Plate Armor vs. Grizzly Attack

[gytalf2000]

Could a man in the finest plate armor of the late middle ages withstand a grizzly bear attack? If you gave him a decent polearm, say a halberd, would he have a decent chance of killing the beast? Or would the bear have a "knightly" feast?

[Reeder]

I would guess the armor would protect him from the claws. But not much from the force of the blow.

[klintypooh]

Or a kick to the nuts.

[silenus]

With some skill on the part of the vict....I mean, knight, I think he could handle an enraged grizzly. You got a combo spear/axe, and some decent amor (with padding) so I'd give odds on the human.

[World Eater]

I guess the question is "how fast can a human run wearing the finest plate armor money can buy?"


:)

[Can Handle the Truth]

I guess the question is "how fast can a human run wearing the finest plate armor money can buy?"

I don't have to outrun the bear... I just have to outrun you!

[Fear Itself]

I would guess the armor would protect him from the claws. But not much from the force of the blow.Plus the fact that the bear could tear your arms and legs off while they are still in the armor.

[Bryan Ekers]

Wasn't this more-or-less exactly a bit in a recent Simpsons episode?

My guess is that the bear couldn't make any headway and was getting a few metal-covered punches for its trouble, it'd give up. Call it a draw.

[Burrido]

I wouldn't think a man in plate would stand a good chance. The bear would probably just run in and maul him. Once on the ground, the armor would be too heavy for any real manuvering. Try poking him with a polearm, watch him swat it out of the way like a toothpick. People have unloaded rounds onto charging bears (Granted Grizzlys) and have them still charging on.

[engineer_comp_geek]

Once on the ground, the armor would be too heavy for any real manuvering.

Coincidentally, I was just watching a show on TV on this very subject (not bears, just guys in armor). For the show, about half a dozen guys were fitted with authentic style plate mail armor. They then specifically tested how well these guys could move around and do things while wearing armor. These guys were reasonably fit, but hadn't trained their entire lives in armor like a real knight would have. They were still able to run all around, manuever quite well, and were even doing things like running across balance beams and doing a dive while running, rolling across their back, and leaping back to their feet. One guy did sprain his ankle performing the last feat, but they pretty much busted the myth that guys in armor are helpless on the ground.

Does anyone know if Troy Hurtubise ever tested his suit out on a real bear?

[pool]

If you had a short lance I would think you could use the bears own weight to impale him by crouching on the ground and hoping he pounces on you at a downward angle.

[Huerta88]

Does anyone know if Troy Hurtubise ever tested his suit out on a real bear?
Yes. I saw his video. The suit failed miserably.

For those who don't know what we're talking about:

http://www.nfb.ca/grizzly/

Anyway, Hurtubise came across as a poseur, big time (one lengthy scene in the video featured him out in the woods shaving with a buckknife, which approximately NO ONE ON EARTH TODAY would choose as a real life activity (when compared to (1) not shaving, 'cause you're in the woods; or (2) shaving with at 29 cent Bic disposable, which fits in any knapsack)), and the rest of the video displayed a similar affinity betwixt Troy and the camera. His "obsession" may or may not be genuine, but it's certainly become his meal-ticket shtick, and he is ever-conscious of his audience.

[Huerta88]

Yes. I saw his video. The suit failed miserably.

I should point out that he tested it (and proved its inadequacy) without himself in it. He is not that "obsessed," despite his self-propagandizing . . . .

[mmmiiikkkeee]

Withstand the attack as in survive by taking smart actions once you start losing? Sure... unarmoured people do it all the time. Walk in and go toe-to-toe with the bear and kill it alone? Highly unlikely.

A few people with lances/spears would stand a MUCH better chance than one guy. With 3 spears jabbing from 3 different angles, the bear (or any other animal that for reason hasn't run away) will have to choose one attacker to maul leaving the others a few extra seconds to get a couple more jabs in. I think such a case is the only realistic scenario to win without getting really lucky, and I'd even say the armour wouldn't be necessary.

3-4 unarmoured guys would do just as good a job as 3-4 armoured guys since the strategy would be "distraction and stabbing from behind" rather than "walk straight in and see who's tougher"

I think armoured or not, whoever gets tackled by the bear is pretty much finished unless the bear was killed pretty quick or the downed guy knew how to play dead... actually the armour would help a lot if he were smart enough to give up the struggle. Again barring a really lucky jab just before being plowed, what can you do? Experienced hunters/outdoorsmen with high-powered rifles and enough time to fire multiple shots at a charging bears fail regularly, so how likely is a guy with a 6-foot sharpened stick, no experience, and 1/10 of a second to act while the bear is in range to stop it dead?

My prediction: You screw up and miss you heart jab, and Smokey swats at the lance and/or your face. You're either killed with a broken neck or TKOed on the spot. Smokey simultaniously bowls you over and while pinning you starts chewing on your head/neck. He/she'll either decide it's not worth the effort to do anything further, or if really pissed just keep wrenching at your armour suit like a car door until your appear dead.

[GomiBoy]

I'd think it would depend on the bear. A big sucker, like a Kodiak, Polar, or Grizzly, if it was pissed enough, would simply tear the armor apart. These animals have been known to tear cars apart, after all, to get to the juicy centres.

A black or North American brown would have a tougher time; I would give roughly even odds for a fully armoured and armed human; the poleaxe would make things more even by keeping the bear at a distance.

I'd give great odds for someone taking on a panda or cinamon bear, though :)

[jester21]

I'd think it would depend on the bear. A big sucker, like a Kodiak, Polar, or Grizzly, if it was pissed enough, would simply tear the armor apart. These animals have been known to tear cars apart, after all, to get to the juicy centres.

A black or North American brown would have a tougher time; I would give roughly even odds for a fully armoured and armed human; the poleaxe would make things more even by keeping the bear at a distance.

I'd give great odds for someone taking on a panda or cinamon bear, though :)


Koala bears are mean little suckers.

Even if you hit them w/ a car, they can do a lot of damage... especially if they are still in the tree! :D

[GomiBoy]

Koala bears are mean little suckers.

Even if you hit them w/ a car, they can do a lot of damage... especially if they are still in the tree! :D

Still no match for a cinnamon bear, though. When those suckers get in your teeth you're digging them out for weeks! :p

[dasgupta]

Depends. Does the bear have a can opener?

[fluiddruid]

I don't think a halberd and armor together would be a very good combination. After all, once the bear gets close enough to make the armor matter, the halberd is no longer any good - it's not a close-quarters weapon. It's going to be very awkward to try to swing it around as a staff once the bear is too close to use the blade. I think the halberd alone would work just as well to try to hold the bear at bay -- brace it against the ground for a charging bear, for example, and start praying.

As for the original question, armor - even plate armor - is designed to stop cutting blades. If a bear comes and swats you, it's not going to absorb that much force -- and you're going to get thrown against the ground or a tree, in which case you're still going to get hurt. Bears are very strong and, while plate armor might protect from claws or glancing blows, it's not going to matter against an enraged bear unless the guy kills it quickly.

[Hampshire]

Who needs armour? (http://www.goldfiles.com/multimedia/humor/portals/salmon.shtml)

[RevCo]

I As for the original question, armor - even plate armor - is designed to stop cutting blades. If a bear comes and swats you, it's not going to absorb that much force -- and you're going to get thrown against the ground or a tree, in which case you're still going to get hurt. Bears are very strong and, while plate armor might protect from claws or glancing blows, it's not going to matter against an enraged bear unless the guy kills it quickly.
Great answer - the fact is a big weapon requires two arms and some balance to operate - a bear taking out any appendage would likely be the victor. The human in armor would have to rely on his skill with the weapon. Joe Dude with a halberd is not a threat to anyone, but a bear has been using those claws all his life.

So I guess it would come down to skill with the halberd - if you have the skill, the armor becomes less and less relevant but still handy in case of emergency. If you don't have the skill, all the armor in the world ain't gonna save you, unless you get lucky.

Also, nobody mentioned how many hit dice the bear has, what level you are, if Gorbong the Cleric cast "Prayer" earlier in the round, etc.

[NurseCarmen]

The Black Knight would kick the bear's ass.

Maybe we could get the bear to wear armor. Then it would get tough.

[WhyNot]

Would the bear simply be able to crush the armor - and you it it? I'm thinking a great wallop to the chest and it doesn't matter if the armor stays in one piece - if it's crushed inward, your ribs will crush underneath it and puncture all sorts of interesting vitals.

Not knowing the relative strength of bears and armor, I dunno.

