A tragic incident occurred where two women and a teenage boy lost their lives attempting to live off the grid in the mountains. They had solely relied on knowledge gained from YouTube tutorials.
From Oddity Central:
The partially mummified bodies of 42-year-old Rebecca ‘Becky’ Vance, her 14-year-old son, and her sister Christine, 41, were recently discovered by a hiker at a camp site in Gunnison National Forest. Last summer, Becky had convinced her son and her sister to go live off the grid, in the wilderness, disconnected from a society that she no longer felt they belonged to. Unfortunately, despite having watched hours of off-grid survival videos on YouTube and on TV, they had very little experience in outdoor survival and did not really prepare enough before venturing into the wilderness. When they were discovered, they had not managed to build a shelter other than a tent and had little more than canned food and ramen noodles for supplies.
“The last time they went camping is when we were kids,” Rebecca’s sister, Trevala Jara, said. “My sister didn’t have a button to press for when they wanted to quit. I wished they’d practiced. You can look on YouTube, and there’s some good survival stuff on there, but reading it, watching it or whatever, is totally different from doing it and living way off the grid.”
Most of the survivalist tutorials and TV shows Rebecca Vance had apparently become fascinated with have some sort of panic button protagonists could press for help, but for the single mother and her family, there was no way to contact rescuers.
Coroners have not been able to determine how the trio of off-grid survivalists met their end, but the most likely scenarios are exposure to extremely low temperatures and malnutrition. An investigation of the campsite found that the three had been working on a ‘lan-to’ type of shelter to protect them from the elements, with only a tent as an alternative.
Living off the grid isn't all fun and games. While some YouTubers and vloggers might paint a rosy picture, what they don't show in their meticulously edited videos is the unending battle just to stay afloat each day. Toss in freezing temperatures and heavy snow, and you've got a perfect recipe for catastrophe.
