This is very sad, and preventable.
Reading the article it sounds like this woman unfortunately just spent too much time on social media reading all the doom and gloom of the media and people amplifying it in places like reddit, Twitter and Facebook.
wanted to live in a land disconnected from the world, which she viewed as chaotic and dangerous
she and her teenage son could be happy and safe away from the news, the viruses, the politics of modern-day America
had been “discouraged with the state of the world”
Rebecca Vance’s fears intensified during the pandemic
Consuming too much of this crap has really affected peoples mental health, from Trump, to BLM riots, racism, covid, it’s broken some people who spend too much time on social media.
So much so that they think the only way out is to hide away from society.
Reminder, friends, to take frequent and extensive breaks from social media for your own mental health.
Please, I knew people who were exactly the same back in the 90s, there are always people who go down the paranoia rabbit hole and don’t come back out.
Lot of them were praying for the collapse because that’s when God would raise them above the wicked heathens and sodomites because they’re secretly special but everyone else is too evil to admit it.
The article said the poor kid was homeschooled, which is often a hallmark of religious fundamentalism. Not trusting the world and thinking it’s out to get you is also a hallmark of fundamentalism - but also of mental illness.
She’s from Colorado Springs (massive conservative area) and she became concerned about the world and wanted to live off the grid in 2022 (when Trump lost). The writer of this article sure does beat around the bush and struggles not to say whether she was a right wing nut.
The BLM “riots” were 99% protests where the only violence was on the part of the cops harassing protesters.
100%. Some people exploited the riots to break into stores but they were the significant minority, and additionally some were outed as bad actors who actually didn’t support the movement.
You can’t lump in blm riots in there, those were protests stoked to violence by police officers, so what you should be saying it’s, corrupt police forces resulting in blm protests
Maybe I’m being too generous, but I was reading it as this person consumed too much media, including lies and exaggerations, and it warped their world view. I guess I read it as a topic like and not calling them riots themselves. Kinda like the “race riot” in Tusla, but idk.
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You can’t deny that there is something fascinating about this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUO8secmc0g
Not reading Twitter has a tangible impact on my anxiety. You can feel it rise when I used it, fell away when I stopped.
I haven’t used Facebook in almost 2 years now and it’s so nice
And remember that despite some unique large scale issues we have today, there were much, MUCH worse times to be alive. “Majority of Americans live a peaceful life and die at 70-80” is not reportable news but still largely true.
Things are far from perfect, there are major issues, but I’d choose to live today than almost the entirety of human existence previously.
There were definitely way more violent times in the US: there were pandemics, there were revolts, there were wars. We live in an amazing time but it takes a bit of grand perspective to realize that all the bad news is easy to see in a matter of minutes. You can have death and destruction delivered right into your home in a matter of milliseconds. It’s much much harder to see all the wonderful things happening in the world
she and her teenage son could be happy and safe away from the news, the viruses, the politics of modern-day America
Just close the apps. That’s literally all it takes to avoid like 90% of the crap that she’s talking about. But the viruses… did she think those don’t make it to the forest or something?
I hate how people talk about off grid living as something you can pull off alone, that’s difficult even if you allow for buying food and installing all kinds of fancy infrastructure in your home.
The truth is that properly sustainable and reliable off-grid living requires a small community, because you need a lot of labour.
Right? Living off grid used to be called being banished by your tribe and it was basically a death sentence.
Other people are annoying as fuck, but I recognize I need them to live.
Casuals ruin everything
You nailed it. And these folks were simply living off canned food and ramen… For how long?
Communal living is great if you get the right mix of people with a shared vision… In the right location… With the right resources… To be successful it seems you need to have a pretty organic evolution of the process and attract people with shared vision. The dark side of this devolves into cultism; the brighter side is a sustainable living and sense of belonging.
Now there are people who live off the grid in places like Alaska (just watch Life Below Zero) and do it successfully… But these people grew up doing that or studied and prepared A LOT. And man, doing that solo is not easy. None of them seemed to be super healthy or cheerful.
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Kazinsky didn’t live off the grid. He worked as a teacher from time to time, and received financial support from his father.
I don’t know this guy, but even Superman needs a backup plan in case he gets sick, and infected wound or ruins his ankle by tripping over something. Living off grid alone is just one misstep away from catastrophe.
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Somebody read Little House on the Prairie once and said, “I can do that!” I’m joking, but only slightly.
