https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless#Death
Turns out no one knew that some of the plants he was eating were poisonous until after he died
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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Every bad situation leading up to his trip into Alaska, someone bailed him out of the situation. There was no one at the bus in Alaska to bail him out.
I agree with some of Chris's viewpoints. Materialism is stupid. Buying shit for the sake of acquiring shit is stupid. Not that you should never have anything sentimental, but those kinds of things are tied to people or events.
But yeah, guy kinda lost me when he decided to camp in the Alaskan bush with no survival skills, no experience dressing a carcass, no foraging skills, and very little equipment. As others pointed out, he went there to die, then changed his mind when it was too late. A rational, non-suicidal person would have spent months preparing for this outing.
Basically everyone who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge and lived (only ~2% of jumpers) regretted doing it before they hit the water. Chris jumped from the bridge and changed his mind halfway down. Going to Alaska wasn't some brave choice to be free. You can do that anywhere in the Lower 48. It was a cry for help masked as a revolutionary idea.
Basically everyone who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge and lived (only ~2% of jumpers) regretted doing it before they hit the water.
My teacher in biology back in school explained that this was due to hormones being released something something close to death something something. In essence, it was not a "choice" to regret jumping, but rather a biological response. So you would regret it wether you wanted to or not, so to say.
^Can't^ ^give^ ^you^ ^a^ ^source^ ^since^ ^I^ ^don't^ ^have^ ^one.^
I have never seen Bojack Horseman but maybe I should!
It's gud
It's relly gud.
I think it would have been the GOAT if they ended it with the view from halfway down
Bojack dying alone after pushing away everyone in his life yet again would've been the perfect ending to the depression show
Idk, I really like the way it ended.
I get your point, but instead of a horrifying (but somewhat deserved ending) we got a very "real" ending.
I remember watching the movie and then immediately thinking, “Why the fuck did I just watch that? And why the fuck did anyone make it? This is not a story that needs to be given attention.”
Idk, I always thought of it as a modern take on Walden . A cautionary tale for those folks who get really hyped up about a life in the bush who forget the crucial fact that Thoreau was on a friend's property and got more meaningful support from people than the book really lets on.
One of those "Yes, lots of people feel like you do, AP English guy, but don't think you'll make it on vibes alone and not die like a dumbass" kind of things. Appreciated it differently at 16 and 20.
I was kinda like this, ~~adoring~~ fetishizing a life free from material constraints, wearing busted old shoes, etc. Then I worked at a homeless church and that's when I realized two things: first, I was basically cosplaying as poor; second, every homeless person I talked to basically thought it was stupid to not have things when you otherwise could have them.
The clearest was this one time I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat at one of the breakfast tables with guys. They looked at me like "you're not eating?" And I said that I wasn't hungry and that I didn't want to take a plate away from someone who might've needed it. They chastised me heavily. "You could have got your plate and then shared it with all of us, then!" I realized that I had the luxury to turn down food. They saw my torn up shoes as a kind of affectation (which they were, but I couldn't admit it at the time).
It's turned me off of a fair bit of folk music, tbh. This whole "get rid of your stuff and be free" sentiment. Yes, reject capitalistic materialism. But the discipline is in having enough. The person with nothing can be just as obsessed with wealth as the person who hoards it.
You read Walden once
And now you're obsessed
With a life where you don't have to try
To be liked, or to be loved
Man it's ~~aweso~~-dumb, yeah I know
And I really think you
Earned the right to go and leave
And never talk to human beings
Being that they're all insane, and
Fucking up this world we've made
You should just get up and go
Just quit your job, leave your phone
Or jump into the great unknown
Or stay at home, it's all in your head
It's all in my head
- Hobo Johnson
I felt like that, too. I guess people glorifying him are missing the point entirely, and it is close to the ‘we finally announce our very own torment nexus implementation’ level of missing a point, imo
The movie glorified him and his death. It isn't portrayed as needless or reckless. His death in the movie is framed as being a spiritual awakening, him finally leaving the material world behind and achieving enlightenment and that dying that way is something to aspire to. It was a dumb movie with hot people in places with exceptional natural beauty with a sloppy message which itself undercuts for mass appeal.