[GomiBoy]

I've seen photos of a grizzly in Yellowstone park in the 50's ripping the doors off of a station wagon to get into it; this was before the park took on a policy of eliminating bears that had become nuisances and before they also took on policies around controlling garbage and such that bears had become dependent on as food sources. I don't imagine a bear would have much problem tearing into a suit of armor.

I would think a grizzly would easily be able to dent a chest plate enough to flail someone's rib cage, deflating or penetrating the lungs, and killing them. Probably more dangerous than if a bear swiped at an unarmored human, as human tissues are somewhat resilient to blunt trauma. The armor would focus the injury, I would think.

[Kinthalis]

Remeber that a suit of plate armor is tempered steel, not the flimsy metal of a car door.

I for one, if forced to into this lopsided encounter, would certainly choose ot have armor rather than not. A long, stout, and sharp spear woudl be handy too.

Who would win? I'd place odds on the bear against myself. Against a trained medieval knight.... I'd say the odds are atleast five times as good for the knight in that case.

[GomiBoy]

Remeber that a suit of plate armor is tempered steel, not the flimsy metal of a car door.


Sorry if I wasn't clear - this was an adult male grizzly ripping the door off by the hinges, not just tearing the aluminum, and it was the honkin' big Detroit Rollin' Iron station wagons they had in the 50s, not some cheap import. Those suckers are STRONG! (bear and car! :))

[Master Wang-Ka]

I'm told-- by someone in a position to know -- that any largish bear can muster enough power in a swat to (at best) break your neck, or (at worst) tear your head off, effectively.

The metal might stop the claws. It might even stop the teeth. But I am inclined to think that the impact alone wouldn't do you a hell of a lot of good, and would certainly hamper your ability to do anything to the bear in return.

[gytalf2000]

Thanks for all the replies! It seems to me that most of you feel that a lone Knight would have little chance against a massive bruin like a grizzly bear. That seems reasonable to me, considering the power of such a creature -- I had forgotten about the bear's penchant for automobile demolition!
By the way -- I armed the knight with a halberd because I remember reading that this weapon (wielded by a sufficiently muscular fellow!) was capable of shearing off a horse's head with one swing! I wonder if that is really true...

[dogbutler]

I love these things. Crunchy on the outside,chewy on the inside!

Of course, the Dark Knight (http://www.darkknight.ca/) would win, if he was prepared.

[Cervaise]

The metal might stop the claws. It might even stop the teeth. But I am inclined to think that the impact alone wouldn't do you a hell of a lot of good, and would certainly hamper your ability to do anything to the bear in return.In other words, your head will remain safely armored as it bounces jauntily away from your also armored body. :cool:

[Chronos]

The Black Knight would kick the bear's ass.Of course-- They're both 2/2, but the Black Knight is first strike ;).

And I would give a knight excellent odds for surviving the encounter, since knights are mounted, and horses are faster than bears. But he's still not going to be killing the thing.

[Quercus]

Well, I think it depends a lot on what kind of bear attack. The typical grizzly close encounter is not a killing attack but a pre-emptive 'get out of my face' charge which isn't meant to do much more than knock the chargee down and convince them to leave the bear (and cubs) alone. In that case, my opinion is that a suit of good armor could be tremendously useful, as the main goal of an attackee is to cover up vital organs until the bear decides you've gotten the message and goes away.

If it's a seriously hungry polar bear who's decided that there's good prey on those two legs, and has significant experience wrenching open metal boxes to get food, then armor probably won't stop the bear for too long, though it might buy time for a couple more strokes with a sword, which could easliy be enough to convince the bear to give it up for easier prey or even kill it.
Bears are strong, but a knife is a lot sharper than a bear claw and does a lot more damage. Unarmored people have killed bears with knives before.

[BMax]

Dig this:
http://www.wildmanlodge.com/Neil.Bart.jpg

and this:
http://www.fawniemountain.com/gr_ob02.jpg

Oh, and this one's good too:
http://www.wildmanlodge.com/Neil.paw.jpg

These guys are HUGE. We're talking up to 10 feet tall and half a ton. Ane they're intelligent omnivores. Not as intelligent as humans, but at least as smart as a dog.

I'll let that Troy Jackass play with bear-proof armor, thanks. The guy in Knight's armor doesn't stand a chance, especially if he does something stupid like piss the bear off

[Misery Loves Co.]

Meh. . .

Grizzlies tear the doors off of large, stationary hunks of metal. They don't tear doors off by swiping at them. I can move a refridgerator if I brace myself and shove but I can't knock one over by backhanding it. Everyone here seems to be imagining a bear prying at a stationary man in a suit of armor. If the man's stationary, the fight's already over.

Plate armor over maille, with a gambeson underneath, provides a stunning amount of protection while affording an amazing amount of maneuverability. I'm not saying that a knight could casually dispatch a bear with one hand while chugging a beer and pleasuring his lady besides, but I doubt it'd be the woefully short battle that people have painted so far.

The guy is fighting back, y'know, and a halberd is also capable of inflicting enormous amounts of damage. Imagine the scene in Apocalypse Now where they slaughter the water-buffalo with a machete. Poleaxes have more power and mass behind them than a machete. We aren't talking about paper cuts here, and I have no trouble believing that with a good swing, one could behead a horse. As a benefit, poleaxes have range on bear arms.

For last-ditch close-in fighting I'd want something like a war-pick in one had and some kind of short-sword in the other. I'm sure that bears are capable of withstanding lots of damage, but a seven inch spike through the skull is a fight-ender.

Assuming that the knight can maintain distance and use his skills to stay alive and look for openings, I think it'd be doable, though failure would be deadly. The knight could not afford to "tank" - that is, wade in swinging and let his armor take the damage.

[smiling bandit]

Given that European nobility regularly hunted bears (and everything else they could find), even without dogs...

[Stranger On A Train]

These guys are HUGE. We're talking up to 10 feet tall and half a ton. Ane they're intelligent omnivores. Not as intelligent as humans, but at least as smart as a dog.
They're actually quite a bit smarter than a dog. In fact, they (black and grizzly/kodiak bears) are probably smarter (http://bears.articleinsider.com/187008_brown_bears.html) than any other non-primate land mammal, comparable (http://www.bearsmart.com/bearFacts/) to the great apes, and are much and unfairly maligned (http://www.arachnoid.com/alaska2003/bear_vs_bear.html).

I've had a couple of encounters with bears, including one "attack" (http://www.simpsoncity.com/hiking/news/SGVT081903a.html), and I run across them regularly in the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains. Black bears (Ursus americanus) are extremely non-confrontational. Even sows with cubs are not aggressive; they'll scream at the cubs to climb a tree (which is one of the first skills they are taught) and then climb a tree herself or otherwise attempt to draw away a predator. Grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horriblis) and Kodiak bears (U. a. middendorffi) are not much more aggressive. In fact, you can take a cruise (http://www.bear.org/Grizzly/Observe_and_Study_Grizzly_Bears.html) where they will land you on the beach, mere feet from grizzlies. Actual bear attacks are extremely rare, and are usually the result of a very old or disabled bear that can't effectively forage for food. And despite their classification in the order Carnivora, they are (as quoted above) omnivores who's diet primarily consists of fruits, nuts, grubs, and insects.

As for the OP, if you were silly enough to try to take on a bear, I don't think plate armor would serve you too well. Bears are not only strong enough to tear doors off of a car, but very clever, extremely good at mechanical problem solving (often avoiding or deliberately setting off traps), and are tenacious when presented with a challenge as any hiker who has seen a bear go after hung food knows. I don't think the bear would take too long to figure out how to stand on you for leverage and pry away at the joints of your armor, peeling it back like the lid of a sardine can. Even if he gave up, he'd certainly do enough blunt trauma to put the hurt on you good.

But I imagine he'd rather just eat your peanut butter and honey sandwiches. At least, that's why I've found.

Stranger

[Catalyst]

Is there any hard data on exactly how strong bears are? How about estimates for ... well, what measurement would we be looking for regarding the armor?

Of course-- They're both 2/2, but the Black Knight is first strike ;).Giant Growth, sucka!

[GomiBoy]

I grew up in Montana and spent large amounts of time in Grizzly country. We had lessons in Boy Scouts about what grizzlies could do, as well.

