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I'm part of the "Chris McCandless was an idiot" crowd, but I guess he was intentionally not optimizing for survival. Into the Wild is still a very engaging book

I'm part of the "Chris McCandless was an idiot" crowd, but I guess he was intentionally not optimizing for survival. Into the Wild is still a very engaging book, but it frustrates me so much that people idolize a guy who made bad decision after bad decision. The thing that pissed me off the most was when he burned his money instead of donating it to charity.

grecy 11y ago
I understand where you are coming from. >he was intentionally not optimizing for survival That's a good way to say it. In all honesty - when I optimize for survival I actually find life too boring, easy and mundane. I want more excitement and adventure than that, so I understand why Chris did what he did. >who made bad decision after bad decision. It's very easy to armchair quaterback. Have you hiked into the middle of nowhere in Alaska and tried to survive? Have you hunted your own food? Have you struggled to cross glacier-melt rivers? I have, and a lot more. I've seen friends go underwater at -35C 100km from anywhere, had snowmobiles not start at -50C well over 200km from anywhere, had severe hypothermia where I thought I was hot, lost feeling in my fingers for hours, jumped up and down on the spot for hours in an attempt to warm up, etc. etc.) Anyone that does as well as Chris did is not an idiot. Most people wouldn't last a week, let alone 3 months.
- keenerd 11y ago
  > Most people wouldn't last a week, let alone 3 months. Not even the native people of the area could have done it. Hunting for sustenance isn't a solo activity. Hunting large game is high reward with high uncertainty. You probably need a group of at least five people. With multiple hunters only one of them has to land a kill to feed the group. And it means there is the manpower present to process or eat all of the meat before it spoils. Which is what happened to McCandless. He was a skilled hunter to bring down a moose with a .22 but he only got a few meals from the carcass before it rotted, wasting hundreds of pounds of meat. I can point you to a record from 1770-ish of a native american woman who managed to survive for six months alone in far north Canada, after escaping from her slavers. The party who discovered her was shocked she could even be alive and none of them had ever heard of such a thing. (Samuel Hearne's journals) edit: Bagging a single moose during the season isn't "sustenance". It is sport. If it ends up in a chest freezer, then it doesn't count for this discussion. Sustenance means 100% of your calories come from hunted game. And sustenance-hunters at that latitude, even with a group, can go a week without seeing any animals. Scaling up what I've seen people do with white tailed deer, 5 people could probably process 800 pounds of moose in two days if they already had stockpiled all the wood. Groups of 100 could eat it all. And groups that large were common for moving across the land.
  - grecy 11y ago
    > Hunting for sustenance isn't a solo activity.... You probably need a group of at least five people That's not even close to the truth. I can tell you've never hunted your own large game. Quite a few of my friends go and get a bull moose solo every year... paddle down a river for a week, shoot it, skin, quarter, load into canoe and keep paddling. One of them is 65, still doing it :) I always just go with one friend, moose and bison each time. > eat all of the meat before it spoils You think 5 people will eat >800lbs of meat before it spoils? Not even close. Sure, McCandless didn't do a good job smoking it, but he sure as hell tried, and he learned a lot that would have worked better next time. I guarantee you won't meet a single person living in Yukon/Alaska that didn't f-up some aspect of large game hunting when they started out (me included). McCandless did what all people moving North do - he threw himself in and tried to learn as fast as possible. The main difference is he didn't give himself any margin for error, because that would have made it less interesting/exciting.
    - keenerd 11y ago
      Please read Hearne's journal. It is probably the best record of what living off of the land in those conditions fully entails.
- exolymph 11y ago
  I think the fact that I have not hiked into the middle of nowhere in Alaska and tried to survive is the indicator of good decision-making. Deciding to do that in the first place was dumb, and counter to all advice that anyone would have given him.

grecy 11y ago

I understand where you are coming from. >he was intentionally not optimizing for survival That's a good way to say it. In all honesty - when I optimize for survival I actually find life too boring, easy and mundane. I want more excitement and adventure than that, so I understand why Chris did what he did. >who made bad decision after bad decision. It's very easy to armchair quaterback. Have you hiked into the middle of nowhere in Alaska and tried to survive? Have you hunted your own food? Have you struggled to cross glacier-melt rivers? I have, and a lot more. I've seen friends go underwater at -35C 100km from anywhere, had snowmobiles not start at -50C well over 200km from anywhere, had severe hypothermia where I thought I was hot, lost feeling in my fingers for hours, jumped up and down on the spot for hours in an attempt to warm up, etc. etc.) Anyone that does as well as Chris did is not an idiot. Most people wouldn't last a week, let alone 3 months.

keenerd 11y ago
> Most people wouldn't last a week, let alone 3 months. Not even the native people of the area could have done it. Hunting for sustenance isn't a solo activity. Hunting large game is high reward with high uncertainty. You probably need a group of at least five people. With multiple hunters only one of them has to land a kill to feed the group. And it means there is the manpower present to process or eat all of the meat before it spoils. Which is what happened to McCandless. He was a skilled hunter to bring down a moose with a .22 but he only got a few meals from the carcass before it rotted, wasting hundreds of pounds of meat. I can point you to a record from 1770-ish of a native american woman who managed to survive for six months alone in far north Canada, after escaping from her slavers. The party who discovered her was shocked she could even be alive and none of them had ever heard of such a thing. (Samuel Hearne's journals) edit: Bagging a single moose during the season isn't "sustenance". It is sport. If it ends up in a chest freezer, then it doesn't count for this discussion. Sustenance means 100% of your calories come from hunted game. And sustenance-hunters at that latitude, even with a group, can go a week without seeing any animals. Scaling up what I've seen people do with white tailed deer, 5 people could probably process 800 pounds of moose in two days if they already had stockpiled all the wood. Groups of 100 could eat it all. And groups that large were common for moving across the land.
- grecy 11y ago
  > Hunting for sustenance isn't a solo activity.... You probably need a group of at least five people That's not even close to the truth. I can tell you've never hunted your own large game. Quite a few of my friends go and get a bull moose solo every year... paddle down a river for a week, shoot it, skin, quarter, load into canoe and keep paddling. One of them is 65, still doing it :) I always just go with one friend, moose and bison each time. > eat all of the meat before it spoils You think 5 people will eat >800lbs of meat before it spoils? Not even close. Sure, McCandless didn't do a good job smoking it, but he sure as hell tried, and he learned a lot that would have worked better next time. I guarantee you won't meet a single person living in Yukon/Alaska that didn't f-up some aspect of large game hunting when they started out (me included). McCandless did what all people moving North do - he threw himself in and tried to learn as fast as possible. The main difference is he didn't give himself any margin for error, because that would have made it less interesting/exciting.
  - keenerd 11y ago
    Please read Hearne's journal. It is probably the best record of what living off of the land in those conditions fully entails.
exolymph 11y ago
I think the fact that I have not hiked into the middle of nowhere in Alaska and tried to survive is the indicator of good decision-making. Deciding to do that in the first place was dumb, and counter to all advice that anyone would have given him.