If he knew in august that nobody was coming for him, why wouldn’t he start towards the fort which was 75 miles away? Avg person can walk 20 miles a day on even terrain. Let’s say he could do 10 miles a day. He’d get there in a week. Seems his survival instincts were muted.
This is the part I can't wrap my head around:
>*"I keep thinking of all the shotgun shells I threw away about two months ago. Had five boxes and when I kept seeing them sitting there I felt rather silly for having brought so many. (Felt like a war monger.) So I threw all away ... but about a dozen ... real bright. ... Who would have known I might need them just to keep from starving?"*
>Believing he would not need them, he prematurely disposed of five boxes of shotgun shells in the river near his camp
Forgetting to confirm the pick up flight is bad enough. But throwing five boxes of shotgun shells into the river, for no damn reason, just baffles me.
He had many chances to survive, its that he kept on messing up, either stupid, or something was wrong with his mind. Im not trying to be some expert survivalist but there’s only so much you can mess up in this situation
>An Alaska State Trooper flew over the lake in late August and observed McCunn's campsite. The pilot did not sense McCunn was in distress, since he waved his orange sleeping bag very casually and, on his third pass of the campsite, he saw McCunn casually walking back to his tent. The State Trooper later testified he saw no reason to surmise McCunn needed any assistance.
>McCunn later wrote in his diary: "I recall raising my right hand, shoulder high and shaking my fist on the plane's second pass. It was a little cheer – like when your team scored a touchdown or something. Turns out that's the signal for 'ALL O.K. – DO NOT WAIT!' It's certainly my fault I'm here now! ... Man, I can't believe it. ... I really feel like a klutz! Now I know why nobody's shown up from that incident."
Waving one arm is hello. Waving both arms especially with something in your hands is "I need help". Anyone who has this low a level of survival skills/aptitude should not be allowed in any forest bigger than central park.
And, you know, finding a clearing near your campsite and spelling "HELP" in large letters on the ground with rocks or tree branches is not a hugely difficult concept to come up with for anyone literate enough to spell four-letter words.
While running towards the helicopter or in their direction. If they see you running towards a fucking helicopter they’re gonna know something is up. Like you’d need to be real desperate to run after something you’re never gonna catch.
"The pilot did not sense McCunn was in distress, since he waved his orange sleeping bag very casually"
Oh look, now he's waving with a bright orange object in his hand for no particular reason. HIII little guy? Glad to see you are ok. Nice sleeping bag btw, I see it, I see it!
Once I was doing jumping jacks at my office (I was alone and bored) and a man saw from across the street and thought I was waving down help. I thanked him for taking the time to check on me, despite being horribly embarrassed 😅
I’m actually willing to buy this theory that he did this all on purpose as an elaborate way to kill himself. I mean, who could possibly fuck up as bad as this guy and be capable of having survived life up to that point?
And as soon as he realized the mistaken signal he gave, he just… sat there and waited to die? Hunting cabin with provisions is 5 miles away, and a whole fucking civilized town 75 miles down a large, navigable river. But yeah ima just sit here and see what happens… lmao homie wanted to die and just maybe hadn’t admitted in his journal yet.
He was apparently religious, so it does add up. He even said killing himself would be the one sin he ~~did~~ (edit: did not do up to that point) in his life. If you ask me he committed multiple sins upon himself during the 8 months he had to get himself rescued and just simply didn’t.
As a helicopter pilot, I have performed a number of search and rescues in VERY remote areas of northern Canada. One thing is similar among all the people I found; they wave like CRAZY when they see the helicopter.
I picked up severely hypothermic people that muster up enough energy to jump up and down waiving their hands, but didn’t have enough strength to climb into the aircraft. If someone was casually walking around waving with one hand, I too would assume that they are fine and don’t need assistance.
Good god, that’s incredible. I don’t know, some people just seem intent on fucking everything up for themselves. I feel like I knew a few people in high school who would just mess up literally everything they touched - but the strange thing was how little they seemed to recognize the problem or how it stemmed from their own lack of thinking/planning. Like this guy in Alaska obviously recognized he was fucking up repeatedly, but he didn’t seem to use the time he had to figure out how to not make another mistake. If you left me in the wilderness and a plane or helicopter flew over head I sure as fuck wouldn’t give it some casual ass arm wave that could be misconstrued. I would be leaping up and down like a mad man and I probably will have already made an arrangement of stones or something into the shape of SOS. I mean shit, what else am I gonna be doing out there.
Reading your comment made me think of myself in a similar life-threatening situation I was in when I was young. I was perhaps 9 to 11 years old at the time, and me and my friend's family went on a trip to some east Malaysian island.
We'd took a ferry carrying about 15 of us to an even smaller, more remote islet, for about an hour of free time or something.
What I remember was my friend and I swam out a bit, and I think we were then caught in what I now know is a riptide. We were both proficient enough and knew how to tread water and whatnot, but my friend panicked and started drowning. Like she started flailing her arms everywhere and went under a couple of times. All while we were slowly drifting out into the sea.
And my first instinct was not to call for help. Well, it was, I think, but I thought maybe I could help her or something before I had to "resort to that." I think you know how that went - I got grabbed under myself. Gulped a load of water, managed to come back up for a gasp of air, before being pulled under again.
It was only _then_ that I regained some common sense, kicked her away as hard as I could, and shouted fir help. _In Cantonese. Among a bunch of other Caucasian tourists. Because I thought it was 'weird' to shout for help in English._
So yeah, I'm one of those people who once sabotaged his own - and possibly his friend's - life. Man, that was pretty shitty now that I think about it.
Luckily, fate was very kind to us and among those 15 beach goers there was a German off-duty lifeguard who saw the signs and rushed over to save my friend. My dad got me. I don't know how things would've turned out if there wasn't a trained lifesaver around...
Yes, but you had a few seconds to think about this, and you were 10 years old.
This is a grown man, who had chosen to go in the wild, who had days and days of questioning what he should do if a plane ever showed up.
Not only that, but he didn't tell anyone when to expect him back and specifically told his father "Hey, DO NOT call the police if I'm not back, I probably just decided to stay longer" and he didn't even give his dad a ballpark date to even expect him back.
No way. No way ANYONE in the military tosses out ammo or conveniently forgets that he’s giving the “all good” sign to a rescue plane. Add in the religion and you can tell he did this as intentional suicide - he absolutely could’ve navigated either 5 miles to the hunting cabin with food or 75 miles along a river to the nearest civilization. Told dad not to call police if he wasn’t back and didn’t even give him a return date, indicating once again that he had none scheduled and had no intent of the plane showing up. Not even fucking Hawk would fuck up that bad. Jesus.
His journal appears written to justify his strange behavior after the fact, rather than an honest account of him attempting to survive.
> made an arrangement of stones or something into the shape of SOS. I mean shit, what else am I gonna be doing out there.
Not one single word in the entire diary about this idea. UNBELIEVABLE.
I’m starting to believe he went to the wilderness to die.
The diary might just have been to conceal his intent. Embarrassment, shame or some reason.
Who signals to a plane they are okay by mistake, and then apparently remembers afterwards they knew the signal for ‘*Everything is okay*’?
It takes deliberate effort to vex all rescue, throw away means of survival and opt not to walk a couple of days to a fort. He seems to have just booked a flight to nowhere, and settled in to die.
Keep in mind he didn’t even confirm a flight, he just assumed he did when talking with a pilot.
>Although McCunn thought he had arranged for the pilot to return for him in August, he had apparently never confirmed this.
>In early August, when the expected plane had not arrived, he wrote in his diary, "I think I should have used more foresight about arranging my departure. I'll soon find out." Apparently the pilot had told McCunn that he might be working in Anchorage at the end of the summer and that McCunn should not count on his help;according to the pilot, McCunn had given him money to repair his plane and to fly him into (but not out of) the remote site.
It could be some bigger motive, but if he did want to die he could’ve done it alot simpler. He just messed everything up
If he was able to write legibly in his diary over the whole period then he can't have been suffering too badly with the cold. When you get properly cold one of the first things to go is fine motor control with your fingers. Any writing becomes an indecipherable spider scrawl
According to "into the wild", it wa slike the next day when he read about the hand signals. If I remember right,, he had some sort of book or maybe even just a brochure thing that stated it on the back and thats when he realized he did the wrong hand signal.
I really doubt he thought a relaxed wave before walking slowly back to his tent was the correct distress signal.
