The "Into the Wild" story seems to keep popping up (and is indeed powerfully fascinating and symbolic to some). This latest theory of what killed Chris McCandless may be of interest. How much weight to give it? I leave that to you.

"A researcher named Ronald Hamilton had written a paper arguing that McCandless had, in fact, been killed by the wild potato seeds, but not because of any "toxic alkaloids." Rather, Hamilton argued, McCandless's meager diet and malnutrition in the wilderness had made him susceptible to a rare but brutal affliction called "lathyrism" that gradually paralyzes its victims. Lathryrism occurs primarily in malnourished young men, and it is caused by the ingestion of an amino acid that was first discovered in the seeds of wild grass peas."

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-chris-mccandless-died-in-into-the-wild-2013-9

makes a compelling argument for:
A. knowing what plants are safe for consumption or
B. having a good guide for edible plants for your region.

Actually, Mr. McCandless had a guide of edible plants and the plant seeds he was eating were supposed to be safe. But the article explains how under certain circumstances they are not.

The article is worth reading.

Shoulda planned better:
* brought food
* had a backup plan/ partner
* vitamins
* Used his (extensive) money for proper training, gear, food.

And left a note where he could be found

Well, you can get sick or hurt all sorts of ways. In reality, it doesn't matter what specifically happened. When you are on the edge of subsistence any little thing can be too much to overcome.

Being in the wilderness, alone with minimal supplies puts you in a risky position. It's the risk he took. *shrug*

-john

In addition, any raw food has risk of contamination as well. People die from lettuce from the supermarket.

-john

I think you are referring to bacterial contamination by other humans which would be unlikely in such a remote area.

Also, the seeds he was eating were not contaminated, they contained a toxic chemical. Cooking would not fix this.

A recent Alaska rebuttal. I think the lathyrism diagnosis has merit.

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20...ng-death-alaska

Does any of this conjecture alter the basic narrative in any meaningful way? Once again we see that a series of not-so-good decisions leads to a bad place- this is not the first or the last time.

A little planning and fore thought usually wins out. There a few simple rules when painting a floor, such as planning to paint the floor next to the door at the very end!

Thanks for posting this link; the plot thickens. A highly entertaining grenade-lob (amongst wordsmithing rivals, we might note). I do cringe at thought of a "celebrity/author" who seemingly recycles the same story with exotic theories that sell in distant markets. This is not exactly the Franklin Expedition. Oh, wait: actually, symbolically, it is.

As an aside, I have noticed a similar disdain amongst Yukoners (who are wonderful, lovely, and capable people in so many ways) for the hippy dippy "back to the land" mode of thinking where a top-down philosophical agenda demands that the landscape conform to the theory. I love these interesting experiments, but it's honest to say that they do necessarily end well. As an obscure author, Charles Long, put it (paraphrasing from memory) "... they were possessed of the notion that they could take a roll of plastic sheeting and a Swiss Army knife and cohabit with Mother Nature. Alas, they withered in the Fall and are now selling insurance in the suburbs."

Not to defend Krakauer's latest theory, but this "grenade-lob" says as much about Craig Medred as it does about Krakauer. I've been reading (and often wincing) at Medred's articles for several decades. Before he became one of the main conributors to Alaska Dispatch, he was for many years the outdoors editor for the Anchorage Daily News. While he sometimes writes some good stuff, he also has a frequent tendency to go off in a flurry of outrage over some minor point or another. Medred also is certainly not above flogging a sensational sounding story, without really adding much (if indeed any) new info. For some reason known only to Mr. Medred, John Krakauer seems to have really gotten under Medred's skin.

That's really the gist of it. Most Alaskan's I know think Chris McCandless was just another dumb Cheechako who badly underestimated the dangers of Alaska. Whether or not sweetvetch seeds exacerbated his starvation is a moot point, at best.

Unfortunately, both Krakauer and Medred are both guilty of perpetuating this whole sad story. This only serves to encourage more dumb Cheechakos to make a "pilgrimage" to the bus.

And you boil/treat/filter your water for no reason?

My point wasn't about what happened in this specific case, my point is things can go wrong even if what you are eating isn't supposed to be toxic.

-john

Krakauer has an economic interest in promoting the notion of the life-at-the-edge vision quest, because that is what sells his writing. Into the Wild explores that through looking at McCandless, with lots of Krakauer autobiography as illumination. Into Thin Air explores the notion through the vehicle of the 1996 Everest tragedy, with similar autobiographical asides.. He seems to advocate a sort of Outdoor Magazine Philosophy, analogous to the Playboy Philosophy of the sixties: men have the need to experience outdoor adventure, and acting in stupid, self-serving and self-destructive ways in meeting this need is okay, because of the importance of being fully and validly men.

In each book, Krakauer provides a huge list of bad decisions without comment, and then focuses enormous energy on analyzing the last bad decisions-McCandless' diet, Boukreev's decisions- as if all of the previous bad decisions could have been redeemed by better choices at the end.

And it works. Sells books, sells magazines, and encourages folks to try similar stuff, as ill-conceived publicity of a suicide bumps up the suicide rate. Fortunately, forums like this one promulgate better thinking in these matters, and are the best antidote to this stuff.

C. having a source of delicious, high calorie food in Alaska.



Excellent post.

Some months ago another theory of which chemical contributed to his death came up,

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-died-update

this time being published in a medical journal.

http://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(14)00277-4/fulltext