Benedict Allen I presume
November 16, 2017 2:40 AM   Subscribe

British explorer Benedict Allen found alive in Papua New Guinea, 16 Nov, 2017
“He has been sighted alive and well near a remote airstrip in Papua New Guinea having trekked vast distances. He has requested rescue and efforts are under way to get him out. This is only a reported sighting, but it is the second sighting and it’s a tribal commission that has been looking for him and they have reported him in. So unless they have got it horribly wrong, and I’m not aware of any other lost British explorers in that part of Papua New Guinea, Benedict Allen is safe and well.”

British explorer Benedict Allen missing in Papua New Guinea, 15 Nov, 2017
“So, don’t bother to call or text! Just like the good old days, I won’t be taking a sat phone, GPS or companion. Or anything else much. Because this is how I do my journeys of exploration. I grow older but no wiser, it seems …
Benedict Allen - Why do I do it? 12 Nov, 2006
I knew I was in trouble the moment the sweat on my face began to freeze. It was tightening over my skin like a mask. Everything had been going so well. I'd been making my way with my dog team across the maze of pack ice, when, having gone ahead to scout the route, I suddenly became separated from the dogs. The next thing I knew, the wind had picked up and, very quickly, the tracks that would lead me back through the ice to my dog team and sledge had been wiped out. I was alone on the Bering Strait, with the light fading and the temperature plummeting.
Benedict Allen - A walk in the crocodile's shoes, 9 Feb, 2002
[A] warning to pedantic readers that if "cultural and geographical blunders scream out at you", remember this was a young guy "launching out into an exotic world which he didn't, and couldn't understand".
Benedict Allen, The questionnaire, 6 Feb, 1999
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
That, in the end, it's worth risking.
posted by Thella (61 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
I know there's usually a bunch of people in these threads who decry how stupid the explorers are for not taking any precautions.

So let me be the first. PNG can be bloody remote - I grew up in POM and when my father took me to visit the village of a friend of his my father and I were the first white people who'd been there in 30 years. This was a coastal village!

Going properly remote without a sat phone, companion or GPS is worse than moronic. I've got no issue with wanting to be a solo explorer but take backup!

I'm glad he's been found but I hope he's billed the full amount of his rescue effort.
posted by Silentgoldfish at 2:56 AM on November 16, 2017 [28 favorites]


I’m an explorer, get me out of here.
posted by unliteral at 3:13 AM on November 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Reported missing? He chose to lose himself in the jungle! Told his own family, “I may be some time …”

Been found? Actually, only second-hand accounts, maybe it's not him.

without a sat phone, companion or GPS is worse than moronic.
No, that is proper exploration, the way it was always done, going by the stars, surviving by ingenuity. I can understand his sentiment completely, as long, as he takes full responsibility. It does not sound like this kind of person would beg to be saved by a helicopter.

But is it ethical to try and contact "one of the last people on the entire planet who are out-of-contact with our interconnected world"?
I don't think so. We don't even know where this "interconnected world" will take us and I certainly don't think it's ethical to force-drag anyone into it.
posted by Laotic at 3:22 AM on November 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


I can't be the only one that feels like there is something sort of outdated and colonialist about this. He purposefully went off without modern technology to satisfy his romantic feelings as an 'explorer'

As for the tribes, they are just an object not the subject. Either leave them alone or send some qualified anthropologists.
posted by vacapinta at 3:26 AM on November 16, 2017 [76 favorites]


I may be an incredible cynic, but if no one else has met this tribe to document in the Western historical record why should we believe anything he has to say about it? He could make up any kind of tosh.

(So yeah, I'm not exactly impressed).

I never had the impression that Black Books episode was based on any explorer in particular, more the archetype, but I feel like if it was anyone it was probably this dude.
posted by chiquitita at 3:33 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Have to nitpick that article (the first one anyway). At no point did it list how long he's been missing. A month? A year? Give me a hint, jeez/
posted by zardoz at 4:02 AM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


The article about him being missing is from yesterday, so he was missing for... a day?
posted by qntm at 4:35 AM on November 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


Was he actually ever missing at all? He went out into the jungle mock-heroically quoting Captain Oates and saying he'd be back in mid-November, which is... right about now.

