Anarchonomicon - December 24, 2025


Ep22 The Cold and The Dark, Prologue： ＂To Build a Fire＂


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 9 minutes

Words per minute

142.07

Word count

9,869

Sentence count

373

Harmful content

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 They will chain you like Prometheus to a rock where the memory of your own greatness will gnaw you.
00:00:30.000 Clark, did you notice anything strange about the dog, anything at all?
00:00:44.620 Strange, no.
00:00:48.360 What was the dog doing in the wrecking?
00:00:51.140 I don't know.
00:00:52.720 I was just wandering around camp all day.
00:01:00.000 Are you saying to me the dog wasn't put in the kennel until last night?
00:01:06.900 Right.
00:01:10.060 How long were you alone with that dog?
00:01:12.780 I don't know, an hour.
00:01:15.260 Hour and a half, maybe.
00:01:30.000 I love you.
00:02:00.000 Thank you.
00:02:30.000 I am inclined to believe that this is a land God gave to Cain, Jacques Cartier, describing
00:02:45.500 Inland Canada.
00:02:52.200 Hello, hello, Glories listeners.
00:02:54.140 We are continuing my little reading series today with the first part of a series which I think you'll find quite interesting.
00:03:08.980 The conceit of this series, the challenge of this series, is that I have to describe to you what true cold feels like.
00:03:20.660 not not the sudden plunge into cold water not even standing out in minus 40 or minus 50
00:03:29.180 in the wind and snow but true aching cold the kind of cold that you have to endure
00:03:38.240 for hours days months on end in the high arctic what it is to camp out and survive
00:03:49.420 in the harshest, most inhuman conditions
00:03:53.280 man has ever been exposed to.
00:03:56.380 And this is quite a challenging thing
00:03:59.160 to capture in audio format.
00:04:01.920 Capturing a ceiling in audio alone
00:04:04.340 is quite the challenge.
00:04:06.700 But capturing a feeling that builds and builds
00:04:10.080 across days and weeks and months
00:04:12.680 and translating that into a podcast,
00:04:16.300 which by the end of it,
00:04:17.140 This will be quite a few hours, but not months' worth of your time.
00:04:23.340 That is a challenge to capture.
00:04:26.940 When I was a child, one of my grandfather's friends was snowmobiling in the high north of Canada,
00:04:34.580 on the Canadian Shield somewhere in northern Ontario,
00:04:38.540 the frigid land of rocks and lakes beyond even the northernmost road.
00:04:44.740 and he was snowbilling along he was alone and he his snowbill broke through the ice
00:04:53.920 on a lake he was traveling um snowbill trails often follow lakes because there's there's less
00:05:01.780 rock and terrain and trees to do it same reason ice road truckers truck along ice roads that
00:05:09.440 the frozen the frozen lakes become a viable pathway so he was going along alone might have
00:05:16.120 been minus 20 minus 30 more with the wind chill and his snowmobile broke through the ice he was
00:05:24.260 completely alone when this happened he plunged into the ice um if you've ever studied water
00:05:30.800 survival in like extreme cold environments it's very possible to just die right then and there
00:05:37.260 It's very easy to have heart attacks from just being suddenly submerged in the ice.
00:05:42.160 And there's this involuntary gasp reflex when you get submerged in freezing water.
00:05:50.540 This can kill people on Lake Superior in the middle of the summer.
00:05:54.680 They plunge, dive into the water, and they get below the surface down to where the water is permanently cold around just about freezing.
00:06:04.480 and it's not uncommon for someone to go boating on a clear day on lake superior another permanently
00:06:12.440 cold lake uh dive in off their boat uh thinking that it feels warm enough from the surface
00:06:19.820 breach the warm water hit the cold war gasp and just never never rise to the surface i heard a
00:06:28.340 horror story once of a man did this.
00:06:31.800 Bubbles emerged.
00:06:32.720 He never emerged.
00:06:34.240 And his wife was left out there in the boat.
00:06:36.300 The keys, he had them in his pocket.
00:06:40.300 And she's left there.
00:06:41.620 The superior never gives up her dead.
00:06:44.720 His body just sank in the cold water.
00:06:48.960 This can happen immediately
00:06:50.500 when you plunge into ice water.
00:06:52.380 This is one of the things that
00:06:53.600 it's so hard to survive in the North Atlantic.
00:06:56.120 And occasionally you'll hear a story
00:06:57.900 of someone who survived uh seven eight hours in the north atlantic and this is a incredible feat
00:07:03.860 of uh water survival but this is colder than the north atlantic this is minus 20 northern
00:07:12.200 ontario and my grandfather's friend he plunged in into water uh didn't sink immediately surfaced
00:07:23.020 um but then he was there in the middle of this lake alone in this hole in the ice of
00:07:30.020 in minus 20 and he had to go up against the ice and break it because he was on a thin
00:07:38.620 thin section of ice he had to continuously break through the ice until he got to a section
00:07:43.460 thick enough they could haul himself up onto the ice and uh this in itself is an incredible
00:07:50.260 feet of strength because the thick snowmobile gear he's wearing, which maybe acted as sort of
00:07:56.120 a little bit of a wetsuit, maybe just let him be that much, keep his body heat that much closer
00:08:03.800 for a slight bit longer. When you go to hold yourself up onto the ice, all that snowmobile gear
00:08:11.860 is holding onto the water, all that insulation that keeps warm air close to your body,
00:08:16.960 All something that's holding on to the cold water.
00:08:20.140 So he weighs maybe 20 to 30 more pounds than he did before he went to the ice with all the water clinging into his clothes.
00:08:30.300 In an impressive feat of strength through how cold he was, manages to haul himself up onto the ice.
00:08:37.220 His snowmobile, everything that's on it is at the bottom of the lake now.
00:08:41.340 And he has to run to shore before hypothermia takes him.
00:08:46.960 He sprints ashore, and fortunately, there is one cottage on this lake.
00:08:54.580 He smashes the window, breaks into the cottage, and I'm not sure where this was, but it had electric heat.
00:09:05.940 And the electricity had not been shut off for the winter.
00:09:08.460 They had electricity year-round.
00:09:10.460 So this cottage is going to be abandoned.
00:09:13.920 is abandoned fortunately the electricity had not been shut off he managed to find the fuse box
00:09:19.340 turn on the the baseboards and find the thermostat and crank up the heat and he stripped down the
00:09:27.140 heat just crawled around the electric baseboard to try and warm himself up as the wind howled
00:09:34.560 through the window he broke broke open and he survived uh i knew this guy for decades of my
00:09:43.240 He is a wonderful handyman, you know, great character, dear friend of my grandfather's.
