The Mystery of Deceased Hiker ‘Mostly Harmless’ Is at Long Last Solved | Hacker News Reader

The Mystery of Deceased Hiker ‘Mostly Harmless’ Is at Long Last Solved

adventure-journal.com

180 pointsrdegges37 comments

Hope this dude found what he was looking for. I think a lot of people can see themselves in this story. The desire to walk off and be alone and sure potentially to just give up and die somewhere. If he really just sat down and decided to starve or was so deeply depressed as to be unable to see he was slowly dying he had some deep issues that we'll probably never know the extent of.

Any time something like this comes out it reminds me, especially during the holiday to season, to reach out intentionally to people I care about and make sure they know I've got their back.

Just last week I did some sleuthing and found out an old friend had been incarcerated for 15 years for a drink driving crash that killed someone. I knew his family life was a mess and even though we hadn't talked in 10+ years I wrote him a letter to let him know someone was at least thinking about him.

Whatever happened to this guy his story reminds us to take care of each other.

I am a fan of long-distance cycle touring, (and cycling in general)and the number of times that I've almost been hit (AND been a victim of a hit & run) is too high to count. I've done things like place a laminated info-sheet with my name, address, DOB, blood-type, etc. in my panniers in the hope that it would help identify the body if it ever came to that. I realized however that emergency responders probably won't find it, or won't look at it if they do find it.

So I got a tattoo on my chest with name, DOB, blood-type and Drivers License number.

These are 2 pictures, one showing a bare-loadout (activity: grocery shopping)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/kq3rhXV6daFDtSVL8

And this is a a medium touring load-out:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/fXgfsRWf8RCLPeTN8

I think you could see why I assume a cop might never find emergency information.

I’d love to do a long distance cycling tour but the fear of being hit and killed is what will prevent me from truly enjoying it.

Yeah same here. Just this week, the CFO of Sports Basement was among a group of riders struck and killed by a box truck driver who was high on meth. They were riding in a group with a support car and it still didn’t help. Just awful.

I've done a lot of day cycling as well as bike touring. There's certainly risk in touring but it's not easy to disengage it from cycling in general.

The practical problem in touring is you may end up on roads with (a) no shoulder, (b) heavy traffic, and (c) drivers who are not expecting to see bicycles. Oregon highway 140 from Klamath Falls to Medford was one of the scarier roads I've ever toured on. Stuff you might think is a death trap actually isn't. Logging trucks are terrifying for bicyclists, but by and large the drivers are really good and tend to pay close attention to the road. I'm more worried about the old fella driving his RV.

I was riding down the West coast a few years ago, met a cycling friend who I rode with a couple days. An RV passed us (my friend was behind me) and he said that the step ladder or whatever thing on the side of the RV was unhitched and came within inches of hitting me. I usually ride alone; who knows how many close calls I've had like that. Gives me the chills just thinking about it.

I've had similar experiences. As you say there are more close calls than you realize.

Still, I love being on the bike with full touring gear. It's a hell of an adventure.

Provided that you have wide tires, appropriately low gearing on the bike, and no strict schedule, then you can choose unpaved routes across much of the world where you will almost never see other cars. Or, even if there are occasional cars, the terrain would force them to move at so slow a speed they don’t pose a danger.

I did a solo cross-USA ride in 2007, Maryland to Calif. Some roads were rather hairy and frightening. I've also bicycle commuted to my work across various jobs over 30 years, from Philly to San Diego and points in between (not religiously in all weather but probably 30% of the time). I tell folks my most important safety item for bicycling is my rear-view mirror, I don't leave home without it. I don't mean one of those little things attached to the helmet, I mean a nice stable one attached to the handlebars. You may see me on occasion (especially on hot days) bicycling without a helmet, I almost never use my lights, but you'll never see me on a bicycle without a rear view mirror. I've never had to ditch because of what I saw coming at me, but many times I pull farther onto the shoulder or even stop and pause given what I saw coming from behind.

You can see my 2007 X-country day-by-day diary here: https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=1mr&doc_id=2579&v=LL

Yep, though I think a safety vest beats the mirror for me in terms of safety.