Stranger on a Train - those are some fantastic pictures and sites, and thanks for sharing them. I hate the way bear stories get inflated by scaremongers and hollywood, when they're usually quite easy to be around as long as you know what you're doing. Fishing in Alaska alongside kodiaks is a memory I will cherish always. You just gotta know the rules - if the bear wants the salmon you just hooked, he gets it! :)

Before anyone gets panicked about bears, though, grizzlies attack people ONLY in the following circumstances:
1. They are surprised. This is why hikers in bear country wear bells and are encouraged to talk when walking on trails and such. This is because what you don't want to do is walk around a corner and be on top of a grizzly
2. Female with cubs. A female grizzly defending her cubs could very easily kill you. She will not stop attacking you until you stop moving, and will attack viciously in order to give her cubs time to get away. DO NOT get between a mother and her cubs. This is probably the only time it's safe to run away from a bear, as well - she will stay with her cubs. Good safety rule - if you see a cub alone (and don't see it's momma), freeze, get down on the ground, and stay there! Momma's around somewhere and she don't like anybody messing with her kid!
3. Fighting over food. A hungry bear is likely to attack a human to defend a found food source (like your rucksack) but this is not a predatory attack but more like a 'leave me alone' attack. This is why the most dangerous times in bear country are in the early spring and late fall (just after and just before bears hibernate) when they are hugely hungry, and also why you never never keep food in your camp but instead hang it in trees and outside of your rucksack. My 'bear kit' hiking rucksack has an outer sack attachment where I put food with a single quick release on it. Bear gets on me, I pop the quick release, he stops to eat my food, I vacate the area.
4. Old bear desperate for food; might mistake a human for a food source. This is EXTREMELY rare (like never).

In every other circumstance, the bear will vacate the area if he sees, smells, or hears you coming and his sight, hearing, and smell are a damn sight better than yours. It boils down to this - bears attack people very very occasionally, but NEVER eat them.

I can move a refridgerator if I brace myself and shove but I can't knock one over by backhanding it.
I would bet an adult grizzly could do exactly that; he could knock a refrigerator flying with a swipe from his paw. These animals are terrifically strong.

Bears are not just big and strong and smart, but they are extremely fast as well. An adult grizzly can charge at up to 40 miles per hour (50 downhill). That's the danger - a bear attack is as follows:
1. Try to scare off attacker. Bears are generally non-confrontational. This means standing on their hind legs, roaring, etc.
2. Charge at attacker, swiping once or twice, will attempt to knock a person down
3. Once the target is down, the bear will come in an maul the person on the ground, rolling them over and over and biting and pawing at the head and neck
4. This is generally where the attack ends, if the person is smart enough to play dead. But I would bet that a person in armor would be pretty messed up by this point, especially by the maul attack, as their armor would be dented

For last-ditch close-in fighting I'd want something like a war-pick in one had and some kind of short-sword in the other. I'm sure that bears are capable of withstanding lots of damage, but a seven inch spike through the skull is a fight-ender.
Grizzlies have been known to take .44 and .357 mag round to the skull several times without stopping them. I doubt your war pick would do as much penetration damage as a .357 or .44 mag.

Given that European nobility regularly hunted bears (and everything else they could find), even without dogs...
From horseback, and in groups, and they didn't hunt Grizzly or Kodiak bears. European blacks and browns are much like North American blacks and browns - not nearly as tough a nut to crack and far more likely to run away than put up a fight.

Please read Stranger's description and links - he's dead on. And I've been through enough bear 'attacks' when camping in the Rockies that I know he's right - a bear will come into your camp and try to eat your food (especially when you're not there) but if you act agressive towards one, they will run away. And Grizzlies, if offered the choice, won't come anywhere near you in the first place!

One particularly memorable incident when we were camping was my mom, my sister (5), me (8), my brother (10). Dad was out of camp somewhere. A young male black bear came into our camp lured by the food my mom was cooking, and mom drove it out by screaming and throwing sticks and logs and rocks at it. I never saw an animal look as scared as that bear did, and the bear was easily double my mom's size! :D

[Fear Itself]

It boils down to this - bears attack people very very occasionally, but NEVER eat them.Well, hardly ever (http://www.adn.com/outdoors/story/5929098p-5835814c.html):Analysis of bear scat found along the shores of a remote lake in the Yukon Territory has confirmed that experienced Alaska woodsman and predator scientist Bart Schleyer was eaten by a grizzly bear.

[GomiBoy]

Well, hardly ever (http://www.adn.com/outdoors/story/5929098p-5835814c.html):

Knew that darn blanket statement would get me in trouble... :smack:

OK, bears hardly ever eat people.

[Misery Loves Co.]

Stranger on a Train, GomiBoy, you're missing my point.

My point about refrigerators is that there's a difference between what an animal or a human can do given leverage and time to apply it, versus the damage that an animal or human can do in a strike.

I do not doubt that a bear can rip apart a car, nor would if have difficulty prying a human out of a suit of armor. No contest, no objection, I AGREE.

I don't agree that that's a realistic phase of combat - I'm not going to try to wrestle a bear, and I'm not going just stand there and let a bear try to open my armor.

I'm going to move, I'm going to dodge, I'm going to maintain range, and I'm going to be swinging a very large peice of sharpened metal at him.

It seems that people's mental image of the OP is of some idiot standing there while a bear takes pot-shots at him. If you're in plate and allowing a bear to do that, then you will die and you deserve to because you're a moron. That's what Hurtubise was trying to do. What the "Knight vs Bear" scenario has that the twit with his "bearproof" suit doesn't, is that the bearproof suit was designed to be a passive defence, and the wearer was not out to tangle with and kill the bear. NOT the scenario (as I imagine it) with K v B.

In the scenario I imagine, I see someone who's actively interested in staying alive, which means staying out of range and relying on the armor in case something bad happens (which is the way armor is used, BTW), and actively trying to kill the bear. Plate Armor was incredibly effective in the day, yet I don't believe even IT was designed to withstand a full-on, prepared shot from a Halberd, which would shatter bones and cause spalling on the inside of the metal, even if it didn't manage to cut through. Remember, that's from a hunk of steel shaped so that all the weight is transfered through a sharp edge, swung on a 8 foot shaft through an arc of at least 90 degrees). It ain't a hatchet.


2. Charge at attacker, swiping once or twice, will attempt to knock a person down
3. Once the target is down, the bear will come in an maul the person on the ground, rolling them over and over and biting and pawing at the head and neck
4. This is generally where the attack ends, if the person is smart enough to play dead. But I would bet that a person in armor would be pretty messed up by this point, especially by the maul attack, as their armor would be dented

Now this is realistic. My problem comes between step 2 and 3. What if I maintain range, use terrain to help against charges, keep moving, and take shots where I can? What if I'm smart enough to fight so I don't get knocked down? What if I fight like I'd fight anyone (or anything) that's superior and deadly at infighting?

Grizzlies have been known to take .44 and .357 mag round to the skull several times without stopping them. I doubt your war pick would do as much penetration damage as a .357 or .44 mag.

Cite? I have serious difficulty that liquifying a bear's brain would not stop it, which is what I'd expect a .357 or .44 that penetrated the skull to do. So I'd want a cite with details: point blank? head -on? Penetration at an angle (like it skimmed the outside of the skull?). Assuming that the foreign object enters the brain, I don't think it matters if it was a bullet or a pick.

I have to ask - does anyone in this thread have any melee experience? Any experiece training or fighting with bladed/hafted weapons? Understand how range, speed, attack, and defense work in such? Understand of what armor is, how it's made, how it's used, what it's designed to do? I mean, I know it's a bear, I know it's powerful, I know it's heavy, and I know that it can charge. These do not make it invincible.

[GomiBoy]

Stranger on a Train, GomiBoy, you're missing my point.
I think I am just disagreeing with you. You couldn't knock a fridge over with your hand without leverage; a bear could. Easily.


Remember, that's from a hunk of steel shaped so that all the weight is transfered through a sharp edge, swung on a 8 foot shaft through an arc of at least 90 degrees). It ain't a hatchet.
Nope, it's quite a deadly weapon that would do serious damage to a bear. I just doubt you'd be able to kill one before it was onto you. That's what I am saying.

Lewis and Clark, during their expedition west along the Missisippi and then Yellowstone rivers, kept hearing stories from the various Indian tribes as they passed about 'yellow' bears that the party would be wise to steer clear of. Merriwether Lewis found one of these yellow bears and promptly shot it. He was either very lucky, or the bear was likely sick or injured already, for it died right away.

Later on the expedition, the party came across another yellow bear (likely a grizzly). It took every man in the party at that point (7 IIRC) shooting at the bear with their muskets (one or two got off two shots) before it went down. These were practiced and skilled hunters; I doubt they missed many shots. And Lewis barely escaped with his life, as the bear got within 2 or 3 feet of him on it's final charge (it chased Lewis up a riverbank and through a thicket of willow trees while being shot by the rest of the party).