00:09:51.620 But that story had always stuck with me.
00:09:54.760 Just the act of surviving 10 to 20 minutes in the high north when something goes wrong can be one of the greatest feats of survival you can imagine.
00:10:12.440 That if at any point he had gone confused or his strength had failed him or if he had hesitated slightly longer or stopped to think or lost his train of thought, lost his adrenaline, lost his initiative, it's very possible that he just wouldn't have had the strength to crawl onto the ice or wouldn't have had the vision and the wherewithal to find that cottage on the shore.
00:10:39.060 uh it can happen that quickly and what i'd like to do today is i'd like to read you
00:10:47.300 uh one of the few stories that i think is i've ever read that captures uh this feeling that
00:10:54.360 really captures the depth and detail of how cold and and miserable and dangerous uh the
00:11:04.060 the extreme north can be
00:11:06.740 and how thin the ice you walk upon can be.
00:11:14.400 This is Jack London's To Build a Fire
00:11:17.720 from 1908.
00:11:22.980 Day had broken cold and gray,
00:11:26.080 exceedingly cold and gray.
00:11:28.440 When the man turned aside from the main Yukon Trail
00:11:31.460 and climbed the high earth bank
00:11:33.220 where a dim and little travel trail led eastward through the flat, fat spruce timberland.
00:11:40.700 It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top,
00:11:44.980 excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch.
00:11:48.740 It was nine o'clock.
00:11:50.420 There is no sun, nor hint of sun.
00:11:54.140 Though there was not a cloud in the sky, it was a clear day,
00:11:57.740 yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things,
00:12:01.320 a subtle gloom that made the dark day and that was due to the absence of the sun
00:12:07.640 this fact did not worry the man he was used to the lack of sun it had been days since he had
00:12:14.340 seen the sun and he knew that a few more days would must pass before that cheerful orb
00:12:19.600 deuce south would just peep above the skyline and dip immediately from view the man flung a look
00:12:27.100 back along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet
00:12:34.020 of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in
00:12:41.580 gentle indulations, where the ice jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south,
00:12:47.640 as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hairline that curved
00:12:54.520 and twisted from around the spruce covered a island to the south and that curved and twisted
00:13:01.500 away into the north where it disappeared behind another spruce covered tree island
00:13:07.920 where it disappeared behind another spruce covered island
00:13:13.620 this dark hairline was the trail the main trail that led some 500 miles to the chiquit pass
00:13:23.220 daia and salt water and that led north 70 miles to dawson and still on the north a thousand miles
00:13:32.520 to new lotto and finally to saint michael's on the bering sea a thousand miles and a half thousand
00:13:39.760 more but all this the mysterious far-reaching hairline trail the absence of sun from the sky
00:13:46.340 the tremendous cold and the strangeness and weirdness of it all made no impression on the
00:13:51.360 man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer to the land, a Chiaqua,
00:14:00.560 and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. 0.99
00:14:08.920 He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only the things, not in the substance.
00:14:14.940 fifty degrees below zero meant 80 odd degrees of frost such fact impressed him as being cold
00:14:23.640 and uncomfortable and that was all in that it did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty
00:14:30.100 as a creature of temperature and upon the man's frailty in general able only to live within
00:14:36.780 certain narrow limits of heat and cold and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural
00:14:43.900 field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for
00:14:53.200 a bite of frost that hurt and must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear flaps,
00:14:58.820 warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty
00:15:06.500 degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never
00:15:13.440 entered his head as he turned to go on he spat speculatively there was a sharp explosive crackle
00:15:22.260 that started him he spat again and again in the air before it could fall to the snow the spittle
00:15:29.140 crackled he knew that a 50 below spittle crackled on the snow but this spittle crackled in the air
00:15:39.100 undoubtedly it was colder than 50 below how much colder he did not know but the temperature did
00:15:46.840 not matter he was bound for the old claim on the left fork of hinderson creek where the boys were
00:15:53.520 all were already they had come over across the divide from the indian creek country
00:15:59.820 while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of guinea logs in the
00:16:05.840 spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in the camp by six o'clock. A bit after dark,
00:16:13.480 it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready.
00:16:20.420 As for lunch, he pressed his hand against a protruding bundle under his jacket.
00:16:26.500 It was almost under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief, and lying against the naked skin.
00:16:31.780 It is the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing.
00:16:36.460 He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits,
00:16:40.720 cut open in soft and bacon grease,
00:16:43.500 and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.
00:16:48.580 He plunged in among the big spruce trees.
00:16:51.840 The trail was faint.
00:16:53.700 A foot of snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over.
00:16:56.880 And he was glad he was without a sled traveling light.
00:17:02.580 In fact, he carried nothing but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief.
00:17:06.940 He was surprised, however, at the cold.
00:17:09.760 It was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed his numb nose and cheekbones with his mitted hand.
00:17:16.420 He was a warm, whiskered man, but the hair on his face did not protect the high cheekbones
00:17:21.520 and the eager nose that thrusts itself aggressively into the frosty air.
00:17:27.160 At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky.
00:17:31.780 the proper wolf dog, gray-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its
00:17:37.200 brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew there was no time
00:17:44.580 for traveling. Its instincts told it the truer tale than was told to the man by the man's
00:17:51.080 judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than 50 below zero. It is colder than 60 below,
00:17:57.860 than 70 below. It was 75 below zero. Since the phrasing point is 32 above zero,
00:18:06.940 it meant that 107 degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anything about thermoblers.
00:18:14.620 Possibly in his brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold,
00:18:19.480 such as it was in the man's brain. But the brute had its instincts.
00:18:23.620 it experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the
00:18:31.260 man's heels and that made it question eerily every want unwanted movement of the man as if
00:18:38.860 expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build up fire the dog had learned
00:18:45.220 fire in it wanted fire or else a burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air
00:18:51.740 The frozen moisture of its breathing had settled on its fur in a fine powder of frost,
00:18:59.520 especially where its jowls, muzzle, and eyelashes whitened by its crystal breath.
00:19:06.480 The man's red beard and mustache were likewise frosted, but more solidly,
00:19:10.900 the deposit taking the form of ice and increasing with every warm, moist breath he inhaled.
00:19:21.740 also the man was chewing tobacco and the muzzle of ice held held his lips so ridgely that he was
00:19:30.680 unable to clear his chin when he expelled the juice the result that was was that a crystal
00:19:36.920 beard of the color and salinity of amber was increasing its length on his chin if he fell
00:19:44.500 down it would shatter itself like glass into brittle fragments but he did not mind the appendage
00:19:51.300 It was the penalty all tobacco chewers paid in that country, and he had been out before in two cold snaps.