(The funk soul brother.)
posted by pracowity at 4:36 AM on November 16, 2017 [22 favorites]


One of my heroes is Captain James Cook, who was a navigator of genius, but also wonderfully able to see the indigenous people simply as people. He was good at not judging, a real man of the Enlightenment.
Uh-huh. From Wikipedia:
Cook was attacked and killed while attempting to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, a Hawaiian chief, during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific in 1779.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:43 AM on November 16, 2017 [18 favorites]


How can anyone without irony refer to someone as 'an explorer' in this day and age? A visitor, perhaps. A trespasser, maybe. Exploring presupposes that that part of the world is not known. Not known to who? To some white dude. It's plenty known and understood by the people who live there. Who apparently don't want to talk to us, so maybe leave them alone?
posted by lollusc at 4:56 AM on November 16, 2017 [52 favorites]


A publicity-seeking privileged white dude mysteriously gets 'lost', creates media buzz and is quickly 'found' just in time for the release of his new book promoting the hackneyed colonialism of his forefathers.
posted by aeshnid at 4:59 AM on November 16, 2017 [36 favorites]


Allen is father to Beatrice, 2, Freddie, 7, and Natalya, 10, and was travelling in rural Papua New Guinea without a phone or GPS device.

He has three children. If he were a mother instead....

Shaking my fist at The Patriarchy
posted by slipthought at 5:19 AM on November 16, 2017 [35 favorites]


At least Wes Anderson just makes movies
posted by thelonius at 5:39 AM on November 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


I can't be the only one that feels like there is something sort of outdated and colonialist about this.

This is my feeling about several forms of "extreme" endeavours. The colonialist impulse demands one conquer something. Pick your poison.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:48 AM on November 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


There was a documentary recently that argued persuasively that Captain Cook went through a chronic psychological deterioration. First voyage, enthusiastic, careful personal attention to every detail, energetic, intelligent and effective. Second voyage, what, I have to do this again? Well fuck that, let’s just get it over. Third voyage; you fucking shitheads, I’m not doing another three years out there; oh God! Negligent, constant foul temper, crippled with depression, near-suicidal at times.

Don’t know how far that’s true but it seemed convincing.
posted by Segundus at 5:55 AM on November 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


The colonialist impulse demands one conquer something.

Maybe the next big thing will be to conquer our own worst impulses and subdue them? Conquer our desire for conquest. (It sounds like of Taoist to do that, I guess.)

I can understand the desire to go walking about, but I think you need a panic button if you get really screwed up by the trip.
posted by mephron at 5:56 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


No, that is proper exploration, the way it was always done, going by the stars, surviving by ingenuity.

You know you can do all that and still have a get-me-out-of-here beacon in the bottom of your bag, just in case?
posted by Dysk at 6:02 AM on November 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


What are the odds that he promptly comes out with a book on how, all along, the real journey was about finding himself?
posted by lydhre at 6:13 AM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


The colonialist impulse demands one conquer something.

That's probably why certain people want to conquer explore other planets. We could send robots to sniff around, send back pictures, test the environment, and let us know whether there is anything interesting there, and do it much more effectively, but that would defuse the thrill of someone standing on a previously totally unknown chunk of dirt, sticking a flag in it, and claiming it. "This dirt... is our dirt. If it has anything worth shipping back to Earth, we call dibs on that, too."
posted by pracowity at 6:13 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


He has three children. If he were a mother instead....

If he were a mother, we’d hear even more of a chorus of outrage and judgement about such monstruous self-indulgence and, oh wait, momentary memory slip there, no need to speculate what if, there have indeed been women with children who went off into the wilderness or climbing some infamous mountains and some may have even infamously died in the process and not even basic respect for the dead and their loved ones stopped the sad ugly caravan of accusations and judgement from strangers who felt they could get on the comfy pulpit of their couches and preach about how self-indulgent it is to do anything that crazy when you have children... preaching and judging no doubt motivated by the noble and higher intention of preventing millions of other women, or men, as may be the case, from going to die in some inaccessible region of the world, because clearly explorers and mountaineers and extreme sports people of any gender, but especially men, or especially women, depending, are a very dangerous threat to our society with the imitation effect they have on the masses... Why, I was in Tesco when the news came on the radio and literally half of the other customers dropped their shopping carts right there and ran off shouting "get me out of here I want to follow in the footsteps of Benedict Allen!".
posted by bitteschoen at 6:19 AM on November 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


As far as I can tell, he was only a few days late, having missed a flight back on Sunday. While he has requested a pick-up it isn't clear whether he was ever in any particularly dire straits.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 6:21 AM on November 16, 2017