Now this is realistic. My problem comes between step 2 and 3. What if I maintain range, use terrain to help against charges, keep moving, and take shots where I can? What if I'm smart enough to fight so I don't get knocked down? What if I fight like I'd fight anyone (or anything) that's superior and deadly at infighting?
Your problem and everyone else's in that situation :) I think you'd be smart enough to try that, and possibly even fit enough - I think the point would be you couldn't; the bear would close with you incredibly quickly. I would say you'd have one chance with your weapons before he was on you. Then you'd be screwed.

Of course, this is a highly unrealistic scenario; the bear would likely leave you the hell alone if you gave it half a chance; at most it would knock you down then leave. They are omnivores, and don't really actually hunt very much or most breeds don't (polar bears are excellent hunters, and do treat humans as just another food source and are quite deadly to humans). Grizzlies are excellent scavengers, but their diet (except at certain times of the year) is mostly root vegetables and berries and such. They like to eat meat when they can, but why risk hunting and fighting when you can just find a nice rotting carcass with your excellent nose?


Cite? I have serious difficulty that liquifying a bear's brain would not stop it, which is what I'd expect a .357 or .44 that penetrated the skull to do. So I'd want a cite with details: point blank? head -on? Penetration at an angle (like it skimmed the outside of the skull?). Assuming that the foreign object enters the brain, I don't think it matters if it was a bullet or a pick.
I'll see if I can find one, but I have seen first hand in my youth a bear that a hunter nailed after it was skinned out. Adult male grizzly, weighed in around 700lbs if I remember correctly (it was a long time ago). Friend's dad shot it 5 times, twice in the head, from side and also the front, with a .30-06 rifle, from a range of between 200 and 50 feet (it was coming at him after the first two shots). Neither of the bullets to the head penetrated the skull; the shot to the heart is the one that took it down.

Have you ever seen a Grizzly skull? It's like 2 inches of bone in most spots. If you got a lucky hit with your war spike, then yeah, you would pierce the brain and that would be it, but I wouldn't count on it.

I have to ask - does anyone in this thread have any melee experience? Any experiece training or fighting with bladed/hafted weapons? Understand how range, speed, attack, and defense work in such? Understand of what armor is, how it's made, how it's used, what it's designed to do? I mean, I know it's a bear, I know it's powerful, I know it's heavy, and I know that it can charge. These do not make it invincible.
Yes, I do; I was taught loads of hand to hand nastyness while I was in the military, and also have experience as an EMT dealing with various types of trauma, including severing of limbs and blunt force trauma from industrial accidents.

Knives cut, as do all blades and swords, and kill by bleeding or if you're lucky (or unlucky, depending :)) by striking an internal organ. Unless you can lop off someone's head or arm, they're still gonna tag you on their way down if they have a mind to; same goes with a bear, although at a factor of several dozen I would think.

[Stranger On A Train]

I don't agree that that's a realistic phase of combat - I'm not going to try to wrestle a bear, and I'm not going just stand there and let a bear try to open my armor.

I'm going to move, I'm going to dodge, I'm going to maintain range, and I'm going to be swinging a very large peice of sharpened metal at him.
This is what I visualize:


Armored man closes on bear with halberd.
Bear stands ground.
Armored man swings halberd. Fails to connect, or connects but does only superficial damage.
Bear gets irritated. Swipes man with paw.
Man falls down, stunned, and lets go of halberd.
Man tries, awkwardly to get up.
Bear swipes man again.
Man tries to get up.
Bear swipes man again.
Bear stands on man, preventing man from moving.
Bear grabs man's arm/leg/helmet in teeth and bites down.
Man screams in pain.
Bear is curious about screaming, bites again.
Man passes out.
Bear pries apart suit at liesure, takes a bite, decides to eat man's horse instead.


Once (if) a bear knocks you down, he's not going to give you the chance to stand back up. If the bear is that close to you, he'll be really nervous and will respond to any movement (which is why playing dead in that situation, at least with a black bear, is the smart move.) They're smart, quick animals.

The bear's skin and thick coat will also provide substantial protection. Hunters who use a large handgun find that a hollowpoint bullet just gets plugged with fur and skin instead of expanding. A glancing blow with a halberd (and yes, I've handled one) would probably do no damage at all, and it's such an awkward weapon at close range that you're not going to get a second stroke, despite all of the weaving and dodging you might try at, IMHO.

Cite? I have serious difficulty that liquifying a bear's brain would not stop it, which is what I'd expect a .357 or .44 that penetrated the skull to do.
I don't have a cite but I'll confirm that opinion with second-hand anecdotal experience. :rolleyes: Handgun bear hunters use the heaviest bullet and the hottest load, but even then, the skull is so thick that a shot that hits the skull at an angle may just glance off. This is why Alaskan guides who carry a weapon against grizzlies carry a large caliber magnum rifle (like a 7mm Rem Mag) or a 12 guage shotgun with slugs. Tough suckers they are, and they can absorb a lot of punishment.


I have to ask - does anyone in this thread have any melee experience? Any experiece training or fighting with bladed/hafted weapons? Understand how range, speed, attack, and defense work in such? Understand of what armor is, how it's made, how it's used, what it's designed to do? I mean, I know it's a bear, I know it's powerful, I know it's heavy, and I know that it can charge. These do not make it invincible.
Yes, I do. Martial arts and (a little) edged weapon training. I've not worn armor (well, ballistic body armor but not a plate suit) but I've seen it up close. A bear charging at you at 40mph is going to give you, maybe, one shot with a melee weapon. Invincible? No. Quick, tough, and ferocious (if cornered and attacked)? Yes.

But not nearly as dangerous as the feared bunny rabbit. :D

Strange

[GomiBoy]

This is why Alaskan guides who carry a weapon against grizzlies carry a large caliber magnum rifle (like a 7mm Rem Mag) or a 12 guage shotgun with slugs. Tough suckers they are, and they can absorb a lot of punishment.

The guides I went fishing with in Alaska carried 10 gauge semi-auto 5-shot shotguns. The first shell was a noisemaker, the second was rocksalt, the next three were slugs. Idea being, if you can't scare it off with a noisemaker and the rock salt, the next three slugs would be enough to take down a charging rhino...


But not nearly as dangerous as the feared bunny rabbit. :D

Nothing is more feared... then the Nasty Sharp Pointy Teeth!

[Misery Loves Co.]

I think I am just disagreeing with you. You couldn't knock a fridge over with your hand without leverage; a bear could. Easily.

Let go of the fridge! My point wasn't about knocking over fridges! :) My point was: Assume a task that is possible for a human, given leverage. That is analagous to a task that a bear is capable of, with leverage. That same task is not possible without that leverage, within the bounds of the analogy. In short: The bear can tear off the door, but not without bracing and leveraging it (even if that leverage is against itself as with a tearing motion). It cannot merely swipe the car door off its hinges. My point was again to redirect what plate armor is supposed to protect against: Impact and slashes, penetration (to a degree), etc.

The scenarios with people shooting bears don't impress me much - I'm crystal on the fact that a bear can survive getting shot with small bits of lead, and while Guns are Great, it is clear to see why the mass of a bear allows it to absorb a huge amount of punishment from small-arms, particularly ball-and-powder which are nowhere near as powerful as modern arms. So in response to all the annecdotes about bears getting shot, OK. NBD. As humans, we put a lot of stock in the fact that .5" of lead can easily pierce our thin skin and cause shock-damage to our relatively small frame and drop us. I have no trouble believing that such damage is more easily absorbed by a bear's skin and fat. But as you mention, blades cause death by blood loss. What allows more/faster blood loss? A .68" hole? or a gaping, massive laceration? You dismissed it but I am talking about removing limbs, not trying to stick a piece of metal through its chest wall and into it's heart. People use similar weapons to hack through whale skin and blubber, with dramatic efficiency.

Have you ever seen a Grizzly skull? It's like 2 inches of bone in most spots. If you got a lucky hit with your war spike, then yeah, you would pierce the brain and that would be it, but I wouldn't count on it.

Fair 'nuff - 2" of solid bone does pose a significant barrier, and I'm sure a pick'd have some severe difficulty getting through that, as would about anything short of a ballista (thinking medieval, here). Ok, so if it comes to infighting, the game's over, period.