00:19:59.160 They had not been so cold as this, he knew, but by the spirit thermometer at 60 miles, he knew they had been registered at 50 below and at 55. 1.00
00:20:12.060 he held on through the level stretch of woods for several miles across a wide flat of nigger heads 1.00
00:20:19.980 and dropped down a bank to the frozen bed of a small stream this was henderson creek and he 1.00
00:20:26.940 knew he was 10 miles from the fork he looked at his watch it was 10 o'clock he was making four
00:20:33.600 miles an hour and he calculated he would arrive at the force at half past 12 he decided to celebrate
00:20:40.660 that event by eating his lunch there. The dog dropped in again at his heels with a tail drooping
00:20:47.800 discouragement as the man swung along the creek bed. The furrows of the old sled trail were plainly
00:20:54.820 visible, but a dozen inches of snow covered the marks of the last runner. It was a month and no
00:21:00.780 man had come up or down that silent creek. The man held steadily on. He was not much given to
00:21:07.700 thinking and just then particularly he had nothing to think about save that he would eat lunch at the
00:21:14.640 forks and then at six six o'clock he would be in camp with the boys there is nothing no way to talk
00:21:22.080 to and had there been speech would have been impossible because of the ice muzzle on his mouth
00:21:26.800 so he continued monotonously to chew tobacco and to increase the length of his
00:21:31.880 amber beard. Once in a while, the thought reiterated itself that it was very cold and
00:21:38.420 that he had never experienced such cold. As he walked along, he rubbed his cheekbones and nose
00:21:44.020 with the back of his mid-hands. He did this automatically now in the unchanging hands,
00:21:50.340 but rub as he would, the instant he stopped, his cheekbones went numb,
00:21:53.980 and the following instant, the end of his nose went numb.
00:21:58.300 He was sure to frost his cheeks, he knew that,
00:22:02.620 and experienced a pang of regret that he not devised a no-strap of the sort but worn cold snaps.
00:22:09.300 Such a strap passed across the cheeks as well and saved them.
00:22:13.720 But it didn't matter much, after all.
00:22:15.460 What were frosted cheeks?
00:22:17.280 A bit painful, that was all.
00:22:19.300 They were never serious.
00:22:22.460 Empty as the man's mind was of thoughts,
00:22:25.060 He was keenly observant, and he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed his feet.
00:22:36.220 Once, coming around a bend, he shied abruptly like a stern horse, curved away from the place where he had been walking, and retreated several paces back along the trail.
00:22:47.760 The creek he knew was frozen clear to the bottom.
00:22:50.860 No creek could contain water in that Arctic winter.
00:22:53.700 But he knew also that there were springs that bubbled out from the hillside
00:22:58.700 and ran along under the snow and on top of the ice of the creek.
00:23:02.700 He knew that the coldest snaps never froze these springs,
00:23:06.540 and he knew likewise their danger.
00:23:09.240 They were traps.
00:23:11.020 They hid pools of water under the snow that might be three inches deep or three feet deep.
00:23:17.640 Sometimes a skin of ice half an inch thick covered them,
00:23:22.840 and in turn was covered by snow.
00:23:25.480 Sometimes there were alternate layers of water and ice skin,
00:23:30.140 so that when one broke through, he kept on breaking through for a while,
00:23:34.580 sometimes wetting himself to the waist.
00:23:38.640 That was why he had shied in such panic.
00:23:41.980 He had felt the give under his feet and heard the crackle of snow
00:23:45.520 he'd nice skin. And to get his feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble and danger.
00:23:53.020 At the very least, it meant delay, for he would be forced to stop and build a fire,
00:23:57.400 and under its protection to bare his feet while he dried his socks and moccasins.
00:24:03.100 He stood and studied the creek bed and its banks, and decided that the flow of water came from the
00:24:09.180 right. He reflected a while, rubbing his nose and cheeks, then skirted to the left, stepping
00:24:15.660 gingerly and testing the footing for each step. Once clear of the danger, he took a fresh chew
00:24:22.560 of tobacco and swung along at his four-mile gait. In the course of the next two hours, he came upon
00:24:30.980 several similar traps. Usually the snow above the hidden pools had a sunken, candied appearance that
00:24:37.220 advertise the danger. Once again, however, he had a close call, and once suspecting danger,
00:24:42.920 he impelled the dog to go on in front. The dog did not want to go. It hung back until the man
00:24:49.860 shoved it forward, and then a wind quickly crossed the white, unbroken surface. Suddenly,
00:24:55.460 it broke through, floundered to one side, and got away to firmer footing. It had wet in its
00:25:02.040 four feet and legs and almost immediately the water that clung to it turned to ice it made
00:25:08.160 quick efforts to lick the ice off its light then dropped down the stone began to bite out the ice
00:25:13.280 that had formed between the toes this was a matter of instinct to remit the ice to remain would mean
00:25:19.600 sore feet it did not know this it merely obeyed the mysterious prompting that arose in that
00:25:25.320 the deep crypts of its being but the man knew having achieved a judgment on the subject and
00:25:32.000 he removed the mitten from his right hand and helped tear out the ice particles he did not
00:25:37.140 expose his fingers for more than a minute and was astonished at the swift numbness that smote them
00:25:43.120 it certainly was cold he pulled on the mitten hastily and beat the hand savagely across his
00:25:50.520 chest at 12 o'clock the day was at its brightest yet the sun was too far south on his winter
00:25:57.300 journey to clear the horizon the bulge of earth intervened between it and henderson creek
00:26:04.460 where the man walked under a clear sky at noon and cast no shadow at half past 12 to the minute
00:26:13.180 he arrived at the fork in the creek he's pleased at the speed he had made if he kept it up he would
00:26:21.700 certainly be with the boys by six he unbuttoned his jacket and shirt and drew forth his lunch
00:26:27.700 the action consumed no more than a quarter of a minute in that brief moment the numbness laid
00:26:33.640 hold of his exposed fingers he did not put the men on but instead shrug the finger a dozen
00:26:41.260 sharp smats against his leg.
00:26:43.360 Then he sat down in snow, covered
00:26:45.020 loud to eat. The sting
00:26:46.980 that followed upon the striking
00:26:48.840 of his fingers against his leg ceased
00:26:50.960 so quickly that he was startled.
00:26:53.620 He had no chance
00:26:54.920 to take a bite of biscuit.