Or that he asked for, wanted, or even thought of rescue. It isn't uncommon for Appalachian trail hikers to be a week or two late, after all. (And that is much less remote)

In this modern age of connectivity, we tend to worry when people don't contact us when expected. That feeding of fear is probably the worst thing about pervasive connectivity itself. (There are plenty of other issues with the way we use technology, but none other so basic to the tech) I'm commonly out of touch with people I know, even my best friends, for a month or two at a stretch, but when Georgia is more than a few hours late checking in I suddenly start to worry for no particular reason. It's a travesty, IMO. Time was that a call once or twice a week was more than plenty.
posted by wierdo at 6:34 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm picturing Kenneth Branagh in the role. Or, if they can't get him, maybe Kennegh Branath.
posted by pracowity at 6:40 AM on November 16, 2017


I'm picturing Kenneth Branagh in the role.

Did something happen to James Franco?
posted by thelonius at 6:53 AM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Viggo Mortensen, please!
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 6:59 AM on November 16, 2017


The only thing tempering my incandescent rage at this dude is the fact that he seems like such a self-centered toolbag that his wife and kids are probably better off when he goes "exploring" (vom) than they are when he is home.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:06 AM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


My bullshit filter says that this is a publicity stunt rather than some actual emergency. First, he doesn't show up precisely when he was supposed to, which would not be unusual on this kind of trip. But his PR people declare him "missing". Then, he does show up and they declare him "found." This garners nice Guardian coverage both times, and more to come when he triumphantly returns with dazzling tales of "contact" with the Yaifo tribe. (Reminds me of Herman Melville's early exploits in the South Pacific, which yielded him a couple of successful novels that turned him into a major sex symbol before Moby-Dick.) Benedict's day job is motivational speaking; this should enable him to increase his fees and bookings nicely.
posted by beagle at 7:12 AM on November 16, 2017 [15 favorites]


Will Arnett seems the most appropriate casting here. Or David Cross.
posted by ocschwar at 7:16 AM on November 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


Papua New Guinean explorer Samuel Mekere Appo found alive in West Dribbling

He has been sighted alive and well near a remote pub in West Dribbling having rambled vast distances. He has requested rescue and efforts are under way to get him out. This is only a reported sighting, but it is the second sighting and it’s a county council that has been looking for him and they have reported him in.

Appo said that on his previous trip he was greeted with “a terrifying show of strength, an energetic dance featuring their pints and football scarves”. He speculated whether the same would happen on this trip, or if he would even reach their pub, given the “treacherous weather”.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:24 AM on November 16, 2017 [65 favorites]


No, that is proper exploration, the way it was always done, going by the stars, surviving by ingenuity. I can understand his sentiment completely, as long, as he takes full responsibility. It does not sound like this kind of person would beg to be saved by a helicopter.

Except he did ask to be saved. It's right there in the first link. Just like every other purported wilderness explorer and mountaineer who claims to have this "Man Versus Wild" view, when everything goes tits up that boast fell by the wayside and he begged for help.

It's the more arrogant version of people who go off hiking in brutal areas, stroll past the signs warning them to take proper precautions, and then panic when they realize the warnings were there for a reason.

Not to mention waiving a rescue is rarely even a choice. In the majority of wilderness-type areas in the world, a government launches search-and-rescue efforts for missing "explorers" (i.e. tourists) by default. You don't get to tell the rangers "nah, I'm good" before you have your little adventure. The only way to deter S&R is to not tell anybody you're entering the area in the first place--and Allen sure as hell doesn't fall into that category.

Calling yourself an "explorer" to justify your lack of safety measures doesn't excuse the risk and burden you put on those who inevitably have to rescue you, much less those who you ostensibly care about back home. Even if the "explorer" waves off the helicopter hovering over them, the process of just getting to the point of the helicopter finding them has already incurred a huge financial and man-hour cost. Furthermore, depending on the area,you've put your rescuers' lives at risk. It doesn't have to be Everest, either. Li'l ol', easily-accessible-to-the-public Mount Washington (see article above) has killed multiple S&R team members deployed to save an unprepared hiker.

It's not highway robbery when foreign countries charge tourists hundreds of thousands of dollars to be airlifted out of wherever they got themselves stuck. It represents the real cost of launching these efforts. In the USA these are done free of cost--but there has absolutely been a debate about whether that should change to get people to take the outdoors more seriously.
posted by Anonymous at 7:24 AM on November 16, 2017


In the USA these are done free of cost--but there has absolutely been a debate about whether that should change to get people to take the outdoors more seriously.

