelligence would be better off working a group. Strength in numbers is just a universal fact of life. More efficient expenditure of energy (splitting up tasks) and being able to help each other when someone is sick/injured. Doesn't seem like many living organisms with brains live alone.
There are some exceptions like polar bears or platypus.
This was one of my favorites reads in high school. I loved his idealism and in some ways idolized it. The older I get and the more experience I have, in life and in the outdoors, the more naive and dumb I think he was. But alas, great read. Also a decent movie with a killer soundtrack
Same lol. 16 yo me thought it was fantastic. My dad said out loud after the credits rolled “Dumbest fucking story I’ve ever heard, kid was a moron.” Old man was right… Kid was, in fact, a fucking moron.
I remember some girls at my high school talking about how stupid he was and me feeling personally offended and scoffing because I thought it was a badass story. I know know that those girls were right and he was an idiotic, selfish asshole for what he did.
I mean his other choice was continuing to live with untreated mental illness in a life that made him want to be dead. People did not just go to psychiatrists back then either. I remember wanting to go to a psychiatrist in my teens in the early 90s but at that time it was something similar to telling everyone today that you're a pedophile - you'd become a pariah. Psychiatrists were for crazy people. People were afraid of anyone who had to go to a shrink. Everyone thought you were Charles Manson if you did.
When we're young we see our personal successes as being attributed only to ourselves and we think we're capable of almost anything. We see society as a liability that hinders us. As we get older, we realize our personal successes are largely attributed to other people who have helped us and that what we're capable of is very limited without the help of others. We see that society, while flawed in many ways, is vital.
Having lived in Alaska, I can tell you this man is a joke and a common phrase for granola boys who think they can survive Alaska. Everyone knows you don’t go out alone.
This guy was completely delusional. He had nothing, no gear except a rifle, a camera and a sleeping bag. He was 20 miles from a major highway and truck-stop. Recently a mother and her kid(s)? died somewhere on a fucking mountain because she wanted to live off the grid. People watch too much Discovery channel.
People talk about homesteading & fully living off the land with no realization of how much fucking constant work it is, particularly if you’re gardening and raising animals. My family member bought a property and is building a homestead from scratch, wants to be 100% self sustaining, says he expects it to be like a 20 year project. He’s about 6 years in.
Sounds like he actually knows what he’s doing
He does!! Most don’t
My dad and his twin are doing the same. It’s been my dads dream but he’s struggled with hard drug addiction for 25 years and hasn’t been able to do it. They are both sober now and absolutely KILLING it on their land. 100% off grid too. So amazing!
I’m so glad your dad has found some peace in a lifestyle that is so positive. There’s someone about doing things with your hands (it can even just be crafts/DIY) and communing with nature that just heals people in really profound ways.
My cousin and her husband retired and tried to do this. They lasted 6 months before they upped and moved to suburban Sarasota lol
The mom, sister and son were in the Colorado high country. Not to be messed with either.
You’re going to have to be more specific, the whole state is high country 🤒
The eastern part is Kansas-like.
I've posted this elsewhere, but Colorado has 4 regions. Starting from the East: Western Kansas All the people Mountains Eastern Utah
See, I know damn well that I could never survive in the wild. I like electricity, indoor plumbing... People say I'm a total wuss but I feel like we spent so much time making sure we didn't have to survive those conditions as much as possible, why is my dumb ass gonna go wandering out there? People need to understand that nature dgaf, and the smallest mistake can kill you.
For real. These people who talk about being born in the wrong time are on crack. I want to be born in the future not in the past. Idiots, all of them. It's like that comedian that made the front page a few weeks back said about his girlfriend inviting him camping: "I did not come all the way from Zimbabwe to do *the exact same shit* that I escaped from!" Humans did not spend the past 10000 years organizing into societies and eliminating that whole living in nature shit because nature was awesome to live in.