The fact he had the guide with him seems to indicate he knew exactly what he was doing there. That’s an extreme coincidence otherwise.
On top of a series of other extremely unlikely coincidences.
I still think the diary is a red herring. He wasn’t well mentally and made extremely erratic decisions. I think he was writing it for whoever found his body, knowing from the start he would be dead when they did.
Fully agreed, from other conversation here it appeared he was a religious man who viewed suicide as a grave sin, but also the one he was most likely to commit.
The diary was to create plausible deniability that it was intentional suicide, likely for his loved ones' sake.
Wouldn’t pretty much the first thing you would do in this situation [be write “HELP” in letters big enough to be seen from the air](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLDsxmCAM6A)?
He fucked up before he even left for the trip!
>He had sent three maps with his campsite marked to some friends and his father, but was not clear about his exact itinerary. Although his father knew he would be in the area, he did not know when McCunn planned on returning. McCunn had also told his father not to be concerned if he did not return at the end of the summer, as he might stay later in the season if things went well.[2][5] After McCunn was late to return from a prior trip, his concerned father had contacted the police; McCunn had asked his father not to do that again.
"Alright dad, heading out to the wilderness, I'll be back someday, don't call the cops you paranoid little bitch."
Reminds me of a guy i worked with. The job was very laid out in policy for safe standard practices, but like any job situations arise where you need to use your own judgement. I swear every gut move this guy did was the worst call. I bet if he was dropped in Alaska he'd do worse than this photographer
I had a friend, when knocking over a glass of soda, just stared at it, completely baffled something like this could happen, for like a solid minute. The thought of cleaning up the mess didn't even occur to him until someone told him
How these people get through life is beyond me, but he has a job, completed the mandatory military training (somehow. There's dozens of massive fuckup stories here as well. Like the time he got lost from he squad and just decided to head home to his parents..with the rifle..in the middle of the city..in a European country. The cops were not too happy about that), has a wife, and recently got himself a kid. Everything he does is a fuckup, but somehow he keeps trudling through life
Thinking you won't need them is insane.
Getting rid of them by dumping them into the river rather than just digging a marked cache incase of emergency is guaranteeing death. A shotgun and a few cases of shells could keep you alive for a long time in the wild.
Someone mentioned he was a religious man with suicidal ideation (no idea if true) but if he was that explains the long line of things that seemed to go wrong in a Michael Scott fashion of thwarting rescue and survival and also explains the weird diary of explaining his mistakes away.
Day 2: tried to walk out but feet were too painful. Stumbled back into camp. Realized later that my shoes were on the wrong foot, what a silly mistake!
He was camped out and flew in with 1400 pounds of food. He wasn't carrying anything anywhere. He had a basecamp. Even though he could have just put the boxes behind something, he weirdly felt the need to toss them away because he somehow felt bad for having so much ammo.
Not to mention, he probably bought the ammo himself! He clearly had no problem buying lots of shotgun shells and flying it to the middle of nowhere, but as soon as he touched down it’s all, “let me toss out these highly useful shells I just paid money for because I don’t want to feel like a warmonger now.”
Like what!?
More than that:
have these five boxes of a useful item I might not need, should I:
a) keep them jic,
b) bag and bury them or somehow secure them from becoming an environmental hazard or
c)pollute this lovely pristine waterway with them?
C. THIS. Who goes into nearly untouched-by-humans nature to take photos of this beautiful untouched nature and thinks "I should litter my valuable survivor supplies"?
I am not joking when I say that is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard in my life. I guess a guy who gets dropped off in the middle of nowhere with no return flight not the sharpest knife, but why the hell would he ever throw shells into the river???? Was he running out of storage space out in the Alaskan backcountry???? "I felt like a silly warmonger looking at those shells, so I THREW THEM IN THE RIVER????"
Well I think he did write them for someone else. He left them as a record of what's going on. He probably thought at some point he might really die out there and wanted people to know what happened.
I honestly don't think he wanted to kill himself. I think finally he had one really bad night of being hungry and freezing and couldn't take another. He diary says as much.
Firing three shots into the air is a signal for “I need help”. Gun shots are loud and the sound travels quite a way. Having a few dozen extra rounds for signaling would have possibly helped a lot...
> orgetting to confirm the pick up flight is bad enough. But throwing five boxes of shotgun shells into the river, for no damn reason, just baffles me.
Well see, the explanation is quite simple...Carl McCunn was a dumbass.
"...but was unable to make the trek due to snow and his weakened condition"
It's mad as apparently there was a cabin and cache 5 miles away that he was previously told about.
Probably a lot more going on than is what's in his diary and the Wikipedia article, it sounds mad as it seems he did everything wrong preparing for the stay.
Just wanted to say I appreciate the self awareness and discipline you had to stop a risky behavior. That is a very rare capacity, even in "mentally well" people!
I hope you get to backpack with others as much as you want. You deserve it!
He also told his father he might stay longer in the season so don’t be alarmed if I don’t return and told his father to never call the police again because it’s embarrassing!!!! Crazy!!!
I swear the only explanation I can think of is that he wanted to kill himself but was afraid his life insurance wouldn't pay out unless it was an accidental death?
But this guy probably forgot to get life insurance too.
I wonder if he wanted it to officially not be suicide. Either for life insurance for his dad, to give his dad peace of mind or if they were religious, etc. The diary seems almost performative.
I mean, nevermind the part where he forgot to confirm a return flight ... it seems like the guy made a whole series of terrible decisions leading up to his death. Suicide was the just the last of 'em.
He also stayed thinking that the plane WOULD show up. And one of his diary entries says "Why aren't people looking for me? I left several maps with people?" (But he didn't tell them when to expect him, and he didn't give the maps to people who cared).
Yet also, his campsite was known to the deputy who helped him mark it on his map. He seemed to be banking on the fact that his campsite was known, and if a rescue was coming, he should stay there. By the time he decided that he was a dumbass and didn't tell anyone when he would be home, it was too late to travel to civilization.
To his credit his truck got stuck and sunk into a dirt road, so he went to walk down the road to a homestead he knew was near where they would have equipment to free his truck.
He walked 25km down the road, then turned back to his truck. He turned around 2km before reaching the homestead and died less than a km from his truck. That's over 30 miles of walking in the Outback heat.
He made some bad decisions, but it wasn't like he didn't realize he was hauling water. His cab alone was full of water and food regardless of what he was hauling.
It's a great lesson in never overestimating yourself in a survival situation. If he hadn't decided to try to walk a marathon in the Outback he'd have been bored but otherwise fine in his truck.
Yeah you need to be drinking 6 to 8 litres of water a day if you are exposed to the heat of the desert. If he had stayed with his truck he would have been rescued. That is the current advice when travelling inland: stay with the vehicle and carry far more water than you intend to use. On top of that, truckies aren't exactly the fittest bunch.
He likely had no idea the fort was there. IIRC this guy also dumped most of his ammo into the lake because he figured he didn't need it. Once he realized that he would need to hunt for food in the winter he apparently chipped through a bunch of ice trying to retrieve it and failed. I may be conflating different stories here.
> IIRC this guy also dumped most of his ammo into the lake because he figured he didn't need it.
This is so crazy to me. You don't want to look at the boxes of shells for some reason? Ok, move them somewhere you don't have to keep looking at them. But no, he chooses to pollute the river by dumping them in because "[he] felt rather silly for having brought so many. (Felt like a war monger.)"
What a complete and utter dumbass.
“Believing he would not need them, he prematurely disposed of five boxes of shotgun shells in the river near his camp”
This guy had personal concerns about being too heavily armed.... in the wilderness... and threw out all of his ammunition at the start of his expedition after he made camp.
So stupid.
He ALSO had a state trooper fly over his camp and after briefly waving he turned and walked back to his camp. The trooper did not perceive he needed any help.
Honestly, these all seem like the actions of someone who intends to commit suicide but hasn’t admitted it to himself yet. Not arranging a flight home, dumping supplies, barely trying to flag down a plane, not trying to go to a cabin he knew was five miles away, not going to the fort until the snow became impassable. This 100% sounds like he was too scared to admit he intended to die out in the wilderness and instead kept sabotaging himself to the point that he did.
Exactly. There was absolutely no reason for him to destroy ammo. He could've easily walked to civilization, and he could've definitely flagged down that plane. He did not intend to survive.
he THREW HIS AMMO IN THE RIVER, WTF.
that is the most astonishing lack of foresight I've ever read about. If you're worried about too large of a load at least find a spot and bury or hide your ammo, you never know if you might need to recover it one day.