My ultimate bike survival hack is this reflexive "hand" mounted on the bike, extending half a metre towards the road: it makes you appear wider, and were it to be hit it'd just told.

I would suggest doing it in Europe where many countries have dedicated cycle paths that are separated from the main roads. Much less risky, much more enjoyable.

The US military way from the Vietnam War on is two metal IDs (dog tags) tied through shoelaces and around the neck. Tattoo is probably more of a surety for positive identification except certain in cases like fire where the metal tag is more likely to make it through the situation than skin or laminated paper as well.

You can get dog tags made up for like $5 or so online probably...pretty cheap and effective.

This is such an obvious and great idea. Especially with the information posted by the EMT. Great suggestion.

I retired from EMS a couple of years ago and have run on several cyclists (and pedestrians) hit by cars (and trucks (and a train)). I advise you to carry your ID in a pocket on your person, if your cycling clothes have pockets. The first place law enforcement or EMS looks for ID is in a pocket, especially a wallet.

While it is standard practace to "trauma strip" a patient by cutting their clothing off, the simple fact is that if a patient is clearly DOA (say due to massive head trauma), the EMTs may not do anything other than check for a pulse. Particularly if the accident happened on a desolate stretch of highway that took the ambulance an hour to reach. If there is a chance the person is still alive, it is not uncommon to place EKG pads on their chest, but some EMTs just slip them on under the shirt, rather than expose the chest. This is especially common if the patient is a different gender than the first responder, or if the assessment is being done roadside, rather than in the ambulance. Part of this is that EMTs are trained to disturb crime scenes as little as possible, so as to not to disrupt police investigations.

Unfortunately most of the time I'm not wearing shorts that have pockets. I do take your advice to heart though. Maybe dog-tags/medic-alter necklace might be a good idea too.

Maybe you should? (Wear shorts that have pockets).

This is the kind of trade off that people who get really into something make, they don’t put on a pair of running shorts that weigh 2-3 oz. and slip an ID in there, to avoid the extra weight. I get it, I have some hobbies that I’m pretty serious about — but the point of the above EMT’s post is to think through what would happen in the event of the worst. If I got hit by a bus, whether or not I was dead, I’d want someone to be able to call my mom pretty fast. That’s hard when you’re optimizing for the version of the experience where everything goes well.

One thing I recommend is getting an extra disposable ID to carry while biking or running. It would be a pain to replace my driver’s license but my NYC ID is just a matter of filling out a form online.

You ought to consider wearing shorts with pockets, then. Personally, as someone who spends at least half of every year traveling the world by bicycle, I find full-length expedition trousers like the Fjällräven Abisko to be the best clothing option. They are durable enough to withstand all the wear and tear of cycling all day and then walking through the bush to set up a campsite at day’s end. Plus they just protect you from the sun – wearing shorts while cycle-touring is way too much UV exposure.

Cyclist here. Sibling comments are suggesting to wear shorts with pockets. That's a big nope for me; anything there will be an annoyance at best, or worse, cause chafing.

Cycling jerseys have pockets in back on the waist, which aren't annoying and, bonus, are accessible while pedaling. Another alternative is a fanny pack -- as long as you don't overload it, it can be quite convenient

Former cyclist. I used an old leather business card case to keep ID, a credit card, and some cash in one of my back jersey pockets. These days I'd look at some of the small aluminum cases that are for a similar purpose. My only cycling shorts that had pockets were for casual mountain biking.

Thanks for your comment. How useful are medic alert bracelets for this purpose? I hate carrying anything on me when I run, even my driver's license, so I got a medic alert bracelet a few years ago. I sometimes wonder if it'll really do any good.

Medic alert bracelets are probably effective, though over my entire career, I remembr seeing less than a dozen.

When I was involved in a cycling-related incident, I had to specifically ask the paramedics to carry my traditional bike onto the ambulance. They probably wouldn't have if I needed critical care. A recumbent bike is much larger and the odds are much higher you will be separated from it.

A tattoo seems a bit extreme but I imagine that it's something that you'll never forget to bring.

Cyclist, tourer here. Is the recumbent by choice or necessity? If the former, have you considered a more traditional frame? Recumbents are so hard to see, even if you have flags and what not.