Yes, I do; I was taught loads of hand to hand nastyness while I was in the military, and also have experience as an EMT dealing with various types of trauma, including severing of limbs and blunt force trauma from industrial accidents.

Hand to hand is not the same. I've done both (a bit), and they're different games. The games I fight are touch=death, so you mentally rely on NO armor. It's all range. But on the other hand, armor's been a hobby of mine for ages, so I know a bit about it - theory, construction, and application.


Knives cut, as do all blades and swords, and kill by bleeding or if you're lucky (or unlucky, depending ) by striking an internal organ. Unless you can lop off someone's head or arm, they're still gonna tag you on their way down if they have a mind to; same goes with a bear, although at a factor of several dozen I would think.

Well, just because you've tagged someone doesn't mean they get the chance to tag you on the way down. Double-kill is still a kill, so you make sure you're guarding until they /are/ down and out. Fighting a ranged fight w/ weapons is not the same as a gun fight, it's not the same as a wrestling match, it's not the same as hand to hand. And methodes appropriate to the first three will get you killed in a ranged fight.

Now on to Strange's post:
I'll skip past the step-by-step, which is good for choreography, particularly with a desired outcome :)

A charge can be prevented by using terrain. A tree in the way makes it hard for a bear to charge you (no, not a sapling, imagine something nice and big). So will a rock. There's also the option of moving to the side, rather than trying to back away. A dodge to the side while swinging at the legs is a better bet that trying to aim one good shot and hoping it'll stop the charge and the bear.

I've addressed the small-caliber anecdotes above, so I'll leave those alone.

A glancing blow with a halberd (and yes, I've handled one) would probably do no damage at all, and it's such an awkward weapon at close range that you're not going to get a second stroke, despite all of the weaving and dodging you might try at, IMHO.


How about a direct blow? How /good/ are you with one? have you trained with one? Training is different from handling one, so don't be modest: if you're an expert and this is an expert POV, let us know. If you've picked one up here and there, that's not the same.

Again, a ranged fight is not just weaving and dodging. It's about moving and maintaining range, which is a different game from dodging swings and ducking swipes so you can land punches and kicks to the body.


Yes, I do. Martial arts and (a little) edged weapon training. I've not worn armor (well, ballistic body armor but not a plate suit) but I've seen it up close. A bear charging at you at 40mph is going to give you, maybe, one shot with a melee weapon. Invincible? No. Quick, tough, and ferocious (if cornered and attacked)? Yes.

See above. Different fight, and balistic armor is not the same as plate. A bear can charge at 40mph, but a person is capable of moving, too, and that doesn't just mean straight backwards.

As I said, I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying that anyone could do it, I'm not even saying that the human has even odds. I'm just not convinced that it's as cut-n-dry as you've all painted it.

But not nearly as dangerous as the feared bunny rabbit. :D

Well, if you're going to bring a bunny rabbit into this, then the fight's clearly over before it 's begun! Bears are one thing, but c'mon, against a bunny rabbit - the knight's clearly toast. What did you mean by bringing it up, anyway! I do have to sleep tonight, y'know?

[GomiBoy]

OK, you're mostly right, and I don't want to go word for word, but I have a couple of points:

I'll even leave the fridge alone! ;)

Guns kill by massive tissue trauma due to shock; a 'small little piece' of metal does a huge amount of damage due to the speed at which it's travelling. That's why little tiny bullets drop people dead at long range - the internal shock is massive. You're way off base if you think bladed weapons, even great huge ones like halbreds, do more damage than guns. If that was true, we'd still be using them as infantry weapons.

I still think you'd have problems getting such an unweildly weapon to bear on a bear (sorry about that), especially one moving quickly to stomp you flat. And all your jinkin' and jivin' to dodge around him wouldn't do you much good either. Bears don't choose to hunt usually, but that don't mean they're not good at it when the choose do, and I can guarantee you a deer or an elk is a hell of a lot quicker than you are.

[Misery Loves Co.]

Guns kill by massive tissue trauma due to shock; a 'small little piece' of metal does a huge amount of damage due to the speed at which it's travelling. That's why little tiny bullets drop people dead at long range - the internal shock is massive. Of course, of course. But that doesn't seem to be the case w/ bears, so mass has something to do with the ability to absorb that shock, no? That's my point. You'd have to scale up the bullet to bear-size, so say small artillery peice,to do the same shock damage to a bear that you'd do with a .45 ACP to a human. But if you open either a human or a bear up with a knife/blade/axe, they loose large amounts of blood,.


You're way off base if you think bladed weapons, even great huge ones like halbreds, do more damage than guns. If that was true, we'd still be using them as infantry weapons.

Again, apples to oranges. Bullets pack the punch they need to to stop humans, guns are easy to shoot, they're the perfect tool for the job. If it was some crazy world where human armies faught against bear armies (stupid, but go with me), we'd upscale our standard infantry weapons to 1-shot 1-kill standards for bears and retain the guns because they allow us to kill at a distance. Again, you can't compare guns to polearms. They inflict different damage and are used in different ways.


I still think you'd have problems getting such an unweildly weapon to bear on a bear (sorry about that), especially one moving quickly to stomp you flat. And all your jinkin' and jivin' to dodge around him wouldn't do you much good either. Bears don't choose to hunt usually, but that don't mean they're not good at it when the choose do, and I can guarantee you a deer or an elk is a hell of a lot quicker than you are.

Well, because of that bear pun, I'm afraid we'll have to take this out back. You've your choice of weapons - I assume you'll be using a bear? I'll forgo the armor/halberd combination in favor of stiletto and off-hand howitzer.

I disagree that a halberd or other poleaxe can be dismissed as an "unwieldy weapon" - in trained hands, weapons aren't unwieldy, or they're useless. "Jinkin' and jivin'" just underscores how trivial you think that an aware human's responsed could be. I know bears kill elk and deer, but they don't catch them in flat-out rushes when the prey is aware. Only a small portion of their diet is red meat, and that is scavanged as well as "caught". Also, deer and elk don't fight back, which requires different reflexes than just getting the hell out of dodge. This is a fight, remember?

[Stranger On A Train]

A charge can be prevented by using terrain. A tree in the way makes it hard for a bear to charge you (no, not a sapling, imagine something nice and big). So will a rock. There's also the option of moving to the side, rather than trying to back away. A dodge to the side while swinging at the legs is a better bet that trying to aim one good shot and hoping it'll stop the charge and the bear.
A bear (if it decided to charge you) would probably just go right over a rock, and wouldn't have much trouble going around a tree. They look slow and dumpy in the Disney videos, but when these suckers want to move, they go. When charging, they're moving at almost 60 feet per second and are surprisingly agile. And remember, they aren't standing up; they're crouched down, moving low. The head is not the highest point in that stance; they're basically just a big brown blur of speed. Not an easy target.


How about a direct blow? How /good/ are you with one? have you trained with one? Training is different from handling one, so don't be modest: if you're an expert and this is an expert POV, let us know. If you've picked one up here and there, that's not the same.
A direct blow from a pole-axe to the skull would no doubt cleave it in half; pole-axes were conceived (as you are probably aware) for the purpose of pentrating armor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_weapon). But the fur acts like kind of a lubricant in preventing the edge to take a bite*, and if your blade comes down slightly off-angle to the skull or limb, it'll probably just do a little shave.

No, I'm not an expert with the pole-axe, but I have trained a bit with the longstaff (bo) and I think I have a good feel for how slowly you can react with a long-handled weapon. If you get a good shot to the head the first time, you stand a good chance of killing the bear (though you still have a 500+ lb mass moving at you at 60 fps :eek: ) but if you miss... :(


As I said, I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying that anyone could do it, I'm not even saying that the human has even odds. I'm just not convinced that it's as cut-n-dry as you've all painted it.
Oh, I wouldn't say it is cut-and-dried hopless (my humorous envisioning aside) but I think Pinky would have to take the long odds against Ursa, even with armor and a halberd. It would take luck, and skill with the axe, to preservere.

Fortunately for me (wait for it) I, for one, welcome our new ursine overlords.

Stranger

* Which is probably the reason, or at least part of it, that humans have a thick coat of hair on their heads.

[Gary "Wombat" Robson]

Two problems with the halberd (or any polearm) against the grizzly.

If you're slashing with it, it has to go through a thick mat of fur. Thick hair is deucedly difficult to cut (as was discussed in the recent guillotine thread), so if your edged weapon makes it through, it will have lost a lot of its momentum. With a polearm, you're unlikely to get a second swing.

If you're stabbing, or holding steady to stop a charge, the first blow has to be fatal, or the bear will slash out, snap the handle, and move in on you.

