Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

godheadv.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 266 posts

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#241

Post by mkramlich »

rdl wrote: post #15
burgerbrain wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to go with mental illness. These people arn't proving themselves, they're abandoning their humanity. It's not something to be celebrated.

I'd be willing to assume a lot more personal risk to be the first person to do something like land on Mars or summit Everest, especially if it's not even clear that it can be done, than to be the 50th. Even more so if there is some compelling scientific benefit to going (which, thanks to robotics, there really isn't anymore, at least for brief boot/flag-planting visits). There are extremely limited cases where it wou…

Bringing up Mars in this discussion makes me think of Olympus Mons. The same kinds of folks attracted and willing to risk their life on being the 1000th person to reach the top of Mt. Everest may be even more attracted to being the first person to scale the tallest mountain in the star system.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#242

Post by killedbydeath »

BeachVentures wrote: post #216
killedbydeath wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to donate you so that you don't climb?

My friend's dad and also one of the original members of our organization died of cancer. They both asked to have their ashes brought to Everest and I think this is a worthy pursuit. We are tryingto raise 100k by climbing 100k feet, so we will go through a lot of hard work. We would love your support.

I did not mean to be mean. I was trying to say I would feel uneasy donating to a cause which may put other people in danger.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#244

Post by tjmc »

efalcao wrote: post #145
webwright wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to go ahead and judge. 1 in 10. Your have a 10% chance of dying if you attempt a summit, right? How much pain is your untimely death going to cause if it happens? How many everest orphans and widows are there? Include in that the considerable cost and time investment to do this when you could be creating something, exploring something that has a conceivable chance of helping humanity, or just plain investin…

I think the actual mortality rate is closer to 2%. I don't know if that changes your opinion at all. Frankly, I feel that even at 2% mortality, it's a pretty selfish act if anybody else depends on you.

So is every Space Shuttle astronaut selfish too? The Shuttle also has a 2% mortality rate.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#245

Post by leoc »

wooster wrote: post #27

I recently got back (almost exactly a month ago) from a month long climbing trip in Nepal with some friends. We had three guides, all three of whom have climbed Everest multiple times. One of our guides, who has summited 5 times, described Everest as his "bad habit". As a relative newbie to high altitude mountaineering (the highest I got was ~19,850 feet), climbing in Nepal was really, really hard. You are never warm…

It says something about these heroes that none are willing to brave Everest to recover (or even to cover) the body of Green Boots instead of pursuing their own self-actualisation on the summit. Never mind the matter of poor Sharp.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#246

Post by Mz »

rdtsc wrote: post #232
Mz wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I just can't see much benefit for anyone else. I and my oldest son both have a form of cystic fibrosis. I have figured out how to get us well (we actually work together on it but I do most of the research). Reading up on altitude sickness was an Aha! moment for me. In some ways, medical science doesn't have much of value to offer me in terms of thinking through the problem and coming up with new solutions. Medica…

> Also, living at 3000 feet above sea level for about 2.5 years, thereby forcibly expanding my lung capacity. Fascinating. It is certainly no regular doctor would prescribe to anyone. But it makes sense. My grandfather was wounded during the war and as a result was left with a severely reduced lung capacity. When he came back, everyone was surprised when he started singing in a local church choir. Here is a man that…

I am often frustrated when I talk to doctors because I want to know in more details what is going on, I want the results of tests explained and so on, Then I am not sure if they are just busy and think I am an asshole for asking annoying questions, or what I am more scared of, they don't actually know or care to know these things and just prescribe pills according to a textbook checklist of symptoms.

Someone who helped me enormously for a time was a former RN who later studied a lot of alternative medicine approaches. I took guaifenisen (sp?) for a time and was trying to figure out what it was doing that it helped. After an internet search failed to answer my questions, I asked her what it did in the body or if she could come up with some information online that might help me understand (she had a track record of coming up with stuff like that). She basically told me "I don't think anyone really knows that. That isn't how drug studies work. You are asking questions that the medical establishment cannot answer." So I suspect that in many cases your bigger fear is exactly what is going on.