Maybe sometimes they're done for free, but, for instance, if you need to be rescued in the White Mountains you're going to be sent a bill, under New Hampshire law. At least six other states have similar provisions, according to that story.
posted by beagle at 7:30 AM on November 16, 2017


I've watched several of Benedict Allen's television series and I've gotta say he comes over as decent bloke if deep down totally mad. I'm not going to jump to conclusions about this escapade. I much prefer him to bloody Bear fake Grylls anyway.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:32 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


This BBC article is like some parody of British colonial fantasy. Down to the intrepid White man with a chiseled jaw boldly going where no civilised man would dare tread. Give me a fucking break.

I have two anthropologist friends who are PNG experts. Both Americans, now professors, who lived in PNG for a year+ at a time doing field work. They've told me a lot of stories over time. It's definitely very different: remote, occasionally dangerously violent, lacking material wealth. It's also totally normal in many ways and relatable on a human level. The exoticism on display in the BBC article is offensive and damaging.
posted by Nelson at 7:57 AM on November 16, 2017 [15 favorites]


It strikes me he needs to save everone a lot of effort and get lost permanently.
posted by Burn_IT at 8:36 AM on November 16, 2017


No, that is proper exploration, the way it was always done, going by the stars, surviving by ingenuity

Or not surviving, as was so often the case. This is like pining for the good old days before vaccines when kids would just "tough out" a case of smallpox.

Besides, everyone knows that real explorers go forth with nothing but an acheulean hand-axe and some value notions about how to use fire.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:44 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


In it, he writes: “The Yaifo, a band of people I made first outside contact with some 30 years ago, are still living in the remote Central Range of PNG. Furthermore, no outsider has made the journey to visit them since the rather perilous journey I made as a young man three decades ago. This would make them the remotest people in Papua New Guinea, and one of the last people on the entire planet who are out of contact with our interconnected world.

...."so I'm gonna contact them!!" - white dudes
posted by nakedmolerats at 8:46 AM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


remote tribes are the Pokemon of the English white dude explorer world.

That, and mountains.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:06 AM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


I've watched several of Benedict Allen's television series and I've gotta say he comes over as decent bloke if deep down totally mad. I'm not going to jump to conclusions about this escapade. I much prefer him to bloody Bear fake Grylls anyway.

Neither of them can hold a candle to Ray Mears and his short shorts.
posted by elsietheeel at 9:20 AM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


schroedinger: past the signs warning them to take proper precautions, and then panic when they realize the warnings were there for a reason.

Oh! You reminded me of this previous AskMe "Looking for emphatic warnings against really bad ideas"
posted by slipthought at 9:26 AM on November 16, 2017


There's nothing wrong with dropping by and saying hello, but writing books about it is kinda gross and exploitative.
posted by wierdo at 9:27 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Also, asking to be picked up at a remote airstrip in a known location is not at all the same as asking for a huge SAR effort. One costs $500 or $1000 for a bush plane charter, while the other starts at ten times the cost and involves many more people with much greater risk.
posted by wierdo at 9:31 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Maybe if we were more accepting of people who want to drink their own piss they'd stop leaving civilisation to do it.
posted by adept256 at 9:32 AM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


This is like finding me alive and well in Bakersfield, only he is safer at that airstrip.
posted by Oyéah at 9:48 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


I don't think it's necessary to express that you wish the guy had died, and it's way unnecessary to speculate that his family's better off without him. Like, I understand that this guy is a member of several classes of people that we dislike, but-- c'mon, a little less bloodthirst, please.
posted by 4th number at 10:15 AM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


How can anyone without irony refer to someone as 'an explorer' in this day and age? A visitor, perhaps. A trespasser, maybe. Exploring presupposes that that part of the world is not known.
Outer space and the depths of our own oceans are probably good candidates, although it's hardly a matter of mutual exclusiveness; i.e., "visitor" and "trespasser" as much as "explorer".
posted by inconstant at 11:04 AM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oh good lord, I've gone missing for longer than that, and that was just in the whiskey section.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 11:34 AM on November 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


You’re against him because his name reminds you of Benedict Arnold, admit it. If he was a similar fool called Ben Franken you’d be all over him and his simple frontier ways...
posted by Segundus at 12:29 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


I actually initially read the name as "Benedict Arnold" and was desperately trying to figure out what the joke was.
posted by holborne at 12:43 PM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


called Ben Franken you’d be all over him

Uhhh, certainly not after today's revelations?
posted by elsietheeel at 12:49 PM on November 16, 2017


How can anyone without irony refer to someone as 'an explorer' in this day and age?