As others pointed out, once you're down, it's all over. I recently visited a facility where they use captive grizzlies to test bearproof containers for food and trash. All it would take is hooking a claw in the joint between two pieces of plate, and that armor is coming apart. Those animals are incredibly strong.

In addition to the local grizzlies (a 500-pound bear in the Yellowstone area is considered really big), they have some Alaskan grizzlies, including a boar weighing over 1,000 pounds. A 200-pound bear is much stronger than a human. This monster is so far out of our league we're not even in the same game.

Just to give you an idea of their speed and fighting skill, by the way, the director of the wolf reintroduction program in Yellowstone said he watched a single male grizzly take a fresh kill away from a pack of 24 (!) wolves. He just waded into the middle of the pack slashing and biting and they all ended up leaving the kill to him. If he's quick enough to deal with a fight where he's completely surrounded by wolves, then it's going to be difficult for a single human to out-manouver him.

Oh, and as an aside to [b]pool[/i], grizzlies don't pounce.

[Gary "Wombat" Robson]

Grrr. Should have previewed. Oh well, this gives me a chance to respond to Misery Loves Co.'s latest post.

I agree with almost everything you said, except the part about red meat being "only a small portion of their diet." It depends on the time of year. When they're out for protein, meat constitutes 30% to 70% of their diet. Most of it comes from kills taken away from other predators (wolves, coyotes, mountain lions...). They aren't fast enough to take down an elk or a moose in an open field, but they're definitely capable of killing one if they get it cornered.

[Chronos]

Misery Loves Co., I certainly agree with you that the human would be wise to maintain range. But I'm unsure how exactly he's going to do so when on foot versus an opponent twice his speed. Add in that the human is encumbered by armor (yeah, I know, not much, but you'll notice nobody wears armor at track meets) and is moving backwards (at least, if he's still trying to fight), there's no possible way that you're going to keep yourself a polearm's length away. If your knight is skilled with the polearm and keeps his nerve, he's going to get in one shot. And if he's very skilled, knows the bear's vulnerabilities, and has a good, strong arm, he may even be able to decapitate the bear in that one shot. And he'd better hope he does, because if not:

The bear closes, and makes contact. Due to its shear mass, it doesn't much matter what sort of contact it is; it's very likely to knock the knight over. Immediately after knocking the knight over, it's going to be on top of him. The knight can't move any more, and depending on how strong his armor is (I don't know enough to say), he might even be crushed. And once the knight isn't moving any more, it wouldn't be too tough for the bear to separate the knight's helmeted head from his armored torso.

You meantion death by blood loss. Fair enough, blood loss will kill, and in fact, that's the usual way in which blades do kill. But even a human can take minutes to bleed to death, and a bear has a lot more blood than a human. Meanwhile, it'll take that bear a fraction of a second to knock you down (and incidentally, it's going to at least succeed in that, even if it does die instantly in the process), and I would not count on it taking a minute to figure out which end of the knight is the head. You can content yourself with the bear bleeding to death, but I'd rather survive, personally.

[Misery Loves Co.]

InvisibleWombat - again, fair 'nuff: I got my Bear-Diet info off a 5 minute websearch, and the sites downplayed the role of red meat, upplaying the role of fish and omni-fare. Point being is that bears aren't the great northern hunters so much as the great northern fisherman, scavengers (or bullies :) ), and gatherers.

As others pointed out, once you're down, it's all over. I recently visited a facility where they use captive grizzlies to test bearproof containers for food and trash. All it would take is hooking a claw in the joint between two pieces of plate, and that armor is coming apart. Those animals are incredibly strong.

No contest. If you're in a condition where the bear can get a claw under your armor, the fight is already over. Armor is proof (or help) against a swipe that would lacerate non-armored flesh, not proof against a can opener, or the bear tapdancing on yer skull, or any number of other scenarios that people have used to illustrate the awesome power of a bear.

As for a pack of wolves - I'm sure I could wade through and take food from a pack of chihuahuas, which I think is a comparable scenario. Wolves aren't built to take down a bear - insufficient strength, insufficient equipment; speed doesn't factor into it.

Which brings me back to the common speed argument: this is a bear, not a taekwondo master; I understand the 40 MPH charge, the lightning reflexes, the 12" adamantium claws, laser-eyes, etc :D. Flat out speed can be countered by maneuver. It's how you win a fight at any level, from tanks to knife fights. Easiest defense is not to be there.

Stranger, in the other current bear thread you had no problem accepting that a person successfully kept a black bear away from them by using cover. What's different in this scenario? Kodiaks and Grizzlys are bigger, definitely, but do they have some sort of special skill at getting around large trees and leaping over boulders?

And remember, they aren't standing up; they're crouched down, moving low. The head is not the highest point in that stance; they're basically just a big brown blur of speed. Not an easy target.

Great, actually. Having the head lower and in front makes it an easier target. Having that head 10 feet above me kinda eliminates the range advantage of the poleaxe, and I'd not close on a standing bear no matter how tempting the underbelly looked.

Speed may make it a bitch to run away from, make it a bitch to shoot, but flat out running is not how you win a fight from either side. I've seen video of bears running, and you're right that they're brown blurs. I've seen video of humans moving, and they can be blurs too - not when running, but when dodging, spinning, evading, etc. You practice martial arts - surely you've seen it too? A charge is an attack to be aware of, but not an insurmountable, indefensible one.

The one thing you've both mentioned that made me stop to think, though, is the fur. Bear fur is dense, and I can see how it would provide very very good protection from slashing and chopping attacks (though not so much from penetrating attacks). All of my slash/chop examples have been with hair-less beasties (the water-buffalo, whales) and when I apply that to my mental equasion, it lengthens the odds. It'd be a game of damage over the long haul, and it's tough to win when you've got to count on landing several good blows, but getting hit will ruin your day.

*shrug* Well, the only way to know for sure would be to pit several knights against several grizzlys, which I'd hate to see happen. I'm getting kinda sick from imagining gaping fleshwounds being inflicted on bears though. I'm rather fond of them, believe it or not.

[Misery Loves Co.]

I read your post, chronos, and it seems to boil down to the same argument:

Bears are fast and powerful, faster and more powerful than a human. I'm not trying to be dismissive, but I disagree with the fundametal premise of "you only get one shot or it's over", and I'm not what any of us can do to convince the other.

I do want to modify a line in my last post though.

I said:
"It'd be a game of damage over the long haul. . . " as if I thought it'd be a simple kill before factoring in bear-fur. I didn't ever think one shot would do it (unless incredibly lucky), but 4-5 shots that really open it up or disable it (crushing joints or severing tendons). But with fur to contend with, I think it'd really minimizes the likelyhood of such traumatic shots being consistently landed.

[GomiBoy]

Of course, of course. But that doesn't seem to be the case w/ bears, so mass has something to do with the ability to absorb that shock, no? That's my point. You'd have to scale up the bullet to bear-size, so say small artillery peice,to do the same shock damage to a bear that you'd do with a .45 ACP to a human. But if you open either a human or a bear up with a knife/blade/axe, they loose large amounts of blood.

Sorry, it don't work that way. People shoot and kill bears all the time with the calibers already mentioned - .44, .357. .30-06, 7mm, etc. By shock I am not talking about the clinical term 'shock' but more like what the physical effects of a bullet hitting something that's 70% liquid (flesh). It don't matter if it's bear flesh or human flesh, the effect is identical, and it is nasty. It's the shock to the tissue and the internal organ damage that kills you, not the little bitty piece of metal or the smallish hole it creates that kills. F'r instance, the .45 caliber cartridge was designed for cavalry soldiers; the M1911a1 pistol, firing that cartridge, was designed to knock down a charging horse during trench warfare. It don't matter that a horse weighs more than a person, the effect is identical on both.

Secondarily, blood drainage takes a long time. If you open, say, the femoral artery, you're dead in seconds. But unless you go into combat with your legs wide open, you're not likely to have that happen. Main arteries run, in humans and in bears, on the inside of limbs and trunks and torsos, not the outside - hence my comment before about how if you're in a knife fight, the only way you're gonna take someone out in one blow is by cutting off a limb, cutting off their head, or getting them in the heart. Anything else will take hours if not days for them to bleed out. And that's on us soft and pasty humans; bears are even tougher than we are, and have layers of fur and whatnot on top for added protection.


