
How Chris McCandless Died - dctoedt
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/09/how-chris-mccandless-died.html
======
malloreon
Obligatory quotes from McCandless' wikipedia page
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless)):

Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote:

"When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what
he did wasn't even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and
inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually
live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the
area. If he [had] had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament
[... ] Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide.[11]"

Sherry Simpson, writing in the Anchorage Press, described her trip to the bus
with a friend, and their reaction upon reading the comments that tourists had
left lauding McCandless as an insightful, Thoreau-like figure:

"Among my friends and acquaintances, the story of Christopher McCandless makes
great after-dinner conversation. Much of the time I agree with the "he had a
death wish" camp because I don't know how else to reconcile what we know of
his ordeal. Now and then I venture into the "what a dumb--" territory,
tempered by brief alliances with the "he was just another romantic boy on an
all-American quest" partisans. Mostly I'm puzzled by the way he's emerged as a
hero[13]"

~~~
cpncrunch
I think the point is that he was an independent thinker, and thus was
disillusioned by all the BS in modern society. Sure he made some mistakes and
he had some back luck, but he chose to find meaning in his life instead of
being another sheep. Can you say the same for your own life?

~~~
lrm242
Give me a break. The guy was most certainly not an independent thinker. Nor
was he a critical thinker. Nor did he have any respect for the challenge he
was taking on. He was an angst ridden teenage boy captured in an twenty
something's body that never learned the difference between fantasy and
reality. Most importantly, he never learned that in the real world there are
consequences for stupid actions.

~~~
Zimahl
This. The previous comment is the reason why McCandless is such a polarizing
figure. Those who prepare and go on a quest without suffering negative
consequences are somehow derided for not being independent thinkers, somehow
cheapened for not risking enough.

"Adventure is just bad planning." \- Roald Amundsen

~~~
wwweston
The good admiral has a point, but I don't think it gets to the heart of the
McCandless drama.

For that, I think I'd look to Norman Maclean's _Young Men and Fire_ where he
talks about smoke jumpers:

"It is very important to a lot of people to make unmistakably clear to
themselves and to the universe that they love the universe but are not
intimidated by it and will not be shaken by it, no matter what it has in
store. Moreover, they demand something from themselves early in life that can
be taken ever after as a demonstration of this abiding feeling...

"For many former Smokejumpers, then, smokejumping is not closely tied up with
their [eventual] way of life, but is more something that is necessary for them
to pass through and not around and, once it is unmistakably done, does not
have to be done again. The 'it' is within, and is the need to settle some
things with the universe and ourselves before taking on the 'business of the
world,' which isn't all that special or hard but takes time. This 'it' is the
something special within that demands we do something special, and 'it' could
be within a lot of us."

If people here are reading this and haven't already realized some parallels
between not just McCandless and smokejumpers _but also entrepreneurs_ I'd be
surprised.

Now, you can draw distinctions between McCandless and smokejumpers, too: the
later train and drill and prepare, probably as well as Amundsen could be
satisfied with. And their work has a practical end. But their work is still an
adventure because they also operate in an area of high risk, and as a result
they sometimes pay a high cost.

And they don't do this job for entirely practical reasons. They do it because
they have a need for an internal narrative that settles certain things and
establishes a kind of identity, they do it because they need something off the
beaten track for middle class success.

McCandless was clearly looking for that. I think it's fair to ask if he'd been
a little less romantic about it and a little more thoughtful whether he might
have had both his survival adventure and his survival.

Then again, unless you're Batman or some other protagonist whose superpower is
acute anticipation by authorial fiat, it's mitigated by the limits of the best
laid plans.

~~~
Tloewald
Admiral?

As far as I know, Roald Amundsen was not affiliated with any military.
Ironically he died while trying to rescue other, less competent, explorers.

~~~
wwweston
You're quite right, in my head I'd accidentally lumped him in with fellow
polar explorers Peary and Scott as a Navy guy.

------
grecy
I made my own personal pilgrimage to The Magic Bus in summer '09 [1]. It's an
extremely special place like none other I've visited.

Completely coincidentally, one of my close friends where I now live in the far
North was with the girl who tragically drowned trying to cross the Tek River
in summer 2010.

