YouTube star Paul Harrell died at the age of 58, revealing the news in a posthumously released announcement.
“I’ll get right to the point: As I’m recording this, it is December 2023 and I’m giving [my manager] Brad [Nelson] instructions to publish this upon my death. So, if you’re watching me, I’m dead,” Harrell said in a YouTube video released on Tuesday, September 3.
Harrell died after a pancreatic cancer battle, which he publicly confirmed in July 2023. In his diagnosis video, Harrell said that his doctors had “caught it early.”
“Well, we did catch it early but not as early as I had thought,” he said in Tuesday’s video. “And it has spread faster than I thought it would. You may have seen me recently using this crutch when I told you I broke my hip. Well, it wasn’t because I was injured in any kind of accident it was because the cancer spread to my bones, the bones crumbled [and] my hip fractured.”
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Harrell further noted that his “time was drawing short” before making certain requests of his social media viewers.
“For everyone who’s a Patreon supporter, thank you, but don’t immediately turn off your Patreon support,” Harrell said. “We have hopes that the crew, primarily my brother, will continue making content on this channel. … People pirate other people’s content in this format — and now that I’m dead I’m not going to be able to do much about it — please don’t put money in the pockets of thieves. If you’re gonna watch what I’m doing, make sure you’re watching it on my channel.”
He continued, “I’m sure people will take [my death] as an opportunity to denigrate my character, so I would hope by now that you know me well enough to know what you should or shouldn’t believe. Don’t just believe whatever nonsense people are telling you.”
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Harrell made over 400 videos about wilderness survival skills and firearm safety, thanking “everyone who watched or hit the subscribe button” in his Tuesday upload.
“I can’t even begin to articulate how beneficial and appreciative those things are,” he gushed. “I also would want to say that my goal in doing all of this was, yes, to have fun doing some things but primarily to put out useful information. Or, if not useful, at least interesting. I really hope that, as you’re watching me, you’ve seen some things that made you say, ‘Oh, I get it.’ [Or saw] things that have made you change something you did in such a way that has helped you. I really hope that the reviews we’ve done have saved you some money and kept you from buying things that probably wouldn’t have been a good fit.”