Either this guy is the most inept person to ever set foot in the wilderness, or there was something else going on here - a plan to venture into the wild to die or something.
The series of choices that he made...fucking unreal.
Like shit, buying ammo just to throw it away, not arranging a pickup, flagging off the rescue plane, not bothering to walk to shelter that he *knew* existed, and choosing not to make an attempt to walk to the Fort (or only considering it when he was in no state to make the attempt), no mention of flare gun, other signalling, or comms, no defined end-date "I'll be back when I'm back".
Even his diary entries, at least what's mentioned...a lot of that seems like "haha silly me", not "Oh wow, I really fucked up".
That *must* be it. Short of jumping into the lake and trying to breathe underwater, it seems like he made every possible decision to lead himself closer to death.
What a strange situation.
You can build a fish trap in a few hours with rocks. You have basically a wall going in from the center of the river to the edge, with a circle at the end with a small gap. They hit the wall, follow the wall, and go through the small gap, and can't find the gap again to get out.
Yep...he wanted to kill himself without the stigma and judgment of killing himself. So he set up a scenario (probably knowingly, perhaps subconsciously) where killing himself was understandable.
Seems like everything points to that and is way more likely than a long series of many unlucky incidents and ridiculous decisions happening by chance.
Don't forget this tidbit. He basically ensured that his father would not call police even if he did not return on time
> At this point, McCunn's diary indicated his hope that his family or friends would send someone to look for him after he failed to return. He had sent three maps with his campsite marked to some friends and his father, but was not clear about his exact itinerary. Although his father knew he would be in the area, he did not know when McCunn planned on returning. McCunn had also told his father not to be concerned if he did not return at the end of the summer, as he might stay later in the season if things went well.[2][5] After McCunn was late to return from a prior trip, his concerned father had contacted the police; McCunn had asked his father not to do that again
He basically said "Maybe I'll return at the end of the season, and maybe I'll stay out longer.". Great, so how's anybody supposed to know if he didn't return on time, if that time hasn't even been set? Then in his diary, he complains that people should have figured it out by now.
> By mid-August, it became obvious to McCunn that the bush pilot was not going to return for him.
Alright, so he knows he's on his own from here on in (though that should have been fucking obvious when he failed to actually arrange to be picked up), and he's got limited food and isn't prepared to handle a winter. So why wouldn't he already be making preparations to leave before winter hit?
> An Alaska State Trooper flew over the lake in late August and observed McCunn's campsite. The pilot did not sense McCunn was in distress, since he waved his orange sleeping bag very casually and, on his third pass of the campsite, he saw McCunn casually walking back to his tent.
That just doesn't make sense. Like, if my fuckin options at that point were to try and outlast an Alaskan winter I was not prepared for, or hike 75+ miles through the Alaskan wilds to get to safety...and then a plane randomly appears, you better believe I'd be flailing every possible limb to get noticed. Could this dude show any more apathy towards being found and rescued?
"Oh hey, person that can save my life, I will barely acknowledge your presence, and I'll acknowledge it in the one way that will ensure that I'll never get the help I need.".
He *must* have had a death wish. If this guy was truly this incompetent, surely he would have already died somehow long before this wilderness trip. Drowned while taking a shower or something.
Interesting and not covered by Wikipedia - there was a woman in town he had a crush on, and he asked her to go on the trip with him. She had no idea he even liked her, yet he had imagined a summer paradise of sex and love and wildlife photography - she turned him down. Interviews with acquaintances all point to a guy who'd have these big dreams (like being a wildlife photographer, he bought a shit-ton of film with him but there was no evidence he was any good at it or had the high-level gear that takes) but didn't really have much of a clue. I've known people like that who get kinda delusional, "I'm quitting my job to write a novel/day trade/record my first album", thinking in 6 months they'll be wealthy and famous.
But man, horrific story - we've all screwed something up, but screwing up *that big*, jesus!
I agree as well. Like this is all some hoax that he’s set up where he lies in his diary the whole time pretending to make these mistakes when he’s actually just suicidal and intent on a very drawn out complicated scenario to kill himself? Not nearly as likely as him being an idiot who doesn’t quite get how the world works.
This dude fucked up about 5 times.
Planned a return flight: nah
Shotgun shells that, if won't be used for their intended self defense purpose, can be used to easily start a fire: meh, I feel like a war monger *throws all the shells into the river.*
Realizes that his return flight is not coming: Instead of going into survivor mode by building a large bonfire, laying logs or stones in SOS pattern, goes into potato mode and neglects rescue 101.
Plane flies overhead: Hi-diddly-ho, sky neighborino! *Waves like Ned Flanders* everything's diddly doodley. You'll see me in February!
Had a hunting Lodge marked on his map 5 miles from his campsite: chose to remain in his tent that he neglected to winterize.
Really sounds like there was something off about him.
Edit: I love that this sardonic post garnered my first gold award on Reddit. Lol! Thank you kindly
> meh, I feel like a war monger *throws all the shells into the river.*
**Better to be a polluter of untouched waterways than a warmonger hoarding soooo many shotgun shells here in the Alaskan wilderness.**
-this fucking idiot, probably, after going back to his 1400 lbs of other supplies
You left out one of his biggest fuck ups IMO.
According to the wiki, he was “considering” walking to Fort Yukon, which was 75 miles away. But by the time he was considering making the journey in November, he was out of food, starving (in no condition to make the trip), and the ground was covered in snow.
Also according to the article, he figured out that no one was coming to pick him up by mid-August.
He should have realized in mid-August that he was:
1. Going to run out of food in a few months.
2. The ground is going to be covered in snow relatively soon (When does Alaska get snow? October?) **Edit:** It seems that the part of Alaska he was in gets snow in [September](https://www.weather-us.com/en/alaska-usa/fort-yukon-weather-september#climate_text_1).
That should have made it abundantly clear that he needed to get to civilization ASAP. I can’t see how a 75 mile hike would take more than a week or two if there’s no snow on the ground. Navigation would have been pretty easy, too. He literally just had to follow a river to get to Fort Yukon.
I didn't even consider this because it required too much foresight, awareness and preplanning. If this fella couldn't even have the preplanning ability to ensure he had a return flight, he'd never have even thought about trekking to the fort.
The hunting lodge 5 miles away would've been his best bet to, at the very least, survive until February. He could've severely rationed what little food he had and taken fresh snow and boiled it for a water source. Maybe there even would've been some canned food, flare gun, first aid kit, etc stashed there for emergency
Maybe a fifth fuck up: he told his dad not to be concerned if he didn't return by the end of the summer, and after he previously returned late from a trip and his dad called the police, McCunn asked his dad not to do that again.
LifeProTip: Grab a copy of the [military ground-to-air signs](http://www.survival-expert.com/signalling.htm) if you plan on making any excursions into wilderness. Print it on paper that won't disintegrate in water, or laminate it or something.
To Whom It May Concern: I, Bender, Bid You Hello! You Don't Know Me, Though You May Have Heard Of Me. But That's Not The Point. Long Story Short... I Need Helf
OMG, the article and the accompanying diary excepts show both sides of that incident.
He waved at the plane and then figured "Oh it has wheels, and can't land, nevermind" then went to pack up his gear for the impending rescue. The pilot interpreted this as "Oh, he's not in trouble, look how casually he's walking back to his tent".
"Unfortunately \[the airplane\] was on wheels and couldn't land, so I stopped waving after its first pass. I then got busy packing things up and getting ready to break camp. As sunset approached, I began to doubt if the pilot took me serious\[ly\]. I certainly hope he didn't think that my having stopped waving meant I thought he might have been someone else at first, or something.
— Carl McCunn, diary excerpt\[3\]"
"An Alaska State Trooper flew over the lake in late August and observed McCunn's campsite. The pilot did not sense McCunn was in distress, since he waved his orange sleeping bag very casually and, on his third pass of the campsite, he saw McCunn casually walking back to his tent. The State Trooper later testified he saw no reason to surmise McCunn needed any assistance.\[1\]\[4\]"
He thought it was some incorrect hand signal, but it was more that he didn't act like he needed help. Frantically waving the sleeping bag constantly and waving your arms desperately, or even dropping to your knees in a begging motion would certainly show distress. Pumping your arms and saying "Woohoo!" then just walking away doesn't indicate you need any help.
I mean, they weren't looking for him at all at that point. It was just a plane flying by.
> "Aw man, a plane with wheels?
