81–90 of 134 posts
Just curious if there was a way that, rather simply, these could have been made completely edible had Chris done it.
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>Did you even bother to read the article, which despite mentioning this detraction, has nothing to do with it? In fact, it invalidates those criticisms against McCandless.
It doesn't really invalidate them, it says that if you eat the seeds while malnourished the ODAP can kill you. It doesn't mention anything about him dying in an unforeseen accident, he went into the Alaskan bush unprepared and died of malnutrition. If he brought a map he could've walked to safety when he started to realize his plight.
Personally, I find the details completely beside the point. McCandless sacrificed everything to test his philosophical conjecture and I have nothing but respect for that. I honestly would've thought there'd be more empathy for it here.
Well, if there's one thing I'm sure about, it's that selling books wasn't why Krakauer was compelled to tell that story.
Reading Krakauer's accounts of his own life, in both Into The Wild and in Eiger Dreams, it's pretty clear he felt the same urge to challenge himself with the wilderness that McCandless did, and that the books are Krakauer's attempts to understand that drive.
Those books are mainly journeys of self-understanding that happen to be available for other people to read.
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The good admiral has a point, but I don't think it gets to the heart of the McCandless drama. For that, I think I'd look to Norman Maclean's _Young Men and Fire_ where he talks about smoke jumpers: "It is very important to a lot of people to make unmistakably clear to themselves and to the universe that they love the universe but are not intimidated by it and will not be shaken by it, no matter what it has in store.…
Admiral? As far as I know, Roald Amundsen was not affiliated with any military. Ironically he died while trying to rescue other, less competent, explorers.
Obligatory quotes from McCandless' wikipedia page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless ): Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote: "When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn't even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail…
It certainly is a very dividing topic. I estimate that the comments on my personal trip to the bus [1] are split 50/50 between people that admire Chris' story, and people that think he was a dumbass. I think the argument boils whether Chris was unprepared (mentally and equipment-wise) to go into the Alaskan wilderness. If you read "Into the Wild", and the newer "Back to the Wild" book which has entries from his diary…
Wait. Why exactly are they not considered dumb asses? I sure do consider them that.
That's good.
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Luckily there are plenty of people that don't agree with you, who are willing to try and push the limits of what humanity can do. We're all going to die, you know. Stats on deaths with/without oxygen: http://faculty.washington.edu/hueyrb/pdfs/jama.pdf
Given that over a thousand people have climbed Everest at this point, it seems to me that climbing Everest is about the most boring/pretentious thing I could imagine doing (compared to all the other interesting things you can do in this world)
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It doesn't really invalidate them, it says that if you eat the seeds while malnourished the ODAP can kill you. It doesn't mention anything about him dying in an unforeseen accident, he went into the Alaskan bush unprepared and died of malnutrition. If he brought a map he could've walked to safety when he started to realize his plight.
>he went into the Alaskan bush unprepared and died of malnutrition. If he brought a map he could've walked to safety when he started to realize his plight. Did you actually read the article? That's not what it says. It suggests he became paralyzed by a neurotoxin, an event which no one could have foreseen at the time. Having a map wouldn't have cured his paralysis. I'm not even convinced he was lost.
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I'm not sure you read the article. He did make an effort to reduce his ignorance. He was knowledgable on what was and was not edible. He had the same knowledge that everyone else had, prior to the investigation of his death. It is only after investigating his death that we know that eating those seeds, while in extreme caloric deficit, is dangerous.
The point is that being in a situation where eating those seeds could be dangerous in the first place was the result of stupidity. "After subsisting for three months on a marginal diet of squirrels, porcupines, small birds, mushrooms, roots, and berries, he’d run up a huge caloric deficit and was teetering on the brink. By adding potato seeds to the menu, he apparently made the mistake that took him down. After July…
Yes, he took a risk. But I don't think it's a significantly different risk from other risky activities young men in their early 20s do, ranging from unusual sports to the military.
Obligatory quotes from McCandless' wikipedia page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless ): Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote: "When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn't even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail…
It certainly is a very dividing topic. I estimate that the comments on my personal trip to the bus [1] are split 50/50 between people that admire Chris' story, and people that think he was a dumbass. I think the argument boils whether Chris was unprepared (mentally and equipment-wise) to go into the Alaskan wilderness. If you read "Into the Wild", and the newer "Back to the Wild" book which has entries from his diary…
This. A lone human is many, many times more vulnerable than even a couple. There is a reason why we tend to stick together.
In this particular case, the article seems to be trying to exonerate McCandless because the poison that killed him was unknown at the time. But if he'd gone with someone else, or even organised someone to drop in occasionally, he'd have survived. His loner instinct made his death almost inevitable, dumbass or no.
Interesting aside: given the high price of loner genes, we still have loners. Evolution is an amazing process.