00:26:56.840 He struck the finger repeatedly and returned
00:26:58.840 them to the mitten,
00:27:00.480 bearing the other hand for the purposes of eating.
00:27:03.320 He tried to take a mouthful,
00:27:04.760 but the ice muzzle prevented him.
00:27:07.840 He had forgotten to
00:27:08.840 build a fire and thaw out.
00:27:10.740 He chuckled at his foolishness, and as he chuckled, he noted the numbness creeping into the exposed fingers.
00:27:18.740 Also, he noted that the stinging which had first come to his toes when he sat down was already passing away.
00:27:25.680 He wondered whether the toes were warm or numbed.
00:27:29.520 He moved them inside the moccasins and decided that they were numbed.
00:27:36.200 He pulled them in non-hurriedly and stood up.
00:27:39.400 He was a bit frightened.
00:27:40.820 He stamped up and down until the sting returned into the feed.
00:27:45.800 It certainly was cold, was his thought.
00:27:48.980 That man from Sulphur Creek had spoken true when telling how cold it sometimes got up in the country.
00:27:55.500 And he had laughed at him at the time.
00:27:58.840 That showed one must not be too sure of things.
00:28:01.940 There was no mistake about it.
00:28:03.480 It was cold.
00:28:04.800 He strode up and down, stamping his feet and threshing his arms.
00:28:08.900 until reassured by the returning warmth then he got up matches and proceeded to make a fire
00:28:14.680 from the undergrowth where high where high water of the previous spring he lodged a supply of
00:28:21.060 seasoned twigs he got his firewood working carefully from a small beginning he soon had a
00:28:28.620 roaring fire or which he thawed the ice from his face and in the protection of which he ate his
00:28:34.660 biscuits. For the moment, the cold of the space was outwitted. The dog took satisfaction in the
00:28:41.740 fire, stretching out close enough for warmth and far enough weight to escape being singed.
00:28:48.100 When the man had finished, he filled his pipe and took his comfortable time over a smoke.
00:28:54.180 Then he pulled on his middens, settled the ear flaps of his cap firmly about his ears,
00:29:00.260 and took the creek trail up the left fork.
00:29:03.640 The dog was disappointed and yearned back towards the fire.
00:29:08.200 The man did not know the cold.
00:29:11.520 Possibly all of the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold,
00:29:16.620 of real cold, of cold 107 degrees below freezing point.
00:29:21.420 But the dog knew, all of its ancestry knew,
00:29:25.320 and it had inherited the knowledge,
00:29:27.080 and it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in such fearful cold it was the time to lie snug
00:29:35.340 in a hole in the snow and waited for a curtain of cloud to be drawn across the face of the utter
00:29:40.300 space once the cold came on the other hand there is keen intimacy between the dog and the man
00:29:47.820 the one was the toil slave of the other and the only caresses it had ever received were the
00:29:54.560 caresses of the whip with lash and of harsh and mincing throat sounds that threatened the whiplash
00:30:01.140 so the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehensions the man it was not concerned with
00:30:07.840 the welfare of the man it was for its own sake that he yearned back towards the fire but the
00:30:14.640 man whistled and spoke to it with the sound of whiplashes and the dog swung in at the man's heels
00:30:20.260 and followed after the man took a chew of tobacco and proceeded to start a new amber beard
00:30:26.360 also his moist moist breath quickly powdered with white his mustache and eyebrows and lashes
00:30:33.700 there did not seem to be so many springs on the left fork of the henderson for half an hour the
00:30:41.520 man saw no signs of any and then it happened at a place where there were no signs where the soft
00:30:48.760 unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath the man broke through it was not deep
00:30:54.900 he wetted himself halfway to the knee before he floundered out out to the firm crust
00:31:01.640 he was angry and cursed his luck aloud he had a hope to get into the camp with the boys at six
00:31:09.840 o'clock and this would delay him an hour for he would have to build a fire and dry out his foot
00:31:16.040 gear. This was imperative at that low temperature. He knew that much, and he turned aside to the bank
00:31:23.280 which he climbed on top and tangled in the underbrush around the trunk of several small
00:31:28.660 fresh trees with a high water deposit of dry firewood. Sticks and twigs principally, but also
00:31:36.660 larger portions of seasoned branches and fine dry last year's grasses. He threw down several large
00:31:44.160 pieces on top of the snow, and this served for a foundation and prevented the young flame from
00:31:51.500 drowning itself in the snow, so it otherwise would melt. The flame he got by touching a match
00:31:57.440 to a small shred of birch bark that he took from his pocket. This burned ever more readily than
00:32:03.840 paper. Placing on the foundation, he fed the young flame with wisps of dry grass and with the tiniest
00:32:12.080 dry twigs. He worked slowly and carefully, keenly aware of his danger. Gradually, as the flame grew
00:32:21.600 stronger, he increased the size of the twigs with which he fed it. He squatted in the snow, pulling
00:32:27.400 the twigs out from their entanglement in the brush and feeding directly into the flame. He knew there
00:32:34.500 must be no failure. With its 75 below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt to build a fire.
00:32:41.060 That is, if his feet are wet.
00:32:43.540 If his feet are dry and he fails, he can run along the trail for half a mile and restore his circulation.
00:32:49.580 The circulation of wet and freezing feet cannot be restored by running when it is 75 below.
00:32:56.020 No matter how fast he runs, the wet feet will freeze the harder.
00:33:00.420 And this the man knew.
00:33:02.220 The old-timer from Sulphur Creek had told him about it the previous fall,
00:33:06.800 and now he was appreciating the advice.
00:33:09.720 Already, all sensation had gone out of his feet.
00:33:13.400 To build the fire, he had been forced to remove his mittens
00:33:16.520 and the fingers had quickly gone numb.
00:33:19.840 His pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pumping blood
00:33:23.480 to the surface of his body and to all the extremities.
00:33:26.420 By the instant he stopped, the action of the pump eased down.
00:33:31.500 The cold of space smote the unprotected tip of the planet
00:33:34.660 and he being on that unprotected tip received the full force of the blow the blood of his body
00:33:41.640 recoiled before the blood was alive like the dog and like the dog it wanted to hide away
00:33:48.160 and cover itself from the fearful cold so long as he walked four miles an hour he pumped that
00:33:55.020 blood willy-nilly to the surface but now it ebbed away and sank down into the recesses of his body
00:34:02.180 The extremities were the first to feel its absence.
00:34:05.140 His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numbed the faster.
00:34:11.780 Though they had not yet begun to freeze, nose and cheeks were already freezing,
00:34:16.960 while the skin of all his body chilled as it lost its blood.