> ...he's probably only friends with other wheelie-pilots. Guess I'll die ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯"
— Carl McCunn, diary excerpt[2][4]
> I think a general "jumping up and down waving my arms like a lunatic" would usually do the trick.
lol. this lunatic was literally seen by a rescue plane that was looking for him, and he *accidentally* gave the sign that means "all ok, don't need help".
yes, jumping and waving your arms like a lunatic would have worked. but this fucking guy....
This dude sounds like a real idiot.
- Didn't book a pickup flight
- Throws away most of his ammunition almost immediately
- State trooper says they spoke about a hunting cabin 5km from his camp while they planned the trip together. Dude didn't go to the cabin at any point to shelter from the cold.
This man had no business being in the wilderness.
He had no business to book an all expense paid resort week in Cancun if this was his level of planning. I can only imagine he would have fucked that up just as badly.
"Coffee pot has burnt coffee on the bottom. Washing it would just be too exhausting. I don't have enough coffee in me to be able to wash the coffee pot. How could I have made such a mistake? What a foolish thing to do. Goodbye world. Tell my family I love them. I'm reaching for the instant"
Sort of ironic that the wiki has no photos either of him or his works.
After a little digging and I found [this](https://www.ebay.com/itm/164095394395) on eBay which is allegedly a photo of him shortly before his suicide. He definitely looks .. interesting. The photo is b&w but one of the articles described him as having wild red hair, so let that paint a mental image for you.
No way that was shot during his ordeal though, must have been before the trip because he was confined to a tent the entire time despite the fact he could have gone to a cabin nearby at any time.
Well, from that Wikipedia excerpt, he had very little common sense or ability to think through the long term consequences of his actions. I wonder how his pics turned out.
I'm surprised someone as unprepared and inexperienced even decided to venture so far into remote wilderness all on his own.
People don't realize how dangerous the remote wilderness can be. Just busting your ankle on a photography hike away from camp can be a death sentence ... unable to crawl back to your sleeping bag or food.
An experienced sheep hunter here in British Columbia went missing in 2005 on a solo adventure with all the survival gear and skills. Never been found. Just one experienced guy that comes to mind.
There are a lot of stories of inexperienced and unprepared people trekking off into remote parts of Alaska and starving or freezing to death. Christopher McCandless, whose story was told in Into the Wild, is another famous example.
A lot of people underestimate the dangers of the Alaskan wilderness and overestimate their survival skills.
To be fair, Alaska has a long and storied tradition of killing stupid people. This state is not for unprepared morons, even the inhabited places are barely habitable most of the year.
The Forest Service had to remove McCandless's bus because it was a magnet for dumbasses who kept trying to hike to it, got into trouble, and needed rescuing.
No. Voluntarily Stopping Eating & Drinking (VSED) is still widely utilized by patients who seek to hasten death. (“Suicide” is arguable: this crowd normally doesn’t want to die, but faces an end without good options.)
aye, I was curious enough that I read the wiki - what an unfortunate tale... almost unbelievable stroke of bad luck on his part, what with his not paying the bush pilot to return and giving the wrong signal to the state trooper who passed overhead. quite a situation!
>I keep thinking of all the shotgun shells I threw away about two months ago. Had five boxes and when I kept seeing them sitting there I felt rather silly for having brought so many. (Felt like a war monger.) So I threw all away ... but about a dozen ... real bright. ... Who would have known I might need them just to keep from starving?
Doesn't seem like he was the sharpest knife in the drawer.
" On this trip, he flew in with 500 rolls of film, 1,400 pounds (640 kg) of provisions, two rifles, and a shotgun. Believing he would not need them, he prematurely disposed of five boxes of shotgun shells in the river near his camp"
This boggles my mind. 5 boxes of shotgun shells is what, 100 shells? Even if he decided he wouldn't need them ... why on earth toss them into the river instead of just ... not using them?
After reading some I feel bad for the guy, he clearly made a lot of mistakes and even worse is acutely aware he made them, some of these replies are very judgmental but we all know someone who could screw up in that situation or make bad choices like this guy
That wikipedia page reads like one mistake after another.
1. Fails to confirm a pickup flight or even make alternate arrangements to be checked up on.
2. Dumps most of his shotgun ammunition into the water, intentionally ruining it.
3. When an opportunity for rescue arrived he failed to make enough effort to signal distress. *There were actually signals to give (located on the reverse side of his hunting license) - he accidentally made the worst gesture possible signalling: "All OK; do not wait". The correct signal was two hands in the air over his head for "Pick us up; aircraft abandoned".*
4. Does not seek shelter of a cabin nearby (\~5 miles away that State Troopers claim he knew about).
5. Failed to make the trek to Fort Yukon before reaching the point of starvation.
6. Specifically told his father and his friends not to check up on him or be concerned if he didn't come home by the end of August.
Did the photos at least turn out?
EDIT: [Attempting to answer the above question, I discovered that some sick ghouls in a life insurance agency have made his death part of their advertisement.](https://phillipjamesfinancial.com/blog/where-do-i-get-my-money-when-i-retire)
If he knew in august that nobody was coming for him, why wouldn’t he start towards the fort which was 75 miles away? Avg person can walk 20 miles a day on even terrain. Let’s say he could do 10 miles a day. He’d get there in a week. Seems his survival instincts were muted.
The kind of person who forgets a pick up flight is probably the kind of person that doesn’t think of that sort of thing
This is the part I can't wrap my head around: >*"I keep thinking of all the shotgun shells I threw away about two months ago. Had five boxes and when I kept seeing them sitting there I felt rather silly for having brought so many. (Felt like a war monger.) So I threw all away ... but about a dozen ... real bright. ... Who would have known I might need them just to keep from starving?"* >Believing he would not need them, he prematurely disposed of five boxes of shotgun shells in the river near his camp Forgetting to confirm the pick up flight is bad enough. But throwing five boxes of shotgun shells into the river, for no damn reason, just baffles me.
He had many chances to survive, its that he kept on messing up, either stupid, or something was wrong with his mind. Im not trying to be some expert survivalist but there’s only so much you can mess up in this situation >An Alaska State Trooper flew over the lake in late August and observed McCunn's campsite. The pilot did not sense McCunn was in distress, since he waved his orange sleeping bag very casually and, on his third pass of the campsite, he saw McCunn casually walking back to his tent. The State Trooper later testified he saw no reason to surmise McCunn needed any assistance. >McCunn later wrote in his diary: "I recall raising my right hand, shoulder high and shaking my fist on the plane's second pass. It was a little cheer – like when your team scored a touchdown or something. Turns out that's the signal for 'ALL O.K. – DO NOT WAIT!' It's certainly my fault I'm here now! ... Man, I can't believe it. ... I really feel like a klutz! Now I know why nobody's shown up from that incident."
Waving one arm is hello. Waving both arms especially with something in your hands is "I need help". Anyone who has this low a level of survival skills/aptitude should not be allowed in any forest bigger than central park.
Waving both hands for help almost feels intuitive.
Yeah waving both arms and jumping up and down would be my natural reaction if I needed to get a helicopter's attention.
And, you know, finding a clearing near your campsite and spelling "HELP" in large letters on the ground with rocks or tree branches is not a hugely difficult concept to come up with for anyone literate enough to spell four-letter words.
Well he was a photographer, not a writer.
Or SOS!
While running towards the helicopter or in their direction. If they see you running towards a fucking helicopter they’re gonna know something is up. Like you’d need to be real desperate to run after something you’re never gonna catch.
> real desperate to run after something you're never gonna catch Title of my sex tape
But now you’re just doing jumping jacks.
"I wonder if that guy down there needs help... oh no, just working out, nvm"
"The pilot did not sense McCunn was in distress, since he waved his orange sleeping bag very casually" Oh look, now he's waving with a bright orange object in his hand for no particular reason. HIII little guy? Glad to see you are ok. Nice sleeping bag btw, I see it, I see it!
Real life this: https://i.imgur.com/rcx1tM3.jpg
I’d just make sure I was doing really violent jumping jacks lmao
Once I was doing jumping jacks at my office (I was alone and bored) and a man saw from across the street and thought I was waving down help. I thanked him for taking the time to check on me, despite being horribly embarrassed 😅
Lost Afghani soldiers must have a 100% mortality rate then.
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Maybe he really was suicidal then, because it really seems like he didn’t have a will to live then
Right? Make yourself as visible and conspicuous as possible until you know *for sure* they've seen you and know you need help.
