Overall death rate for Everest climbers is pretty close to 3% - pretty high (although its been falling).
Edit: 3% is for climbers above base camp - for summit climbers its close to 10%! According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster
Not to mention two sons, two and three years old respectively. There is a season of life for climbing mountains. This was not it.
There's really never a good time to climb Everest.
It might be much better for the kids to have a dead father than a bitter, reluctant father.
Who are you to say what he should or shouldn't do? He essentially died from a freak accident that couldn't be predicted ahead of time.
Telling him that he shouldn't do something because he's married with children is like someone telling you you shouldn't pursue a dream (whether that be climbing a mountain or trying an innovative startup with a high chance of failure) just because you happen to be married.
You don't know his situation. I don't know his situation.
Can't we just stop this judging and simply feel bad about an unfortunate death?
By going off and risking his life on a personal accomplishment, he wasn't doing the best job to protect his family. There are an unlimited number of other ways that he could have challenged himself physically and mentally without the risk to the people close to him.
This isn't a criticism of John as a person, but a decision that he made. I don't know who he was and I'm sure that he was a great man. But he put his family at risk to pursue a challenge that is mostly a boost to his own ego.
Disrespectful in the extreme.
I believe this is exactly why he is the CEO of a popular company and others like me are not. He takes risks most of us avoid for various reasons!
http://www.mounteverest.net/story/MountEverestKillerMountain...
"To date, there have been 1,924 ascents of Mount Everest (more than 1,300 different climbers), and 179 people have died. The overall fatality rate is thus about 9% (fatality rate is defined as successful summits compared to fatalities). However, since 1990 there has been an explosion of summiteers and fatality statistics have changed. Up to 1990, the Everest fatality rate is a whopping 37%, with 106 deaths and only 284 summits. Yet from 1990 until today, the rate has dropped to 4.4%; 73 people have died, and 1,640 have summited. Thus, the rate decreased to about eight times less than the pre-1990 fatality rate!"
I wouldn't do it. But I do want to climb Mt Kilimanjaro sometime (much less dangerous).
I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but that is a horrible pun.
I guess everyone who goes there knows the dangers, and would be prepared for the worst.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-Disaster/dp/067...
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Climb-Tragic-Ambitions-Everest/dp/0312...
Sometimes I wonder if various acts of greatness are often made possible by the person having a "blind spot". Maybe starting Intrade was equally stupid.
Generally I think of this mostly for entrepreneurs and fiction authors.
I have yet to meet anyone who started a company and is not a little crazy, and a little less risk-averse than most.
Where do you draw the line for acceptable behavior? Is flying a plane OK? Riding a motorcycle? Skydiving? Having an extra helping of dessert?
Hell, starting a company is a risk and takes a toll on a family.
Whenever you read a tragic story like this, you try to think of all the reasons it couldn't happen to you.
He spun the dice, maybe a little harder than most, and he lost. You could draw an unlucky card tomorrow driving in your car, or get cancer from your cell phone.
If you don't want to spin the dice that hard, you don't have to, I know I wouldn't. Some people have the need to go to the limit. They shouldn't put others at risk. But if he was a CEO and reasonably prudent, the family is, I hope, well-provided for. If he loved them, and he did that and died doing something he loved, bad break and a life well lived.
And here's one from the Freakonomics blog: http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/24/r-i-p-john-delaney-pr...
Other people's personal lives are their own. They make their choices, the people they share their lives with share their choices, by choice or otherwise.
Leave them alone. Leave it alone. Go build something useful.
Compare and contrast his death to Bob Parsons' cowardly choice of shooting an elephant. Bob was never in any meaningful danger, where is the courage in killing an animal that can't shoot back?
I am sorry for his family's loss.
I'm troubled by your use of "meaningful" in describing danger. Danger is not meaningful in itself. An act does not become meaningful because 10% of the people who attempt it die. Acts are meaningful based on their impact on the world around them. Ascending the summit of Everest is ultimately meaningless; killing an elephant who was destroying crops and feeding an African village is quite meaningful.
The most instructive part of that video was the end where the crop Bob Parsons was trying to "save" was totally destroyed by people trying to get at the elephant. Those people did much more damage to the crop than the elephants.
So a lump of rotting flesh that will spoil in days takes the place of a field of grain that could have lasted a season. Not very meaningful. The farmer/village sure didn't benefit from Bob Parson's "help."
Saying that Bob Parsons did anything meaningful isn't being honest about what he did. Some people take pleasure in killing things; that's the basis of hunting as a sport. I'm not really interested in it one way or another. What does pique my interest is the idea that Bob Parsons was doing anything meaningful.
If he takes pleasure in killing things, he should go ahead and be honest about it. He shouldn't try excusing himself with some antiquated colonial view of white man helping some poor impoverished people with a big gun. That's the repulsive part of the whole thing.
If Bob Parsons really wanted to do something other than kill an animal, he could have given a micro-loan or grant to all those people to help them out of subsistence.
Now as to Mr. Parsons, don't be suckered into equating his killing an elephant with the question of whether elephants should be culled. Culling an elephant involves game wardens. What he did was murder tourism, big difference.
How does that make it more meaningful? Does the fact that it can be deadly make playing russian roulette meaningful too then?
I find this conversation pretty bizarre. Of course climbing Mount Everest is meaningful. It's used ubiquitously as a metaphor for the ultimate in human achievement! Just because it may be selfish or egotistically motivated in some circumstances doesn't mean it isn't a deeply meaningful and symbolic challenge to undertake.
Ironically, the odds on an InTrade bet might have warned him that he was not expected to survive. The crowdsourced research about conditions and the likely physical ability of Mr. Delaney would have exceeded his own and might have led him to delay or reconsider the trip.
A lot of the decision points for whether to go on or turn back have to be made in the short term on the mountain.
If you want to understand more how high-altitude climbers think, this makes for a perfect read: http://www.amazon.com/Above-Clouds-Diaries-High-Altitude-Mou...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295
How about running a marathon instead. Or is that not expensive enough?
For those whose greatest ambition (confirmed by their actions) is to be a responsible parent, great!
The reality for actual parents is that parenting is a constant struggle between one's ambitions and one's responsibilites.
Yes, this is an extreme case, but how is this much more selfish than parents who get divorced?
One might argue that if a father cannot always and in all conditions put the children first, he should not be a father.
I'd argue that this is overly simplistic. Honestly and strictly applied, it would mean that we'd almost never reproduce.
We all take survival risks. I wouldn't climb Everest but I do ride a motorcycle and scuba dive. Both hobbies do add survival risks for only enjoying life more.
In that order.
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And really? 5 downvotes for saying that the link does't work? This community has really declined.