00:34:22.320 But he was safe.
00:34:23.920 Toes and nose and cheeks would be only touched by the frost,
00:34:27.140 for the first fire would begin to burn with strength.
00:34:30.500 he was feeding it with twigs the size of his fingers.
00:34:34.740 In another minute, he would be able to feed it with branches the size of his wrists,
00:34:38.820 and then he would remove the wet foot gear,
00:34:41.760 and while it dried, he could keep his naked feet warm by the fire,
00:34:45.980 rubbing them at first with, of course, the snow.
00:34:50.760 The fire was a success.
00:34:53.040 He was safe.
00:34:54.480 He remembered the advice of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek and smiled.
00:34:58.980 The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man could travel alone in the Klondike, above fifty below.
00:35:07.100 Well, here he was. He had had the accident, he was alone, and he had saved himself.
00:35:12.420 Those old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. 1.00
00:35:17.840 All a man had to do was keep his head, and he was all right. 1.00
00:35:22.360 Any man who was a man could travel alone.
00:35:24.700 But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his cheeks and nose were freezing
00:35:30.540 And he had not thought his fingers would go lifeless in so short a time
00:35:36.520 Lifeless they were, for he could scarcely make them move together to grip a twig
00:35:41.880 And they seemed remote from his body and from him
00:35:45.060 When he touched a twig, he had to look to see whether or not he had hold of it
00:35:51.460 the wires were pretty well drawn between him and his finger ends
00:35:56.840 all of which counted for little there was a fire snapping and crackly and promising life with every
00:36:04.960 dancing flame he started to untie his moccasins they were coated with ice the thick german socks
00:36:12.120 were like sheaths of iron halfway to the knees and the moccasin strings were like rods of steel 0.98
00:36:18.060 all twisted knot it is by some conflagration for a moment he tugged with his dumb fingers and 0.87
00:36:26.200 realizing the folly of it he drew his sheep knife but before he cut the strings it happened 0.90
00:36:33.600 it was his own fault or rather his mistake he should not have built the fire under the spruce
00:36:40.020 tree he should have built it in the open but it had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush
00:36:45.620 and dropped them directly on the fire.
00:36:48.780 Now the tree under which he had done this
00:36:52.880 carried a weight of snow on its boughs.
00:36:56.040 No wind had blown for weeks,
00:36:58.220 and each bough was full freighted.
00:37:01.720 Each time he had pulled a twig,
00:37:03.840 he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree,
00:37:07.200 an imperceptible agitation,
00:37:10.100 so far as he was concerned,
00:37:11.500 but an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster.
00:37:17.340 High up in the tree, one bough capsized its load of snow.
00:37:22.300 This fell on the bough beneath it, capsizing them.
00:37:25.760 This process continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree.
00:37:30.300 It grew like an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man in the fire,
00:37:36.000 and the fire was blotted out.
00:37:38.040 Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered snow
00:37:43.600 The man was shocked
00:37:46.040 It was though he had just heard his own sentence of death
00:37:50.300 For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been
00:37:54.220 Then he grew very calm
00:37:56.480 Perhaps the old timer at Sulphur Creek was right
00:37:59.500 If he had only had a trail mate he would have been in no danger now
00:38:03.640 The trail mate could have built the fire
00:38:05.780 what was up to him to build the fire over again and this second time there must be no failure
00:38:13.000 even if he succeeded he would most likely lose some toes his feet must be badly frozen by now
00:38:20.800 and there would be some time before the second fire was ready such were his thoughts but he did
00:38:26.980 not sit and think them he was busy all the time they're passing through his mind he made a new
00:38:33.100 foundation for a fire, this time in the open where there were no treacherous trees could blot it out.
00:38:39.380 Next he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the high water flotsam. He could not bring his
00:38:47.620 fingers together to pull them out, but he was able to gather them by the handful. In this way he had
00:38:54.180 got as many rotten twigs and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but it was the best he
00:39:00.940 could do. He worked methodically, even collecting an armful of the large branches to be used later
00:39:08.600 when the fire gathered straight. And all the while the dog sat and watched him, a certain
00:39:15.660 yearning wistfulness in its eyes, for it looked upon him as the fire provider, and the fire was
00:39:23.800 slow in coming when all was ready the man reached in his pocket for a second piece of birch bark
00:39:31.180 he knew the bark was there and though he could not feel it with his fingers he could hear its
00:39:36.520 crisp rustling as he fumbled for it try as he would he could not clutch hold of it and all the
00:39:43.340 the time in his consciousness was the knowledge that each instant his feet were freezing
00:39:50.760 This thought tended to put him in a panic, but he fought against it and kept calm.
00:39:56.440 He put on his mittens with his teeth and threshed his arms back and forth, beating his hands with all his might against his side.
00:40:04.600 He did this sitting down, and he stood up to do it.
00:40:08.040 And all the while the dog sat in the snow.
00:40:10.920 Its wolf brush of a tail curled her around warmly over its forefee.
00:40:15.560 its sharp wolf ears pricked forward intensely as it watched the man and the man as he beaten
00:40:23.520 threshed with his arms in hand and felt a great surge of envy as we regarded the
00:40:28.720 creature that was warm and secured in its natural covering
00:40:32.180 after time he is aware of the first faraway sing signals of sensation in his beaten fingers
00:40:42.280 The faint tingling grew stronger till it evolved into a stingy ache that was excruciating,
00:40:49.980 but which the man hailed with a satisfaction.
00:40:53.720 He stripped the mitten from his right hand and fetched forth the birch bark.
00:41:00.640 The exposed fingers were quickly going numb again.
00:41:04.200 Next he brought out his bunch of sulfur matches.
00:41:07.600 But the tremendous cold had already driven the life from his.
00:41:12.360 The life out of his fingers.
00:41:18.160 But the tremendous cold had already driven the life out of his fingers.
00:41:22.800 In his effort to separate one match from the other, the whole bunch fell in the snow.
00:41:28.120 He tried to pick it out of the snow but failed.
00:41:31.120 The dead fingers could neither touch nor clutch.
00:41:34.440 He was very careful.
00:41:35.700 He drove the thought of his freezing feet and nose and cheeks out of his mind
00:41:46.760 and devoted his whole soul to the matches.
00:41:50.380 He watched using the sense of vision in place of that of touch,
00:41:54.540 and when he saw his fingers on each side of the bunch, he closed them.
00:41:59.220 That is, he willed to close them.
00:42:01.640 For the wires were drawn and the fingers did not obey.
