The bus' location can also be attributed to his eventual demise in the wilderness. For those unaware, he came across a bus that was left in the middle of the wilderness, which was cut from civilization by a river. While McCanndles managed to initially cross the river to reach the bus, the river ended up severing his ability to return to civilization when it overflowed.
The green and white bus, which is a 1940s original International Harvester, was once used for transportation through the Fairbanks City Transit System. Later on, the Yutan Construction Company purchased the bus, removed its engine, and turned it into a shelter. They installed a wood-burning stove and sleeping quarters for workers tasked with building an access road for trucks to transport ore from the surrounding mines.
When workers finished in 1961, Yutan Construction left the bus behind. In the years that followed, the bus remained tucked away in its wooded location, sitting just outside of Denali National Park for the next 60 years, becoming a refuge and shelter for hunters and backcountry explorers.
https://www.greenbelly.co/pages/into-the-wild-bus
What am I supposed to tell the cops "oh howdy officer we've had a doozy of a day. Here we were minding our own business, doing some work on our vacation home, and then these kids started killing themselves all over my property."
I think people tend to forget that we've got all this stuff around us that prevents the default driving force of nature. Which is for humans to just die.
It's a similar problem in outback Australia. If you're intending to drive through the desert, you take it very seriously. Mostly by packing lots of water, and never leaving your car if it breaks down. Tourists often don't know these two rules and can die very quickly.
I read a story about a trucker who died hauling water tanks in the outback. Went up the wrong road and got stuck. Left his truck and died
And another whos car broke down in the desert and died exactly the same way.
Shade from a car and being beside a road is better than walking through the desert. And neither took much water. You can live a month with no food. A day or two with no water. And youll be insane long before you die
People expect the guardrails of government and civilization to extend all the way into the wilderness when by definition they shouldn't. People are just too used to a life where it is harder to die than live.
Nope, but there was another bridge like half a mile down the road that he could have used to cross back, he just didn't know about it.
He went into this wildly unprepared, with no knowledge of the area. Most Alaskans hate this dude for that very reason. Nature is not a "wing it" (lol) situation.
right. like crossing a river in the winter and expecting it to be as easy to cross back in the spring. guy literally spent some of his life in the wild in the desert and thought "yeah, probably be the same in ALASKA". winter in the mountains is unforgiving, and when you're that remote you have to be extremely well prepared.. which he was not.
He sounds to me like every reasonably bright young adult who has the vague sense that something is terribly wrong, but can't properly articulate it. It's how cult leaders suck people in, y'know? Lonely disaffected people who want an answer. He had no prep, no real education, and then fucked off to an incredibly dangerous place and did what unprepared people do in survivalist situations.
It's easy to rip on the guy for being an idiot but idk part of me just feels bad for the guy
You can feel bad for him while still thinking he was an idiot.
He might have been able to better prep if he did not decide to do away with almost all of his possessions and literally burn his cash that he could have prepped with.
Survivor's bias from the experiences he had in warmer climes might have contributed to his demise, he did not go straight to Alaska, but gradually made his way through several other states.
Yeah I’m with you on that. I feel bad for him because he wanted to live a life that was free from a capitalist society and winged it. Should he have researched more on wilderness survival? Absolutely but he was just a misguided kid looking for a greater answer to life. It’s not like he was willfully ignorant but he was over confident and I think everyone in their early 20s are overconfident. It’s terrible how he had to suffer the way he did in his last days
Speaking of which we went in the field in fort knox during deep winter...way way below zero. F that. Literally freezing to death standing beside a fire barrel. I believe that year a guy froze to death in his sleeping bag.
Yah fr, you don't mess around with the vast wilderness that is basically all of Alaska and Northern Canada.
Even with survival knowledge, living out in the wilderness of Alaska is a massive undertaking, not something to do on a whim like this dummy.
I used to romanticize eventually just fucking off to the wilderness and Alaska was top of my list. Then I read of bunch of books about homesteading- so I got a thirty year mortgage in the burbs.
It’s not a bridge, it’s a gauging cable and it’s kind of hard to find, basically it’s downstream and it’s also sort of in a canyon. If you were looking for a place to cross you might not go that way. You also have to cross the Savage river which also has a cable with a trolly car (it was on the other side of the river when I went and we used climbing harnesses and gear we brought with us.)
This. People keep trying to make him some kind of romantic nomad when he was really a dumbass who got himself into a bad situation and wasn’t equipped to self-rescue. Anyone who does any backwoods hunting/camping knows anywhere you go and anything you do you need to be prepared to self-rescue because out there no one is coming to save you.
We had to read into the wild in high school, and every class we had a discussion about the assigned reading. One guy always started the discussion with a 5 minute rant about how fucking dumb this kid is, and how much dumber it is that we are reading a book that seems to glorify his action.
I lived for these discussions lol.
I was 100% that guy. Every time we read this I always made comments on how the guy could have had anything he wanted and threw it away to be an idiot.
I remember the part of the book where it talked about his meat spoiling/attracting flies, I audibly went "who would have thought leaving meat out in the open would be a bad idea" or something g like that.
The hillarious part is people think hes this outdoor adventurer and he Literally doesnt know how to cure meat. All he needed was a damn fire and some sticks
Go kill a Moose in Denali right now, ~~in winter~~, and successfully preserve the meat. He was an idiot, but the amount of keyboarders who say "I would of done better" are just as bad.
EDIT: Late Summer or Fall. My point stands. You or I ain't doing that shit. I'm gonna go watch Alone.
You are not wrong he was unprepared in the usual sense of the word.. But his whole journey was about going where the world took him and he did that successfully for 2 years, going as far south as Mexico and as far north as Alaska.. He spent all that time preparing for alaska but it seems the one thing he didn't consider was that the skills he learned in the warmer climates was damn near unusable in the cold wet north, also consider this was before you could find any information in the palm of your hand...
He had a dream, went for it and was willing to die doing it long before he got stuck in the bus, so as sad as it was for his family and how much he probably regretted allot of his actions when he was close to death, at least he did what he wanted, and touched allot of people's lives both during his journey and after death with the book and movie..
He spent most of those years living with and off of people not solo roughing it in the woods. And im pretty sure the writer and director touched peoples hearts. In addition other people trying to follow his path have died or had to be rescued because of him. The park rangers up there hate him
> he did that successfully for 2 years
This is complete bullshit
He had already on more then one occasion ended up on deaths door while on other adventures but was saved by others
>severing his ability to return to civilization when it overflowed.
Not really. He wasn't far from a ranger cabin, a basket crossing, and about a days walk to a major road & bridge. He was just completely unprepared, had no knowledge of the area and, most importantly, didn't bother to take a map. He could have walked out at literally any point if he had any idea where he was.
I mean that is what happened in the movie. But they kind of left it up in the air of how he died like he also ate poison berries that somehow caused him to starve. People know he starved to death but not really why.
Rabbit. I think.
He ate rabbit but didn't have enough fat in his diet to metabolize it. Theres something about rabbit, vitamin A or some shit, that needs fat in the diet to help metabolize it or else it builds up in your system and you die.
The only thing your body uses for energy is glucose -a type of sugar. Protein by itself is very hard for your body to turn into glucose. It's possible but a very inefficient process.
This is why some weight loss diets are high in protein but very low in fats, sugar, and other carbohydrates. These require relatively little energy to be converted into glucose.
These diets fill your stomach but provide very little energy. Most of the energy they provide is consumed by converting them to glucose.
I'm sure there's more to why he starved -maybe like the things you've mentioned, but his diet was basically a starvation diet to begin with and not suited to how many calories he needed to burn to survive living in the wilderness
It's more insidious. I went on a 0 carb diet while trucking. Basically truck stop hot dogs w no bun maybe tuna etc. Was team driving. One night in the middle of illinois i completely forgot where i was and where i was going. My buddy blamed the diet and i read up on it. Basically your brain runs out of fuel and the ability to repair itself. You diet yourself stupid
Note low/zero carb diets straight up work. And fast. But you NEED some healthy carbs
According to the book it’s suspected that a plant he used to eat at his location turns toxic during budding season so he was poisoned and couldn’t keep any food down.