I still don't know what gauifenisen really does to the body. It ended up being the last remaining drug I took for a time. I got off it some time in the summer of 2009 and have been drug free ever since.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#247

Post by jodrellblank »

TheCondor wrote: post #201
jodrellblank wrote: post #149

How far is materials technology from being able to keep people warm there?

Materials isn't the problem. No amount of warm clothes make you feel warm when your body is losing oxygen.

The losing more oxygen than you can breathe part is only in the death zone, the last Apart from that, I'm less wondering about feeling warm and more wondering about avoiding severe frostbite (or is that already mostly a thing of the past?)

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#248

Post by Mz »

jacquesm wrote: post #237
Mz wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I just can't see much benefit for anyone else. I and my oldest son both have a form of cystic fibrosis. I have figured out how to get us well (we actually work together on it but I do most of the research). Reading up on altitude sickness was an Aha! moment for me. In some ways, medical science doesn't have much of value to offer me in terms of thinking through the problem and coming up with new solutions. Medica…

Have you considered taking up playing a wind instrument ? This might help you to maintain that extra lung capacity or even to build it out further. I've had a collapsed lung about two years ago and it was my years and years of sax playing that probably saved the day (that and a helpful neighbor that figured out that something serious over and beyond serious chest pain when inhaling was amiss, I'm off the 'if it came…

I am so not musical (I appear to be tone deaf, though as I heal, my hearing has changed and I understand lyrics better than I used to). And a wind instrument would not likely fit into my lifestyle at the moment in terms of owning so very little and keeping everything germ-free. However, chest x-rays 4 years ago and the lack of pain in my left lung indicate that the hole I once had has closed up. I also generally have more stamina..etc.. I have a very long list of criteria for an ideal place to live and, somewhat to my annoyance, Cheyenne Wyoming is looking like it might be the next place I go (assuming I can arrange to go anywhere I want). It happens to be 6000 feet above sea level, which is likely a good thing.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#249

Post by shin_lao »

boredguy8 wrote: post #165
webwright wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to go ahead and judge. 1 in 10. Your have a 10% chance of dying if you attempt a summit, right? How much pain is your untimely death going to cause if it happens? How many everest orphans and widows are there? Include in that the considerable cost and time investment to do this when you could be creating something, exploring something that has a conceivable chance of helping humanity, or just plain investin…

10% failure rate is bad on a website about startups ? Now, we're talking life instead of life savings, but I find it hard to say that their decision is wrong in any ethical or moral sense, and I'm curious what moral framework would justify your viewpoint. Additionally, burning through your life savings (and that of friends/family) can easily cause more long-term harm than having a mom or dad that died while climbing…

Failing a startup is part of the process of becoming a better entrepreneur. Failing a startup actually brings something to the community.

Dying in a mountain may be part of the process of living your life and it's not less stupid than dying in a car accident, however climbing a mountain and have 10% chance of dying in the process is just plain reckless and selfish.

Your life is your own, but don't expect to get approval and admiration from everybody else.

Re: Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies

#250

Post by jacquesm »

Mz wrote: post #248
jacquesm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered taking up playing a wind instrument ? This might help you to maintain that extra lung capacity or even to build it out further. I've had a collapsed lung about two years ago and it was my years and years of sax playing that probably saved the day (that and a helpful neighbor that figured out that something serious over and beyond serious chest pain when inhaling was amiss, I'm off the 'if it came…

I am so not musical (I appear to be tone deaf, though as I heal, my hearing has changed and I understand lyrics better than I used to). And a wind instrument would not likely fit into my lifestyle at the moment in terms of owning so very little and keeping everything germ-free. However, chest x-rays 4 years ago and the lack of pain in my left lung indicate that the hole I once had has closed up. I also generally have…

Ai, that rules that out. Ok. Great to see you're healing like that, you should write a book about what you're going through, or at a minimum a very well documented website, I've never heard of someone with CF to recover that much by banging their head against the problem, collecting the data in one spot might be a godsend for others.
Post reply on HN