Didn't they have to deconstruct the bus he lived in or something because other idiots went there? People who are really into that movie are so weird in my experience
"This dude just killed a whole ass moose and let it all go to waste?"
I remember watching it, liking it, and thinking thats it? Never watching it again
Yeah they should've just made the soundtrack.
This sounds like the most beautiful deconstruction of Ayn Rand I've ever heard.
Mmmm... Checks out
From my understanding, all the locals where this happened think this dude is a colossal dumbass.
I think his legacy is slowly changing though, and people are less impressed by his antics today than when it happened.
He wasn't a dumbass, he was just suicidal.
He first left his privileged life, then his family and friends, then society. Typical steps of a suicidal person preparing for the end.
If he actually wanted to keep living, he could have left the bus and simply walked back, 3 days before his provisions ran out (it takes 6 hours to get to the trailhead).
But he stayed, even though he didn't have the skills to live off the land. He accepted death, until it came close, then he regretted his decision and tried to get out.
To me, this is the simplest and most plausible explanation.
Somewhat related but it’s odd to me how many people I’ve met that feel so strongly negatively about him. Maybe as a herd instinct to warn others?
He wasn’t exceptionally selfish as he had no serious responsibilities.
On June 18, 2020, various government agencies coordinated with an Alaska Army National Guard training mission to remove the bus, deemed a public safety issue after at least 15 people had to be rescued and at least two people died while attempting to cross the Teklanika River to reach the bus.[
This BS is part of the reason, I think. Not only is he a dumbass, but he inspires other dumbasses to be the best dumbass they can.
Natural selection working as intended?
Several Darwin Awards nominees
stupid is as stupid does
Not sure the hate is directed at him, but at people glorifying him
I think he was stranded because of a flooded river though? From memory there was a reason he couldn't just walk out.
The reason was him refusing to bring a map, which would have shown a bridge over the river less than a mile away.
And not scouting out his environment either, or even trying a detour along the river, or improvising a raft....
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I have a theory that his family was abusive and he learned to distrust strangers and became convinced that he needed to always stand on his own two feet because nobody would ever truly have his back. I've been through a similar phase in my life caused by neglect and abuse throughout my childhood and adolescence. Could be totally wrong ofc but it seems to fit for me
Edit: Apparently his sister confirmed this in a memoir she wrote called The Wild Truth. There's an interesting article on the NPR website about it:
She and her brother Chris grew up with a volatile, viciously abusive father who made their weak-willed yet hyper-competent mother both his victim and his accomplice.
This is a really similar situation to mine. Took many years of therapy to get to where I am, but I'll probably never really fully heal from it.
Is that theory based on a hunch you had, or is it maybe based on the memoir that his sister wrote where she says so?
It was a hunch, I didn't know about any memoir, what's it called?
The Wild Truth
Dang, thanks so much for mentioning that, it's lowkey crazy to have this theory I've kinda kept to myself be confirmed all these years later. I'll edit my original comment
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How do you manage to starve in a heated school bus literally on a trail, a few hours walk from a tourist lodge in the direction you came from?
By being a fucking moron. He was out of food and weak, and by the time a thought sparked in his brain, the small stream he crossed on his way there was a big river, because of snow melt.
Anyone on a trail would know that, because they're not fucking morons. Except for dumb entitled Chris who thought nature would just provide and that solo survival would be easy.
Men will do literally anything except get therapy
Lean meats. He was mostly eating rabbits and other small game, this is problematic since they aren't particularly nutritional by themselves. He did take down a caribou with a .22 which is impressive, but he didn't know how to cure the meat so most of it rotted away.
The term for this is protein poisoning or protein toxicity. Less formally, rabbit starvation.
He also ate plants he didn't know, which were poisonous and shut down his digestive tract.
But that was all after he made his fatal mistake, which was staying put when his actual food ran out instead of just walking back.
I thought he was already starving by the time he ate the plants out desperation. Regardless his whole situation was of his own making, especially since I've met a few guys who basically did the same thing around that time and didn't starve to death in a random spot in Alaska.
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