Oh, no you don't. That was facetious, to say you would cop out along those lines. You answered two other posters without suggesting it was in error. Own your inexplicable and gratuitous race-baiting.
Now, what does him being white have to do with anything?
It was nothing; please just ignore it.
No, you didn't. Do you have any idea how survivalists work? They specifically want to go into it with little more than the shirts on their backs and the most bare minimum of equipment and supplies. that's what survivalism is all about. It's not freaking Club Med; they want to test their ability to survive with very little.
Strictly speaking, Survivalism is not about "a bare minimum of equipment and supplies"; certainly some of them go that route, but not enough of them, I think, to warrant describing that approach as what survivalism is "all about". Survivalism is a subculture based largely around the expectation of near-future societal collapse as a result of manmade or natural catastrophe; to "prep" for that inevitable occasion, survivalists more typically amass
large stores of ammunition, food, clothing, fuels, and other supplies, and often build elaborate shelters or "bunkers" in which to hide and defend themselves from the presumed predatory armed gangs of people they expect society to devolve into after "the end". Although many of them do choose to learn primitive wilderness survival techniques as part of the "just-in-case" philosophy that defines their lifestyle, and some do go on extremely primitive camping trips to practice, survivalists
in general have no intention of escaping to the woods to deliberately make do with as little as possible. Quite the opposite, they tend to want their lives after-the-end to be as comfortable as possible for as long as possible, and the primitive skills are only there for when the stockpiles inevitably run out.
I think I know what you
mean to describe when you say "survivalist", though I'm not sure what the term really is. The kind of off-the-grid-ism that for instance Ted Kaczynski went for; a here-and-now rejection of "the system" and society, as opposed to survivalism's being centered on preparing for a future event and only planning on "bugging out" when that day arrives. But nonetheless, I have seen little evidence to convince me that this guy is that kind of person. He decided to live far away from town yeah; but that's where the "primitive" part ends; he certainly does not appear to have done so with "little more" than a single change of clothing and a bare minimum of equipment and supplies. He did not hack together a shelter out of branches and stones or build a primitive log cabin; he purchased a prefabricated plastic building on an established site and - unwisely - used it for what was intended to be a permanent "house". He had a modest store of ammunition and a couple of firearms but nothing he has said gives the impression that he was hunting for food; and he certainly was not practicing agrarian homesteading techniques nor was he eating MREs or rehydrated meals in typical "survivalist" fashion, but rather had a substantial pantry of normal grocery-store food and received (or intended to receive) regular resupply by air service; indeed, after most of his food supply was destroyed in the fire he still managed to have what he determined to be a month's rations left over. He did not build campfires and construct lean-tos to catch the heat; he had a wood-burning stove and was comfortable enough while using it to sleep in long underpants and a t-shirt. He had modern clothes and ate commercial food and had no qualms using such modern technology as was practical in the circumstances (even complaining at one point about the "crappy" quality of his cellphone), which argues against that kind of anti-social and Luddite philosophy that underpins modern reclusivism (a term of convenience that I have just made up).
If this guy was near the point of hypothermia, he may have desperately made that fire in delirium that he does not even remember. To dismiss him as a fool shows a lack of empathy for a survivalist mindset. He brought a phone, too, showing that he was prepared for a Hail Mary if needed, assuming it was within tower reach and he had a solar charger (he was 20 miles from a town, IIRC).
The hypothermia made-the-fire-desperately-in-a-delirium hypothesis does not seem to match the man's own description of the night of the accident which he seems to remember with some clarity; again, he was warm enough that night to have been able to sleep in his underwear. But you seem to want this both ways; you assert he was a well-prepared rough-and-tumble "survivalist", as evidently proven by his ability to survive for three weeks (with a wood stove and a month's worth of food) after his tarp-house burned down, but he was also so horrendously bad at it that he wound up deliriously hypothermic to the point that he burned down his only shelter without knowing he had done so. If he had a "survivalist mindset" inasmuch as he had a dream to live that way, but lacked the skill to back it up with, then yes "fool" works just fine.
The phone that he had brought with him was not a backup plan. He communicated with his family in Utah with it on at least a weekly basis; he lamented during his interview that it turned out to be "crappy" on account of its battery life being considerably poor even when fully charged, which he stated kept him from using it as often as he would've liked. But he
was able to charge it, meaning he had access to electricity. You have made a declarative statement that he had a solar charger; but this isn't stated in any of the articles, and the helicopter footage shows two separate antenna masts among the remains of the outbuilding as well as power lines at the site; given how notoriously unreliable and gimmicky solar phone-chargers are known to be even in the brightest sunlight (in cloudy high-latitude winter conditions they would almost certainly be useless), it is more plausible that he had and used an electric generator.
So no; I'm going to tentatively reject the "recluse living off the land" hypothesis; while he certainly put himself in a position where the comforts and conveniences of modern life weren't immediately accessible, it's pretty clear he didn't intend to deprive himself of them completely.