The article tells a touching story but it leaves me trying to piece together_exactly_ how he died. 83lbs with money and food in the tent. Did he just selectively starve himself as a symptom of some form of depression?

I guess what I'm morbidly curious about is the ability to sit among food and starve yourself to death.

I apologize if this sounds insensitive. I don't intend it to be so.

This might be grossly miscalculated, but IIRC you lose 1~2 pounds per day of fasting. At 2 pounds per day, he fasted for 35 days to lose 70 pounds. If he was alone all that time, he had to get up and drink liquids periodically, or he would have died way before 35 days. It seems like he decided to go ascetically, sokushinbutsu style. The medication found in his stomach reinforces this speculation.

He was missing for 90 days, but his body was in better shape than the humid summer would suggest, maybe he fasted for most of those 90 days, as sitting immobile would have saved calories and water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu

The mystery was heavily discussed (>300 comments) here earlier (before this development in the story): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24981786

Can be interesting to see how the speculation there was correct or not.

As far as I can tell almost all of it was wrong.

I feel like my comment aged pretty well.

> It's possible that his family recognized him and just hasn't bothered to say anything publicly. Maybe he burned bridges in his previous life and folks would rather let it go than deal with interviews, etc.

From the article:

> His family has not responded to requests for comment

> “There’s a reason no one reported him missing,” said a former roommate in Baton Rouge

> an intelligent and troubled man who often struggled with personal relationships, particularly with his family

I wouldn't necessarily read too much into that. Sadly there have apparently been similar cases where family members have been harassed by anonymous internet users for not reporting their adult family members missing. Apparently law enforcement is now giving families a heads up during the identification process and allowing them to retain some level of anonymity. I've seen this specifically cited as the reason "Lyle Stevik"[0]'s name was never made public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle_Stevik

Your comment speculates that they intentionally chose to withhold information. The article tells a different story of someone who had enough people who knew and cared about him, but who also knew him as someone who lived in such a way that due to it not being unusual to go long stretches without contact with others, his disappearance and death could easily go unnoticed. And of course, when people did realize the dead hiker was theirs, they came forward. It's the whole reason this article was able to be written in the first place. These are two different pictures that aren't especially compatible. (It's bad enough to participate in those types of speculation fests, but even worse that at the moment the fog lifts and it should be approached with a newly sober attitude, you instead show up to pimp out your (wrong) theory.)

Being wrong most of the time in this cases is normal. Speculation is based in the limited set of data available at a given point. As the data slowly improves, the hypothesis will be replaced by better explanations. Is an iterative process.

If we see for example an old fainted abdominal scar, without more additional data, the correct explanation would be to assume that it was made (or closed) by a surgeon. This will be the correct explanation in, lets say, 80% of the real cases. An attack or an accident would be the next logical candidates. People deliberately shooting themselves in the belly are really rare events so we should not choose this explanation in the first iterations without discarding the more probable candidates first.

After discarding the other options, a case of mental issues and anorexia, maybe followed by eating too much [1] in a too fragile body would explain it

[1] despite his extreme condition, he was eating and drinking, as the autopsy reveals.

... but after discarding the other options, there is still another remaining candidate that links together and explains practically all little strange details that seemed out of place in this history, and this candidate is prostate cancer.

Wow. I was at University of Louisiana in 94 and vividly remember a specific group of people who would spend hours playing muds on those SparcStation 1's.

Interesting story. Given this is a tech forum, this page has a link to hiker's scanned notebook with the code in it, just in case anyone else is curious.

https://www.colliersheriff.org/news/sworn-statement

This is a case that has interested me for a while.. Photos definitely look the same.

It seems a bit odd that Collier County sheriff's office haven't been able to confirm this yet, though?

The sheriff's office has much higher requirements, including next-of-kin notifications, etc (and it appears said kin would want them to stay quiet).

Once they can verify foul play wasn't involved, official interest can peter out.

How heartening and amazing it is about human beings the lengths we will go to rescue a total stranger from dying unknown in mystery, and lay his/her body and life to rest with some sense of resolution.

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