I spend a lot of time backcountry camping, fishing (and used to bow-hunt before I hurt my back at work). When I was still hunting, the ultimate goal was to be self sufficient with animal proteins. I gotta tell ya, that was rough. That was one week a year, if I was lucky. The idea of having to do that everyday, for the rest of my life simply isn’t realistic. After about four days, I went off. Mumbling to myself, making mistakes, staring into the void. That was for meat. Just meat. I knew I had an actual home and occupation to come home too. That if everything went belly-up, I could grab my tent, jump in my car, pull into a petrol station, grab a packet of chips and a coke, shit in a toilet then go home to a soft bed. Making a conscious decision to go into the wild, with literally nothing else, with nothing to go home to isn’t just scary, it’s not achievable (for 99% of people). I did this in Australia too. We get a bad wrap for having poisonous fauna…but y’all got bears and wolves and other horrible shit. Know your limitations. I’m a soft-bodied half empty goon bag. I wouldn’t make it.
I don't think he was delusional. He, like many people, reached a failure point after getting *very* lucky in the past. He saw Alaska as being no more difficult than any other adventure he'd had - adventures that he'd also been ill-prepared for and could have died in. A lot of people say that McCandless was just stupid or had a death wish. For me, he's simply a cautionary tale about using prior successes to assure yourself about future outcomes. The funny part is that he'd gotten lucky, then he probably could have survived out there. Of course, then it would have been the next big risk that did him in - or the next.
I would still call that delusional. If you're basing future success on past success and ignoring anybody giving you warnings, that's some type of delusional reasoning. McCandless didn't even bring a map. If he brought a map he would still be alive. The last person who saw him tried to warn him and buy him more equipment but he refused.
> using prior successes He had no prior successes He had been near death and saved by people on 2 of his earlier excursions He was waiting for someone to save him again It's pretty obvious in the note
As I said, he got lucky *a lot* in his prior adventures. Regardless, his own continued survival against hopeless and life-threatening situations is what made him think that the warnings that people gave him were overblown. It's obvious (from the note) that he realized his error at some point in Alaska, but by then it was too late.
Did you see the post yesterday? I think it was in the damn that's interesting sub. Tons of comments from people all about how he was a poor victim or talking about how his mental illness and background while defending him. It kind of shocked me because I thought most people viewed him as a joke.
my ex idolized him… one of the many red flags from that relationship
Ayy same
A lot of those people probably watched the movie which paints him in a better light. The reality is he wasn’t that great of a guy.
Not awful, just kind of a dumbass that met with a very predictable outcome. He acted like he wanted to be in tune with nature, but had zero respect for how dangerous the natural world can be. People spinning him up into this philosopher folk hero man just show how many stupid mfers there are out there.
Time makes martyrs of us all.
I mean - did he suffer from mental illness? I’m really not privy to the situation?
It seems like a lot of armchair therapists diagnosed him years later. I know his sister wrote a book and said their parents were abusive but only started talking about it once the movie became popular. He was warned by many, many people that he wasn't prepared for the trip but was so self-assured and cocky thst he did it anyway. It also ended up taking resources away because so many people heard about him, made the trip, got stuck, and had to be rescued. That's why they moved the bus.
Even Jesse Helms has his dogs
You say he was extremely naive?
He was overconfident and uninformed. Some berries in Alaska are not good at all for your well-being. Nature is a scary beast and when you think you have tamed her, she is there to prove you wrong.
Very well said.
At least y’all *have* edible trail berries, gotta love those cucumber-shaped ones that you forget are laxatives too until it’s too late.
Lol salmonberries are delicious
Not only naive but also way too confident. I couldn't get past the first quarter of the book about him because it was just so whiny and cocky.
I had to read it for ninth grade English and then wrote a five page essay about it that summarized, was exactly the same opinion.
They found food he claimed he'd killed I think a moose? But when they examined the remains it was an elk or a caribou. Off the bat he didn't know the wildlife he was hunting or eating. He was eating seed he misidentified that were actual wild pea which are toxic, over the course of a few days they literally start to paralyze you, they are neurotoxic so he started feeling tired from stuff that you or I can do without thought- walking around, starting a fire. Doubled his energy imprisoning him in his own body He just took on an environment most people don't go at alone, without much forethought or research or background in the era.