00:42:05.700 he pulled the mitten on the right hand and beat it fiercely against his knee
00:42:11.400 then with both mitten hands he scooped the bunch of matches along with much snow into his lap
00:42:19.020 yet he was no better off after some manipulation he managed to get the bunch between the heels of
00:42:28.060 his mitten hands and in this fashion he carried it to his mouth the ice crackled and snapped
00:42:34.920 by a violent effort he opened his mouth he drew the lower jaw in curled the upper lips out of
00:42:43.320 the way and scraped the bunch with his upper teeth in order to separate a match he succeeded
00:42:49.620 in getting one which he dropped on his lap he was no better off he could not pick it up
00:42:55.860 then he devised away he picked it up his in his teeth and scratched it on his leg 20 times he
00:43:03.740 scratched it before he succeeded in lighting it. As if flamed, he held it with his teeth to the
00:43:09.660 birch spark, but the burning brimstone went up his nostrils into his lungs, causing him to cough
00:43:16.000 spasmatically. The match fell into the snow where it went out. The old timer on Sulphur Creek was
00:43:24.120 right, he thought in the moment. A controlled despair then sued. After fifty below, a man
00:43:32.520 should travel with a partner. He beat his hands but failed in exciting any sensation.
00:43:40.260 Suddenly he bared both hands, removing the mittens with his teeth. He caught the whole
00:43:45.000 bunch between the heels of his hands. His arm muscles not being frozen enabled him to press
00:43:51.760 the hand heels tightly against the matches. Then he scraped the bunch along his legs.
00:43:57.200 It flared into flame, 70 sulfur matches at once.
00:44:02.640 There's no wind to blow them out.
00:44:04.920 He kept his head to one side to escape the straggling fumes,
00:44:09.660 and he held the blazing bunch to the birch bark.
00:44:12.740 And so he held it.
00:44:14.120 He became aware of sensation in his hand.
00:44:17.640 His flesh was burning.
00:44:19.900 He could smell it.
00:44:21.740 Deep down below the surface, he could feel it.
00:44:23.960 The sensation developed into pain that grew acute, and still he endured it, holding the flame of the matches clumsily to the bark that would not light readily, because his own burning hand was in the way, absorbing most of the flame.
00:44:41.760 Alas, when he could endure no more, he jerked his hands apart.
00:44:46.220 The blazing matches fell sizzling into the snow, but the birch bark was alight.
00:44:50.860 He began laying dry grasses and the teemiest twigs on the flame.
00:44:57.180 He could not pick and choose, for he had to lift the field between the heels of his hand.
00:45:03.040 Such pieces of rotten wood and green moss clung to the twigs,
00:45:07.000 and he bit them off as well he could with his teeth.
00:45:10.900 He cherished the flame carefully and awkwardly.
00:45:13.860 It meant life, and it must not perish.
00:45:16.860 The withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now made him begin to shiver,
00:45:21.720 and he grew more awkward.
00:45:22.880 A large piece of green moss fell squarely on the little fire.
00:45:29.300 He tried to poke it out with his fingers, but a shivering frame made him poke too far,
00:45:34.360 and he disrupted the nucleus of the little fire.
00:45:38.260 The burning grasses and tiny twigs separating and scattering.
00:45:41.840 He tried to poke them together again, but in spite of the tenseness of his effort, his shivering got away with him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered.
00:45:51.620 Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and went out.
00:45:55.820 The fire provider had failed, and he looked apathetically about him, his eyes chanced on the dog.
00:46:03.960 Sitting across the ruins of the fire from him, in the snow, making restless, hunching movements.
00:46:09.860 slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other shifting its weight back and forth on them with
00:46:16.760 wistful eagerness the sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head he remembered the tale of the
00:46:25.060 man caught in a blizzard who killed a spear and crawled inside the carcass and so was saved
00:46:31.560 he would kill the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until the numbness went out of them
00:46:39.120 then he could build another fire he spoke to the dog calling calling it to him but in his voice 0.87
00:46:47.440 was a strange note of fear that frightened the animal who had never known the man speak in such
00:46:53.440 a way before something was the matter and its suspicious nature sensed danger it knew not what
00:47:01.660 danger, but from somewhere, somehow, in his brain arose an apprehension of the man. It flattened
00:47:09.200 its ears down at the sound of the man's voice, and its restless hunching movements and the lifting
00:47:15.000 and shifting of its forefeet became more pronounced, but it would not come to the man.
00:47:20.260 He got on his hands and knees and crawled towards the dog. The unusual posture again excited
00:47:27.120 suspicion, and the animal saddled mincingly away. The man sat up in the snow for a moon
00:47:35.260 and struggled for calmness. Then he pulled on his mittens by means of his teeth and got upon
00:47:42.020 his feet. He glanced down at first in order to assure himself that he was really standing up,
00:47:48.220 for the absence of sensation in his feet left him unrelated to the earth. His erect position
00:47:55.400 in self start to drive the webs of suspicion from the dog's mind when he spoke preemptorily
00:48:01.380 with the sound of whiplashes in his voice the dog renders its customary the dog rendered its
00:48:08.520 customary allegiance and came to him and it came within a reaching distance the man as it came
00:48:15.500 within a reaching distance the man lost his control his arm flashed out to the dog and he
00:48:21.400 experienced genuine surprise when he discovered that his hands cannot clutch that there was neither
00:48:27.600 bend nor feeling in the fingers he had forgotten for the moment that they were frozen and that
00:48:33.300 they were freezing more and more all this happened quickly before the animal could get away he
00:48:39.180 encircled his body with its body with his arms he sat down in the snow and in this fashion held the
00:48:45.360 dog, while it snarled and whined and struggled. Bo's all he could do, hold its body encircled in
00:48:51.740 his arms and sit there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There is no way to do it.
00:48:59.100 With his helpless hands, he could neither draw nor hold his sheath knife, nor throttle the animal.
00:49:05.400 He released it, and it plunged wildly away with its tail between its legs still starling.
00:49:10.460 It halted forty feet away and surveyed him curiously, with the ear sharply pricked forward.
00:49:17.100 The man looked down at his hands in order to locate them, and found them hanging on the ends of his arms.
00:49:23.300 It struck him as curious that one should have had to use his eyes in order to find out where his hands were.
00:49:30.000 He began threshing his arms back and forth, beaming the mittened hands against his side.
00:49:34.420 He did this for five minutes violently, and his heart pumped enough blood to the surface to put a stop to his shivering, but no sensation was aroused in the hands.
00:49:45.860 He had an impression that they hung like weights on the end of his arms, but when he tried to run the impression down, he could not find it.
00:49:56.240 A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him.
