<story><title>&apos;Into The Wild&apos; bus removed from Alaska wilderness</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53106441</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thaumaturgy</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re completely right to point this out, but this particular subject and individual seems to be a fulcrum for the sort of people who say things like, &amp;quot;kids these days...&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The most common thing I hear, by far, from members of the public at search and rescue fundraisers is, &amp;quot;why do you go to all that trouble for stupid people?&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s a question almost always delivered with the self-satisfied smugness of someone who has no idea that they&amp;#x27;re already suffering the atrophying effects of not venturing outside of familiar territory often enough.&lt;p&gt;McCandless surely made mistakes and errors in judgement. He certainly underestimated what he was getting in to. In that, he has something in common with hundreds of thousands of casual hikers, mountain bikers, kayakers, and visitors to national parks every year. There are vanishingly few entries in the annual &lt;i&gt;Accidents of North American Mountaineering&lt;/i&gt; where the people involved are unimpeachable in terms of their preparedness or skill. In almost every case, there&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;something&lt;/i&gt; that someone could point to that the victim did wrong, and if not, then there&amp;#x27;s always the fallback that they were dumb to be doing it to begin with.&lt;p&gt;If he hadn&amp;#x27;t died, nobody would know his name. Statistics caught up to him. Statistics will catch a few other people every year while far more visitors to the same area will escape without consequence.&lt;p&gt;The dynamics of this subject on HN in particular are really sort of obvious, given that McCandless has come up at least half-a-dozen times on HN over the years, a site not known for its enthusiasm for the outdoors. The treatment here is often about as embarrassing as someone might imagine the topic of machine learning to be on a forum for mushroom pickers.</text></item><item><author>grecy</author><text>These kind of hyperbolic statements don&amp;#x27;t do much to educate, they&amp;#x27;re over sensationalized.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;These quickly get in trouble and either die by bears, by drowning, by freezing or they are rescued by park rangers or other rescue personnel–but often, not before risking their lives and&amp;#x2F;or spending a lot of government money on helicopters and overtime&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since 1992, only two people have died trying to reach the bus, they both drowned in the Tek (which was hard for me to cross, at 6 foot 2 and 185 lbs). One in 2010, and one last year.&lt;p&gt;As for the number of rescues:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The state carried out 15 bus-related search and rescue operations between 2009 and 2017, authorities say&amp;quot; [1]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-us-canada-53106441&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-us-canada-53106441&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;For what it&amp;#x27;s worth, I lived in the Yukon for 4 years. I&amp;#x27;ve been bison hunting at -45C, I&amp;#x27;ve spent months hunting, hiking and fishing all over the Yukon and a ton of time in Alaska too. I know what it takes.</text></item><item><author>EL_Loco</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s an interesting piece called &amp;quot;Chris McCandless from an Alaska Park Ranger’s Perspective&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nmge.gmu.edu&amp;#x2F;textandcommunity&amp;#x2F;2006&amp;#x2F;Peter_Christian_Response.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nmge.gmu.edu&amp;#x2F;textandcommunity&amp;#x2F;2006&amp;#x2F;Peter_Christian_Re...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Some like McCandless, show up in Alaska, unprepared, unskilled and unwilling to take
the time to learn the skills they need to be successful. These quickly get in trouble and
either die by bears, by drowning, by freezing or they are rescued by park rangers or other
rescue personnel–but often, not before risking their lives and&amp;#x2F;or spending a lot of
government money on helicopters and overtime.
