Slashdot Mirror
Hikers May Have Found Fossett Items
An Anonymous reader writes "CNN is reporting 'A weathered sweat shirt, cash and a pilot license with Fossett's name were found Tuesday near Mammoth Lakes, police Chief Randy Schienle said.' The license did not have a photo. '"We're not certain that it belongs to Steve Fossett, but it certainly has his name on the ID," Schienle said.'"
In other news, a salon discount card with Amelia Earheart's name and picture was found floating in the South Atlantic by a passing schooner.
That's 'cause the ALIENS took 'im.
And they kept the plane.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
some more info here
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fossett2-2008oct02,0,1608495.story
Nothing in any of the reports I've read said anything about the license being "partially burned"... and the hoaxer had so much money laying around he decided he'd add $1,000 to the find?
I had some time to burn so I entered a few things in Google Maps. Here's the best map I could come up with using the takeoff location provided by Wikipedia. There's no option for directions by plane, so I went with the walking option. Anyway ... assuming this isn't some stupid hoax, the point is (if there really is one) that the searches last year were all focused on Nevada if I remember correctly. But from the location being reported and from the map, you can see that the location they're talking about is A) in California, and B) pretty much due south from where Fossett took off from.
Ok, so a world-renowned pilot takes off in 2,000 pounds of airplane, steel, fuel, and glass, What's found? A partially burned piece of some of the most flammable things on the plane,
Have you seen the remains of the towers on 9/11? It's bizarre what can come out of a catastrophic event.
I'm not saying it's genuine or fake, but your criteria doesn't prove anything either.
Nonsense! Everyone knows that aliens use video games to determine the worth of a pilot.
Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
Ok, so a world-renowned pilot takes off in 2,000 pounds of airplane, steel, fuel, and glass, What's found? A partially burned piece of some of the most flammable things on the plane,
Have you seen the remains of the towers on 9/11? It's bizarre what can come out of a catastrophic event.
I'm not saying it's genuine or fake, but your criteria doesn't prove anything either.
Stewart: "how do you know the twin towers collapsed there?"
Joe: "Well, I found a little plastic card and some chewing gum"
Stewart: "noo.. concrete chunks? no steel fragments?"
Joe: "nope"
Stewart: "with all due respect sir, this structure was several hundred meters tall"
Joe: "It's bizarre what survives a catastrophic event.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
So our hoaxer forges 3 separate IDs, in one case getting all the original information that was on Fossett's FAA card, and adds $1005? That's one heck of a hoax. I suppose you could argue that's he's trying to get a reward from Fossett's rich widow for "finding" her husband's final resting place... but after he couldn't get ahold of the family's lawyers, he went to the police. Seems that would be the last thing a hoaxer would want to do, is get the police and authorities involved; I imagine forging federal IDs is a pretty serious offense. Doesn't make sense.
True, finding the contents of his wallet off on their own is odd... but animals are curious and like to chew on things, especially when they're hungry. In the middle of winter in the Sierra mountains, a bear or fox might decide that a leather wallet was better to eat than nothing and tear the wallet apart for a snack. Bears in particular will eat damn near anything, edible or not.
The other card and money are paper. Pilots licenses are made out of plastic. It wouldn't get wrinkled/dirty like a piece of paper.
One little flaw, they may be highly flammable but they are also highly transportable. If the plane EXPLODED, and if the hikers were where it exploded, sure.
1) depending on the environment the hikers could have walked within 50 yards from the crash site and not seen it.
2) even if he didn't survive, or died away from the crash site, animals could have wandered off with stuff either from the crash site, or from the site where he passed away.
As someone else said a bear might easily be interested in taking a bite out of a leather wallet, or briefcase. It might also rip through a bag cotaining perhaps a sweater, and then strew its contents of anything it wasn't interested in along it path. Contents which might be moved further by weather or other animals...
People in the later stages of hypothermia engage in 'shedding' of clothes. They think they are hot so they start taking off articles of clothing, leaving a trail. This is often how rescuers find bodies, by following the trail of clothing to a frozen stiff. This was how they found the husband of the James Kim family who made a wrong turn in California about a year ago. The family stayed in the car while the husband went on walkabout. They followed the trail of clothing to his frozen corpse.
15 minutes later old man comes out of lake after a refreshing swim and says, "Hey, who the fuck took my wallet and my shirt!?"
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
It's funny both the slashdot summary and CNN note that the police said the pilot's license didn't have a photo.
For good reason. Pilots' licenses don't have photographs. I think the police there have never seen anything like it and are just plain perplexed.
They'll tell you that Fossett was anything but "an amazing pilot". He wasn't exactly a terrible pilot, just nothing better than average, at best. What he did have was a willingness to fund adventures, so long as he was top dog.
His money was greatly appreciated, but the attention-seeking man was merely tolerated. He wasn't hated, but nor was he required, beyond the financial aspect of his participation. But Fossett loved the glory and limelight, so he made it a precondition of funding a venture that he be the public face of it.
Yes, I know this is going to be modded troll and flamebait, but at least I can say that I genuinely "knew" Fossett, and I don't like hearing people such as the OP claiming that Fossett was "an amazing pilot", when the fact is he couldn't have done shit without the help of the other people and pilots he funded.
No, it's not. The certificate has a small tear taken out of it. The other IDs didn't look to have fared quite as well, but also don't show any obvious burn marks - they're torn, tattered, and dirty. A year of exposure to the elements probably caused all the damage you see to those papers and the bills.
More plausible: He was able to get the plane on the ground, probably destroyed it in the process, suffered significant injuries, and was unable to get help. He may have left some items behind, dropped them, or perhaps his body was disturbed by wildlife. I expect they'll find more evidence upon searching more thoroughly.
He has a knack for that sort of thing.
I think the "hoax" crowd neglects the possibility that Fossett survived the crash and walked towards what he thought was civilization. The Lady Be Good" was a US bomber that went down in the desert during World War II. The crew bailed out and some of the survivors walked over a hundred miles in the scorching desert with only a very limited supply of food and water. Perhaps Fossett crash-landed and tried to survive off the land awaiting rescue. He might have became disoriented and left his ID and belongings behind, or even may have sought shelter in some gully and died there.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Search crews have found some wreckage, apparently. No link because it's only a banner on CNN's website.
Just in: Wreckage has been reported near to where the items were found, but the exact location is being kept a closely-guarded secret. They're due to swarm into the area of the reported wreckage pretty much first thing tomorrow.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Nobody said anything about the findings being burned, partially or otherwise.
Large, bulky items tend to stay right where they were put... Smaller and lighter items get picked up by winds, water (streams, rivers, etc.), etc.
Yes, because the real world is just like the movies... where every crash causes an explosion and a raging inferno, even when the vehicle has run out of gas.
Which is why there are no undiscovered crash sites, since someone always notices the raging inferno... And of course you don't actually find a downed plane, because noting remains after the necessary conflagration...
You are a moron.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
>They've already found wreckage [bloomberg.com], so this is basically a sure thing
Having actually searched for, and found, missing persons and aircraft wreckage on the ground in that general location in the Sierras, I can tell you that there are many more undiscovered crash sites than you might believe. The odds are good that it could be any of dozens of aircraft that have gone missing in recent years, including the one that carried Fossett, but not good enough to be a 'sure thing'. This is why they have to go in and make sure.