Posted on 07/20/2009 12:59:51 AM PDT by DemforBush
ADELAIDE, Australia – A British teenager who was found dehydrated and freezing after 12 wintry days lost in Australia's wilderness said he wrote farewell notes to his family and expected to die of starvation.
Jamie Neale, 19, told Australia's "60 Minutes" television program Sunday that he was "a total idiot" to venture unprepared into the Blue Mountains, 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of Sydney...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
This young man is lucky to be alive. Nature can be rather unforgiving of foolishness.
“”I had overconfidence and I didn’t respect the seriousness of the situation, and I made mistakes,” Neale acknowledged to the program, which paid him 200,000 Australian dollars ($160,600) for his story.”
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Not too bad for being lost for a few days... :-)
And a shmuck like this gets a $20,000 tv/book deal.
The world sucks.
I always am amazed at how indestructible young people believe themselves to be. I was always paranoid in dangerous environments, assuming that doom was seconds away.
> Jamie Neale, 19, told Australia’s “60 Minutes” television program Sunday that he was “a total idiot” to venture unprepared into the Blue Mountains, 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of Sydney...
Nope. Not an idiot, just a typical Pom. We’re used to them DownUnder, that’s why nobody here is sweating about it.
> I always am amazed at how indestructible young people believe themselves to be.
That’s because typically they are indestructible. At 19 they are in peak condition, their minds relatively clear, their joints flexible, their metabolism efficient, their reactions fast, and their bodies resilient to everything but the most fatal of blows. It is as close to “indestructible” our species can get.
It’s all straight downhill once we hit 30, as we have all found out.
He's right.
On the other hand, he’s not as much of a total idiot as the program that paid him that kind of money is...
Obviously that assertion is untrue. After all, “60 minutes” is sweating about it.
And by the by, who’s the bigger idiot? The 19 year old who gets himself lost and nearly dead in the mountains, or the people who pay him $200,000 to tell about it?
I’ve survived alone in the wilderness for 6 months at a time with nothing but the clothes on me and a knife. no electricity, no technology at all. guiding myself with the stars and seasons. it’s a lost art these days.
Thats two hundred thousand, not twenty thousand!
You’re right, the sense of value is ridiculous. $200,000 Australian - that’s over £98,000 sterling! Thats as much as I make working hard for four YEARS - so why bother to work hard? Why don’t I just go and make a public idiot of myself for a month? Well actually, because I have some dignity and morality, but there’s an awful lot of people who will make the connection and act accordingly.
I could never do that, but I admire people who can do it immensely. Well done sir!
This kid is, at least, donating a fair chunk of the money he receives to the rescue teams that looked for him, and the hospital that treated him.
His dad put over $1000 behind the bar for the rescue workers the other night.
That’s good. As others have said on this thread, a man who knows he’s a fool is halfway to fixing it.
Well, paying him $200,000 to tell his “story” just blows me away. That’s the easiest fortnight’s work he’s never done. It rewards stupid behavior.
Glad he made it out alive. Plus, this one can be taught. Lesson learned. He won't do that again, I'd bet.
Pom according to the dictionary is a demeaning word for a British person in Austraila.
Does it stand for anything in particular?
> Pom according to the dictionary is a demeaning word for a British person in Austraila.
Whose dictionary? It’s about as demeaning as the term “Yank” would be for an American. It’s a term also in use in New Zealand.
> Does it stand for anything in particular?
There’s wide speculation as to the term’s etymology. Some say it’s an acronym for “Prisoner of Mother England”. That explanation, of course, doesn’t take into account the silent “E” in the word’s correct spelling “POM”.
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