Also co-incidentally, just today I gave an interview for someone writing an
article on the anniversary of Chris' death. She was at the Tek river a few
days ago, and watched three backpackers get swept downstream, luckily without
major injury.

It's amazing how this place and Chris' story have impacted so many people's
lives. I'm making plans now to go back in the winter/spring, when the river
will be frozen and the scenery will be spectacular.

[[http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus](http://theroadchoseme.com/the-
magic-bus)]

EDIT/UPDATE: I'll add that there is no doubt in my mind Chris helped me find
the courage to quit my Software Engineering job, sell all my stuff and spend 2
years driving from Alaska to Argentina. No doubt it was the best decision of
my life so far.

~~~
jlgreco
What did you do for the Darién Gap? I've thought about making a similar trip a
few times, but have never really gotten far into the planning stages.

~~~
grecy
I loaded my Jeep into a shipping container and ocean freighted it. It's much
cheaper (~$800) and easier (~1 week) than you might think, and well, well
worth it.

My report is: [http://theroadchoseme.com/shipping-across-the-darien-gap-
pt-...](http://theroadchoseme.com/shipping-across-the-darien-gap-pt-1)

And there are much more up to date reports and costs at
[http://wikioverland.org/Pan_American_Highway](http://wikioverland.org/Pan_American_Highway)

If you're serious about this kind of travel,
[http://wikioverland.org](http://wikioverland.org) has everything you need to
know.

~~~
jlgreco
Awesome, thanks!

~~~
grecy
You're welcome.

I'm interested in your username. Does that indicate your name?

My last name is Grec, and I'm always on the lookout for more :)

~~~
jlgreco
Close, mine's got an "o" on the end of it. ;) It's a fairly common Italian
surname meaning "Greek".

------
jusben1369
I wonder if we aren't starting to miss the forest for the trees here. Perhaps
this is the true, final reason. However, if he'd fallen down the steps on that
bus and broken his leg he would most likely be dead. He basically put himself
in a position where he had such a small margin for error that it's not all
that surprising he didn't make it. I backpacked Central and South America for
quite some time pre-internet and pre mobile. There were a lot of people who
were removing themselves from their environments and doing some wonderful self
discovery. There was also the odd, additional person, who was so completely
reckless that it seemed inevitable that something bad would befall them. I've
always thought of those people whenever I've bumped into stories on Chris
MacCandless.

~~~
zerooneinfinity
Yea I mean the entire debate shouldn't even be about whether he was stupid to
do this. Because of him, we are able to say in hindsight that travelers should
be weary of these kinds of things.

------
mpyne
The author posits that it wasn't stupidity that killed McCandless for eating a
plant not known to be toxic, but rather ignorance.

However the reason he (and the rest of us) were ignorant of the danger of the
potato seed is that the potato seed isn't dangerous to anyone except those in
a severe caloric deficit and still undergoing physical exertion.

In other words he applied knowledge gained in one situation (normal persons
eating potato seed) to a situation far outside of the experiments that seemed
to show no issues with potato seed.

Call it ignorance instead of stupidity if you want, but he's still just as
dead (and apparently wouldn't have died had he maintained something other than
a caloric deficit which must have eventually led to his death anyways).

~~~
glibgil
If he didn't eat the wild potato seeds, he would have survived the 18 days
until help came. He would have survived on squirrels and porcupines. The wild
potato seeds poisoned him. He died from complications of paralysis. No one
should eat wild potato seeds, ever, just to be sure they don't become
permanently paralyzed. Young men are the highest risk group. This is new
information. No one knew this before. I don't know how to help you understand
the article better. You got it very wrong.

~~~
rralian
Well, you really don't know that he would have survived. He put himself in a
precarious position and as others have said, he could have succumbed to any
number of other dangers.

~~~
glibgil
He would have survived. As other people have said he could have survived any
number of ways (eating squirrels, porcupines) all while enjoying any number of
comforts (sitting by the fire, sleeping, reading). You don't really know that
he would not have survived.