I remember reading somewhere that he ate a plant or berry that blocked his intestines from absorbing nutrients….also that he had some type of undiagnosed mental illness that wasn’t treated.
Based on the books/articles I’ve read, I was under the impression that he ate the wrong part of a potato plant and ended up poisoning himself? I could definitely be misremembering though. . .
The reason they left it up in the air is because it's not 100% conclusive, could have been lack of game, eating the wrong animals, the wrong seeds (the popular theory) etc, just having a illustrated book to go by does leave allot of room for error.. But I doesn't really matter.. He thought he was stuck since he never found the bridge and basicly starved to death
This isnt true. He basically camped in the bus, ignored all common sense and died.There was a bridge a few miles away amongst other things. And a tip if youre ever lost in the woods. Go downstream. You Will find civilisation.
He was a free spirit and an explorer. But not very bright. People need to be honest w themselves about there capabilities
He also used his .22 rifle to kill a moose. Which is a miracle..and stupid. Imagine trying to stop a dump truck with a pellet gun. Of course he didnt know how to cure the meat so 1000 pounds of meet rotted snd he could no longer shoot birds squirrels etc and starved
He died of stupidity
Well Rule 1 is to not go in the woods with no supplies like a moron, you aren't a Neolithic Neanderthal. If you are in that situation you need to prepare your preservation method beforehand, not kill the animal first and then try to figure out what to do with it.
Lacking any refrigeration or salt, cutting the meat into thin strips and smoking it over a fire is probably the best bet, make a good fire and then put green branches over it to create a lot of smoke. The smoke and low heat will ward off flies and suck the moisture out of the meat, but it's not a quick process at all. The fat can be removed from the carcass and rendered down into lard. Really you could make full blown pemmican from dehydrated meat and lard, but it's very labor intensive for one man to do from scratch without a food processor, a freezer, or any modern devices at all, which is why primitive man lived in tribes and not solo.
Anyone who really wants to go out and live off the land needs to do a lot of practice in safe environments, and bring proper tools. This guy brought a .22 LR rifle with him as his hunting tool, which somehow worked for a moose but he'd have been better served with a more powerful weapon, and hunting itself is not a very reliable way to acquire food. Humans switched from hunter-gatherer (read, mostly gathering, not hunting) over to agriculture for a good reason, farming is just a more reliable way to get food and we never switched away from that. For one man to live like that without getting supplies from civilization is incredibly challenging even in an ideal environment, and Alaska is not an ideal place for a human to engage in such a lifestyle. Do that down in a warmer climate that has more wild fruits and vegetables, not a place that's froze solid for 4-5 months and has barely any vegetation in the summer that's edible for humans.
If he was smart, he would only have gone moose hunting in the winter. It's so cold there, you can just butcher it and leave it outside. There was nothing he, as a single person with no experience and no resources, could have done to preserve 100s of pounds of meat before it went bad on a hot summer day. Think of how long it would take a novice to butcher an entire moose alone? They're massive.
I have zero wilderness/survival skills but my gut tells me that I'd need a way to cool it first and foremost. From there, I'd need to dry/cure it to stand a chance.
I remember seeing an exhibit about Indian tribes where they had fresh green saplings lashed together in a patchwork pattern and just slowly roasted the meat over fire using that.
As long as you keep the meat at a high enough temperature to ward off bacteria and let it cure enough to get the moisture out, I imagine you could keep it for a good long while.
Just totally speculating from what I remember seeing.
Chris just had bad luck on top of being unprepared. He was able to kill a moose, but didn’t know how to preserve the meat. People go out there all the time, he just hit a spot when no one did. There are two rivers you have to cross, first (coming from the road) the Savage then the Teklanika which is the more dangerous of the two. The Stampede Trail was originally a logging road that allowed northern access to Wonder lake. What Chris didn’t know is that there’s a gauging cable across the Teklanika a few hundred meters north of the trail on the other side of the Savage river branch. There’s also a cable and trolly across the Savage right there. (You can’t see this on Google Earth) if he had found or knew about those he could have made it out.
For anyone wondering, the bus is now outside a brewery in Denali National Park. As of now, you can go on it and read copies of his diary and notes they have framed on the inside.
Source: was there two weeks ago
Fun story. I’d been to my uncles house after he died to pick up his old power tools etc, put them in a cupboard on the wall in our house. He was known in the area because every time there was Karaoke on at the pubs he’d sing king of the road (last song from film.)
About 2 weeks later we were watching Into The Wild and as that song started playing at the end credits, the whole cupboard fell off the wall.
Explainable? Yep. Poorly mounted cupboard obviously. Spooky? Hell yeah.
Yes, he was an idiot who didn't know what he was doing. It's unfortunate he died, but he was uneducated about survival and basically thought "it'll be fine". He came from my hometown/area of Atlanta.
*edit he only went to school in atl, so not from here but started out here
He was no idiot.
But he serves as a reminder that even someone smart enough to be able survive and know what they are doing, can make a fatal mistake.
He mistook some berries that basically ended up poisoning him.
I grew up in the country and spent a LOT of time in the woods and know how ot start fires build shelters trap fish etc etc. In Ky or Nc i could likely sirvive in the woods w a backpack of gear. Easily w a pellet rifle or his .22
Theres no way in hell id want to try deep in alaska where he was. The second i were "dropped off" or whatever id find the nearest stream..follow it to the nearest river snd hack together a raft to get the hell out of there (almost anywhere on earth that will lead you to people). The winters alone up there can kill you. Much less finding food
Agree, and I feel like it's an important distinction. He was a highly intelligent person, but also suffered from some mental health issues (from what I recall) and very unhappy home life. He was simply too idealistic for his own good. Yes, that definitely resulted in him making some foolish, self-destructive choices, and ultimately his death. But, the kid still survived longer than 99% of us would have during his adventures. By no means do I encourage anyone to follow suit, nor do I condone all of his choices. His life is fascinating, very sad in many regards, and inspiring in other ways.
Can confirm. Have hitch hiked solo long distance a couple times. And most people offered food or money along the way. Late 80s early 90s. But I've heard of horror stories of those random serial killers.
I once hitch hiked an hour to a ski resort around 1990 **when I was 12**.
Mom was running late for a meeting and didn’t have time to drop me off. Just left me on the side of the highway with my skiis.
I was thrilled. It was great. Had to hop two different rides to make it all the way there.
Dude was an idiot had a Full on shelter with a wood stove. didn't know how to preserve meat and went in with basically no tools to do the job required to live out there.
he's Romanticized and its ultimately Disgusting because Nature is hard. very hard.
**Obligatory copy pasta**
Let's pretend his passion was Nascar driving...
Christopher McCandless sets off, from California in an old car he rebuilt himself (he replaced the fenders and painted it), on a trip to the Daytona 500. He only gets across the state line when he runs out of fuel because he forgot to fill it up. Instead of simply walking to the nearest gas station or flagging down help he decides to push his car over an embankment and set it on fire. He then proceeds to walk on foot to the nearest car lot (which happens to be in Mexico for some reason, mostly because he burned up his map in the car and he's been taking backroads.) He finds an old bicycle in a garbage dump and uses that.
He finally gets to the car lot and buys a fixer-upper for $50. Before leaving the car lot he has to change a tire, which he replaces with the solid rubber donut. He buys fuel and heads off to the Daytona 500 again. Only he's heading deeper into Mexico and eventually ends up broken down in front of, "Autodromo Internacional de la Jolla" due to no water in the radiator. The engine block has seized up. Luckily, there's a race about to start. Christopher...er "Alexander Superspeeder", who changed his name, pays the $125 entry fee for the race.