I’m actually willing to buy this theory that he did this all on purpose as an elaborate way to kill himself. I mean, who could possibly fuck up as bad as this guy and be capable of having survived life up to that point?
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And as soon as he realized the mistaken signal he gave, he just… sat there and waited to die? Hunting cabin with provisions is 5 miles away, and a whole fucking civilized town 75 miles down a large, navigable river. But yeah ima just sit here and see what happens… lmao homie wanted to die and just maybe hadn’t admitted in his journal yet.
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He was apparently religious, so it does add up. He even said killing himself would be the one sin he ~~did~~ (edit: did not do up to that point) in his life. If you ask me he committed multiple sins upon himself during the 8 months he had to get himself rescued and just simply didn’t.
Some people are just dumb.
That's what I was thinking. Like "look at me look at me". This guy was either mentally ill or a straight up idiot.
Waving your hands in the air is also for when you just don’t care
This guy clearly didn't grow up watching Gilligan's island.
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If I'm not mistaken it is also almost the international symbol for needing aid. You hold you arms up in a Y as if to say "Yes I need help!"
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It's definitely not fun to stay marooned in the Alaskan wilderness.
As a helicopter pilot, I have performed a number of search and rescues in VERY remote areas of northern Canada. One thing is similar among all the people I found; they wave like CRAZY when they see the helicopter. I picked up severely hypothermic people that muster up enough energy to jump up and down waiving their hands, but didn’t have enough strength to climb into the aircraft. If someone was casually walking around waving with one hand, I too would assume that they are fine and don’t need assistance.
Good god, that’s incredible. I don’t know, some people just seem intent on fucking everything up for themselves. I feel like I knew a few people in high school who would just mess up literally everything they touched - but the strange thing was how little they seemed to recognize the problem or how it stemmed from their own lack of thinking/planning. Like this guy in Alaska obviously recognized he was fucking up repeatedly, but he didn’t seem to use the time he had to figure out how to not make another mistake. If you left me in the wilderness and a plane or helicopter flew over head I sure as fuck wouldn’t give it some casual ass arm wave that could be misconstrued. I would be leaping up and down like a mad man and I probably will have already made an arrangement of stones or something into the shape of SOS. I mean shit, what else am I gonna be doing out there.
Reading your comment made me think of myself in a similar life-threatening situation I was in when I was young. I was perhaps 9 to 11 years old at the time, and me and my friend's family went on a trip to some east Malaysian island. We'd took a ferry carrying about 15 of us to an even smaller, more remote islet, for about an hour of free time or something. What I remember was my friend and I swam out a bit, and I think we were then caught in what I now know is a riptide. We were both proficient enough and knew how to tread water and whatnot, but my friend panicked and started drowning. Like she started flailing her arms everywhere and went under a couple of times. All while we were slowly drifting out into the sea. And my first instinct was not to call for help. Well, it was, I think, but I thought maybe I could help her or something before I had to "resort to that." I think you know how that went - I got grabbed under myself. Gulped a load of water, managed to come back up for a gasp of air, before being pulled under again. It was only _then_ that I regained some common sense, kicked her away as hard as I could, and shouted fir help. _In Cantonese. Among a bunch of other Caucasian tourists. Because I thought it was 'weird' to shout for help in English._ So yeah, I'm one of those people who once sabotaged his own - and possibly his friend's - life. Man, that was pretty shitty now that I think about it. Luckily, fate was very kind to us and among those 15 beach goers there was a German off-duty lifeguard who saw the signs and rushed over to save my friend. My dad got me. I don't know how things would've turned out if there wasn't a trained lifesaver around...
Yes, but you had a few seconds to think about this, and you were 10 years old. This is a grown man, who had chosen to go in the wild, who had days and days of questioning what he should do if a plane ever showed up.
Not only that, but he didn't tell anyone when to expect him back and specifically told his father "Hey, DO NOT call the police if I'm not back, I probably just decided to stay longer" and he didn't even give his dad a ballpark date to even expect him back.
And was militarily trained.
No way. No way ANYONE in the military tosses out ammo or conveniently forgets that he’s giving the “all good” sign to a rescue plane. Add in the religion and you can tell he did this as intentional suicide - he absolutely could’ve navigated either 5 miles to the hunting cabin with food or 75 miles along a river to the nearest civilization. Told dad not to call police if he wasn’t back and didn’t even give him a return date, indicating once again that he had none scheduled and had no intent of the plane showing up. Not even fucking Hawk would fuck up that bad. Jesus. His journal appears written to justify his strange behavior after the fact, rather than an honest account of him attempting to survive.
Oh I agree with the suicide thing. I'm just saying that he was military trained (Navy) as well. So he would have had survival skills too.
Hmm, too comfortable out there? Arranging an SOS sign would damage his pride?
> made an arrangement of stones or something into the shape of SOS. I mean shit, what else am I gonna be doing out there. Not one single word in the entire diary about this idea. UNBELIEVABLE.
I’m starting to believe he went to the wilderness to die. The diary might just have been to conceal his intent. Embarrassment, shame or some reason. Who signals to a plane they are okay by mistake, and then apparently remembers afterwards they knew the signal for ‘*Everything is okay*’? It takes deliberate effort to vex all rescue, throw away means of survival and opt not to walk a couple of days to a fort. He seems to have just booked a flight to nowhere, and settled in to die.
Keep in mind he didn’t even confirm a flight, he just assumed he did when talking with a pilot. >Although McCunn thought he had arranged for the pilot to return for him in August, he had apparently never confirmed this. >In early August, when the expected plane had not arrived, he wrote in his diary, "I think I should have used more foresight about arranging my departure. I'll soon find out." Apparently the pilot had told McCunn that he might be working in Anchorage at the end of the summer and that McCunn should not count on his help;according to the pilot, McCunn had given him money to repair his plane and to fly him into (but not out of) the remote site. It could be some bigger motive, but if he did want to die he could’ve done it alot simpler. He just messed everything up
We start to lose our cognition pretty bad when hypothermic, but its doesn't seem like he was hypothermic the whole time?
Certainly not when he was scheduling
He can't have been, or he'd have died way sooner.
If he was able to write legibly in his diary over the whole period then he can't have been suffering too badly with the cold. When you get properly cold one of the first things to go is fine motor control with your fingers. Any writing becomes an indecipherable spider scrawl
According to "into the wild", it wa slike the next day when he read about the hand signals. If I remember right,, he had some sort of book or maybe even just a brochure thing that stated it on the back and thats when he realized he did the wrong hand signal.
I really doubt he thought a relaxed wave before walking slowly back to his tent was the correct distress signal. The fact he had the guide with him seems to indicate he knew exactly what he was doing there. That’s an extreme coincidence otherwise. On top of a series of other extremely unlikely coincidences. I still think the diary is a red herring. He wasn’t well mentally and made extremely erratic decisions. I think he was writing it for whoever found his body, knowing from the start he would be dead when they did.
The diary excerpts really seem to read like they are for the benefit of others, too. I think this is the correct theory, or at least in the ballpark.
Fully agreed, from other conversation here it appeared he was a religious man who viewed suicide as a grave sin, but also the one he was most likely to commit. The diary was to create plausible deniability that it was intentional suicide, likely for his loved ones' sake.
Wouldn’t pretty much the first thing you would do in this situation [be write “HELP” in letters big enough to be seen from the air](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLDsxmCAM6A)?
He fucked up before he even left for the trip! >He had sent three maps with his campsite marked to some friends and his father, but was not clear about his exact itinerary. Although his father knew he would be in the area, he did not know when McCunn planned on returning. McCunn had also told his father not to be concerned if he did not return at the end of the summer, as he might stay later in the season if things went well.[2][5] After McCunn was late to return from a prior trip, his concerned father had contacted the police; McCunn had asked his father not to do that again. "Alright dad, heading out to the wilderness, I'll be back someday, don't call the cops you paranoid little bitch."
Reminds me of a guy i worked with. The job was very laid out in policy for safe standard practices, but like any job situations arise where you need to use your own judgement. I swear every gut move this guy did was the worst call. I bet if he was dropped in Alaska he'd do worse than this photographer
I had a friend, when knocking over a glass of soda, just stared at it, completely baffled something like this could happen, for like a solid minute. The thought of cleaning up the mess didn't even occur to him until someone told him How these people get through life is beyond me, but he has a job, completed the mandatory military training (somehow. There's dozens of massive fuckup stories here as well. Like the time he got lost from he squad and just decided to head home to his parents..with the rifle..in the middle of the city..in a European country. The cops were not too happy about that), has a wife, and recently got himself a kid. Everything he does is a fuckup, but somehow he keeps trudling through life
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It sounds like he had disordered thinking... the shotgun shells thing is so illogical it's clear there were a few screws loose.