I read a book a while back about the real life of the author of little house on the prairie (it’s called “prairie fires”) - her books really sugarcoat how hard life was - even people who knew how to live off the land had a really hard time
Now there are people who live off the grid in places like Alaska (just watch Life Below Zero) and do it successfully… But these people grew up doing that or studied and prepared A LOT. And man, doing that solo is not easy. None of them seemed to be super healthy or cheerful.
But even in the story they went into town for food and blankets, and they didn’t try to winter in a tent.
You quoted a post other than the one to which you replied
And everyone that wanted to live off the grid wanted to get away from people.
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I am reminded of that guy who did that in Alaska solo, for like 30 years Dick Perniky or some such I believe his name was. He took video of wildlife and got it edited. I think he was 50 or there abouts when he left the lower 48.
I wish people would realize that humans only got to where we are because we are a COMMUNAL species. We developed complex language and tool usage BECAUSE we work together. Being “off the grid” is usually isolationist and therefore extremely dangerous. We need community in order to develop and manage the resources we need to survive.
Well no, there’s a difference between offgrid and alone and an offgrid commune.
The secret ingredient is commun
alism.Agreed, I’m a fan of village-regional center structure myself.
Oh, to be a seamstress, stitching clothes for the farmer’s infant son in exchange for a sack of wheat and 6 ounces of butter
Hate to ask what you’d need to do for a steak… 🤐
The current infant-clothes to steak exchange rate is unfavorable. It would be wiser to hold off till the late autumn, when steak futures usually fall and clothing values skyrocket.
Reasonable. See you in the back-40.
Yeah let’s all go back to subsistence agriculture! Every time my mind wanders and I find myself romanticizing an age of simpler times and communal living I remind myself of the realities of that sort of lifestyle.
Well, why aren’t we practicing that communal specialty into you know, bettering society from it’s current dumpster fire state? Or is that just too tall of a task?
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There’s also Dunbar’s number to consider for groups larger than that.
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Also, we’re living in kind of an unprecedented part of history that enables is to be independent of other people in ways never before possible. So that gives people a very distorted sense of that, a lack of any notion of the importance of community. And of course this “independence” is achieved by a complete dependence on this huge ubiquitous economic machine.
I think sometimes it’s the extreme dependence that makes the attempt at off the grid freedom seem more attractive; it’s weird how the technology seems to both take away so much freedom and yet make people feel independent at the same time
theres a reason why banishment was historically a death sentence. It took communities to prosper!
It’s dangerous to go full off the grid, but in reality it’s never complete isolation. In Leave No Trace/My Abandonment (based on a true story) the father relied on disability checks to buy goods and educated his daughter using encyclopedias… In Walden Thorough is living alone in a remote area, but it’s not like he’s completely cut off from the benefits of society and has visitors somewhat regularly. I think there’s a difference between trying to minimize the brunt of society 24/7 vs going full isolation.
I’m a world of growing instability where the inputs for modern lifehave their supply consistency threatened, learning some basic survival skills is not a bad thing. Many countries will likely have huge energy, food, and water shortfalls in the coming years. Germany is burning what amounts to wet coal to make up for losing Russian oil. Ukraine was one of the world’s biggest wheat producers. Russia produced a lot of the world’s fertilizer. There are reasons to learn how to live without the entire support network most of us take for granted.
Though you should be pretty decent at living off grid before commiting to it.
Don’t assume that you’re cougar-proof or that 40°F and below weather with no real insulation is something you can save yourself from with enough bootstraps.
I feel for the kid, who got dragged down by the hubris of his mom. It’s troubling that we’ve grown so disconnected from the world we’ve built; we dont feel like we benefit from it at all. We can all sit here and shame this mother for being neglectful and stupid, and yet the feelings she had of a chaotic life with no upside…that’s so fucking common right now.
Its a commonly floated idea among my circles, and by me personally, that we kinda just want to fuck off and build a comfy commune somewhere not too hot, not too cold, just away from cities, and try to be as self-sufficient as possible. Just a small group of friends and family. It’s kinda what I’m saving up for, if I’m honest, because buying a city house is just… Prohibitively expensive for what it is.
Probably easier to survive in a commune of a few dozen than it would be in tents with 3 people. But yeah I think a lot of us have had dreams of fucking off to the wilds to live like a hermit.
I would probably last like 3 days and only if I’m being extremely optimistic.