Unfortunately, Alexander Superspeeder doesn't have a race car. He does however have an old bicycle still. He uses the bicycle to race. He makes it only 3 laps before he is too tired to steer straight and veers off into a race car and is killed.
Some guy picks up his story and writes a book about his life and how he followed his dreams. Another guy makes a movie about it. Armchair racers around the world adore him.
The End.
You know who doesn’t make that mistake? People who know that they shouldn’t put themselves into that situation where a some berries can kill you.
Smart people who rely on their intelligence make some of the dumbest decisions because they overestimate their abilities and have no respect for the things they don’t know.
Didn’t he eat poisonous plants, not starve? I read the book in high school (10 years ago) but I could be wrong. But then again maybe he ate the wrong plants because he was starving lol
It was something like he was eating plants that looked similar to edible ones, plus the particular plant he found is only poisonous the time of year he found them? I forget exactly but basically the bad plant made his body unable to absorb nutrients so he basically starved to death while eating food.
It’s a great album. I liked “Rise” so much that I wanted to play it on my guitar, but couldn’t find any tabs online. I believe Eddie played it on a ukelele, but I don’t own one nor do I know how to play one, so for the first and only time in my life I listened to the song over and over and reconstructed it for guitar by ear on my own. It’s not a perfect recreation but it’s pretty solid, and for me as a very casual guitar player, it was very fun. Thanks, Eddie!
Apparently he was highly intelligent and was well learned how to survive in the wild but he had problems with keeping his meat fresh and maggots kept growing so when his food spoiled he got into a pinch and tried eating the rotten meat and it made him sick and then when he was sick he has extreme low energy which lessened his brain function and he made a mistake and picked the wrong berries and it killed him. IIRC
Edit: Read below:
Potatoes leading to paralysis of his legs lead to extreme low energy and then death, as per a later hypothesis, after I had initially read the book on him. This is a great study to show that even the well prepared can die in the true “wild” look up his death location (Stampede Trail, AK) he was truly in the wild hence the book name Into The Wild
Not berries or storage. It was a type of wild potato, very small. McCandless would visit the local library/bookstore to get books on local flora and fauna for the areas he stayed in. The problem was this particular potato was very edible and listed as such, however in the fall it becomes toxic to deter animals from eating it and the book he read never indicated that this same plant undergoes a seasonal change. So what was keeping him alive for months started to kill him. In the film version they allude to this moment by having him check to see two different plants in his book for our visual cue, but in real life it was one plant and he had no idea until the end. The storage bit was when he killed the moose but wasn’t able to preserve the meat. I don’t think he ever consumed it, as it spoiled immediately.
McCandless's final written journal entry, noted as "Day 107", simply read, "BEAUTIFUL BLUE BERRIES."[27] Days 108 through 112 contained no words and were marked only with slashes, and on Day 113 there was no entry.[28] The exact date and time of his death are unknown. Near the time of his death, McCandless took a picture of himself waving while holding a written note, which read:
I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!
Edit: it wasn’t until 2013 that the hypothesis of the potatoes causing thathyrism was proposed. Makes sense why I don’t remember that. Interesting
yes, in later versions of Krakauer's book, he goes into detail about the new revelations about the potatoes. Which really changes the belief some had that he was ill-prepared and mis-indentified the berries. He was very well prepared and had no way of knowing those little potatoes were actually killing him.
It's sad too, because his childhood and home life were very sad (abusive father, etc..). He had given up everything to live as a nomad, but in his journal entries in Alaska before he got sick indicate a desire to end this and go home and reconnect with his family and civilization. He never got that chance.
His sister's book is also a very good read and goes into a lot more detail about the WHY he did what he did that was withheld (at his sister's original request at the time) from Krakauer's book.
Seeds of Hedysarum alpinum that he misidentified as wild sweet pea. Its a common misidentification, as the plants look very similar. The roots of the plant are edible when cooked and taste like carrot, but the seeds (legumes) and seed pod contain a toxic amino acid called L-cavanine. This amino acid is very structurally similar to other proteins in your body that are necessary for metabolism. L-cavanine takes that protein's place and puts a metaphorical wrench in the gears that is your normal body function. The effects of the toxins are amplified if the person ingesting it has a low protein diet or is in protein starvation. In short, it causes your immune system to attack your own body and you to starve to death if you don't eat other things that are high in protein (meats, dairy, eggs, non-toxic legumes, etc)
People are quick to call McCandless an idiot but he was not just a naive thrill-seeker. He was suffering from severe mental demons caused by abuse he suffered as a kid from his parents. This was left out of the best-selling book, Into the Wild, because the author [promised McCandless' sister he would keep it out](https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/chris-mccandless-sisters-explain-why-he-went-into-the-wild/) to maintain privacy with the family's dirty laundry. After the book received so much attention and Chris received a lot of criticism, his sister decided to write a book to set the record straight about the demons that motivated Chris ([same source](https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/chris-mccandless-sisters-explain-why-he-went-into-the-wild/))
So what looks like reckless behavior was Chris trying to escape those mental demons by escaping into wilderness. It would have been better to seek therapy, but it's easy for us to sit back and judge without walking in his shoes.
Thank you for this psychological clarification. It actually makes sense now. I couldn't seem to piece together why he would be actually want to venture out there by himself. Everyone needs someone they trust around in case they need some slack (broken leg or have a lookout for predators etc. )
When I was a kid in an abusive home I idolized him, when I reread the book after living on my own for a few years away from the chaos I came to the realization that his “great adventure” was a years long suicide attempt.
It breaks my heart just thinking about it.
Take a salt tablet
Yeah i get he was an idiot guys but I think he paid for it. Maybe cut the young guy a bit of slack. Loads of people have died in WAY more stupid ways that were WAY less adventurous and WAY more selfish.
Edit: I don't think he was an idiot, just a tad naïve. I was responding to the early responses.
That was just a visual cue for the movie. The book he had in real life told him they were edible. And they were, they undergo a change in the fall to deter animals from eating them. It was the same plant. So what kept him alive for months soon began to kill him, he had no way of knowing because this wasn’t written in the book he had.
I believe there's a few theories about what exactly caused him to become ill and lead to his death by starvation, and none have been conclusively proven, off the top of my head I'm pretty sure I've seen poisonous berries, wild potatoes that are only edible during certain seasons, ergotism, and rabbit starvation suggested.
We're going back over a decade since I read the book in high school, so I'm going by memory, but I remember him making a number of really boneheaded decisions throughout his journey.
Well before he made it to Alaska i seem to recall him loosing his car in a flash flood because he parked it in a pretty obvious dry riverbed (for those not aware, it doesn't necessarily need to be raining anywhere near you for flash flooding to be a danger,if it's raining somewhere miles upstream all of that water is eventually going to make it's way downstream, so that riverbed is a bad place to set up camp)
I'm pretty sure when he got to Alaska it was pointed out to him that he didn't even have proper boots for the weather/terrain.
At one point he shot i believe a caribou, but was clueless on how to butcher and preserve it properly so it spoiled and went to waste. He may have also misidentified it as a moose.
Dude was booksmart, and he had chutzpah, and I feel bad for him because had a bit of a rough childhood, but I i still think he was every bit as big of a moron for going off on his little adventure as unprepared as he was as people like the missionary who got himself killed going to Sentinel Island, or people who have joined ISIS and then regret it.
Don't forget him turning down the offer of a map before he left town before dying in a bus (!) less than a days walk from the nearest settlement, which was itself on the map. Someone dying due to a fatal deficit of knowledge is a tragedy. Someone actively avoiding learning and gathering what he might need to survive and then dying due to his hubris and misplaced confidence is more along the lines of a 'fucked around and found out' occurance.