~~~
dandelany
How can you condemn his post for being so certain while expressing the same
(opposite) certainty yourself? You sound a bit ridiculous, obviously _no one_
can be certain of what would have happened had he not eaten the potato seeds.
In any case, the article says:

"After subsisting for three months on a marginal diet of squirrels,
porcupines, small birds, mushrooms, roots, and berries, he’d run up a huge
caloric deficit and was teetering on the brink. By adding potato seeds to the
menu, he apparently made the mistake that took him down."

Meaning the only reason he started eating the potato seeds in the first place
was because his other sources of nutrition weren't cutting it. So if he hadn't
eaten them, he would have at least needed to find another source of calories.

~~~
glibgil
I'm sure that if he did not eat wild potato seeds he would not have died of
complications from paralysis. I'm absolutely certain. I know it. I can think
of nothing else in his environment that would have poisoned him and made him
permanently paralyzed and unable to move or hunt. The other source of calories
that he needed was on its way and would have arrived 18 days later. He would
have been fine subsisting until then.

------
waterlesscloud
" Krakauer took a poor misfortunate prone to paranoia, someone who left a note
talking about his desire to kill the “false being within,” someone who managed
to starve to death in a deserted bus not far off the George Parks Highway, and
made the guy into a celebrity. Why the author did that should be obvious. He
wanted to write a story that would sell."

Well, if there's one thing I'm sure about, it's that selling books wasn't why
Krakauer was compelled to tell that story.

Reading Krakauer's accounts of his own life, in both Into The Wild and in
Eiger Dreams, it's pretty clear he felt the same urge to challenge himself
with the wilderness that McCandless did, and that the books are Krakauer's
attempts to understand that drive.

Those books are mainly journeys of self-understanding that happen to be
available for other people to read.

------
cpncrunch
Into the Wild is probably one of the best movies I have ever watched. It's a
very powerful and emotional story.

~~~
sspiff
I agree, and it had a great soundtrack. In real life, it was a silly death
though.

------
kqr2
Did he eat the seeds raw? This paper suggests it may be possible to reduce the
toxin through simple means:

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-00...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-0010%28199605%2971:1%3C50::AID-
JSFA545%3E3.0.CO;2-J/abstract)

    
    
      Ordinary cooking and pressure cooking of pre-soaked seeds 
      were found to be most effective in reducing the levels of 
      all the natural toxicants examined...
    
      These findings and the high water solubility suggest that 
      a simple and effective means of detoxifying Lathyrus by 
      removing this neurotoxic amino acid may be practicable.

------
northband
I read about Chris back in '94 or so and was moved. I sold everything I had
and decided to head out into the Colorado wilderness.

However, while working and saving for my trip I saw Phish and ended up going
on Phish tour '95 instead.

Whether you head into the wilderness or follow your favorite band - IMO life
on the road is a great building block for life.

There's hardly a period that goes by where I don't somehow think about my time
spent on the road.

(...and I still see Phish every year ;-))

------
bostonpete
Am I reading this correctly:

"EXTREMELY WEAK. FAULT OF POT[ATO] SEED."

McCandless wrote "POT SEED" and the author inferred that he meant potato seed?
Is that a given...?