I mean, we kind of did this with lemmy right? Same thing with people escaping British rule to come to USA?
The problem is that ‘we’ didn’t build this world. Our society was (is) shaped by people who’s situation and life experience have very little in common with the average person, and yet we continue to let them shape policy to their own benefit and our detriment because… money? Or something? Idk.
Into the Wild was a cautionary tail that for some reason people romanticize…
The difference between what I took away when I first read that book and the 2nd or 3rd time I watched the movie was night and day.
I feel bad the kid he had a privileged shit life. But going out into the middle of the Alaskan wilderness to survive with no formal training was punching way above his weight…
The thing that dawned on me when I watched it as an older adult was his sheer selfishness. Smug, cliched little prick. His father’s violence aside, what about the rest of his family?
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Except he dies alone at the end, so it was definitely a cautionary tale.
This is sort of like saying Don Quixote was about a famous knight saving the world and not a crazy rich guy fighting windmills
Except he dies alone at the end, so it was definitely a cautionary tale.
If the last recent years has taught us anything, it’s that how you present a thing matters a lot more than what the thing is that’s actually being presented. Unfortunately.
Pretty much, which is why I consider the Fight Club movie a complete flop, maybe not financially, but it fails at its own message so hard that only the dudebros it mocks like it.
that only the dudebros it mocks like it.
or, hear me out, movies don’t need to be lectures and is ok to just do something for the entertainment/artistry/visuals/storytelling of it.
I can tell you that I’m the opposite of what the movie depicts, I’m fragile, never been in a fight, I sincerely hope that will never be in one, I cried like a baby in ET or the time traveles wife, the Schindler’s list broke my heart, I dislike the dudebro dynamics, and I adore that movie. I also like horror movies as a genre and I don’t go around killing people.
It’s fine that you use movies as lectures of life and ethics, or that you don’t enjoy them if they don’t have a message that you agree with, but some people like them for other reasons, so please try not to profile people for what they like to watch.
It’s not that I dislike Fight Club for “not having a message”, but for the fact that it’s meant to have a message according to the director and the writer of the book, but the movie doesn’t depict what that message is very well.
sorry I wasn’t clear, my criticism wasn’t towards you not liking the movie, anyone have their own taste and there is nothing wrong with it, we all just want to enjoy things :-)
My problem was about you profiling people that do like the movie as “dudebros”, that wasn’t very nice IMHO
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What a terrible way to go. They sounded less prepared than even Chris McCandless.
I can’t believe I’m recommending reality TV, but Alone is a fairly good representation of being alone in the wilderness with no resources. It is extremely unpleasant.
Alone is a great show. But I’ve got to tell you, while I watch and know I do not (currently) possess the skills to do what those folks do, there is a draw for me to want to do it. I mean I’m sure I’m over-romanticizing the thing to an extent, and - again - I know enough about me to know I can’t do it today, but there’s a distinct pull to want to.
I’m a pretty hardcore outdoorsman. Been hunting and fishing since I was a kid, and I spend a lot of my year maintaining family timberland pretty far out in the cut. I like to think I can handle some shit, and I even attended a wilderness survival camp as a kid. I’m good with knots, plant identification, wood carving, shelter building, and fire building.
A few seasons of Alone showed me that I probably wouldn’t last more than a few months if the area I was in had any kind of significant winter. Maybe in the south where it never snows, but even then it’d be fucking unbearable in the middle of summer where you still have to constantly work for food and water and are constantly at risk of dehydration and malnutrition.
I did a wilderness survival camp in Arizona as a kid myself. I have had massive respect for nature ever since then. Even with a group of people survival in the wilderness is tough. I remember struggling for days to even make my first fire.
Alone showed me how different survival tactics are depending on your location. I feel like I could survive at least a few months on my own in the Sonoran desert, but anywhere else I would be done for pretty quickly. Cold snowy weather would probably end me on the first night.
No doubt. We get used to the fact that even if we were forced to go without food for a day we could rebound after gorging ourselves on reserves the following day. But bury your no-heat wooden shelter in snow and go without food for a day and see how hard it gets to figure out food the day after. Then keep that going for a week and shit gets real, REAL fast.
Love this video essay related to this topic
I think many people have that pull to nature, but most that do it and survive recognize that living without the infrastructure of the rest of humanity is at least extremely challenging and so will thoroughly prepare.