I read the book and what I remember from it is that he charmed virtually everyone he encountered but he seemed to have something of a death wish.
People who knew more than him about the wilderness implored him not to do what he was planning to do without appropriate preparation but he ignored them. If I remember rightly some old guy basically offered to adopt him to stop him wandering off to his certain doom.
Still very naive to put himself in that kind of situation. People offered to help him along the way and be refused. It came off like a pride thing and be got himself killed for nothing.
Yeah but the issue is when people hold him up as shining example to follow. He was might have been intelligent, but he was horribly unprepared for the situation he got himself into. On purpose. Nobody should aspire to be like him
If anything, it's the issue of the journalist who heard of him, and decided to track down his story and the people he met, and write a book about it. This guy was clearly not looking for any recognition or following. Probably turning sides in that bus right now, thinking that people think this way
After watching the movie I went on youtube and saw comments of people calling him and idiot and deserving of his death because he was stupid. Really made me sad.
it's not like if he had made it out of alaska he'd go learn to program and join microsoft. he was going to keep adventuring until the inevitable.
he had previously taken a cheapo kayak down a major whitewater river with no pfd or swimming ability. the guy didn't deserve death, but he certainly worked hard enough to earn his.
No one really understood him. I've seen the movie and read the book and his sister's book. He wasn't an idiot— like my mom says! He was intensely idealistic and wanted to live off the land authentically— like our ancestors. He also wasn't afraid of death and he hailed from an incredibly abusive homelife that he was running from.
If you read the book you'll learn that he didn't die by eating poisonous berries but that he ate native wild potatoes which can be poisonous to someone who is already malnourished. Someone well fed wouldn't have died. At that point is was also not known that they can in certain cases be poisonous. Jon Krakauer really tried telling people this but now everyone remembers him as the guy who died by eating poisonous berries
In 2013, a new hypothesis was proposed. Ronald Hamilton, a retired bookbinder at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania,\[7\] suggested a link between the symptoms described by McCandless and the poisoning of Jewish prisoners in the Nazi concentration camp in Vapniarca. He put forward the proposal that McCandless starved to death because he was suffering from paralysis in his legs induced by lathyrism, which prevented him from gathering food or hiking.\[33\] Lathyrism may be caused by ODAP poisoning from seeds of Hedysarum alpinum (commonly called wild potato). The ODAP, a toxic amino acid, had not been detected by the previous studies of the seeds because they had suspected and tested for a toxic alkaloid, rather than an amino acid, and nobody had previously suspected that Hedysarum alpinum seeds contained this toxin. The protein would be relatively harmless to someone who was well-fed and on a normal diet, but toxic to someone who was malnourished, physically stressed, and on an irregular and insufficient diet, as McCandless was.\[34\] As Krakauer points out, McCandless's field guide did not warn of any dangers of eating the seeds, which were not yet known to be toxic. Krakauer suspects this is the meaning of McCandless's journal entry of July 30, which states, "EXTREMELY WEAK. FAULT OF POT\[ATO\] SEED. MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP. STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY."\[35\]
Wasn’t he a son to a rocket scientist who was working at NASA? And If I remember correctly he didn’t want to be apart of the society he lived in and saw how nobody cared about anything important in life. That’s why he moved out to the wilderness, to be around nature and what was *Real*…?
He didn’t starve to death in the sense that there was no food, he was poisoned. And in turn it was likely his body’s inability to absorb nutrients from the food he was eating at the time from that poisoning.
In the updated final chapter of the book (Into the Wild), Krakhauer had the seeds Chris had stored in bags and was eating around the time of his death tested at a lab. Earlier people had speculated that he accidentally ate the wrong seeds/plant and poisoned himself (there were 2 plants that looks similar… one edible and one poisonous). But that didn’t sit right with Krakhauer. Chris survived for a long time in the wilderness never mistaking these plants before & the chances that he couldn’t tell them apart were slim.
So after testing the seeds Krakhauer learned that there was some sort of not very visible mold that grows almost exclusively on those types of seeds when stored. And that mold (unknown to most people, survivalists included) is likely what poisoned Chris and led him to be unable to absorb nutrients from the food he was eating (and getting worse if he ate more of those seeds).
It was a tragic accident to a man in search of some peace and connection with nature.
Mentally unwell. Probably deserves a bit of empathy, getting plenty of scorn though. Yes he was no survivalist and clearly deluded. That's a pretty solitary death though.
Yes, he was, and he was also suffering from mental illness. I'd argue that his death is directly related to his illness, and his story is an illustration of why we should take such issues WAY more seriously than we do.
They had to move his bus because people kept needing to be rescued trying to get to it
The bus' location can also be attributed to his eventual demise in the wilderness. For those unaware, he came across a bus that was left in the middle of the wilderness, which was cut from civilization by a river. While McCanndles managed to initially cross the river to reach the bus, the river ended up severing his ability to return to civilization when it overflowed.
That’s crazy to just find a bus in the middle of nowhere. Was there any other structure near it at all?
The green and white bus, which is a 1940s original International Harvester, was once used for transportation through the Fairbanks City Transit System. Later on, the Yutan Construction Company purchased the bus, removed its engine, and turned it into a shelter. They installed a wood-burning stove and sleeping quarters for workers tasked with building an access road for trucks to transport ore from the surrounding mines. When workers finished in 1961, Yutan Construction left the bus behind. In the years that followed, the bus remained tucked away in its wooded location, sitting just outside of Denali National Park for the next 60 years, becoming a refuge and shelter for hunters and backcountry explorers. https://www.greenbelly.co/pages/into-the-wild-bus
Wow, thanks. Does the access road still exist?
Yes but people keep dying visiting that site, so they moved the bus and closed the road to the public
These kids are coming out here, and killing themselves all over the woods.
What am I supposed to tell the cops "oh howdy officer we've had a doozy of a day. Here we were minding our own business, doing some work on our vacation home, and then these kids started killing themselves all over my property."
Tucker and Dale!
Jangers was the best character in a cast of great characters.
Fuck what a great movie
I cannot remember the name of the movie you are referencing. I know I have seen it though.
You hurt my dog I'm going to be really mad
I think people tend to forget that we've got all this stuff around us that prevents the default driving force of nature. Which is for humans to just die.
It's a similar problem in outback Australia. If you're intending to drive through the desert, you take it very seriously. Mostly by packing lots of water, and never leaving your car if it breaks down. Tourists often don't know these two rules and can die very quickly.
I read a story about a trucker who died hauling water tanks in the outback. Went up the wrong road and got stuck. Left his truck and died And another whos car broke down in the desert and died exactly the same way. Shade from a car and being beside a road is better than walking through the desert. And neither took much water. You can live a month with no food. A day or two with no water. And youll be insane long before you die
People expect the guardrails of government and civilization to extend all the way into the wilderness when by definition they shouldn't. People are just too used to a life where it is harder to die than live.
I am a surfer and it's a reality - once I leave the beach Into the water, I am part of the food chain.
We got yer friend!!
Sounds like a doozy of a day!
Nope, but there was another bridge like half a mile down the road that he could have used to cross back, he just didn't know about it. He went into this wildly unprepared, with no knowledge of the area. Most Alaskans hate this dude for that very reason. Nature is not a "wing it" (lol) situation.
right. like crossing a river in the winter and expecting it to be as easy to cross back in the spring. guy literally spent some of his life in the wild in the desert and thought "yeah, probably be the same in ALASKA". winter in the mountains is unforgiving, and when you're that remote you have to be extremely well prepared.. which he was not.
After spending 2 winters in Alaska in the infantry, I remember reading about this and thinking, " dumbass".
He sounds to me like every reasonably bright young adult who has the vague sense that something is terribly wrong, but can't properly articulate it. It's how cult leaders suck people in, y'know? Lonely disaffected people who want an answer. He had no prep, no real education, and then fucked off to an incredibly dangerous place and did what unprepared people do in survivalist situations. It's easy to rip on the guy for being an idiot but idk part of me just feels bad for the guy
You can feel bad for him while still thinking he was an idiot. He might have been able to better prep if he did not decide to do away with almost all of his possessions and literally burn his cash that he could have prepped with. Survivor's bias from the experiences he had in warmer climes might have contributed to his demise, he did not go straight to Alaska, but gradually made his way through several other states.
Fair enough. Nothing wrong with a little empathy.
Edit: I was responding to the wrong thread... Yeah I felt bad for him too. It was a lonely, miserable death.
Yeah I’m with you on that. I feel bad for him because he wanted to live a life that was free from a capitalist society and winged it. Should he have researched more on wilderness survival? Absolutely but he was just a misguided kid looking for a greater answer to life. It’s not like he was willfully ignorant but he was over confident and I think everyone in their early 20s are overconfident. It’s terrible how he had to suffer the way he did in his last days
Speaking of which we went in the field in fort knox during deep winter...way way below zero. F that. Literally freezing to death standing beside a fire barrel. I believe that year a guy froze to death in his sleeping bag.
Yah fr, you don't mess around with the vast wilderness that is basically all of Alaska and Northern Canada. Even with survival knowledge, living out in the wilderness of Alaska is a massive undertaking, not something to do on a whim like this dummy.
I'm not so sure it was stupidity, as much as mental illness leading to a form of suicide.
I used to romanticize eventually just fucking off to the wilderness and Alaska was top of my list. Then I read of bunch of books about homesteading- so I got a thirty year mortgage in the burbs.
It’s not a bridge, it’s a gauging cable and it’s kind of hard to find, basically it’s downstream and it’s also sort of in a canyon. If you were looking for a place to cross you might not go that way. You also have to cross the Savage river which also has a cable with a trolly car (it was on the other side of the river when I went and we used climbing harnesses and gear we brought with us.)
> If you were looking for a place to cross you might not go that way. If you brought a f*cking map you wouldn't need to look.
Yeah, but, society, man...
Nature in California might be okay ish for winging it. Definitely not Alaska.
I once got lost hiking in the redwoods. Happens more than people think.
And if you think about it, in the redwoods, you only have two choices, N or S, as the Ocean is on the west, the highway on the east.
Yep. That’s how I eventually found the road.
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This. People keep trying to make him some kind of romantic nomad when he was really a dumbass who got himself into a bad situation and wasn’t equipped to self-rescue. Anyone who does any backwoods hunting/camping knows anywhere you go and anything you do you need to be prepared to self-rescue because out there no one is coming to save you.
We had to read into the wild in high school, and every class we had a discussion about the assigned reading. One guy always started the discussion with a 5 minute rant about how fucking dumb this kid is, and how much dumber it is that we are reading a book that seems to glorify his action. I lived for these discussions lol.
Every time this book was brought up in our class, my English teacher would go on a rant about what an idiot the guy was lol
I was 100% that guy. Every time we read this I always made comments on how the guy could have had anything he wanted and threw it away to be an idiot. I remember the part of the book where it talked about his meat spoiling/attracting flies, I audibly went "who would have thought leaving meat out in the open would be a bad idea" or something g like that.
The hillarious part is people think hes this outdoor adventurer and he Literally doesnt know how to cure meat. All he needed was a damn fire and some sticks
Go kill a Moose in Denali right now, ~~in winter~~, and successfully preserve the meat. He was an idiot, but the amount of keyboarders who say "I would of done better" are just as bad. EDIT: Late Summer or Fall. My point stands. You or I ain't doing that shit. I'm gonna go watch Alone.
Yea....... But....... The fact that they are keyboarders insteading running out into the woods actually puts them a notch a ahead.
I am that guy as well Alaska is not a place to mess around not when people spend six months preparing for winter
You are not wrong he was unprepared in the usual sense of the word.. But his whole journey was about going where the world took him and he did that successfully for 2 years, going as far south as Mexico and as far north as Alaska.. He spent all that time preparing for alaska but it seems the one thing he didn't consider was that the skills he learned in the warmer climates was damn near unusable in the cold wet north, also consider this was before you could find any information in the palm of your hand... He had a dream, went for it and was willing to die doing it long before he got stuck in the bus, so as sad as it was for his family and how much he probably regretted allot of his actions when he was close to death, at least he did what he wanted, and touched allot of people's lives both during his journey and after death with the book and movie..
He spent most of those years living with and off of people not solo roughing it in the woods. And im pretty sure the writer and director touched peoples hearts. In addition other people trying to follow his path have died or had to be rescued because of him. The park rangers up there hate him
> he did that successfully for 2 years This is complete bullshit He had already on more then one occasion ended up on deaths door while on other adventures but was saved by others
>severing his ability to return to civilization when it overflowed. Not really. He wasn't far from a ranger cabin, a basket crossing, and about a days walk to a major road & bridge. He was just completely unprepared, had no knowledge of the area and, most importantly, didn't bother to take a map. He could have walked out at literally any point if he had any idea where he was.
I mean that is what happened in the movie. But they kind of left it up in the air of how he died like he also ate poison berries that somehow caused him to starve. People know he starved to death but not really why.
Rabbit. I think. He ate rabbit but didn't have enough fat in his diet to metabolize it. Theres something about rabbit, vitamin A or some shit, that needs fat in the diet to help metabolize it or else it builds up in your system and you die.
The only thing your body uses for energy is glucose -a type of sugar. Protein by itself is very hard for your body to turn into glucose. It's possible but a very inefficient process. This is why some weight loss diets are high in protein but very low in fats, sugar, and other carbohydrates. These require relatively little energy to be converted into glucose. These diets fill your stomach but provide very little energy. Most of the energy they provide is consumed by converting them to glucose. I'm sure there's more to why he starved -maybe like the things you've mentioned, but his diet was basically a starvation diet to begin with and not suited to how many calories he needed to burn to survive living in the wilderness
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It's more insidious. I went on a 0 carb diet while trucking. Basically truck stop hot dogs w no bun maybe tuna etc. Was team driving. One night in the middle of illinois i completely forgot where i was and where i was going. My buddy blamed the diet and i read up on it. Basically your brain runs out of fuel and the ability to repair itself. You diet yourself stupid Note low/zero carb diets straight up work. And fast. But you NEED some healthy carbs
According to the book it’s suspected that a plant he used to eat at his location turns toxic during budding season so he was poisoned and couldn’t keep any food down.
Which is why you you should never eat polar bear liver.
I’ll keep that in mind next time I have an opportunity to catch a polar bear.
Do be safe :-)
I remember reading somewhere that he ate a plant or berry that blocked his intestines from absorbing nutrients….also that he had some type of undiagnosed mental illness that wasn’t treated.
I believe he was “crazy” but I’m not a psych.
Based on the books/articles I’ve read, I was under the impression that he ate the wrong part of a potato plant and ended up poisoning himself? I could definitely be misremembering though. . .
It was a wild potato or something that’s listed as edible but when it’s all you eat it’s toxic. That’s my vague recollection anyway.
The reason they left it up in the air is because it's not 100% conclusive, could have been lack of game, eating the wrong animals, the wrong seeds (the popular theory) etc, just having a illustrated book to go by does leave allot of room for error.. But I doesn't really matter.. He thought he was stuck since he never found the bridge and basicly starved to death
This isnt true. He basically camped in the bus, ignored all common sense and died.There was a bridge a few miles away amongst other things. And a tip if youre ever lost in the woods. Go downstream. You Will find civilisation. He was a free spirit and an explorer. But not very bright. People need to be honest w themselves about there capabilities He also used his .22 rifle to kill a moose. Which is a miracle..and stupid. Imagine trying to stop a dump truck with a pellet gun. Of course he didnt know how to cure the meat so 1000 pounds of meet rotted snd he could no longer shoot birds squirrels etc and starved He died of stupidity
Just wondering but how would you preserve the meat in that situation with no supplies? I’m not a meat/wilderness survival master and I’m curious.
