State of Alaska finally gets rid of McCandless death bus

Chris McCandless, poor devil.

Two people have died and fifteen have had to be rescued while visiting the abandoned bus where Christopher McCandless died of starvation in 1992. He was the subject of the movie Into the Wild, based on the book of the same name. You just can't survive on your own as a hunter/gatherer. The poor guy was eating roots he found but digging them up burned more calories than he got out of them. If he had just brought a map of the area, he could have simply walked out. He thought he was trapped there. He died at age 24.

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources finally had the good sense to get rid of the bus, using a helicopter to carry it away.

The people who visited the thing called it "The Magic Bus" rather than "The Death Bus" or "The Starvation Bus".


I had a great uncle who was born in the 1880's. He was half Indian. He grew up among the Indians on the Oregon coast and had an uncanny ability find his way through the forest.

He was out in the woods one time with his nephew, my uncle. The sun set and they were in total darkness. He told his nephew to stay behind him and he walked in total darkness at full speed directly to their parked car.

The point here being that even my Great-Uncle George was afraid to go into the woods alone. That's why he brought his nephew.

His son, my first cousin once removed, got a degree in anthropology when he was in his 60's. I was sitting at a table with him and others at his graduation party. He was talking about Indian lore. I won't go into it, but he talked about what parts of a human body bears left behind when they ate somebody. It's terribly dangerous out there.