I would guess a good portion of US adults, these days, have no idea how to survive away from modern convenience for any length of time
How did they leave a car at a campsite for months and not have any kind of search and rescue triggered?
My buddy got lost on a trail once and had to do an shitty night out in the woods, the next morning there were forest service personnel out looking for him because they spotted his car parked overnight with no camp permit posted.
I thought this was standard practice at every national and state park. An unattended vehicle is seen as a sure sign that someone is in trouble. I guess I’m never going hiking in Colorado, cause if I get in trouble the CO forest personnel are apparently just going to leave me for dead.
Yeah, that’s insane. Also, now I know where to go if I ever need to store my vehicle for extended periods of time!
From what I’ve read they weren’t in a sanctioned Park, this was more of a back country area tucked away in the woods.
You’re right… National Forest… Not a park
The forest service is still supposed to check for abandoned vehicles overnight, as is the best way to check for lost hikers
Why didn’t they just get back in the car and head back to civilization?
Probably froze overnight while sleeping. Between hypothermia and malnutrition, sometimes people just never wake up.
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They must have made some sort of effort to hide the vehicle, or park it somewhere it wouldn’t be questioned for some time. If the goal is to get away from people, you don’t want your vehicle to cause someone to come looking for you.
It wasn’t a park, so unless someone filed a missing person report the car itself wouldn’t necessarily trigger anything since people abandon all kinds of crazy shit on national forests.
I feel like too many people do not respect nature. They romanticize it, and that’s a very dangerous thing. They forget that you need actual skills to survive in the wild. This didn’t have to happen.
That has gotten worse with all the “survivalist” shows acting like its easy to survive with just a knife and fig leaf in the wild.
They see a show grab some gear and off they go. Not realizing those shows are often fake and when not, the star has many years of actual experience and training.
I’m a huge fan of Alone, but would never in a million years think I could do it. Those people are literally survival teachers or Bushmen/women who have done this their entire lives and even then only make it 20 or so days before calling to gtfo.
This is incredibly sad.
The contestants also get regular medical checkins and emergency locaters.
Yep!
I didn’t watch a lot of him but I enjoyed Les Stroud’s Survivorman.
Red in tooth and claw…
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Sounds tough. I dont even know how to find and catch wild ramens.
I heard you can get spaghetti from trees in some places
Italy duh
That’s easy. Set up camp and just hike over to Italy.
Reminds me of the Netflix series Alone. Only one out of ~12 people make it to 100 days, and they’re all experienced survivalists
Sounds like this wasn’t thought through and was perhaps an emotional decision. True off-grid living takes lots of knowledge and prep. Surviving 100 days is basically conservation of resources to last till the e d. Off grid still requires shelter and resources.
For once though, their motives seem more noble/less crazy than most of the headlines. Heck, a bunch of us are here on Lemmy cause we got fed up with a system and want something better. At least they wanted something better.
I thought about going off grid in a house with a well, solar, and storage batteries. The price looked good.
Even with the house it was too marginal. One anomalous weather event would have been RIP.
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I could see that. I think the off the grid thing has been glorified by people who haven’t actually done it.
I mean, Id like to run off into the hills sometimes, but I’d probably run right back due to some combination of boredom, weather, starvation, and running out of alcohol.
Can confirm, live in Montana. Cabins are great…during the summer months. Winter rolls around and you better be prepared to be cut off from everything for a few months. Plus it’s cold as fuck. Last year where I live, we consistently saw -20F and stayed below 0F for weeks at a time. Winter here sucks, but it keeps out the riff raff for the most part ;)
The tent was what got me. A fatal choice. Tragic, but avoidable.
Another article I read stated that the incomplete beginnings of a lean-to or similar shelter were present at the camp, seems like they tried to build something more permanent but ran out of energy to finish it. Which is why you build your shelter first.
Once I watched a season of alone I dropped all illusions about running into the woods to live the naturalist life.
If anyone is thinking “lol I could do that” just watch alone, it is HARD out there in the wilds.
In the show Alone the take away is that fat beats skills. All of the super fit “survival experts” with 5% body fat are being carried out on stretchers in a couple of weeks. The 300lb dude with minimal skills out lasts all of the experts.
The environment just doesn’t have enough fat calories available. Skill won’t change this.
For the first few seasons sure but that Jordan guy that won season 6 was all skill and attitude.