I explored NYC a few years ago; it was awesome!
posted by el io at 1:00 PM on November 16, 2017


After a day spent tracking down East Sepik language maps, Pacific Linguistics articles, and missionary newsletters, it's now clear that the "Yaifo" tribe, which otherwise appears on Google only in Benedict Allen-related references, is a reference to the village of Yaipo, who are speakers of Nete, an Outer Engan language in the same family as the widespread highlands language Enga. They live on the border between the East Sepik and Enga provinces, exactly where the Yaifo are described as living in his book: near the Bisorio and Bikaru peoples, who speak a related Outer Engan language and live just down the mountain from the Nete region.

As far as Yaipo vs. Yaifo, the f/p distinction likely arose from the fact that p often manifests as /φ/ intervocalically in highlands Papuan languages. Unfortunately, this identification only came about because Yaipo and other Nete region villages suffered a measles outbreak in 2015.
posted by likethemagician at 1:51 PM on November 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


Comparing that language map to Google Earth, I think he was looking for somewhere about here, which is pretty isolated but is also just 20 miles away from Porgera, the second biggest gold mine in the country, like the Guardian article says.
posted by Small Dollar at 3:21 PM on November 16, 2017




There's a lot of things wrong with his approach - I'm a firm believer in the moral wrongness of contacting uncontacted tribes - but I thought this was a more common fantasy, going off into the wilderness alone, reliant only or primarily on one's self. I wouldn't do this if I had a family, but I don't. I wouldn't go to PNG because me and heat don't get along, but I dream about walking off into the Canadian Rockies or whatever. I'm 43 and have some physical limitations so it seems unlikely but you never know.

Maybe it's stupid to go without an EPIRB, if survival is your goal, but I don't see how it's selfish. I've known people who died on mountains and their wives knew the type of guy they married. I don't think it's that different from being married to e.g. a firefighter. You know there's a risk and you know they're never going to stop being that type of person.
posted by AFABulous at 6:49 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


(Oh, I guess EPIRBs are mainly for maritime use. I was married to a sea kayaker so I picked that term up from him. Substitute personal locator beacon or whatever.)
posted by AFABulous at 6:52 PM on November 16, 2017


It's selfish to the extent that you end up imposing the risks and costs of your rescue (and/or the trauma of your recovery) on strangers just to feed your sense of manliness or whatever. Men never want to think about who's going to have to sponge up the brains and entrails afterwards.
posted by praemunire at 7:37 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thank god Benedict Cumberbatch is ok.
posted by soakimbo at 8:33 PM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


I see what you're saying. I should have further emphasized self-reliance. If you're going to do something that risky, absorb all the risk. If you can't get out on your own, so be it. I confess I don't know exactly where to draw the line since most activities contain some degree of risk. I don't think we should abandon skiers in avalanches or sailors in typhoons. But this guy had a reckless disregard for his own safety. If he wasn't going to prepare to call for rescue then I'd assume he didn't want it.

(There's probably a reason I'm not in charge of these decisions.)
posted by AFABulous at 8:41 PM on November 16, 2017


Electronics reveal the location of those who wish to be undiscovered. So good job on protecting his "friends."
posted by Oyéah at 8:51 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Will Arnett seems the most appropriate casting here

They're called "explorations", Michael, not "trips." Trips are something a hippie takes for enlightenment.
posted by quinndexter at 9:41 PM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


On the 90th Anniversary of the First European Crossing Of New Guinea, “Explorer” Benedict Allen Claims to Have Done It For The First Time.
As a historian and anthropologist who lived for two years in Porgera (about 20 miles from where Allen was eventually rescued) I want to weigh in here with another criticism of Allen: Although he claims to be be the first person to cross Papua New Guinea’s central ranges, he is not. His accounts of his amazing feats not only downplay the achievements of Papua New Guineans, they ignore — or perhaps were made in ignorance of — the actual explorers, both white and Papua New Guinean, who have so long ago accomplished what he claims to have done first.
posted by Nelson at 10:51 AM on November 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


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