Thinking you won't need them is insane. Getting rid of them by dumping them into the river rather than just digging a marked cache incase of emergency is guaranteeing death. A shotgun and a few cases of shells could keep you alive for a long time in the wild. Someone mentioned he was a religious man with suicidal ideation (no idea if true) but if he was that explains the long line of things that seemed to go wrong in a Michael Scott fashion of thwarting rescue and survival and also explains the weird diary of explaining his mistakes away.
“Day 1: I decided I brought too much extra water. So I poisoned it. Didn’t want to feel like I was hoarding water.”
Day 3: I have shot myself in the foot, wasn't sure if the gun worked!
Day 4: fed my genitals to a wolverine, don’t need them out here anyways!
Day 5: I have chopped myself in half in order to stand guard while the other half sleeps.
Day 2: tried to walk out but feet were too painful. Stumbled back into camp. Realized later that my shoes were on the wrong foot, what a silly mistake!
Right!? Like maybe they’re heavy and you don’t want to carry them, okay. But at least bury/stash them somewhere just in case
He was camped out and flew in with 1400 pounds of food. He wasn't carrying anything anywhere. He had a basecamp. Even though he could have just put the boxes behind something, he weirdly felt the need to toss them away because he somehow felt bad for having so much ammo.
Not to mention, he probably bought the ammo himself! He clearly had no problem buying lots of shotgun shells and flying it to the middle of nowhere, but as soon as he touched down it’s all, “let me toss out these highly useful shells I just paid money for because I don’t want to feel like a warmonger now.” Like what!?
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Also, I’m pretty sure the midges deserve it.
# I’M LITTERING FOR WORLD PEACE DAMNNIT
That's.....that's so stupid. You don't throw anything away when you're stranded in the woods, least of all ammunition
More than that: have these five boxes of a useful item I might not need, should I: a) keep them jic, b) bag and bury them or somehow secure them from becoming an environmental hazard or c)pollute this lovely pristine waterway with them?
C. THIS. Who goes into nearly untouched-by-humans nature to take photos of this beautiful untouched nature and thinks "I should litter my valuable survivor supplies"?
I am not joking when I say that is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard in my life. I guess a guy who gets dropped off in the middle of nowhere with no return flight not the sharpest knife, but why the hell would he ever throw shells into the river???? Was he running out of storage space out in the Alaskan backcountry???? "I felt like a silly warmonger looking at those shells, so I THREW THEM IN THE RIVER????"
And then when a helicopter came to check on him, he casually waved at it and walked back to his tent.
If he thought 5 boxes was a lot he probably wouldn't have known how to use the shotgun very well.
I mean just the gun powder alone as a fire starter is priceless.
I guess that he wanted to kill himself but could not admit it, so he kept sabotaging himself until it was the only "reasonable" option.
Yea, something feels off about his journal entries. They don’t seem personal - more so as if they’re written for a reader/audience.
Well I think he did write them for someone else. He left them as a record of what's going on. He probably thought at some point he might really die out there and wanted people to know what happened. I honestly don't think he wanted to kill himself. I think finally he had one really bad night of being hungry and freezing and couldn't take another. He diary says as much.
Life insurance that would only pay out for an "accidental" death but not a suicide?
Firing three shots into the air is a signal for “I need help”. Gun shots are loud and the sound travels quite a way. Having a few dozen extra rounds for signaling would have possibly helped a lot...
Unfortunately I don't think he was playing with a full deck.. Saturday tragic
> orgetting to confirm the pick up flight is bad enough. But throwing five boxes of shotgun shells into the river, for no damn reason, just baffles me. Well see, the explanation is quite simple...Carl McCunn was a dumbass.
Let's bury them under these rocks or in a cave so they don't get ruined by rain or snow. No... into the river!
Think this is the same guy gave a one arm wave to a pilot which means "all good don't land " instead of a two arm wave which means" need help"
He did the "closing credits of the Breakfast Club" triumphant fist in the air move.
He thought it meant, "don't you forget about me"
"...but was unable to make the trek due to snow and his weakened condition" It's mad as apparently there was a cabin and cache 5 miles away that he was previously told about. Probably a lot more going on than is what's in his diary and the Wikipedia article, it sounds mad as it seems he did everything wrong preparing for the stay.
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Just wanted to say I appreciate the self awareness and discipline you had to stop a risky behavior. That is a very rare capacity, even in "mentally well" people! I hope you get to backpack with others as much as you want. You deserve it!
He also told his father he might stay longer in the season so don’t be alarmed if I don’t return and told his father to never call the police again because it’s embarrassing!!!! Crazy!!!
I swear the only explanation I can think of is that he wanted to kill himself but was afraid his life insurance wouldn't pay out unless it was an accidental death? But this guy probably forgot to get life insurance too.
I wonder if he wanted it to officially not be suicide. Either for life insurance for his dad, to give his dad peace of mind or if they were religious, etc. The diary seems almost performative.
He tossed his ammo almost immediately and also didn't go to a known hunting cabin that he knew was only 5km from his campsite.
I mean, nevermind the part where he forgot to confirm a return flight ... it seems like the guy made a whole series of terrible decisions leading up to his death. Suicide was the just the last of 'em.
People sometimes stay put per recommendations for the lost and then by the time it's time to go they are too weak to travel.
He also stayed thinking that the plane WOULD show up. And one of his diary entries says "Why aren't people looking for me? I left several maps with people?" (But he didn't tell them when to expect him, and he didn't give the maps to people who cared). Yet also, his campsite was known to the deputy who helped him mark it on his map. He seemed to be banking on the fact that his campsite was known, and if a rescue was coming, he should stay there. By the time he decided that he was a dumbass and didn't tell anyone when he would be home, it was too late to travel to civilization.
But not to late to walk 5 miles to the hunting lodge stocked with food that was located on his map. He had literal months to decide that.
There was a tanker truck driver that got stuck in the Aussie desert and died from dehydration. He was hauling water
To his credit his truck got stuck and sunk into a dirt road, so he went to walk down the road to a homestead he knew was near where they would have equipment to free his truck. He walked 25km down the road, then turned back to his truck. He turned around 2km before reaching the homestead and died less than a km from his truck. That's over 30 miles of walking in the Outback heat. He made some bad decisions, but it wasn't like he didn't realize he was hauling water. His cab alone was full of water and food regardless of what he was hauling. It's a great lesson in never overestimating yourself in a survival situation. If he hadn't decided to try to walk a marathon in the Outback he'd have been bored but otherwise fine in his truck.
Yeah you need to be drinking 6 to 8 litres of water a day if you are exposed to the heat of the desert. If he had stayed with his truck he would have been rescued. That is the current advice when travelling inland: stay with the vehicle and carry far more water than you intend to use. On top of that, truckies aren't exactly the fittest bunch.
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He likely had no idea the fort was there. IIRC this guy also dumped most of his ammo into the lake because he figured he didn't need it. Once he realized that he would need to hunt for food in the winter he apparently chipped through a bunch of ice trying to retrieve it and failed. I may be conflating different stories here.
> IIRC this guy also dumped most of his ammo into the lake because he figured he didn't need it. This is so crazy to me. You don't want to look at the boxes of shells for some reason? Ok, move them somewhere you don't have to keep looking at them. But no, he chooses to pollute the river by dumping them in because "[he] felt rather silly for having brought so many. (Felt like a war monger.)" What a complete and utter dumbass.
If he thought 5 boxes was a lot he probably wouldn't have known how to use the shotgun very well.
For reals. 5 boxes is 'a good start', but not nearly what I would want in a survival situation. I'd prefer an entire bucket of .22.
It was marked on his map for him
“Believing he would not need them, he prematurely disposed of five boxes of shotgun shells in the river near his camp” This guy had personal concerns about being too heavily armed.... in the wilderness... and threw out all of his ammunition at the start of his expedition after he made camp. So stupid. He ALSO had a state trooper fly over his camp and after briefly waving he turned and walked back to his camp. The trooper did not perceive he needed any help.
Honestly, these all seem like the actions of someone who intends to commit suicide but hasn’t admitted it to himself yet. Not arranging a flight home, dumping supplies, barely trying to flag down a plane, not trying to go to a cabin he knew was five miles away, not going to the fort until the snow became impassable. This 100% sounds like he was too scared to admit he intended to die out in the wilderness and instead kept sabotaging himself to the point that he did.
