You may have seen the 2007 movie
or even read the 1997 book, but the real story of the
man behind Into the Wild is a lot more
twisted and confusing than you'd probably ever think. Chris McCandless' death was
far from straightforward. Rife with missteps
and miscalculations, his final fate may have been
completely out of his hands. Today we're exploring
everything that had to go wrong for Chris
McCandless to meet his fate. Before we get started,
be sure to subscribe to the Weird History Channel. Leave a comment,
and let us know what topics you would like
to hear about next. Forget the bogeyman
or Freddy Krueger. After learning about
Chris McCandless, the subject of your nightmares
is going to be potato seeds. In his 1996 book Into the
Wild, author Jack Krakauer asserts that McCandless
perished from starvation caused by consuming--
you guessed it-- poisonous potato seeds. In one of McCandless's
final journal entries he wrote, "Extremely weak. Fault of potato seeds." In his research, Krakauer
found that, based on the number of potato seeds
in the proximity of the bus, McCandless had probably been
eating poisonous wild potato plant seeds for weeks,
not just for a day or two towards the
end of his life. In Krakauer's experience,
"Wild potato plants were growing everywhere I
looked in the surrounding taiga. I filled a one-gallon bag
with more than a pound a seeds in less
than 30 minutes." But wild potato
plant seeds were not considered to be poisonous,
so the potato plant theory was dead in the water. But then, after reading a
paper by Ronald Hamilton, a metaphorical light bulb
appeared over Krakauer's head. The Hamilton paper
recalled an experiment conducted by German
forces in World War II, in which camp inmates
were slowly poisoned using a ground up legume. Their symptoms reminded
him of descriptions of McCandless's final days. So following his hunch,
Krakauer sent the seed samples to a Michigan lab. The lab results confirmed
Krakauer's hunch. The disease brought on
by this type of poisoning is called neolathyrism,
or if that's too much of a mouthful for
you, lathyrism for short. Lathyrism involved a
neurological breakdown that results in weakness,
paralysis, and ultimately loss of life. So even though his
initial reports said McCandless
died of starvation, the real answer was clearly
a little bit more complicated than that. As an able-bodied
24-year-old dude, you would think Chris was in
the best shape of his life. But that may have actually
worked against him when it came to his bad luck
with wild potato plant seeds. Remember that paper
by Ronald Hamilton we were just talking about? Well, Hamilton
based his theories on medical experiments conducted
at the Vapnyarka concentration camp during World War II. At Vapnyarka, located
in the Ukraine, prisoners were given pea
fodder in their bread to assess potential
side effects. Individuals at the
camp started limping, and within just a
few months, were so weak that they had
to crawl around the camp if they wanted to get around. The more the men ate the
worse the effects were, and there was no
way to reverse it. After World War II, scientists
used this information to explore the toxicity of
the poison Lathyris sativus. Doctor Arthur Kessler, a
doctor who was actually a prisoner at Vapnyarka,
spent the rest of his life in studying and caring for
victims of Lathyris sativus. Further study determined that,
while all individuals exposed to the toxin were
susceptible to its effects, men between the
ages of 15 and 25, especially those with
low-calorie diets, regimens of heavy
physical activity, and nutrient deficiencies
were impacted most severely. Initially the
seeds from the site were McCandless died were tested
at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and
came back negative for swainsonine,
an alkaloid poison. It was only after Krakauer
came into the picture that more seeds were analyzed
for the presence of OPAD, the toxin protein
from Hamilton's paper. Dr. Craig Larner
from the Michigan lab found levels of
OPAD in the seeds at concentrations significant
enough to cause Lathyrism. Given the large number
of seeds McCandless was likely consuming, his age,
and his overall malnutrition, he would have been highly
susceptible to the debilitating condition. Krakauer ultimately
agreed with Hamilton, who concluded
McCandless did indeed starve to death in the
Alaskan wild, but this only because he'd been poisoned. And the poison had
rendered him too weak to move about to hunt or
forage, and toward the end, extremely weak, too
weak to walk out, and having much trouble
just to stand up. He wasn't truly starving
in the most technical sense of that condition. He'd simply become
slowly paralyzed. Considering his
final journal entries stopped containing
full words and morphed into a series of
slashes, we can only guess just how weak and
in pain he really was. When Chris McCandless set out
for his post-college Alaskan adventure, he was determined
to live off the land. In 2007, chemists posited
that McCandless's seeds were contaminated with
Rhizoctonia leguminicola, the mold that
causes swainsonine. Some thought it was possible
that when McCandless stored his food, it got moldy. There's no way to
be certain how Chris stored his seeds, berries,
and the meat of small animals. But we can probably
guess that they weren't stored in Ziploc freezer bags. However, in an experiment
to test this mold theory, scientists Edward Treadwell
and Thomas Clausen attempted to grow mold on two
types of legume seeds found near bus 142, AKA the
site of Chris's death. Interestingly, no trace
of swainsonine was found. McCandless's final resting
place was in his homemade base at an abandoned bus
along the Stampede Trail. Hikers and hunters
who traversed the area used the bus as a place of
refuge, and so did Chris. Two weeks after his
death, his remains were discovered inside the rusty
shelter in September of 1992. A note on the door
read, "Attention all possible visitors. SOS. I need your help. I am injured, near death, and
too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone. This is no joke. In the name of God,
please remain to save me. I'm out collecting
berries close by, and shall return this evening. Thank you, Chris McCandless. August?" Other than the "no
joke" note, Chris never did anything to draw
attention to his position. In a twist of bad luck, the bus
wasn't near any flight paths, so he couldn't have
signaled for aid that way. However, some theorize he could
have lit a fire large enough to be seen in the
nearby town of Healy, or at other hunting
camps in the area. According to his sister,
Carine McCandless, Chris would never
ever intentionally burn down a forest, not
even to save his life. Anyone who would
suggest otherwise doesn't understand the first
thing about my brother. Regardless of
whether Chris could have avoided his
untimely fate or not, it's clear that his journey made
a lasting imprint on the world as we know it. Since it was popularized
by Jon Krakauer's article, and later his 1996 nonfiction
book, Into the Wild, it's gone on to be a 2008 movie
directed by Sean Penn starring Emile Hirsch, and even scored
by Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. Additionally, in
2011, Twin Star Press published Back to the Wild, a
book of photographs, journal entries, and postcards from
McCandless during his journey from the Western US to Alaska. In 2015, McCandless's
sister, Carine, wrote a celebrated memoir,
The Wild Truth, about her struggles with her
brother's legacy. Later that same
year, PBS released a 60-minute documentary
on McCandless called Return to the Wild. To say Chris's story
is an inspiration is an understatement. His spirit, attitude, and
determination, especially during the end of his life,
continues to inspire people long after he's been gone. Regardless of how many factors
it took for Chris McCandless to meet his maker, it's clear
the world lost a bright star on that 1992 day. What do you think about
Chris McCandless's story? Let us know in the
comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos from our weird history.