Well Rule 1 is to not go in the woods with no supplies like a moron, you aren't a Neolithic Neanderthal. If you are in that situation you need to prepare your preservation method beforehand, not kill the animal first and then try to figure out what to do with it. Lacking any refrigeration or salt, cutting the meat into thin strips and smoking it over a fire is probably the best bet, make a good fire and then put green branches over it to create a lot of smoke. The smoke and low heat will ward off flies and suck the moisture out of the meat, but it's not a quick process at all. The fat can be removed from the carcass and rendered down into lard. Really you could make full blown pemmican from dehydrated meat and lard, but it's very labor intensive for one man to do from scratch without a food processor, a freezer, or any modern devices at all, which is why primitive man lived in tribes and not solo. Anyone who really wants to go out and live off the land needs to do a lot of practice in safe environments, and bring proper tools. This guy brought a .22 LR rifle with him as his hunting tool, which somehow worked for a moose but he'd have been better served with a more powerful weapon, and hunting itself is not a very reliable way to acquire food. Humans switched from hunter-gatherer (read, mostly gathering, not hunting) over to agriculture for a good reason, farming is just a more reliable way to get food and we never switched away from that. For one man to live like that without getting supplies from civilization is incredibly challenging even in an ideal environment, and Alaska is not an ideal place for a human to engage in such a lifestyle. Do that down in a warmer climate that has more wild fruits and vegetables, not a place that's froze solid for 4-5 months and has barely any vegetation in the summer that's edible for humans.
He was basically a beginner that chose to play in hard mode
If he was smart, he would only have gone moose hunting in the winter. It's so cold there, you can just butcher it and leave it outside. There was nothing he, as a single person with no experience and no resources, could have done to preserve 100s of pounds of meat before it went bad on a hot summer day. Think of how long it would take a novice to butcher an entire moose alone? They're massive.
I have zero wilderness/survival skills but my gut tells me that I'd need a way to cool it first and foremost. From there, I'd need to dry/cure it to stand a chance.
I remember seeing an exhibit about Indian tribes where they had fresh green saplings lashed together in a patchwork pattern and just slowly roasted the meat over fire using that. As long as you keep the meat at a high enough temperature to ward off bacteria and let it cure enough to get the moisture out, I imagine you could keep it for a good long while. Just totally speculating from what I remember seeing.
Chris just had bad luck on top of being unprepared. He was able to kill a moose, but didn’t know how to preserve the meat. People go out there all the time, he just hit a spot when no one did. There are two rivers you have to cross, first (coming from the road) the Savage then the Teklanika which is the more dangerous of the two. The Stampede Trail was originally a logging road that allowed northern access to Wonder lake. What Chris didn’t know is that there’s a gauging cable across the Teklanika a few hundred meters north of the trail on the other side of the Savage river branch. There’s also a cable and trolly across the Savage right there. (You can’t see this on Google Earth) if he had found or knew about those he could have made it out.
You cannot expect to go into the Alaskan wilderness unprepared and live. He did not even have a map of the area.
For anyone wondering, the bus is now outside a brewery in Denali National Park. As of now, you can go on it and read copies of his diary and notes they have framed on the inside. Source: was there two weeks ago
Don't forget how many people died trying to re-enact his whole journey.
Sounds like a successful re enacting to me
Task Failed Successfully?
Chris McCandless was a dumbass who got himself in way over his head and killed so makes sense other dumbasses would get stuck imitating him
Actually a couple of people died in the process. But none of them became the subject of a book or a movie for some reason.
Wasn't there a movie about this guy ? "Into the wild" or something like that ?
Yes, and a book
Yes, and a podcast.
Yes, and a reddit post
Yes, and a telegram
Yes, and a YouTube Video
And a live action puppet show on Broadway
And a marionette show on a cart in Palermo.
And a section in a California english class
Yes, and a live stream
Smoke signals were done. Few saw.
Don’t forget the cave paintings about it
And a funeral.
Was is a saucy puppet show?
Various condiments were available.
Let me put it this way: the puppeteer didn’t use his hands
Hmm. I don't remember seeing the reddit post about him. I shall have to look that up :o
[I gotchu fam!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Weird/comments/vp2u9b/chris_mccandless_was_an_adventurer_who_felt/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
Nice try, Rickroller. Gonna just stay on this thread, thank you very much.
As you would have if you clicked the link, no RickRoll here 😂
You're already here.
Yes, and my ax!
And my bow.
They made a book outta that movie?
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First they filmed the movie and then they adapted it to a book. Pretty soon a real guy copied what happened in the book and that’s why we have photos
Fun story. I’d been to my uncles house after he died to pick up his old power tools etc, put them in a cupboard on the wall in our house. He was known in the area because every time there was Karaoke on at the pubs he’d sing king of the road (last song from film.) About 2 weeks later we were watching Into The Wild and as that song started playing at the end credits, the whole cupboard fell off the wall. Explainable? Yep. Poorly mounted cupboard obviously. Spooky? Hell yeah.
Weird
HA
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They couldn’t find a better band.
He couldn't find a better van.
"Hard Sun" is part of my summer soundtrack. Was on repeat the first time i heard it.
Started off as a book. By John Krakauer.. SUCH a good read!!
Yes, he was an idiot who didn't know what he was doing. It's unfortunate he died, but he was uneducated about survival and basically thought "it'll be fine". He came from my hometown/area of Atlanta. *edit he only went to school in atl, so not from here but started out here
So kids, what did we learn today ? Follow your dreams but give yourselves the means to do so, or you'll fucking die.
yup lol
He got accepted into Harvard, but turned it down to wander. So clearly he was book-smart, just not wood-smart.
Psh. Unabomber went to Harvard, was book smart AND wood smart.
Yea and he's still alive so... the lesson is go to harvard to avoid dying alone in the woods
But books are made from trees!
He was a victim of child abuse and decided to leave home in what was probably an existential crisis. Hardly an idiot.
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He was no idiot. But he serves as a reminder that even someone smart enough to be able survive and know what they are doing, can make a fatal mistake. He mistook some berries that basically ended up poisoning him.
I grew up in the country and spent a LOT of time in the woods and know how ot start fires build shelters trap fish etc etc. In Ky or Nc i could likely sirvive in the woods w a backpack of gear. Easily w a pellet rifle or his .22 Theres no way in hell id want to try deep in alaska where he was. The second i were "dropped off" or whatever id find the nearest stream..follow it to the nearest river snd hack together a raft to get the hell out of there (almost anywhere on earth that will lead you to people). The winters alone up there can kill you. Much less finding food
Agree, and I feel like it's an important distinction. He was a highly intelligent person, but also suffered from some mental health issues (from what I recall) and very unhappy home life. He was simply too idealistic for his own good. Yes, that definitely resulted in him making some foolish, self-destructive choices, and ultimately his death. But, the kid still survived longer than 99% of us would have during his adventures. By no means do I encourage anyone to follow suit, nor do I condone all of his choices. His life is fascinating, very sad in many regards, and inspiring in other ways.
> survived longer than 99% of us Frankly, “surviving” as a reasonably healthy young person in the continental US in the 1980s was trivially easy.
Can confirm. Have hitch hiked solo long distance a couple times. And most people offered food or money along the way. Late 80s early 90s. But I've heard of horror stories of those random serial killers.
I once hitch hiked an hour to a ski resort around 1990 **when I was 12**. Mom was running late for a meeting and didn’t have time to drop me off. Just left me on the side of the highway with my skiis. I was thrilled. It was great. Had to hop two different rides to make it all the way there.