Again, apples to oranges. Bullets pack the punch they need to to stop humans, guns are easy to shoot, they're the perfect tool for the job. If it was some crazy world where human armies faught against bear armies (stupid, but go with me), we'd upscale our standard infantry weapons to 1-shot 1-kill standards for bears and retain the guns because they allow us to kill at a distance. Again, you can't compare guns to polearms. They inflict different damage and are used in different ways.
You should read His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. (link here (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0439994799/qid=1107984796/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-7282823-4218067)). One of the main characters was an armored intelligent bear! It was cool! :) I'd highly recommend the series to anyone.



Well, because of that bear pun, I'm afraid we'll have to take this out back. You've your choice of weapons - I assume you'll be using a bear? I'll forgo the armor/halberd combination in favor of stiletto and off-hand howitzer.
Fine, I'll take a Tomohawk cruise missile from 200 miles away. Hey, I said I like distance weapons! :)


I disagree that a halberd or other poleaxe can be dismissed as an "unwieldy weapon" - in trained hands, weapons aren't unwieldy, or they're useless. "Jinkin' and jivin'" just underscores how trivial you think that an aware human's responsed could be.
Sorry, should have been a bit more specific. Unweildly in the circumstances, with a bear coming at you damn quick. You're swinging a large piece of metal around, and I still reckon you've got one shot to get him in the head or chop off a leg, or you're well and truly screwed. And Jinkin' and jivin' is just slang; I take it to mean moving quite quickly in various directions. I called it that during hand to hand training during Special Forces boot camp, so I think I do understand how fast someone can move. Some of my instructors were blurs kicking my butt, that's for sure! :) I just still think a grizzly with it's dander up would be faster, with more reach, etc. etc. etc...


I know bears kill elk and deer, but they don't catch them in flat-out rushes when the prey is aware.


Yes, actually, they do. They run in short sprints up to 40-50 miles per hour; that's way faster than an olympic sprinter and the only North American big game animal faster from a standing start is an antelope. A bear will come thundering out of a bush or some such and run down an elk that does know it's there. The only way the elk gets away is by running before the bear starts his charge, or the elk is lunch.


Only a small portion of their diet is red meat, and that is scavanged as well as "caught". Also, deer and elk don't fight back, which requires different reflexes than just getting the hell out of dodge. This is a fight, remember?
I gotta disagree again, on both these points. Yes, bears prefer to scavenge, but they do sometimes have a significant portion of their diet as protein and they are always looking for more of it (especially in the fall and spring, when they are going into or coming out of hibernation). As for the 'prey' fighting back, bull elk have a pretty massive rack of antlers that will work as a weapon quite well, as do deer, and they're both a hell of a lot faster than you are in full plate no matter how well it fits! And both elk and deer will fight back, like any animal, if they're being attacked by a bear. They just don't do it well.

Don't worry, mate - I fully believe you like bears. I love the suckers - they get a bad rap from ignorant or frightened people, and that I will try to always change people's minds about, but this here discussion is all in fun, me thinks, and the most fun I've had on the Dope in, well, days anyways! :)

[lno]

but I disagree with the fundametal premise of "you only get one shot or it's over", and I'm not what any of us can do to convince the other.

I do want to modify a line in my last post though.

I said:
"It'd be a game of damage over the long haul. . . " as if I thought it'd be a simple kill before factoring in bear-fur. I didn't ever think one shot would do it (unless incredibly lucky), but 4-5 shots that really open it up or disable it (crushing joints or severing tendons). But with fur to contend with, I think it'd really minimizes the likelyhood of such traumatic shots being consistently landed.Are you trying to land blows, or are you trying to stay out of the bear's reach? If you're swinging off-balance as you backpedal and duck behind trees, I question how effective you would be, and if you set your feet and attack a bear with a melee weapon, it seems to me that the bear would be upon you by definition.

[Stranger On A Train]

Stranger, in the other current bear thread you had no problem accepting that a person successfully kept a black bear away from them by using cover. What's different in this scenario? Kodiaks and Grizzlys are bigger, definitely, but do they have some sort of special skill at getting around large trees and leaping over boulders?
If you're referring to this (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5817149&postcount=20) post by Mr. Duality (about his friend and a sow) I'm a little dubious; not that his friend met up with a bear, but I doubt the momma was trying to hurt him. She was probably trying to keep herself between the cub and his friend. As I said before, bears aren't just straight-line fast, they're dexterous as well. They climb up trees and have been known to jump from one tree to another, if the branches are substantial enough. They can catch and flick salmon out of a river. Their instincts, both grizzlies/kodiaks and especially blacks, are as much or more prey than predator. In the past 20,000 years the really big predators--the dire wolf, the saber-tooth tiger, and the short-faced bear--have all died out, but prior to that, these animals considered U. americanus. and U. a. horriblis to be food, so their survival (especially the non-tree climbing grizzly) depended in no small part on speed and agility.

Great, actually. Having the head lower and in front makes it an easier target.
Well, yes and no. Yeah, it's within reach, but because of the aspect (low, coming to you) it's hard to hit the critical part (head, 'neck') instead of the well-protected back. And if you just wound a bear, you're going to initiate a fight response, just like someone socking you in the jaw causes you to pump adrenelin. Now he's not just curious or trying to bluff you--his life is in danger and he'll act accordingly. You're not going to have the chance to land several good blows; you're going to have one chance to land one incapacitating blow, and if you've ever dealt with or seen an aggressive dog, you know how hard it is to get the dog to stop. You knock the dog down, and he just gets back up; you hit him again, and he gets back up. Think of a bear as a 500+ pound dog who is looking at you like you're a can of Iams.

On the other hand, you spray OC pepper in their eyes, and they freak out. It's a totally novel experience for them; they're in pain, they can't see, and it came from nowhere (as far as they can figure out). It's not the damage, or even the pain, that stops them, but the sheer inexplicableness of it.

So, you can have your halberd and a suit of armor, and I'll take a Seattle Police-sized can of pepper spray, and we'll see who walks away from the bear. :D

Stranger

[Stranger On A Train]

By shock I am not talking about the clinical term 'shock' but more like what the physical effects of a bullet hitting something that's 70% liquid (flesh). It don't matter if it's bear flesh or human flesh, the effect is identical, and it is nasty. It's the shock to the tissue and the internal organ damage that kills you, not the little bitty piece of metal or the smallish hole it creates that kills.
To expand on this, what GomiBoy is referring to is hydrostatic shock. The theory is somewhat convoluted and contested, but the idea is that a bullet moving at high speed through a mostly liquid medium (flesh) creates a shockwave (or that the collapsing void behind is causes a wave, depending on who you talk to) which turns material outside the immediate wound channel into hamburger. Whether the theory is "valid" or not, the fact remains that high speed rifle bullets do a lot more damage than the diameter of the wound channel would suggest on its own. Blades are nasty in their own way in that they create (relatively) enormous wound channels but as Chronos noted, the animal can take seconds or minutes to bleed out, even if you've struck an artery, and in the meantime he's still swatting and biting.

Stranger

[Misery Loves Co.]

So I had a nice long reply posted for Gomi and lno, saw two more from Stranger, and am conceding this fight, if for no other reason than it's half past quitting time and I'm still sitting in my cube. That's dumb.

My parting shot is only this: killing a bear is without a doubt tough, and there are better ways of doing so than in plate and with a halberd. However, these things do even the odds, if only somewhat. I still maintain that plate serves a protective purpose, even against an angry bear. It ain't bear-proof, but it ain't designed to be.

So tell me, do our ursine overloards prefer clover or orange honey?

Cheers -

[Stranger On A Train]

So I had a nice long reply posted for Gomi and lno, saw two more from Stranger, and am conceding this fight, if for no other reason than it's half past quitting time and I'm still sitting in my cube. That's dumb.
Awww...and I was enjoying this so. It's so much more civilized (ironically) than the "Yes it is," "No it's not." "Well, ffff you!" "Well, ffff you and your little dog, too!" brawls in The Pit :)


So tell me, do our ursine overloards prefer clover or orange honey?
I'm guessing they want some of this Italian Organic Forest Honey (https://www.oraganic.com/products_detail.asp?food_type_id=20&food_sub_type_id=66&food_id=604) along with their Baked Salmon with Lime and Dill. :D

Stranger

[GomiBoy]

Awww...and I was enjoying this so. It's so much more civilized (ironically) than the "Yes it is," "No it's not." "Well, ffff you!" "Well, ffff you and your little dog, too!" brawls in The Pit :)



I'm guessing they want some of this Italian Organic Forest Honey (https://www.oraganic.com/products_detail.asp?food_type_id=20&food_sub_type_id=66&food_id=604) along with their Baked Salmon with Lime and Dill. :D

Stranger

Me, too! I wanna be a servant for our new ursine overlords! Can I be the one that takes care of their fur? Please! :)

Seriously, thanks for a fun debate. This was really cool.

