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Fool survives for three weeks in Alaskan woods after burning tarp-dwelling down

theprestige said:
Given the number of square miles in Alaska... hrm.

There's about 134,700 bears of all species in Alaska

There's about 663,300 square miles in Alaska.

I'm having trouble braining this morning, and can't figure out if that's five bears per square mile, or one bear every five square miles. Probably one bear every five square miles.

A radius of five miles, originating at his campsite, sweeps out an area of almost 80 square miles. So that would be about... sixteen bears within say a ten mile walk of his camp?

Assuming an even distribution of spherical bears across a frictionless Alaska in a vacuum, of course.
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There isn't an even distribution of bears in Alaska, or anywhere else.

How many polar bears are within a ten mile walk of his camp?
 
William Parcher said:
There isn't an even distribution of bears in Alaska, or anywhere else.

How many polar bears are within a ten mile walk of his camp?
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A trick question! The polar bears might be within ten miles, but not accessible by walking alone: they could be perched in trees, as bears often are. The question should be "how many polar bears are within a ten mile walk or climb or combination thereof of his camp?" Although that doesn't account for flying, hovering, or burrowing polar bears. Also we should add "round to the nearest billion" for convenience.
 
theprestige said:
Given the number of square miles in Alaska... hrm.

There's about 134,700 bears of all species in Alaska

There's about 663,300 square miles in Alaska.

I'm having trouble braining this morning, and can't figure out if that's five bears per square mile, or one bear every five square miles. Probably one bear every five square miles.

A radius of five miles, originating at his campsite, sweeps out an area of almost 80 square miles. So that would be about... sixteen bears within say a ten mile walk of his camp?

Assuming an even distribution of spherical bears across a frictionless Alaska in a vacuum, of course.
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Bears have a very sensitive sense of smell and can smell food from a distance of a few miles. So he doesn't just have to worry about the chance of random encounters, but of bears actively smelling his food/cooking and coming to investigate.
 
Checkmite said:
But I'm not willing to call it a precaution he took either. In his post-rescue interviews he used language that very clearly conveyed that he had hoped his relatives would set "something" in motion to try and found out what happened to him after communication ended; not that he confidently assumed they would, or that they were instructed to do so after a certain amount of time. In fact, I would use exactly these circumstances to contradict you: if he had been responsible, he would have positively set an arrangement that after exactly this much time incommunicado they should contact so-and-so. And certainly in less time than three weeks! But clearly no such arrangement existed, forcing him to "hope". According to the release, he didn't even figure on them calling rescue authorities as such - he supposed they would have contacted his air supply outfit.

He is lucky that they only waited 3 weeks. If they waited much longer, he might have run out of food, and if that happened he would be dead.
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That's valid. It's not entirely clear to me what sort of communication or planning existed between him and his friends/relatives back home. Sometimes that's assumed rather than articulated clearly (which isn't a good idea, but is still better than nothing). If I tell someone "Hey, I'm going for a hike on such and such a mountain, be back tonight", even though we didn't make any plans for what to do if I don't get back, I've taken more precaution than if I hadn't told anyone.

But you are right that making clear plans about what length of time to expect regular contact and what to do if such contact isn't had is a much better idea.

My view is that I don't know all the details of either his preparation or his mindset and what he was trying to achieve. Some people go into something knowing the risks and trying to overcome them, others are just reckless and foolish. Often there is a combination of both. I'm not comfortable judging exactly where on that spectrum this man falls, though I think you've made a good case that at least some of his actions fall more on the reckless side.
 
Roboramma said:
Bears have a very sensitive sense of smell and can smell food from a distance of a few miles. So he doesn't just have to worry about the chance of random encounters, but of bears actively smelling his food/cooking and coming to investigate.
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It's a random distribution, not a random encounter. It's the bears within smelling distance that are the factor.
 
Checkmite said:
He was just rescued after relatives in Utah, where he lived before traveling to Alaska in September, asked police to perform a welfare check (the man is white) as they hadn't heard from him in "weeks".



It's hard to choose where to begin with this. Let's start with the "home" itself I suppose. The man describes it as a "Quonset hut", but Quonset huts aren't made out of tarps, so what he actually seems to be describing is some kind of tarp-shed or carport - something never intended for long-term human habitation at any rate - and evidently he had decided despite his admitted unfamiliarity with the area that this would be a sufficient permanent home to pass the Alaskan winter in. Next, he decided that having a fire going inside this tarp-structure, his only source of shelter for 20 miles, ought to be A-OK.

Not actually knowing anything about the area - possibly including such details as "which direction to walk to find people" - when his phone was destroyed in the fire his only option was to ration the surviving remnants of his food and "hope someone (from Utah) would call for a welfare check".

I am glad he was rescued and I am sad that his dog was not lucky enough to survive this grand mistake; but what we seem to have here is another Christopher McCandless situation. This man had the sense to pack food with him at least (although perhaps not much more sense than that), but he very nearly lost it anyway.
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Tarp Quonset hut type structures aren't uncommon to such settings.

https://www.aks.com/military-division/aks-xp-shelter-system/

I've seen them used by many agencies, not just recreationalists.
 
theprestige said:
Global warming has opened the Northwest Passage?
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I was really hoping the unindented consequences of global warming would be more positive. All I got was Fosters and foundation damage due to thawing permafrost.*




*Since you insist on pretending this is all happening in Alaska.
 
Dr. Keith said:
I was really hoping the unindented consequences of global warming would be more positive. All I got was Fosters and foundation damage due to thawing permafrost.*




*Since you insist on pretending this is all happening in Alaska.
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If it's happening in Australia, then the dude who thought he was in Alaska has way bigger problems than burning down his Quonset hut. His rescuers may be in a bit of a pickle as well.
 
theprestige said:
If it's happening in Australia, then the dude who thought he was in Alaska has way bigger problems than burning down his Quonset hut. His rescuers may be in a bit of a pickle as well.
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Especially with all the forest fires.
 
Checkmite said:
He was just rescued after relatives in Utah, where he lived before traveling to Alaska in September, asked police to perform a welfare check (the man is white) as they hadn't heard from him in "weeks".
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The man was enjoying a meal of fried chicken and smoking pot (he was black)...
The girl was returning home from a National Honor Society get-together (she was Asian)...
The man had been living illegally in the US for four years (he was Latino)...
The motorist had suffered a flat tire and had no clue how to use a jack (she was a woman)...
 
bluesjnr said:
...... really? That was written in the original article you read?
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Of course not. He meant he was struck by the poignancy of reading 'the man was white' somewhere, and copied it for his tattoo artist. Then he had a seizure which caused him to drop it in the end of the sentence where he happened to have empty parentheses. Reflecting on the odds of the coincidental grammatical correctness from this fluke was even more moving than the original cut-and-paste, so he left it for posterity.
 
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