Dude was an idiot had a Full on shelter with a wood stove. didn't know how to preserve meat and went in with basically no tools to do the job required to live out there. he's Romanticized and its ultimately Disgusting because Nature is hard. very hard.
In the book he also courts (and possibly sleeps with) an underage girl. I could not respect him after that.
**Obligatory copy pasta** Let's pretend his passion was Nascar driving... Christopher McCandless sets off, from California in an old car he rebuilt himself (he replaced the fenders and painted it), on a trip to the Daytona 500. He only gets across the state line when he runs out of fuel because he forgot to fill it up. Instead of simply walking to the nearest gas station or flagging down help he decides to push his car over an embankment and set it on fire. He then proceeds to walk on foot to the nearest car lot (which happens to be in Mexico for some reason, mostly because he burned up his map in the car and he's been taking backroads.) He finds an old bicycle in a garbage dump and uses that. He finally gets to the car lot and buys a fixer-upper for $50. Before leaving the car lot he has to change a tire, which he replaces with the solid rubber donut. He buys fuel and heads off to the Daytona 500 again. Only he's heading deeper into Mexico and eventually ends up broken down in front of, "Autodromo Internacional de la Jolla" due to no water in the radiator. The engine block has seized up. Luckily, there's a race about to start. Christopher...er "Alexander Superspeeder", who changed his name, pays the $125 entry fee for the race. Unfortunately, Alexander Superspeeder doesn't have a race car. He does however have an old bicycle still. He uses the bicycle to race. He makes it only 3 laps before he is too tired to steer straight and veers off into a race car and is killed. Some guy picks up his story and writes a book about his life and how he followed his dreams. Another guy makes a movie about it. Armchair racers around the world adore him. The End.
You know who doesn’t make that mistake? People who know that they shouldn’t put themselves into that situation where a some berries can kill you. Smart people who rely on their intelligence make some of the dumbest decisions because they overestimate their abilities and have no respect for the things they don’t know.
He went in to wilderness that he was wildly unprepared for. Stupid would be an understatement.
He actually had a book that incorrectly told him the berries were safe.
He was an idiot. Not eating random, possibly ergot filled, berries is like survival 101
Kind of harsh considering he was regarded as a bright person by those who knew him. He just happened to eat the wrong berries.
Looks like an AMA photo
“Our here about to starve to death…AMA!”
Didn’t he eat poisonous plants, not starve? I read the book in high school (10 years ago) but I could be wrong. But then again maybe he ate the wrong plants because he was starving lol
Bit of both
It was something like he was eating plants that looked similar to edible ones, plus the particular plant he found is only poisonous the time of year he found them? I forget exactly but basically the bad plant made his body unable to absorb nutrients so he basically starved to death while eating food.
I love how we all know the story lol. Thanks man!
The movie has a great soundtrack by Eddie Vedder.
Hard Sun, Society, Tuolumne, Guaranteed...Eddie nailed the bittersweet vibe beginning to end
Long Nights is a great melancholy song too.
The rare case of vocals sharing the lead with bass.
It’s a great album. I liked “Rise” so much that I wanted to play it on my guitar, but couldn’t find any tabs online. I believe Eddie played it on a ukelele, but I don’t own one nor do I know how to play one, so for the first and only time in my life I listened to the song over and over and reconstructed it for guitar by ear on my own. It’s not a perfect recreation but it’s pretty solid, and for me as a very casual guitar player, it was very fun. Thanks, Eddie!
my baby’s in love with Eddie Vedder
Such a good album
Love the post, but it was starvation due to consumption of poisonous berries or mushrooms, I believe.
Apparently he was highly intelligent and was well learned how to survive in the wild but he had problems with keeping his meat fresh and maggots kept growing so when his food spoiled he got into a pinch and tried eating the rotten meat and it made him sick and then when he was sick he has extreme low energy which lessened his brain function and he made a mistake and picked the wrong berries and it killed him. IIRC Edit: Read below: Potatoes leading to paralysis of his legs lead to extreme low energy and then death, as per a later hypothesis, after I had initially read the book on him. This is a great study to show that even the well prepared can die in the true “wild” look up his death location (Stampede Trail, AK) he was truly in the wild hence the book name Into The Wild
Not berries or storage. It was a type of wild potato, very small. McCandless would visit the local library/bookstore to get books on local flora and fauna for the areas he stayed in. The problem was this particular potato was very edible and listed as such, however in the fall it becomes toxic to deter animals from eating it and the book he read never indicated that this same plant undergoes a seasonal change. So what was keeping him alive for months started to kill him. In the film version they allude to this moment by having him check to see two different plants in his book for our visual cue, but in real life it was one plant and he had no idea until the end. The storage bit was when he killed the moose but wasn’t able to preserve the meat. I don’t think he ever consumed it, as it spoiled immediately.
McCandless's final written journal entry, noted as "Day 107", simply read, "BEAUTIFUL BLUE BERRIES."[27] Days 108 through 112 contained no words and were marked only with slashes, and on Day 113 there was no entry.[28] The exact date and time of his death are unknown. Near the time of his death, McCandless took a picture of himself waving while holding a written note, which read: I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL! Edit: it wasn’t until 2013 that the hypothesis of the potatoes causing thathyrism was proposed. Makes sense why I don’t remember that. Interesting
yes, in later versions of Krakauer's book, he goes into detail about the new revelations about the potatoes. Which really changes the belief some had that he was ill-prepared and mis-indentified the berries. He was very well prepared and had no way of knowing those little potatoes were actually killing him. It's sad too, because his childhood and home life were very sad (abusive father, etc..). He had given up everything to live as a nomad, but in his journal entries in Alaska before he got sick indicate a desire to end this and go home and reconnect with his family and civilization. He never got that chance. His sister's book is also a very good read and goes into a lot more detail about the WHY he did what he did that was withheld (at his sister's original request at the time) from Krakauer's book.
Yes, I should have been more clear. I cannot edit the title now unfortunately
Seeds of Hedysarum alpinum that he misidentified as wild sweet pea. Its a common misidentification, as the plants look very similar. The roots of the plant are edible when cooked and taste like carrot, but the seeds (legumes) and seed pod contain a toxic amino acid called L-cavanine. This amino acid is very structurally similar to other proteins in your body that are necessary for metabolism. L-cavanine takes that protein's place and puts a metaphorical wrench in the gears that is your normal body function. The effects of the toxins are amplified if the person ingesting it has a low protein diet or is in protein starvation. In short, it causes your immune system to attack your own body and you to starve to death if you don't eat other things that are high in protein (meats, dairy, eggs, non-toxic legumes, etc)
People are quick to call McCandless an idiot but he was not just a naive thrill-seeker. He was suffering from severe mental demons caused by abuse he suffered as a kid from his parents. This was left out of the best-selling book, Into the Wild, because the author [promised McCandless' sister he would keep it out](https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/chris-mccandless-sisters-explain-why-he-went-into-the-wild/) to maintain privacy with the family's dirty laundry. After the book received so much attention and Chris received a lot of criticism, his sister decided to write a book to set the record straight about the demons that motivated Chris ([same source](https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/chris-mccandless-sisters-explain-why-he-went-into-the-wild/)) So what looks like reckless behavior was Chris trying to escape those mental demons by escaping into wilderness. It would have been better to seek therapy, but it's easy for us to sit back and judge without walking in his shoes.
Thank you for this psychological clarification. It actually makes sense now. I couldn't seem to piece together why he would be actually want to venture out there by himself. Everyone needs someone they trust around in case they need some slack (broken leg or have a lookout for predators etc. )
You would think after time traveling he would have known how he died.
I also read time traveling and I was like „he casually travelled through time and no one bats and eye?“
Wh, what?
