To Build a Fire
by Jack London · first published 1960
10mentions
3recommended by
10HN commenters
2010–2023first – last mentioned
30% recommend70% neutral
A man travels across the Yukon with only a dog as his companion. He believes he has all the skill and preparations ready to survive it.
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
This topic makes me think of the Jack London story "To Build a Fire", which is one of my favorites. http://www.jacklondons.net/buildafire.html Also timely, one of our power users at Referly just made a preparedness kit list for winter driving. I probably should have…
on “The Cold Hard Facts of Freezing to Death (1997)” ↗…any practical experience in most people, but surviving just long enough to be rescued. The unstated implication being death is not far off. This always reminds me of Jack London's timeless short story "To Build a Fire": https://nmi.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/11.pdf
on “You're trapped in a Blizzard. Do you know what to do next to survive?” ↗Was it "To Build a Fire"? It's story about a man and his dog who venture out at the onset of a storm. A very good read.
on “The Benefits of Being Cold” ↗…weekend it was 45 and blissfully sunny; it felt like spring, I left my hat and gloves at home and did my first shirtless workout of the season. The article reminds me of the quote from Jack London's "To Build a Fire" (full text at [1]): > His idea of running until he arrived at the camp and the boys presented one problem: he lacked the endurance. Guðlaugur did have the endurance! Good on him. It does make me think,…
on “The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold” ↗…effort against the Zulus, began to abandon his racist beliefs, gave up sex, and invented satyagraha. London: got arrested for being a Socialist, and wrote The Call of the Wild, The Unparalleled Invasion, To Build a Fire, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf, all of which are still read today. Darrow: represented Debs in the Pullman Strike case, once successfully and once unsuccessfully; helped organize the Populist Party; successfully…
on “Winning Isn't Normal” ↗…depending on physical activity. And so naturally this process involves too-hot and too-cold periods that are less than pleasant. Still, I survived to tell the tale. I mean, we could all live like the hero of To Build A Fire, at least until we died.
on “Heat people, not spaces (2015)” ↗…to find the table of contents for a book from high school—a collection of short stories called Characters in Conflict. I knew a few of the story titles, so I did a multiple-phrase search, like so: "to build a fire" "harrison bergeron" "characters in conflict" The results from a Google search are near useless. Curious, I tried DuckDuckGo (which I've heard of but don't regularly use). The fifth result was this page,…
on “Ask HN: Is Google's search quality declining?” ↗> we could all live like the hero of To Build A Fire That (and 45 degrees) are strawperson arguments against turning down the thermostat a little and putting on a sweater (and let me recommend shoes). My sense is that many people generally (I don't know…
on “Heat people, not spaces (2015)” ↗The hero of To Build A Fire was obviously the sled dog, the human was too much whiny and needy - which is what caused the hero to abandon him in the end.
on “Heat people, not spaces (2015)” ↗…especially his gold rush stories, because very often in the stories the main character ends up dead, defeated by bad luck and an unsympathetic wilderness which is hostile to clueless men. I mean, did he read "To Build a Fire"?
on “‘That Girl Is Going to Get Herself Killed’” ↗