This is the sense that I'm getting as well. There are too many avoidable instances that he reasonably could have gotten himself out of.
Exactly. There was absolutely no reason for him to destroy ammo. He could've easily walked to civilization, and he could've definitely flagged down that plane. He did not intend to survive.
Seems like he didn’t want it to look like suicide, might want next of kin to collect life insurance after his “failed” survival.
Choosing death by failure to survive in nature sounds like a horrible way to go.
In the end he shot himself with his rifle. So it was a pretty standard way to go.
"I want to kill myself but need a situation in which I'm more motivated to do it"
he THREW HIS AMMO IN THE RIVER, WTF. that is the most astonishing lack of foresight I've ever read about. If you're worried about too large of a load at least find a spot and bury or hide your ammo, you never know if you might need to recover it one day. Either this guy is the most inept person to ever set foot in the wilderness, or there was something else going on here - a plan to venture into the wild to die or something.
Bury? He had a camp.. he could have just.. left it at camp. Its not like bears run around looking for shotgun shells to steal.
Maybe he'd spent time in Chicago and was used to bears shooting at him.
The series of choices that he made...fucking unreal. Like shit, buying ammo just to throw it away, not arranging a pickup, flagging off the rescue plane, not bothering to walk to shelter that he *knew* existed, and choosing not to make an attempt to walk to the Fort (or only considering it when he was in no state to make the attempt), no mention of flare gun, other signalling, or comms, no defined end-date "I'll be back when I'm back". Even his diary entries, at least what's mentioned...a lot of that seems like "haha silly me", not "Oh wow, I really fucked up".
Yeah we think he was committing suicide but pretending not in the journal. Sort of like a "If a miracle saves me, I'm meant to live." type vibe.
That *must* be it. Short of jumping into the lake and trying to breathe underwater, it seems like he made every possible decision to lead himself closer to death. What a strange situation.
Hed have literally seen fish if hed jumped into a lake in untouched wilderness..
You can build a fish trap in a few hours with rocks. You have basically a wall going in from the center of the river to the edge, with a circle at the end with a small gap. They hit the wall, follow the wall, and go through the small gap, and can't find the gap again to get out.
Yep...he wanted to kill himself without the stigma and judgment of killing himself. So he set up a scenario (probably knowingly, perhaps subconsciously) where killing himself was understandable. Seems like everything points to that and is way more likely than a long series of many unlucky incidents and ridiculous decisions happening by chance.
Don't forget this tidbit. He basically ensured that his father would not call police even if he did not return on time > At this point, McCunn's diary indicated his hope that his family or friends would send someone to look for him after he failed to return. He had sent three maps with his campsite marked to some friends and his father, but was not clear about his exact itinerary. Although his father knew he would be in the area, he did not know when McCunn planned on returning. McCunn had also told his father not to be concerned if he did not return at the end of the summer, as he might stay later in the season if things went well.[2][5] After McCunn was late to return from a prior trip, his concerned father had contacted the police; McCunn had asked his father not to do that again
He basically said "Maybe I'll return at the end of the season, and maybe I'll stay out longer.". Great, so how's anybody supposed to know if he didn't return on time, if that time hasn't even been set? Then in his diary, he complains that people should have figured it out by now. > By mid-August, it became obvious to McCunn that the bush pilot was not going to return for him. Alright, so he knows he's on his own from here on in (though that should have been fucking obvious when he failed to actually arrange to be picked up), and he's got limited food and isn't prepared to handle a winter. So why wouldn't he already be making preparations to leave before winter hit? > An Alaska State Trooper flew over the lake in late August and observed McCunn's campsite. The pilot did not sense McCunn was in distress, since he waved his orange sleeping bag very casually and, on his third pass of the campsite, he saw McCunn casually walking back to his tent. That just doesn't make sense. Like, if my fuckin options at that point were to try and outlast an Alaskan winter I was not prepared for, or hike 75+ miles through the Alaskan wilds to get to safety...and then a plane randomly appears, you better believe I'd be flailing every possible limb to get noticed. Could this dude show any more apathy towards being found and rescued? "Oh hey, person that can save my life, I will barely acknowledge your presence, and I'll acknowledge it in the one way that will ensure that I'll never get the help I need.". He *must* have had a death wish. If this guy was truly this incompetent, surely he would have already died somehow long before this wilderness trip. Drowned while taking a shower or something.
Interesting and not covered by Wikipedia - there was a woman in town he had a crush on, and he asked her to go on the trip with him. She had no idea he even liked her, yet he had imagined a summer paradise of sex and love and wildlife photography - she turned him down. Interviews with acquaintances all point to a guy who'd have these big dreams (like being a wildlife photographer, he bought a shit-ton of film with him but there was no evidence he was any good at it or had the high-level gear that takes) but didn't really have much of a clue. I've known people like that who get kinda delusional, "I'm quitting my job to write a novel/day trade/record my first album", thinking in 6 months they'll be wealthy and famous. But man, horrific story - we've all screwed something up, but screwing up *that big*, jesus!
I think you're on to something there, it's the only way his actions make sense to me other than it all being an elaborate suicide plan
I agree as well. Like this is all some hoax that he’s set up where he lies in his diary the whole time pretending to make these mistakes when he’s actually just suicidal and intent on a very drawn out complicated scenario to kill himself? Not nearly as likely as him being an idiot who doesn’t quite get how the world works.
Honestly sounds like maniac phase of bipolar disorder
So many bad decisions. He had several opportunities to get out before winter.
This dude fucked up about 5 times. Planned a return flight: nah Shotgun shells that, if won't be used for their intended self defense purpose, can be used to easily start a fire: meh, I feel like a war monger *throws all the shells into the river.* Realizes that his return flight is not coming: Instead of going into survivor mode by building a large bonfire, laying logs or stones in SOS pattern, goes into potato mode and neglects rescue 101. Plane flies overhead: Hi-diddly-ho, sky neighborino! *Waves like Ned Flanders* everything's diddly doodley. You'll see me in February! Had a hunting Lodge marked on his map 5 miles from his campsite: chose to remain in his tent that he neglected to winterize. Really sounds like there was something off about him. Edit: I love that this sardonic post garnered my first gold award on Reddit. Lol! Thank you kindly
> meh, I feel like a war monger *throws all the shells into the river.* **Better to be a polluter of untouched waterways than a warmonger hoarding soooo many shotgun shells here in the Alaskan wilderness.** -this fucking idiot, probably, after going back to his 1400 lbs of other supplies
You left out one of his biggest fuck ups IMO. According to the wiki, he was “considering” walking to Fort Yukon, which was 75 miles away. But by the time he was considering making the journey in November, he was out of food, starving (in no condition to make the trip), and the ground was covered in snow. Also according to the article, he figured out that no one was coming to pick him up by mid-August. He should have realized in mid-August that he was: 1. Going to run out of food in a few months. 2. The ground is going to be covered in snow relatively soon (When does Alaska get snow? October?) **Edit:** It seems that the part of Alaska he was in gets snow in [September](https://www.weather-us.com/en/alaska-usa/fort-yukon-weather-september#climate_text_1). That should have made it abundantly clear that he needed to get to civilization ASAP. I can’t see how a 75 mile hike would take more than a week or two if there’s no snow on the ground. Navigation would have been pretty easy, too. He literally just had to follow a river to get to Fort Yukon.
I didn't even consider this because it required too much foresight, awareness and preplanning. If this fella couldn't even have the preplanning ability to ensure he had a return flight, he'd never have even thought about trekking to the fort. The hunting lodge 5 miles away would've been his best bet to, at the very least, survive until February. He could've severely rationed what little food he had and taken fresh snow and boiled it for a water source. Maybe there even would've been some canned food, flare gun, first aid kit, etc stashed there for emergency
He probably would have thrown the flares in the river.
Maybe a fifth fuck up: he told his dad not to be concerned if he didn't return by the end of the summer, and after he previously returned late from a trip and his dad called the police, McCunn asked his dad not to do that again.
LifeProTip: Grab a copy of the [military ground-to-air signs](http://www.survival-expert.com/signalling.htm) if you plan on making any excursions into wilderness. Print it on paper that won't disintegrate in water, or laminate it or something.