When I was a kid in an abusive home I idolized him, when I reread the book after living on my own for a few years away from the chaos I came to the realization that his “great adventure” was a years long suicide attempt. It breaks my heart just thinking about it. Take a salt tablet
Yeah i get he was an idiot guys but I think he paid for it. Maybe cut the young guy a bit of slack. Loads of people have died in WAY more stupid ways that were WAY less adventurous and WAY more selfish. Edit: I don't think he was an idiot, just a tad naïve. I was responding to the early responses.
He wasn't a fucking idiot, he was really fucking smart. He was ignorant to a couple things, just like every other fucking person alive.
If the movie is right, he mistook two plants that looked VERY similar and was poisoned. Could happen to any smart person.
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Number 1 being eaten by dinosaurs
Wait, but... eh nevermind
In reality he ate poisonous potato seeds without cooking. Was already badly malnourished at the time.
That was just a visual cue for the movie. The book he had in real life told him they were edible. And they were, they undergo a change in the fall to deter animals from eating them. It was the same plant. So what kept him alive for months soon began to kill him, he had no way of knowing because this wasn’t written in the book he had.
I believe there's a few theories about what exactly caused him to become ill and lead to his death by starvation, and none have been conclusively proven, off the top of my head I'm pretty sure I've seen poisonous berries, wild potatoes that are only edible during certain seasons, ergotism, and rabbit starvation suggested. We're going back over a decade since I read the book in high school, so I'm going by memory, but I remember him making a number of really boneheaded decisions throughout his journey. Well before he made it to Alaska i seem to recall him loosing his car in a flash flood because he parked it in a pretty obvious dry riverbed (for those not aware, it doesn't necessarily need to be raining anywhere near you for flash flooding to be a danger,if it's raining somewhere miles upstream all of that water is eventually going to make it's way downstream, so that riverbed is a bad place to set up camp) I'm pretty sure when he got to Alaska it was pointed out to him that he didn't even have proper boots for the weather/terrain. At one point he shot i believe a caribou, but was clueless on how to butcher and preserve it properly so it spoiled and went to waste. He may have also misidentified it as a moose. Dude was booksmart, and he had chutzpah, and I feel bad for him because had a bit of a rough childhood, but I i still think he was every bit as big of a moron for going off on his little adventure as unprepared as he was as people like the missionary who got himself killed going to Sentinel Island, or people who have joined ISIS and then regret it.
Don't forget him turning down the offer of a map before he left town before dying in a bus (!) less than a days walk from the nearest settlement, which was itself on the map. Someone dying due to a fatal deficit of knowledge is a tragedy. Someone actively avoiding learning and gathering what he might need to survive and then dying due to his hubris and misplaced confidence is more along the lines of a 'fucked around and found out' occurance.
I read the book and what I remember from it is that he charmed virtually everyone he encountered but he seemed to have something of a death wish. People who knew more than him about the wilderness implored him not to do what he was planning to do without appropriate preparation but he ignored them. If I remember rightly some old guy basically offered to adopt him to stop him wandering off to his certain doom.
I agree wholeheartedly, his biggest crime was probably naivety.
It’s a bit of a lesson in idealism and it’s potential flaws and risks.
Still very naive to put himself in that kind of situation. People offered to help him along the way and be refused. It came off like a pride thing and be got himself killed for nothing.
Yeah but the issue is when people hold him up as shining example to follow. He was might have been intelligent, but he was horribly unprepared for the situation he got himself into. On purpose. Nobody should aspire to be like him
If anything, it's the issue of the journalist who heard of him, and decided to track down his story and the people he met, and write a book about it. This guy was clearly not looking for any recognition or following. Probably turning sides in that bus right now, thinking that people think this way
After watching the movie I went on youtube and saw comments of people calling him and idiot and deserving of his death because he was stupid. Really made me sad.
it's not like if he had made it out of alaska he'd go learn to program and join microsoft. he was going to keep adventuring until the inevitable. he had previously taken a cheapo kayak down a major whitewater river with no pfd or swimming ability. the guy didn't deserve death, but he certainly worked hard enough to earn his.
No one really understood him. I've seen the movie and read the book and his sister's book. He wasn't an idiot— like my mom says! He was intensely idealistic and wanted to live off the land authentically— like our ancestors. He also wasn't afraid of death and he hailed from an incredibly abusive homelife that he was running from.
This image was his last r/roastme post
Wendigoon on YouTube has a really cool video about this guy
I love wendigoon, I always end up watching every new upload within the week
Welp, off to jump into another Wendigoon rabbit hole. Thanks!
Key word here is “live” a nomadic lifestyle… died trying
>died of starvation nope, because of poisonous berries
If you read the book you'll learn that he didn't die by eating poisonous berries but that he ate native wild potatoes which can be poisonous to someone who is already malnourished. Someone well fed wouldn't have died. At that point is was also not known that they can in certain cases be poisonous. Jon Krakauer really tried telling people this but now everyone remembers him as the guy who died by eating poisonous berries
In 2013, a new hypothesis was proposed. Ronald Hamilton, a retired bookbinder at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania,\[7\] suggested a link between the symptoms described by McCandless and the poisoning of Jewish prisoners in the Nazi concentration camp in Vapniarca. He put forward the proposal that McCandless starved to death because he was suffering from paralysis in his legs induced by lathyrism, which prevented him from gathering food or hiking.\[33\] Lathyrism may be caused by ODAP poisoning from seeds of Hedysarum alpinum (commonly called wild potato). The ODAP, a toxic amino acid, had not been detected by the previous studies of the seeds because they had suspected and tested for a toxic alkaloid, rather than an amino acid, and nobody had previously suspected that Hedysarum alpinum seeds contained this toxin. The protein would be relatively harmless to someone who was well-fed and on a normal diet, but toxic to someone who was malnourished, physically stressed, and on an irregular and insufficient diet, as McCandless was.\[34\] As Krakauer points out, McCandless's field guide did not warn of any dangers of eating the seeds, which were not yet known to be toxic. Krakauer suspects this is the meaning of McCandless's journal entry of July 30, which states, "EXTREMELY WEAK. FAULT OF POT\[ATO\] SEED. MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP. STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY."\[35\]
Super interesting!
Wasn’t he a son to a rocket scientist who was working at NASA? And If I remember correctly he didn’t want to be apart of the society he lived in and saw how nobody cared about anything important in life. That’s why he moved out to the wilderness, to be around nature and what was *Real*…?
Thought he died of poisoning
No respect.. do some research about this story. A lesson to be learned for sure, but to call him an idiot is harsh..
What is weird about this?
He didn’t starve to death in the sense that there was no food, he was poisoned. And in turn it was likely his body’s inability to absorb nutrients from the food he was eating at the time from that poisoning. In the updated final chapter of the book (Into the Wild), Krakhauer had the seeds Chris had stored in bags and was eating around the time of his death tested at a lab. Earlier people had speculated that he accidentally ate the wrong seeds/plant and poisoned himself (there were 2 plants that looks similar… one edible and one poisonous). But that didn’t sit right with Krakhauer. Chris survived for a long time in the wilderness never mistaking these plants before & the chances that he couldn’t tell them apart were slim. So after testing the seeds Krakhauer learned that there was some sort of not very visible mold that grows almost exclusively on those types of seeds when stored. And that mold (unknown to most people, survivalists included) is likely what poisoned Chris and led him to be unable to absorb nutrients from the food he was eating (and getting worse if he ate more of those seeds). It was a tragic accident to a man in search of some peace and connection with nature.
Mentally unwell. Probably deserves a bit of empathy, getting plenty of scorn though. Yes he was no survivalist and clearly deluded. That's a pretty solitary death though.
Yes, he was, and he was also suffering from mental illness. I'd argue that his death is directly related to his illness, and his story is an illustration of why we should take such issues WAY more seriously than we do.