00:50:00.040 This fear quickly became poignant, and he realized that it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes or of losing his hands and feet,
00:50:08.100 but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him.
00:50:11.900 This threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek bed along the old dim trail.
00:50:17.880 The dog joined him behind and kept up with him.
00:50:21.540 He ran blindly without intention, in fear such as he had never known in his life.
00:50:26.780 Slowly, as he plowed and floundered through the snow, he began to see things again.
00:50:32.140 The banks of the creek, the old timber jaws, the leafless aspens in the sky.
00:50:37.560 The running made him feel better.
00:50:39.220 He did not shiver.
00:50:40.720 Maybe if he ran on, his feet would thaw out.
00:50:43.560 And anyway, if he ran far enough, he would reach camp and the boys.
00:50:47.740 Without doubt, he would lose some fingers and toes and some of his face,
00:50:51.300 but the boys would take care of him and save the rest of him when he got there.
00:50:56.120 And at the same time, there was another thought in his mind that said he would never get to the camp and the boys.
00:51:01.740 That it was too many miles, that the freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead.
00:51:09.000 This thought he kept in the background and refused to consider.
00:51:12.540 Sometimes it pushed itself forward and demanded to be heard, but he thrust it back and strove to think of other things.
00:51:18.620 it struck him as curious that he could run on at all on feet so frozen they could feel them
00:51:27.020 when they stuck the struck the earth and took the weight of his body he seemed to himself to skim
00:51:33.640 along the surface and to have no connection with the earth somewhere he had once seen a wing in
00:51:38.880 mercury and he wondered if mercury felt as he felt when he skimmed it over the earth
00:51:43.720 his theory of running until he reached the camp and the boys had one flaw in it he lacked the
00:51:50.540 endurance several times he stumbled and finally he toddle tottered crumpled up and fell when he
00:51:57.400 tried to rise he failed he must sit and rest he decided and next time he would merely walk and
00:52:03.200 keep on going as he sat and regained his breath he noted that he was feeling quite warm and
00:52:09.260 comfortable. He was not shivering, and it even seemed that a warm glow had come to his chest and
00:52:15.740 trunks, and yet when he touched his nose and cheeks there was no sensation. Running would
00:52:22.060 not thaw them out, nor would it thaw out his hands and feet. Then the thought came to him
00:52:29.220 that the frozen portions of his body must be extending. He tried to keep his thought down
00:52:34.900 and to forget it to think of something else but he's aware of the panicky feeling that cause
00:52:40.040 cause and he was afraid of the panic but the thought asserted itself and persisted
00:52:45.760 until produced a vision of his body totally frozen this was too much and he made another
00:52:51.440 wild run along the trail once he slowed down to a walk but the thought of freezing extending
00:52:57.520 itself made him run again, and all the time the dog ran with him at his heels.
00:53:03.880 When he fell down the second time, it curled its tail over its forefeet and sat in front of him,
00:53:09.760 facing him curiously, eager and intent. The warmth and security of the animal angered him,
00:53:16.500 and he cursed it till it flattened down its ears appeasingly. This time the shivering came
00:53:23.840 more quickly upon the man, and he's losing it in his battle with the frost. It was creeping into
00:53:29.420 his body from all sides. The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no more than a hundred feet
00:53:34.620 when he staggered and pitched headlong. It was a last panic. When he had recovered his breath
00:53:41.520 and control, he sat up and entertained in his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity.
00:53:47.740 A chicken with its head cut off, such was the simile that occurred to him.
00:53:51.460 Well, he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently.
00:53:57.020 With his newfound peace of mind came the first glimmerings of drowsiness.
00:54:02.380 A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death.
00:54:05.860 It was like taking an anesthetic.
00:54:08.160 Freezing was not so bad as people thought.
00:54:11.000 There were lots worse ways to die.
00:54:14.520 He pictured the boys finding his body the next day.
00:54:18.660 Suddenly, he found himself with them, coming along the trail looking for himself.
00:54:23.880 And still with them, he came around a turn in the trail and found himself lying in the snow.
00:54:29.480 He did not belong with himself anymore, for even then he was out of himself,
00:54:34.500 standing with the boys and looking at himself in the snow.
00:54:37.920 It certainly was cold, was his thought.
00:54:40.860 When he got back into the States, he could tell the folks what real cold was.
00:54:46.660 He drifted off from this to a vision of the old timer on Sulphur Creek.
00:54:50.900 He could seem quite clearly warm and comfortable and smoking a pipe.
00:54:55.840 You were right, old hoss.
00:54:57.840 You were right, the man mumbled to the old timer of Sulphur Creek.
00:55:02.600 Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him
00:55:05.740 the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.
00:55:10.700 The dog sat facing him and waiting.
00:55:14.460 The brief day drew to a close in a long, slow twilight.
00:55:19.280 There were no signs of a fire to be made,
00:55:21.800 and besides, never in the dog's experience had it known a man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire.
00:55:27.920 As the twilight drew on, its ear yearning for the fire mastered it,
00:55:31.480 and with a great lifting and shifting of its forefeet, it whined softly,
00:55:36.020 then flattened its ears down and anticipated being chitten by the man.
00:55:40.440 But the man remained silent.
00:55:41.700 later the dog whined loudly
00:55:44.480 and still later it crept close to the man
00:55:47.060 and caught the scent of death
00:55:48.240 this made the animal bristle
00:55:51.000 and back away
00:55:52.320 a little longer it delayed
00:55:54.580 howling under the stars
00:55:55.980 that leaped and danced and shone brightly
00:55:58.760 in the cold sky
00:55:59.580 then it turned and trotted up the trail
00:56:02.980 in the direction of the camp it knew
00:56:04.620 where were the other food providers
00:56:07.320 and fire providers
00:56:08.540 so glorious listeners that is jack london's to build a fire it's it's almost certainly the best
00:56:30.120 a little short story like that that captures what it is like in extreme cold um i've never
00:56:37.380 been out in 75 degrees Fahrenheit. The coldest I've ever been out was about like 45, 50 degrees
00:56:47.540 degrees below, 45, 50 degrees below Celsius, which is about, I want to say,
00:56:57.480 maybe 60 below fahrenheit but uh it all the little details that it captures the crackling of the spit
00:57:09.820 the um the way the snow so moves the sensation in your fingers uh this if you haven't experienced
00:57:21.440 This is the most immediate thing you know of living in any really cold environment.
00:57:28.580 If you have to, like, scrape off your car in the middle of winter after a lot of snow and ice has accumulated on it,
00:57:36.140 the feeling of losing sensation in your fingers.
