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Comment by poulpy123 | Hacker News Reader

I don't say I identify with him but I have some respect and even admiration for McCandless, because I think I understand his feelings from what I've read and watched about him, but I don't have the same feeling for Treadwell though

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They were both ill-prepared and harmed their environment. Anybody who gets help for their mental health problems deserves more admiration.

To be fair to McCandles, who was generally extremely foolish in what he did too, at least his idiocy and lack of really basic preparation didn't get anyone else killed.

Yeah, but someone had to handle his corpse. I mean, SAR people can get kinda used to it, but it's still going to ruin your day a little.

We should make it illegal to die

Civilized people walk into the incinerator alive.

I'd rather take my chance at being renewed in carousel than be terminated as a runner.

someone is going to have to handle everyones

Retrieving him was a choice. This attitude that we have to rescue everybody from the backcountry whether dead or alive is silly. We could just leave the fools out there. At the very least, then we wouldn't have to put up with all these arguments about what you should or shouldn't do in the backcountry because of the externalities incurred when SAR gets involved.

Nah, McCandless deserves no respect or admiration at all. He was arrogant, and he died, and someone else had to drag his decomposed corpse out of the bus.

At least he didn't get his girlfriend eaten by a bear I suppose.

> someone else had to drag his decomposed corpse out of the bus.

That will happen with all of us probably, whether it's a bus, a bathtub, or a senior living apartment. When I read Into the Wild I had the same feelings that this arrogant idiot deserved to die.

Now that I'm older and I can feel the heat death of me and everything I've touched I'm starting to second guess that feeling. We're all arrogant, ignorant, and selfish, and dying is going to most likely hurt no matter how it happens. Why not be a fool?

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