Is he the guy that killed an elk?
Bullet points of what’s the ass kicker?
- Maintaining a balance of calories in vs out is really hard. In particular fats are extremely difficult to acquire.
- Getting almost anything done requires hard manual labor, which means you need even more calories.
- Harsh winters mean food scarcity and burning even more calories just keeping warm.
- You’re completely fucked if you get sick or injured.
- Boredom, loneliness and stress could drive you insane.
Can you expand on why fats are harder to acquire? The most immediate method I can think of is from hunting and trapping. Is this very difficult to do from a practical point of view?
Do you know how to hunt or set traps? Do you know how to butcher an animal without nicking a bowel and tainting the meat? Most folks don’t. I know I don’t. I would die if left out in the woods and having to fend for myself.
I can do most of that. Still would probably die due to falling from a cliff or shit.
It’s weird to me people who think they could or want to attempt to survive doing those things every. single. day. by themselves. I’ve done everything you’ve mentioned, as well as foraged for whatever couldn’t kill me or eat me first, bugs included. It’s not fun, it’s fucking brutal work and you spend most of your day hungry unless you find a good, consistent source of calories and clean water. You’re still fucked though if you live anywhere that gets a real winter, break a bone, get an infection, run into an animal that’s just as hungry as you are. Humans aren’t equipped to survive alone for very long.
Fair enough. Even if you do end up killing something, you might not have the skills to safely prepare it for consumption.
Unless you are a skilled and experienced hunter and trapper, game is quite difficult to acquire. Especially if modern hunting and trapping equipment is not available.
All the bullet points, there’s a reason we’ve moved society in the direction we have. Everything from shoes to showers makes life tolerable.
People like to idealise primitive lifestyles. But when actual primitives are given a choice, they always choose civilization, despite the drawbacks.
If you can’t at the very least identify what mushrooms you can or can not eat in the forest, you should not go out there to live. I 100% can not, so my dumb ass will never try to go live off grid out in the woods. I can’t find food and I acknowledge that. More folks need to realize their limitations.
For most of us, going to live in “the wild” is as preposterous as us returning to the oceans we crawled out of eons ago. We’ve evolved past that, and are no longer suited for that environment, at least not naturally anyway.
I built a submarine, would you like to go
dieexplore the depths of the ocean with me?Sure, I’ll bring the chips to go with the human salsa we’ll turn into.
I don’t know, man. There are Amazon tribes who do perfectly well without iPhones. I think what you mean is, we, that is, you and me didn’t get to learn how to survive in those environments naturally and organically, simply because our societies don’t need those skills. But of course we are suited for that environment. We have opposable thumbs!
For real though, they are straight up experts, and after 60 days, 90% of them are on the verge of death lol
If they had read a few more books on survival, this would have been prevented.
Usually those books tell you that you need provisions through winter and if you don’t, you need to get those provisions from someplace.
Nobody typically lives 100% off the grid the first year or more unless they’re a super expert.
You also need someone who isn’t with you to know where you are and arrange check-ins of some sort, or at least give them a time frame of when they can expect to hear from you again if all is well.
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Looks like it was probably from hypothermia or malnourishment or a bit of both. They could have died the same night, very sad.
The fact that a hiker found one and the other two weren’t found until the next day makes me think that one left to try and get help, froze to death, and the other 2 died waiting.
Apparently this was during winter. If they got hit by bad weather unprepared, they might not have had any options left once they realized they were fucked.
First rule of the Rocky’s, don’t camp / hike outside in the winter, you will not survive.
Even with a well-stocked cabin, the cold alone will sap your energy and kill you slowly.
Trying to survive it in a tent isn’t mere ignorance, it’s outright stupidity.
I just feel bad for the kid. Mom wanted to get off the grid but Colorado has a history of killing those who try it without a lot of money and infrastructure to support it. Go off the grid in like South Carolina, not Colorado.
Lol this is ridiculous. I’ve been hiking in the Rockies plenty of times during the winter, as long as you take the proper precautions you will be fine.
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That’s… a concerning viewpoint. You doing ok there buddy?
That’s rather silly, as long as people can hear you shouting it’s almost always going to be safe no matter what you do.
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Indeed… this is a major life change, not just a “we’ll pop off the grid for a week to chill out and definitely not die of botulism”.
“How long were they out there, sheriff?”
“I’d say 2… Maybe 3 hours?”