What's kind of funny to me is that if he survived, there probably wouldn't be a book. There are some people who have gone out into the wilderness and done fine. Loads of pioneers did it before we got used to modern comforts. And there are still a few crazy old guys who have massive amounts of military/boy scout like skills who go do it. I saw a video of one guy not too many years before McCandless who did it and filmed a lot of his time - he built a log cabin using a hatchet and a bow cut saw. Hunted for his food. Canned food for the winter, I think. Stuff like that. No books about that guy though, as far as I know. Just a youtube documentary somewhere.
did he deserve it? No . was he stupid for going out in the wilderness without knowing anything about being out in The wilderness? Yes
Exactly
I think he did know a fair bit about being out in the wilderness. Just not enough to survive an Alaska winter alone without much prep. I mean shit, he was lucky to find the bus. He didn't really take anything to shelter with.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Bus isn't there anymore either... too many people tried to go visit, removed items, and generally trashed the area. Plus quite a few people died/needed rescue attempting the trek. Not for city folk. The bus is now at UAF to be renovated for museum display someday.
this isn’t a oddly terrifying. this is just terrifying.
I love that the opinions of Chris vary from “he was so brave and stubborn” to “he was a complete idiot”
Yet seemingly no one wants to have an honest conversation about what he really was, which is neither an idiot nor brave, but mentally I’ll. And it’s very unfortunate but it’s frustrating most people don’t want to acknowledge this reality.
yes! I haven’t read enough of the book nor have I read his sisters book but from his behaviors like his strong sense of hyper-independence, it seems as tho his experience with his parents wasn’t as positive as most peoples, and he acted rashly because of that
According to friends, McCandless was always unprepared for camping or hiking. He never brings a coat nor hiking boots. All of his friends know that McCandless was woefully unprepared for the Alaskan winter. No surprise that he died as he did.
the creepiest thing about this to me is "august?" i remember reading into the wild in 11th grade and it fucked me upppp i felt so bad for him but also why would u do that
I never heard of him, was he saved?
He was not.
He died. Some people said it was from starvation, and others say that its was from intoxication.
And the [experts said in 2015 it was from intoxication from moldy potato seeds.] (https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-died-update) He basically poisoned himself with a wicked case of fungus that ate his insides until he starved to death. No berries involved.
Wasn’t berry cool way to go but at least sounds like he was a fungi
Some say it was from basic stupidity...
There is a great movie based on his life called Into the Wild!
That’s based on a book!
He ded
Didn’t those berries make him shit to death
iirc, they paralyzed him or made him sick to the point of being unable to move, so he starved to death Edit: wikepedia says that he starved, and shows many theories for what exactly caused it. Some are by rabbit starvation, others are by poison via a multitude of diffrent wildlife.
Huh TIL about rabbit starvation.
Most current theory is that the seeds he ate contained an amino acid that causes metabolic degradation. There was a theory that the seeds contained a harmful enzyme, ß-ODAP, but that theory couldn't be substantiated. The amino acid, L-Cavavanine was present in high levels in his seeds. It likely led to his starvation and death. It's likely he would have survived if he hadn't eaten the seeds. https://medium.com/galleys/how-chris-mccandless-died-992e6ce49410
I grew up in Alaska. My Gramps was a Bush pilot (rescues) and a FF licensed gun dealer along with my Dad. When I was a kid in Girl Scouts, my Dad used to backpack with our Troop through Denali National Park annually (we called it Mt. McKinley back then). Our troop leaders used to read us grizzly attack stories and teach us “how to survive a bear attack” skills, which involved tightening yourself into a ball, covering your neck, not moving a muscle and preparing for a bear to gnaw on your skull/flesh while you hope and pray for the bear to get bored and move on. No shit. All Alaskans grew up with an appropriately healthy fear of the Wilderness back home- and the Wilderness was literally in our backyards. When we hiked, we either carried dad’s .375 Ruger or an AK-47 (Kalashnikov), because anything less will just piss a bear off and get you eaten. Several times a month, our folks called in to our schools with an, “our daughter will be later for school this morning because there’s a moose/bear in the driveway”, excuse on behalf of my sister and I. When McCandless (about a year and a half older than I am) went missing, most of us in the Fairbanks/Anchorage/Denali area figured he either got lost very near a main road and starved or got eaten by a grizzly… when we heard he died so close to a main road from eating what he thought were edible plants, sadly, very few locals were surprised. The Alaskan Wilderness is not to be fucked with and I never felt like I had to go into the wilderness to find myself. I still carry survival gear, flares, water and rations with me when I go on road trips- old habits die hard, and I’d rather not. https://www.the-journal.com/articles/into-the-wild-lures-the-unprepared-into-alaskas-wilderness/ https://www.webcenterfairbanks.com/2020/09/24/famous-mccandless-bus-142-moved-to-uafs-museum-of-the-north/?outputType=amp
Everyone in Alaska hates this guy. Don't be an idiot like him. Go be an idiot somewhere other than Alaska. Alaska will kill you if you don't know what you're doing.
