John M Grigg wrote:
>
> I read Mike's story about the man who drove the heavy equipment across the lake with fatal results with interest. He may not have been stupid but simply a risk-taker who liked pushing his luck. And he died for it...
>
> In Alaska we had a famous case of a young man in his early twenties who came up after graduating from a nice east coast college. He was seen as brilliant but somewhat eccentric and private by his few friends. This fellow moved into a broken down schoolbus in the wilds of Alaska during the late fall. He gave away much of the food supplies he had originally gotten for the trip!
>
> Snow came and his food ran out. He was many miles from other people and not sure of his way around. He simply stayed holed up in the van and slowly starved to death. About a week after he died a pair of hunters came across the bus and found his dead body.
>
> A bestselling book was written about what happened. It was a good read and showed a troubled soul who thought he could find himself in the wilds of Alaska. I'm not sure to what extent he was "an idiot" for not planning ahead or simply had a unconcious death wish. He left messages behind saying he did want to live. Some folks just don't have any common sense I guess!
Actually, readers of the book would see that he did not actually die of
starvation directly, but innoctuously poisoned himself with an alkaloid
from a wild plant that was very similar to one he regularly lived on in
the wild in the southern 48. The alkaloid prevented his system from
digesting anything, so no matter how much he ate (and he shot a moose
and ate many wild plants, so he was not starving) it didn't get into his
system.
This young guy, dont remember his name, did not come up to Alaska after
graduating college, but after several years of living in the wilderness
in the lower 48. While many did think he was politically naive and
emotionally immature, he was a skilled outdoorsman and knew how to keep
himself alive.
-- TANSTAAFLMike Lorrey
"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." --- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
"A person who wants a society that is both safe and free, wants what never has been, and what never will be." --- Thomas Jefferson
"It's a Republic, if you can keep it..." --- Benjamin Franklin
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