00:57:38.660 This has happened to be a ton while motorcycling close to the freezing point.
00:57:45.580 because of course when you're motorcycling uh you're in 90 60 mile an hour 90 kilometer an hour
00:57:54.120 winds so you lose sense you can lose sensation your fingers very easily uh that jack london
00:58:02.760 captures that maybe better than any writer i i've ever ever found um i've i've worked outside in
00:58:11.840 like minus 30 30 and the entire process he talks about having to like needing to like move about
00:58:22.160 and run about to get the blood to your extremities uh the feeling when you stop moving and all
00:58:28.020 suddenly the blood stops flowing and suddenly your fingers start freezing up again and
00:58:33.960 and you need to do something like aggressively physical to get enough blood into your fingertips
00:58:41.620 so that you can do delicate tasks again he captures that so accurately in a in a way i've
00:58:49.900 never read another writer do and of course what he captures very well is the way that little
00:58:58.100 mistakes or like little setbacks, how these all compound on each other again and again.
00:59:05.920 If you're up north or you're in a snowstorm and cars will go off the road because they've
00:59:14.640 been blinded or they lose traction in a really bad snowstorm, you can drive along and there
00:59:22.040 are cars that have gone to the side of the road.
00:59:25.140 and if it's a really bad one, you're going along the next day or the day after
00:59:29.200 and there's little ribbons of tape that police and emergency vehicles
00:59:35.060 and snowplow drivers have put in the windows of the cars
00:59:38.920 or like taped to the side of the car.
00:59:42.520 And why do they do this?
00:59:43.620 Well, they do this so to mark that there is not a person in the car
00:59:51.040 because people have frozen to death.
00:59:56.440 Their car goes off the road.
00:59:58.300 They're in the ditch at the side of the road.
01:00:02.720 Heaven help them if they try to, like, run the gas tank
01:00:08.020 and run out or, like, get stuck out there and run out the gas
01:00:13.720 or if the exhaust gets blocked and they wind up monoxiding themselves.
01:00:21.040 But it's very possible if your car just goes off the road and you're in the ditch and you can't unstick if the tires spin, it's very possible if you don't seek shelter, if you don't have a good coat on you, to die out there like that.
01:00:38.220 To just stay in your car and not make the judgment calls that you need to make.
01:00:42.600 and then by the time you realize oh you aren't going to be able to stay warm in your car
01:00:48.060 car um it's late at night you don't know where you are and you freeze to death uh this is this
01:00:57.220 happened many times to the point where there's this protocol that even like the snowplow drivers
01:01:02.560 and the other emergency vehicles have to mark out the cars in case there is someone like just
01:01:09.600 huddled in in there thinking they'll wait it they can wait it out or shelter in their car
01:01:14.360 uh these these little things that uh that
01:01:20.760 if you haven't like wintered up north before like doesn't occur to you or if you haven't
01:01:30.020 or uh if you've only lived in the north like going to an office job like basically spending like
01:01:35.760 a few minutes outside before getting in your car and driving somewhere, doesn't occur to you?
01:01:42.480 London captures all this in a way that makes it incredibly immediate, makes you feel the
01:01:51.120 detingling of sensation leaving your fingertips and the incredible aching pain of having the
01:02:01.840 blood finally go back into your extremities and uh it feels like they're on fire like exploding
01:02:08.160 when you finally get blood back into them um
01:02:11.680 that but the real reason i wanted to share this story with you is that man the protagonist of to
01:02:22.820 build a fire uh the southerner who's like kind of good kind of knows knows it but it's still his
01:02:29.720 first winter winter uh his trip if you paid attention it would he left at 9 a.m and he was
01:02:38.920 hoping to be in camp at 6 p.m so nine hour trip uh he made it he made it about like three to four
01:02:49.120 hours all all to build a fire from him leaving his initial camp to him dying is a four-hour process
01:02:58.640 Just four hours on the environment can kill you, which is actually very exacting to what emergency personnel are taught about survival.
01:03:13.560 You can survive, what is it, four weeks without food, four days without water, four hours without shelter is what's usually taught.
01:03:25.820 pretty accurate to what london depicts so that's a nine-hour trip that goes wrong and he's dead
01:03:35.520 within within the first four hours uh the reason i wanted to to read the short story to you
01:03:45.300 and the reason uh this is part one of a series despite the fact that we've just finished
01:03:50.840 the short story is i want to tell you the story of another man i want to tell you the story of a man
01:04:00.420 who survived out in the high arctic
01:04:03.340 being hunted by one of the greatest police chases that it ever happened in human history to that
01:04:13.560 point and still ranks up there there with the greatest police chases in human history
01:04:18.380 who survived out in that exact wilderness actually significantly higher uh jack london's uh to build
01:04:27.020 a fire protagonist he's going south from dawson to uh i think it was keno was mentioned or one of
01:04:34.880 the the town south there uh henderson creek if you want to look look it up uh south of dawson
01:04:41.900 i will tell you the story of a man who is north of dawson and then north of this the town six
01:04:51.420 hours north of dawson about another four to six hours i won't tell you the story of a man who
01:04:57.300 survived one month out in the wilderness in the freezing cold in the darkness uh when the sun
01:05:07.100 only creeps above the horizon for a few hours a day is that whilst being hunted by the entire
01:05:15.460 force of the British Empire. I want to tell you the story of one of the greatest examples of
01:05:22.200 individual survival, field craft, endurance, will, pure madness in human history. I want to tell you
01:05:36.620 the story of what i'd say is probably the contender for the greatest individual uh criminal
01:05:43.960 survivalist soldier warrior what have you in human history i want to tell you this story
01:05:51.660 in detail across the next next three plus little episodes like this i want you to just because the
01:06:00.500 future stories are not going to capture it in this much detail. I want you to remember
01:06:06.200 Jacqueline to build a fire. I want you to remember the pain and misery, the horror, and the feeling
01:06:14.000 of feeling leaving fingers that Jacqueline captures. I want you to remember this when
01:06:20.880 we're talking about this coming man who survived out for a month in these conditions.
01:06:30.500 while racing along for his life against dog sled teams, man hunters, World War I fighter aces.
01:06:42.880 This is maybe one of the greatest stories of all time. An example of a warrior that I really want
01:06:51.440 to capture for you Anarchonomicon readers. I really want you to take this. I really want this to
01:06:57.960 linger, I want to tell you the story of Albert Johnson, the mad trapper of Rat River.
01:07:27.960 We'll be right back.
01:07:57.960 We'll be right back.
01:08:27.960 We'll be right back.
01:08:57.960 Transcription by CastingWords