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 a good map he could have walked out of his 
predicament using one of several routes that could have been successful.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway0a5e</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m on a forum that&amp;#x27;s very outdoorsy (it&amp;#x27;s for an outdoor hobby and most of the best locations to do it are in BFE) and this story hit there too.  While there&amp;#x27;s less ivory tower smugness, possibly a reflection of user demographics, McCandless is not exactly a popular figure over there either.  It&amp;#x27;s understandable for an amateur to be under-prepared because you don&amp;#x27;t know what you don&amp;#x27;t know.  It&amp;#x27;s understandable to be experienced and get into a crap situation because you planned to wing it and one of the variables you based your assumptions on changed.  It&amp;#x27;s much less forgivable to be an amateur and also plan on winging it.  The dude knew he hadn&amp;#x27;t lived in that environment before.  He knew that he couldn&amp;#x27;t get food the ways he was accustomed to.  He tried to dodge the stupid tax but he was so flagrant about it that luck couldn&amp;#x27;t justify not auditing him.</text></comment>
<story><title>&apos;Into The Wild&apos; bus removed from Alaska wilderness</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53106441</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thaumaturgy</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re completely right to point this out, but this particular subject and individual seems to be a fulcrum for the sort of people who say things like, &amp;quot;kids these days...&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The most common thing I hear, by far, from members of the public at search and rescue fundraisers is, &amp;quot;why do you go to all that trouble for stupid people?&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s a question almost always delivered with the self-satisfied smugness of someone who has no idea that they&amp;#x27;re already suffering the atrophying effects of not venturing outside of familiar territory often enough.&lt;p&gt;McCandless surely made mistakes and errors in judgement. He certainly underestimated what he was getting in to. In that, he has something in common with hundreds of thousands of casual hikers, mountain bikers, kayakers, and visitors to national parks every year. There are vanishingly few entries in the annual &lt;i&gt;Accidents of North American Mountaineering&lt;/i&gt; where the people involved are unimpeachable in terms of their preparedness or skill. In almost every case, there&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;something&lt;/i&gt; that someone could point to that the victim did wrong, and if not, then there&amp;#x27;s always the fallback that they were dumb to be doing it to begin with.&lt;p&gt;If he hadn&amp;#x27;t died, nobody would know his name. Statistics caught up to him. Statistics will catch a few other people every year while far more visitors to the same area will escape without consequence.&lt;p&gt;The dynamics of this subject on HN in particular are really sort of obvious, given that McCandless has come up at least half-a-dozen times on HN over the years, a site not known for its enthusiasm for the outdoors. The treatment here is often about as embarrassing as someone might imagine the topic of machine learning to be on a forum for mushroom pickers.</text></item><item><author>grecy</author><text>These kind of hyperbolic statements don&amp;#x27;t do much to educate, they&amp;#x27;re over sensationalized.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;These quickly get in trouble and either die by bears, by drowning, by freezing or they are rescued by park rangers or other rescue personnel–but often, not before risking their lives and&amp;#x2F;or spending a lot of government money on helicopters and overtime&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since 1992, only two people have died trying to reach the bus, they both drowned in the Tek (which was hard for me to cross, at 6 foot 2 and 185 lbs). One in 2010, and one last year.&lt;p&gt;As for the number of rescues:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The state carried out 15 bus-related search and rescue operations between 2009 and 2017, authorities say&amp;quot; [1]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-us-canada-53106441&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-us-canada-53106441&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;For what it&amp;#x27;s worth, I lived in the Yukon for 4 years. I&amp;#x27;ve been bison hunting at -45C, I&amp;#x27;ve spent months hunting, hiking and fishing all over the Yukon and a ton of time in Alaska too. I know what it takes.</text></item><item><author>EL_Loco</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s an interesting piece called &amp;quot;Chris McCandless from an Alaska Park Ranger’s Perspective&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nmge.gmu.edu&amp;#x2F;textandcommunity&amp;#x2F;2006&amp;#x2F;Peter_Christian_Response.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nmge.gmu.edu&amp;#x2F;textandcommunity&amp;#x2F;2006&amp;#x2F;Peter_Christian_Re...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Some like McCandless, show up in Alaska, unprepared, unskilled and unwilling to take
the time to learn the skills they need to be successful. These quickly get in trouble and
either die by bears, by drowning, by freezing or they are rescued by park rangers or other
rescue personnel–but often, not before risking their lives and&amp;#x2F;or spending a lot of
government money on helicopters and overtime.
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 a good map he could have walked out of his 
predicament using one of several routes that could have been successful.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ghaff</author><text>&amp;gt;In almost every case, there&amp;#x27;s something that someone could point to that the victim did wrong&lt;p&gt;In fact, with many accidents, it&amp;#x27;s often a matter of compounding mistakes. (The victim didn&amp;#x27;t have a lot of experience, went out in worsening weather, lost the trail, and didn&amp;#x27;t have the gear to survive overnight.)&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it&amp;#x27;s easy to identify &amp;quot;mistakes&amp;quot; in retrospect. Someone got caught in an avalanche so they &amp;quot;clearly&amp;quot; shouldn&amp;#x27;t have been somewhere that they could get caught in an avalanche--even if the danger was just moderate and the danger in that particular area is often moderate.&lt;p&gt;Which also speaks to your statistics comment of course. There are various levels of danger to many activities and you can reasonably reduce your chances of something going wrong but not eliminate them.&lt;p&gt;And, also of course, many people who don&amp;#x27;t participate in many of those activities see them as unreasonably dangerous. And, depending upon their political views, may think rescuing mountain climbers or even winter hikers as a waste of societal resources.</text></comment>