Also, doesn't this author seem a bit sloppy? First, he asserts in an 8400-word
article that McCandless died from sweet pea seeds, which he shrugs off because
he was on a tight deadline. Then he says he made a "rash" decision to suggest
in his book that the wild-potato seeds contain swainsonine?

~~~
glibgil
It is a given. McCandless meant to write potato seed. Krakauer wasn't sloppy.
He was right. He knew that wild potato seeds killed McCandless. He just didn't
know how. Krakauer pursued the analysis himself to determine what toxin was
present in the seeds. That's not good enough? Man, everyone's a critic.

------
yawgmoth
I highly recommend reading Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild if this story
interests you - it's the story of McCandless in all its gory detail.

------
lpvn
For everyone who liked 'Into the Wild' I suggest the documentary 'Once I Was a
Champion' that tells the story of Evan Tanner, a mma fighter who died in a
pilgrimage in the Californian Desert. Evan, an avid travelller just like
Chris, was also a person who had trouble finding his place in this world and
suffered from depression and a deep sense of alienation.

------
meritt
This warning was also recently added to the Wikipedia Page for Hedysarum
alpinum.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hedysarum_alpinum&...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hedysarum_alpinum&diff=570431498&oldid=542725679)

There's even a bit of back and forth as people argued about mentioning
McCandless in the page :)

------
_mulder_
I'm disappointed by the hypocrisy of most of these negative HN comments.

How can you be so quick to rubbish what McCandless achieved, calling him
stupid and unprepared, then go straight back to reading the next "Why I sold
my home to Bootstrap my dating App" blog post to grace the front page or "How
I finally achieved my dream" and then be full of praise and admiration.

Don't you see, McCandless was a young guy with a dream and a philosophy and
actually had the balls to go and try it for himself. He's become a bit of a
cult icon because he showed exactly the same disregard for the rules and
society norms that make Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Richard Branson such heroes.

To everyone commenting along these lines, I look forward to not-reading your
next blog post; "How I could have done x, if only I'd tried"

------
Evgeny
Call me a cynic, but this is about the guy who went to live into the
wilderness underprepared and full of noble ideas and died, either from
poisoning or from hunger.

Now he has his own wikipedia page and inspires people.

I mean, wouldn't one rather admire someone who tried a similar thing, but was
prepared and _succeeded_?

~~~
Goladus
_I mean, wouldn 't one rather admire someone who tried a similar thing, but
was prepared and succeeded?_

Do you have any examples? Ted Kaczynski doesn't count.

I have one: Sooyong Park.

You know why he's not widely admired? Because people don't know much about him
because no one's been able popularize a good narrative about him. Some it it
is just marketing, and the extent to which he succeeded or not is a minor
detail.

Also, what Park did was dangerous, too, filming tigers in the Siberian
wilderness. He easily could have died accidentally in similar fashion to
McCandless. He was prepared be he still could have been killed many times.

------
tdees40
My one issue with this is that he was, by all accounts, alarmingly thin before
the seeds did him in, and winter hadn't even arrived yet. It's hard to imagine
him surviving the winter, seeds or not. So while the seeds obviously shortened
his life, I doubt it was by a very large factor.

~~~
grecy
He never planned to stay the winter. He was just going to wait another month
or two until the river level dropped, then he could just hike out the same way
he hiked in.

------
loser777
It's interesting to note that Jon Krakauer also wrote _Three Cups of Deceit_ ,
when _Three Cups of Tea_ was required summer reading for me in high school.
Funny how opinions about people change--though in this case it's sad instead
of angering.

------
samstave
Is there any way to prepare the seeds for consumption that destroys the
compound responsible for this; e.g. boiling into a mush?

Just curious if there was a way that, rather simply, these could have been
made completely edible had Chris done it.

------
narfquat
Hmm, I wonder what other types of otherwise harmless food stuffs can become
detrimental given the correct physiological conditions of the consumer? How do
we even go about humanely testing that sort of thing?

~~~
ballard
It depends on loads of factors.

Also, differentiation between acute toxicity (would kill within a month) or
chronic issues (inflammation, deficiency, hormone altering, etc).

------
jeltz
It was interesting to learn that people still eat the grass pea, which was the
plant containing ODAP used in the concentration camp.

Apparently what causes most deaths by ODAP poisoning is that it survives
droughts better than most crops making starving people eat it. The very group
most susceptible to the poisoning.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathyrus_sativus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathyrus_sativus)

------
fixermark
So some new scientific knowledge has come out of this unfortunate death.

That's good.

------
adrianwaj
Never knew he was injured at the end as well, that may have put him into a
catabolic state. But he was ahead of his time.. "rewilding" is a hip thing to
do now.

------
stevehawk
holy hell.. "How Chris McCandless Died" is such a bad title considering at the
very end it says - "there is ample reason to believe that McCandless
contracted lathyrism from eating those seeds". So he /may/ have died that way.

Jon Krakauer just really wants to believe that McCandless could have survived
if he hadn't been a dumbass.

~~~
ajarmst
Well, "could have survived is [s]he hadn't been a dumbass" is a valid comment
about an astonishing number of human deaths.