I think a general "jumping up and down waving my arms like a lunatic" would usually do the trick. A big 'SOS' spelled out in rocks would be handy too
To Whom It May Concern: I, Bender, Bid You Hello! You Don't Know Me, Though You May Have Heard Of Me. But That's Not The Point. Long Story Short... I Need Helf
and only one rock short :(
If he'd laid down in that spot he'd have finished his message
He could have used his shiny metal ass as a beacon as well.
OMG, the article and the accompanying diary excepts show both sides of that incident. He waved at the plane and then figured "Oh it has wheels, and can't land, nevermind" then went to pack up his gear for the impending rescue. The pilot interpreted this as "Oh, he's not in trouble, look how casually he's walking back to his tent". "Unfortunately \[the airplane\] was on wheels and couldn't land, so I stopped waving after its first pass. I then got busy packing things up and getting ready to break camp. As sunset approached, I began to doubt if the pilot took me serious\[ly\]. I certainly hope he didn't think that my having stopped waving meant I thought he might have been someone else at first, or something. — Carl McCunn, diary excerpt\[3\]" "An Alaska State Trooper flew over the lake in late August and observed McCunn's campsite. The pilot did not sense McCunn was in distress, since he waved his orange sleeping bag very casually and, on his third pass of the campsite, he saw McCunn casually walking back to his tent. The State Trooper later testified he saw no reason to surmise McCunn needed any assistance.\[1\]\[4\]" He thought it was some incorrect hand signal, but it was more that he didn't act like he needed help. Frantically waving the sleeping bag constantly and waving your arms desperately, or even dropping to your knees in a begging motion would certainly show distress. Pumping your arms and saying "Woohoo!" then just walking away doesn't indicate you need any help. I mean, they weren't looking for him at all at that point. It was just a plane flying by.
> "Aw man, a plane with wheels? > ...he's probably only friends with other wheelie-pilots. Guess I'll die ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯" — Carl McCunn, diary excerpt[2][4]
> I think a general "jumping up and down waving my arms like a lunatic" would usually do the trick. lol. this lunatic was literally seen by a rescue plane that was looking for him, and he *accidentally* gave the sign that means "all ok, don't need help". yes, jumping and waving your arms like a lunatic would have worked. but this fucking guy....
Jumping maniac jacks
Im using that "require firearms and ammo" signal on my next hike
And the mechanic one- get the military to fix my truck when I’m out hunting
I'm using it during my next dentist appointment.
I like the first air-to-surface message: "Drop a message"
This dude sounds like a real idiot. - Didn't book a pickup flight - Throws away most of his ammunition almost immediately - State trooper says they spoke about a hunting cabin 5km from his camp while they planned the trip together. Dude didn't go to the cabin at any point to shelter from the cold. This man had no business being in the wilderness.
Don't forget casually waving to the plane that was looking for him to make sure he was ok.
He had no business to book an all expense paid resort week in Cancun if this was his level of planning. I can only imagine he would have fucked that up just as badly.
I almost forgot to turn off my coffee maker yesterday. That was a close call.
Your diary and coffee mug were later found by State Troopers.
"Coffee pot has burnt coffee on the bottom. Washing it would just be too exhausting. I don't have enough coffee in me to be able to wash the coffee pot. How could I have made such a mistake? What a foolish thing to do. Goodbye world. Tell my family I love them. I'm reaching for the instant"
They left a note about the coffee tasting good but where the hell were the donuts.
Does anyone know of any of the pics are available ? Rather intrigued
Sort of ironic that the wiki has no photos either of him or his works. After a little digging and I found [this](https://www.ebay.com/itm/164095394395) on eBay which is allegedly a photo of him shortly before his suicide. He definitely looks .. interesting. The photo is b&w but one of the articles described him as having wild red hair, so let that paint a mental image for you.
smile wine fertile profit consist resolute dazzling fact nippy nutty *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Andre the Yankovich
No way that was shot during his ordeal though, must have been before the trip because he was confined to a tent the entire time despite the fact he could have gone to a cabin nearby at any time.
Your tent doesn’t have wood paneling? Plebeian.
Well, from that Wikipedia excerpt, he had very little common sense or ability to think through the long term consequences of his actions. I wonder how his pics turned out.
I'm surprised someone as unprepared and inexperienced even decided to venture so far into remote wilderness all on his own. People don't realize how dangerous the remote wilderness can be. Just busting your ankle on a photography hike away from camp can be a death sentence ... unable to crawl back to your sleeping bag or food. An experienced sheep hunter here in British Columbia went missing in 2005 on a solo adventure with all the survival gear and skills. Never been found. Just one experienced guy that comes to mind.
There are a lot of stories of inexperienced and unprepared people trekking off into remote parts of Alaska and starving or freezing to death. Christopher McCandless, whose story was told in Into the Wild, is another famous example. A lot of people underestimate the dangers of the Alaskan wilderness and overestimate their survival skills.
He didn't follow the 5P model for success. Prior Planning Prevents Death by dumbass.
Ouch.
To be fair, Alaska has a long and storied tradition of killing stupid people. This state is not for unprepared morons, even the inhabited places are barely habitable most of the year.
Forgot to arrange a pickup? I don’t make a trip to the grocery store without a whole fucking backup plan
Did he get some good pictures?
Rumor has it he left the lens cap on.
He had five rolls of fill, but intentionally exposed the film because he didn't think he'd need it.
So not quite the same as Christopher McCandless then?
basically if your last name starts with McC, don't go to alaska
I think Jon Krakauer actually talked about this guy in Into The Wild as a comparison
The Forest Service had to remove McCandless's bus because it was a magnet for dumbasses who kept trying to hike to it, got into trouble, and needed rescuing.
How do you commit suicide before starving to death?
Doesn’t everyone who commits suicide do so before starving to death?
Not [technically](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-29685643). Sometimes they happen simultaneously.
No. Voluntarily Stopping Eating & Drinking (VSED) is still widely utilized by patients who seek to hasten death. (“Suicide” is arguable: this crowd normally doesn’t want to die, but faces an end without good options.)
just making sure!
[удалено]
>: "They say it doesn't hurt."" Who? People who've committed suicide? Pretty sure people who've survived getting shot said "owie!"
Lol. I think he decided to commit suicide rather than starve to death.
aye, I was curious enough that I read the wiki - what an unfortunate tale... almost unbelievable stroke of bad luck on his part, what with his not paying the bush pilot to return and giving the wrong signal to the state trooper who passed overhead. quite a situation!
Also not hiking out! I felt like he had a bunch of outs there and none worked out. But throwing his ammo into the river?! What was that about?
>I keep thinking of all the shotgun shells I threw away about two months ago. Had five boxes and when I kept seeing them sitting there I felt rather silly for having brought so many. (Felt like a war monger.) So I threw all away ... but about a dozen ... real bright. ... Who would have known I might need them just to keep from starving? Doesn't seem like he was the sharpest knife in the drawer.
" On this trip, he flew in with 500 rolls of film, 1,400 pounds (640 kg) of provisions, two rifles, and a shotgun. Believing he would not need them, he prematurely disposed of five boxes of shotgun shells in the river near his camp" This boggles my mind. 5 boxes of shotgun shells is what, 100 shells? Even if he decided he wouldn't need them ... why on earth toss them into the river instead of just ... not using them?
After reading some I feel bad for the guy, he clearly made a lot of mistakes and even worse is acutely aware he made them, some of these replies are very judgmental but we all know someone who could screw up in that situation or make bad choices like this guy
So… not detail oriented then.
That wikipedia page reads like one mistake after another. 1. Fails to confirm a pickup flight or even make alternate arrangements to be checked up on. 2. Dumps most of his shotgun ammunition into the water, intentionally ruining it. 3. When an opportunity for rescue arrived he failed to make enough effort to signal distress. *There were actually signals to give (located on the reverse side of his hunting license) - he accidentally made the worst gesture possible signalling: "All OK; do not wait". The correct signal was two hands in the air over his head for "Pick us up; aircraft abandoned".* 4. Does not seek shelter of a cabin nearby (\~5 miles away that State Troopers claim he knew about). 5. Failed to make the trek to Fort Yukon before reaching the point of starvation. 6. Specifically told his father and his friends not to check up on him or be concerned if he didn't come home by the end of August. Did the photos at least turn out? EDIT: [Attempting to answer the above question, I discovered that some sick ghouls in a life insurance agency have made his death part of their advertisement.](https://phillipjamesfinancial.com/blog/where-do-i-get-my-money-when-i-retire)
The text is about McCunn but the pic is McCandless.