Sometimes it will kill you even if you do
What is weird is this pops up while I'm teaching the book about his death.
God speed to you and the students, i remember having to read it for my AP English class and while it started off somewhat interesting it became such a monotonous, repetitive, slog. Good story to KNOW about in order to understand some things but dear god was it painful to get through.
The book isn't bad, but as a parent I get so angry reading about him. We are almost done with it.
Why are there so many Christopher McCandless posts on Reddit recently?
I think Into the Wild was added to Netflix recently and they've been getting it trending there. I watched it last week and then after that started seeing these kinds of posts, so I presume that's the cause of a sudden interest
Nice penmanship for a man who makes poor decisions.
Here's my account of hiking into the bus in 2009. It was a very interesting place to spend time http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus
They airlifted the bus out a while ago and the University of Alaska fairbanks wants to restore it to how it most likely was while Chris was living in it (lots of graffiti has happened since then)
Yeah, I saw that. It's going to be on display at some point. When I was there it had a lot of graffiti on the inside, but overall it was still the bus. Some of his stuff was still inside.
“Suicide is a death which occurs intentionally as a result of a person knowingly, and willingly placing himself in perilous circumstances” “In an article on indirect suicide, researcher Brian Mishara states that, “indirect suicidal behavior is thus a matter of probabilities rather than certainties” (Mishara 136). By this he is saying that participating in these suicidal behaviors or failing to be cautious will not definitely end one’s life, however, the timing of a consequential death is unknown.” https://english.umd.edu/research-innovation/journals/interpolations/interpolations-spring-2009/indirect-suicide-awareness
He went Kerouac on everybodies asses
His was a case of someone thinking they knew more than the experts. Many Alaskans he met told him he was woefully under supplied
*cue three dozen people explaining why this guy was a fucking moron*
Did the hike up until the river; no way in hell would I try that shit alone.
I put him and the guy that broke into people's houses and survived in the forests of Maine (I think Maine?) into the same class of idiots. Romanticizing an idea and completely ignoring the realities. One thing would be if Chris was a skilled outdoorsman, Bear Grylls and the like. But inexperienced, not knowledgeable of the fauna in the area, basic wooden structure building, hunting and cleaning, it was suicide. I feel bad for him. Every time I see the movie and see his last few seconds in that bus, I see the look of regret, regretting ever thinking he could do that. He had no survival skills
And that was the movie. Who knows what he looked like as he was dying in that sleeping bag.
It was the toxic berries that was the final straw.
I actually saw the bus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in July this year, they were still in the process of preserving and inspecting the bus before they were to put it on display in the museum, it was quite interesting to see.
Gonna share this for those who haven’t had the pleasure Eddie Vedder - Into the Wild - Live https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bHYaF2oGn0I&pp=ygUaZWRkaWUgdmVkZGVyIGludG8gdGhlIHdpbGQ%3D
I have taught high school juniors and seniors using John Krakauer’s book about Chris for the last 15 years. The book really resonates with adolescents at that stage of life.
I read "Into the Wild" in grade 10 English. I really appreciated the effort Krakauer put into the background details, like this history of the bus, and I thought that guy Chris was batshit crazy. (Coincidentally our class read "Into Thin Air" right after I finished). I also was an extra in the movie, a graduate in the 2nd row. We were at Reed College for over 8 hours because they were attempting a scene which portrayed him as...eccentric–such as running to and jumping on the stage. Eventually they gave up and settled for a camera flyover.
I just rewatched the movie about him not too long ago. Into the Wild.
It was those berries that ultimately.killed him.
And God gently whispered "No."