A British survival enthusiast attempting to live off the land for a full year was recently found dead in Scotland. He lasted perhaps a few weeks in the wild. I wouldn't mind trying a night out or a weekend with a minimal kit but why did this guy think that he could do a full year in the wilderness. Heck, even Bear stays overnight in hotels when he is doing his survival shows! By the look of the picture, it doesn't appear that there is much shelter and few trees in the area he was "surviving".

A man found dead in a remote mountain hut was an adventurer who had planned a year-long Bear Grylls-style survival challenge in the Scottish wilderness. David Austin, 29, from Derby, was found dead in a 'bothy' by a track worker near Corrour, a remote railway station in Highland Perthshire, on December 31 at 9.50am. His body is believed to have been lying there for several weeks when it was discovered.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...untain-hut.html

Wow.

That's a pretty big (over)commitment to a personal project on wilderness survival. To actually stake your life on the outcome?

I wonder why he didn't attempt to walk out, when he realized that things had gone wrong? No emergency plan at all?? I've got to imagine that surviving the winter in Scotland would be a tremendously difficult feat to pull off.

Pete2

Not much details in the article. Doesn't say how much similar time he has spent living off the land before. As with anything you work your way up to it. Start off camping a night or two then backpacking a few nights. Work your way up through longer and longer trips while you work out all the details.
And don't start in winter, any person or animal knows to work through the summer season storing up for winter when food is scarce.

Very sad story...

Yes, sad. And no fall back position. No PLB, no phone. I suppose overconfidence, although I don't know the man.

HJ

I can see someone wanting to attempt such a feat but can't understand not having any communication if things go wrong. There's no sense in ever putting yourself in a life or death situation for the sake of proving your survival skills. There's no room for learning from your mistakes, you either make it or you die. A real shame.

I've seen in my working life that there are cautious folks who try to think ahead (me) and folks who truly leap before looking.

Of course there's a spectrum in between.

But I've learned of these people as they ridicule me for being "risk averse" while they promise management guaranteed results on something they know nothing about. They seem to be planning on sewing themselves a parachute on the way down. (It gets ugly when the leaper is my boss.)

It may turn out that this fellow, if he wasn't suicidal, was a 'leap before you look' sort and his friends will already know this about him.

Excessively high balls/brains ratio.

That is the downside of the current celebrity of survival experts, just a year ago Canadian man died in Northern Ontario trying to emulate Les Stroud. There was a thread on it here.

Very sad. I feel sorry for the family and friends who tried to 'talk him off the ledge'. They clearly saw the danger. That would be a tough one to live with, wondering if there was more that they could have done to convince him to reconsider his plans.

Short of handcuffing him in his home, the family probably couldn't have prevented this tragedy.

To speculate as to why he tried the stunt? Not sure. But it is clear he underestimated the danger that nature presents.

Yep, I've been called "risk-averse" also. However, it has paid-off. Never was a Boy Scout, but I learned from the Cubs & Wiebelos and the army. Build skills and learn basic gear. I don't consider it a personality flaw that I don't like high-adrenaline activities (bungee, rollercoasters, etc.).

I may like Cody, Dave, Les & the others, but I know that my skills aren't to that level yet. I'll test my gear & skills this year on a 3-day camping excursion.

The Highlands in winter? Sigh...

Well said.

It's always tricky to speculate about underlying reasons for this sort of event. There is too much we don't know. Is it simple naivety about the level of difficulty and danger? Are there perhaps underlying psychological difficulties? Is it the deep disquiet with modern life that many of us feel -- and the need to test our mettle against something hard and absolute?

Regardless, it's a sad outcome.

I think it's a combination of idealism and a "I survived previous adventures, so I'll survive anything" mentality. Less so about "ballsy, but not to bright".

Is there a syndrome or other diagnostic for this type of behavior? When poking about as to what Chris McCandless was thinking, I found repeated references to a "Schizoid personalty".

Schizoid personality disorder (SPD) is "characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency towards a solitary lifestyle, secretiveness, emotional coldness, and sometimes (sexual) apathy." I got that from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder .

There are certainly people who live by themselves in isolation without being grossly unprepared and accidentally doing themselves in. Someone with SPD would be more likely to not have told anyone what he was up to. The article didn't say as much, but I get the idea that he was excited about it.

It's hard to diagnose someone's mental condition from a news article, and I'm not a mental health professional. But it doesn't seem to me that he suffered SPD.