274
Man caught living for 8 years among half-ton of trash in national forest, feds say
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
274 points (99.6% liked)
News
38263 readers
1349 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Actually, a lot of that sounds pretty practical.
The barrels would work as slow burn barrels for long term heat on cold nights, the bike parts could be a source of income (part bikes > full bikes to sell), more than 2 pans seems too many, but he may go through them fast if used over an open fire (depending on the type of pan), for millennia campers kept fires buring over night or for days to make cooking later easier (yes it's risky in some situations, but practical in general), and covering his car would ensure it looked cleaner and required lower maintenance (both have a lot of perks for a homeless person trying to live cheaply and fly under the radar). I'm not sure about the tires, but keeping cans and some other materials can def provide a source of income.
Nothing is ever really disposable, except the abusive people in your life. We could all benefit from less of those. Everything else is reusable or recyclable. Just listing this guys possessions without explanations for them makes them easy to dismiss as trash, but that isn't necessarily even close to honest. He likely had some actual waste on site from food prep or completed projects, but by no means was all his stuff trash.
Still a fire hazard. No open flames are supposed to be burning during high fire danger alerts and leaving an open fire burning unattended is taboo anytime, since we now have reliable means of starting a fire when needed. Climate change has made wildfires worse but even in the Old West they were a frequent cause of death.