Stranger - I didn't realize that hydrostatic shock was still just a theory. I saw some motion capture video one time of a bullet hitting a transparent block of gelatine that had been mixed to represent human flesh; it was pretty shocking the amount of damage done.

That, plus I have seen enough wounds in both animals and in people from gunshots that I know something else is doing the damage; the damage is just too huge to be simply from the bullet itself...

[gytalf2000]

Well, this has been a really fascinating thread! Thanks for all the informative posts!
Now, if you had three or four knights with halberds (or various other nasty, pointy polearms!) facing the enraged beastie, I think the bear would definitely lose-- though the humans would definitely take some casualties! What do you think?

[Quercus]

And if you just wound a bear, you're going to initiate a fight response, just like someone socking you in the jaw causes you to pump adrenelin. Now he's not just curious or trying to bluff you--his life is in danger and he'll act accordingly.
If the bear really feels his life is in danger, don't you think he's most likely to just get outta Dodge?

[SuperNelson]

Probably a hijack, but this thread reminded me of a short video of another bear encounter (http://www.StupidVideos.com/?VideoID=672).

[GomiBoy]

Probably a hijack, but this thread reminded me of a short video of another bear encounter (http://www.StupidVideos.com/?VideoID=672).

Only in bloody Montana, where the men are men and the sheep are nervous, would someone think to tranquelize a bear out of a tree onto a trampoline! Nothing like redneck know-how and cowboy can-do! :) I love my home state sometimes...

If the bear really feels his life is in danger, don't you think he's most likely to just get outta Dodge?
That really depends. If he's just been hit on the snout by someone with a sharp pointy thing who continues to try to hit him on the snout and has caused a wound, then the bear is rather likely to attack as best he can and continue to do so until whatever smacked him stops moving. Then he would likely jump up and down on that thing just to make sure it stopped moving. Then maybe take a bite out of it to see if he recognized whatever it was before he smacked it around and jumped up and down on top of it.

Which is a problem for our noble knight! :)

Well, this has been a really fascinating thread! Thanks for all the informative posts!
Now, if you had three or four knights with halberds (or various other nasty, pointy polearms!) facing the enraged beastie, I think the bear would definitely lose-- though the humans would definitely take some casualties! What do you think?

My personal opinion is that the guys would have the bear apart very quickly, and wouldn't be nearly as likely to suffer any casualties, as long as they could keep their distance from the bear and continue to harass it from multiple angles. If anybody fell down, the bear would likely have him, but as long as the attackers kept their feet I think they'd stand an excellent chance of killing the bear without any of them getting hurt.

[Gary "Wombat" Robson]

The only way the elk gets away is by running before the bear starts his charge, or the elk is lunch.
That's assuming that the bear starts his charge from pretty close. They have the acceleration, but they don't have the stamina. If a bear starts at an elk from 100 yards away, it'll never catch up.

And both elk and deer will fight back, like any animal, if they're being attacked by a bear. They just don't do it well.
I agree with almost everything you said, but just for the record elk can fight quite well. They're no match for a grizzly, but elk have killed quite a few other predators, including wolves. I certainly wouldn't want to take a blow from a bull elk's front hooves.

And I also agree that this thread's been a lot of fun.

[Stranger On A Train]

If the bear really feels his life is in danger, don't you think he's most likely to just get outta Dodge?
That depends on the situation. If a bear feels threatened, then yeah, it'll just run if it can. But if you injure it, you are kicking on a fight response; because it can't turn its back and run without risking more injury, the instinctive response is to fight.

Dr. Rogers makes the point several times that often when people get injured while feeding a bear it isn't because the bear is being aggressive about wanting food, but because it has taken what the person has offered it and then is suddenly nervous about being so close to a person. As a result, it'll swat at the person (usually pretty harmlessly--the idea that bears can disembowl someone with their claws in a single swipe is a myth) to give itself time and space to get away.

From this (http://www.bearsmart.com/coexistence/TruthAboutBears.html) site:

Typical incidents involve people offering food to hungry half-tame bears to lure them closer than the bears feel comfortable. When the bear opens its mouth to take the food, a fearful person often involuntarily jerks the food back. If the bear is hungry enough, he might make a quick move to get it and bite the hand too, causing a bruise. Another scenario involves half-tame bears feeding from the hand calmly until the food is gone then suddenly feeling crowded without the distraction of the food. Too fearful to turn their backs and leave, they slap defensively, giving themselves an instant afterward to turn and run.

If you've ever seen or been in a fist fight--one of those bar fights that starts because two drunk assholes won't aplogize to each other--you know that there's a period of posturing and bluffing, with each side not wanting to show weakness by backing down, and then finally someone gets nervous, throws a punch, and hell breaks loose from there. At that point, neither guy is thinking about backing down; all they know in the world is that point is that they have to keep throwing punches. Same thing.

Stranger

[GomiBoy]

I agree with almost everything you said, but just for the record elk can fight quite well. They're no match for a grizzly, but elk have killed quite a few other predators, including wolves. I certainly wouldn't want to take a blow from a bull elk's front hooves.

Sorry, should have been more specific; I meant that an Elk or deer wouldn't be able to fight back efficiently if the bear got a hold of them, not that they couldn't at all. Elk are big and strong and fast, and can do a hell of a lot of damage.

And I also agree that this thread's been a lot of fun.
Why do I have a sudden mental image of a bunch of Dopers staging competitions in the woods jousting with grizzlies at the next dope fest? :)

[GomiBoy]

That's assuming that the bear starts his charge from pretty close. They have the acceleration, but they don't have the stamina. If a bear starts at an elk from 100 yards away, it'll never catch up.
Definitely; a bear can run that fast for only very short distances - I would say more like 50 yards even rather than 100.

[Stranger On A Train]

Stranger - I didn't realize that hydrostatic shock was still just a theory. I saw some motion capture video one time of a bullet hitting a transparent block of gelatine that had been mixed to represent human flesh; it was pretty shocking the amount of damage done.

That, plus I have seen enough wounds in both animals and in people from gunshots that I know something else is doing the damage; the damage is just too huge to be simply from the bullet itself...

Well, there's no question that high speed (hypersonic) rifle bullets cause significantly more damage than a low speed pistol round, or than the nominal size of the wound channel would justify. You're right; when fired into ballistic gelatin you can see a secondary area of disruption surrounding the wound channel. But exactly what causes this, and whether it is due to a "hydrostatic" pulse is still hotly debated. Some people claim that it is the shock wave of the bullet exceeding the "speed of sound" (natural rate of propagation) in the hydraulic medium of soft tissues, analogous to a sonic boom in air. Others claim that it is caused by the collapse of the wound channel after the passage of the bullet, kind of like cavitation. And some think that it's caused by some other kind of action, like the wobbling or spinning of the bullet as it travels. (I think this is unlikely--if the bullet starts to wobble after it enters the body it is going to rapidly become dynamically unstable and start tumbling, but I've seen the claim.)

As far as I know, there isn't any one accepted explaination in forensic literature, though, as a mechanical engineer, the "shock wave" explaination seems the most likely. But I'm not a doctor or a physiologist, so that's just MHO.

Stranger

[GomiBoy]

Well, there's no question that high speed (hypersonic) rifle bullets cause significantly more damage than a low speed pistol round, or than the nominal size of the wound channel would justify. You're right; when fired into ballistic gelatin you can see a secondary area of disruption surrounding the wound channel. But exactly what causes this, and whether it is due to a "hydrostatic" pulse is still hotly debated. Some people claim that it is the shock wave of the bullet exceeding the "speed of sound" (natural rate of propagation) in the hydraulic medium of soft tissues, analogous to a sonic boom in air. Others claim that it is caused by the collapse of the wound channel after the passage of the bullet, kind of like cavitation. And some think that it's caused by some other kind of action, like the wobbling or spinning of the bullet as it travels. (I think this is unlikely--if the bullet starts to wobble after it enters the body it is going to rapidly become dynamically unstable and start tumbling, but I've seen the claim.)

As far as I know, there isn't any one accepted explaination in forensic literature, though, as a mechanical engineer, the "shock wave" explaination seems the most likely. But I'm not a doctor or a physiologist, so that's just MHO.

Stranger

Makes good sense, and thanks for the deeper explanation.

Cheers

GomiBoy