Prime Time 7/8, Language in Use, Arbeitsheft

How Christopher McCandless died Read the article on the death of Christopher McCandless. 3 On 6 September 1992, the body of Christopher McCandless was discovered by moose hunters in a rusting bus just outside the northern boundary of Denali National Park. Taped to the door was a note. It said: “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 am out collecting berries close by and shall return this evening.” From a cryptic diary found among his possessions, it appeared that McCandless had been dead for nineteen days. A driver’s license issued eight months before he perished indicated that he was twenty-four years old and weighed a hundred and forty pounds. An autopsy determined that he weighed sixty-seven pounds and lacked subcutaneous fat. The probable cause of death, according to the coroner’s report, was starvation. In my book Into theWild I came to a different conclusion. I’ve speculated that McCandless had poisoned himself by eating seeds from a plant commonly called wild potato. According to my hypothesis, a toxic agent in the seeds must have weakened McCandless to such a degree that it became impossible for him to hike out to the highway or hunt, leading to starvation. McCandless’s diary shows that beginning on 24 June 1992, the roots of the wild potato plant became a staple of his daily diet. On July 14 th , he started harvesting and eating the seeds as well, to make up for his caloric deficit due to his marginal diet of squirrels, small birds, mushrooms, roots and berries. After July 30 th , his physical condition deteriorated, and three weeks later he was dead. The wild potato was universally believed to be safe to eat. Tests taken after McCandless’s death didn’t reveal any toxic agents in the plant and so some scientists believed the adventurer had mistaken poisonous plants with the seemingly harmless wild potato. Recently, a writer named Ronald Hamilton posted a thoroughly researched paper on the internet that brought new facts to the discussion. The toxic agent in the wild potato turned out to be an amino acid, and according to Hamilton it was the chief cause of McCandless’s death. In the meantime, Hamilton’s findings have been backed up by chemical analysis: wild potato seeds contain the substance ODAP. ODAP was identified in 1964. It brings about paralysis by over-stimulating nerve receptors, causing them to die. Occasional consumption of food containing ODAP as one component of an otherwise balanced diet bears no risk of toxicity. Experts warn, however, that individuals suffering frommalnutrition, stress, and acute hunger are especially sensitive to ODAP, and are thus highly susceptible to its paralysing effects. As McCandless exactly matched the profile of those most susceptible to ODAP poisoning, it might be said that he 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. Had McCandless’s guidebook to edible plants warned that wild potato seeds contain a neurotoxin that can cause paralysis, he probably would have walked out of the wild in late August with no more difficulty than when he walked into the wild in April, and would still be alive today. If that were the case, Christopher McCandless would now be in his mid-forties. (Jon Krakauer, The New Yorker , 12 September 2013; adapted and abridged) 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 26 Extreme situations 5 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv