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Comment by jariel | Hacker News Reader

Young men don't die for 'no reason'. It's odd that they couldn't find some cause of death, I assumed that in 2020 we'd be able to make a rough estimate. If there's no obvious foul play then statistically the obvious one would be suicide, but that should narrow only to a few specific things. How many ways are there for one to 'just die' while lying in a tent.

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Foraging in the wild for food or water can have deadly consequences. For example, McCandless ate the wrong kind of berries.[0] Or the time when three campers scooped up more than just water in their coffee pot.[1] And don't underestimate the effects of Giardia.[2] That ubiquitous parasite could easily weaken and lead to the demise of a solo-hiker.

[0]https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-chris-mccand... [1]http://www.realclear.com/discovery/2014/06/27/tiny_newt_pois... [2]https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/giardia/index.html

He had foot and $3500 in the tent...

He’s getting back to nature, people don’t just eat wild food when their other food runs out

It's rare but it does happen. Sometimes the heart can just stop beating such as in SADS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_arrhythmic_death_syndro... https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17522-sudden-...

The article says he weighed 86 lbs, so it sounds like he died of starvation or malnutrition.

Which again is strange, since he was found with $3500 on him.

And there was food nearby.

On the other hand, on the show Alone a few seasons back the medical staff had to pull someone who had weeks worth of smoked fish saved up yet was risking serious organ damaging due to malnutrition. Even though he had plenty of food he was simply rationing too strictly and had lost over 20% of his bodyweight in a matter of weeks. Point being, it's possible to put oneself in danger despite having the resources to avoid the risks.

Alone was fascinating to binge on netflix. The winner of the season I watched had a whole elk to eat and was still losing dangerous amounts of weight over the course of the season. I would have never guessed that he would have struggled so much with such bounty.

https://www.colliersheriff.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=94010

I wonder if he was fasting or starving himself and ran into unexpected trouble. For example pg 17 has some detailed nutritional data on something, maybe an idea for a protein bar?.

It looks like he was developing some sort of nutritional "wafer." I remember when Rob Rhinehart was in the early days of developing soylent, he commented that some of the raw nutritional powders he was sourcing for the mixture could be quite harmful if taken in the wrong dosage. Maybe he made himself sick with a bad batch of wafers?

I'm not sure the article said...is it known how long he was dead for before the body was discovered? After enough time has passed, it becomes impossible to reliably determine whether certain factors played a role in the death. Underlying health issues and infection can be hidden by decomposition.

I don't think it was in the article, but I read somewhere that they believe, based upon the little external decomposition, that the body was found perhaps a day after he passed.

"Young men dying for no reason" is not totally uncommon. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocarditis#Epidemiology.

Aneurisms, strokes, toxins (spider/snake bites). The first is pretty quick, but the latter two could leave someone sufficiently weak or incapacitated to move and care for themselves, but still survive long enough to become emaciated.

Aneurism would show up in the autopsy, right? And snake bite in the toxo report?

Not sure about stroke.

Well, I'm not a doctor or medical professional of any sort so I honestly don't know. I was just presenting things that could lead to an apparently healthy young-ish man suddenly dropping dead for no apparent reason.

I didn't pick them totally randomly, though. I had a rationale: He seemed emaciated, which suggests something left him immobile for an extended period since he had food at hand. This made me think of strokes and snake/spider bites. The former could leave you permanently immobile, but alive. Without assistance he'd have died within a few days. The latter, depending on the sort, could leave you immobile and in great pain for a day or so, with a chance to recover and survive. But if he'd already become sufficiently dehydrated he may not have had the energy or wherewithal to care for himself.

There are other conditions which could lead to a similar outcome. Heat exhaustion, for instance, may not kill outright. But could leave you in a state where you need assistance and can't recover on your own.

Whether they'd show up on an autopsy, I don't know. But also per the article it was a while before he was found. So given a sufficient level of decay, it's possible these conditions wouldn't show up or would be sufficiently hard to detect (remember, the sheriff's didn't even want to pay $5k for the DNA testing, he wasn't a crime victim so their budget wasn't paying for a lot of analysis).

Bothrops or Vipers distroy blood or tissues. Would made unmistakable swelling or extensive inner bleeding.

Micrurus bites could be not so easy to detect but would not explain the weight loss.

And liver and kidneys were clean

Florida is like the US's Australia. There are so many things that can kill you including a number of poisonous species of spiders and snakes. It's not a good place to hike alone.

All of this would show up in an autopsy. Snake bites would leave visible puncture wounds. There are for all practical purposes no deadly spiders native to the US. Tissue necrosis from a brown recluse would be visible, and a black widow would leave neurotoxic signs that a decent autopsy would have found, as well as possibly the toxin itself. (Hardly anybody dies from those two spider bites, and those two are the only medically significant spiders in the US.)

How long would they remain detectable by an autopsy in a county that didn't even want to spend $5k on DNA testing? How long was the body decaying before discovered. I do agree about the necrotizing venoms. But consider a black widow. You could be incapacitated, rendered helpless for a day or so, and become sufficiently dehydrated to be essentially delirious after recovering from the bite proper. That would leave you in a state that, without assistance, you'd not die from the bite, but from starvation/dehydration several days later. How long is the toxin in the body?

Depends on the state of decomposition as to what they would find in the autopsy, but I would generally agree that invenomation is unlikely as it wouldn't explain the emaciation (they could be coincidental). Found in a tent in FL... I don't want to imagine that smell. It's also possible they found anomalies or issues but were not able to tie them to the death (I imagine the autopsy is confidential).

> All of this would show up in an autopsy

Not necessarily. The toxin could have been ingested, especially if it was something man-made rather than natural. Many would have left recognizable signs, but others you'd have to know what signs to look for and/or do a specific test. Whatever it is might even have cleared his system (it takes a while to become that emaciated) but not before doing some kind of neurological/motor damage.

It would take a fairly long time for even a 130 person to get into the 80s. If you can't move or care for yourself, you'd be dead in that tent in less than 3 days.

True. I saw another poster commenting on a case where a person was being too strict in rationing their (plentiful) food. Which perhaps makes more sense here. If he'd already lost a lot of weight and stamina as a result of that, could've laid down and died shortly after.

Rationing could be an issue, if he had reason to ration. Maybe if he got lost deeper within the park and was on his way out. Depends on how much food he had with him, when he was previously buying supplies, etc.

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