Would you say it’s really realistic?
For the news, I say “meh”. I really didn’t like MvW to begin with for a lot of the reasons people have already pointed out. It’s not a survival show so much as the watch Bear jump over everything show.
This just makes me like Les a lot more.
Hunkering down isn’t always an option. You’re making a lot of assumptions about a given situation. There are situations where it may be more or less impossible to make a fire (and of course, situations where you don’t want to make a fire because you don’t want to be found), and where you will die, and fast. Or where no one really knows you’re lost, so there’s no reason to expect “dudes in the air” looking for you.
Of course, in a lot of extreme conditions, you’ll probably be dead no matter what you do. If you’re somehow lost in the wilderness in a place that is very, very cold, and you have no way of attaining shelter or fire–then you’re dead. I mean, trying to get back to civilization is really your only hope if fire/shelter are completely ruled out, but realistically you’re going to freeze to death fairly quickly.
Even in the best case scenario where you can hunker down for awhile, live relatively comfortably off the land and keep a fire going, after a week or so most rescue efforts have probably died down. There’s no guarantees you’re going to be found, “shit happens” maybe for some reason rescuers who are looking for you think you’re in a vastly different stretch of wilderness than you actually are or et cetera. Just in my experience from watching the news after about two weeks search and rescue is pretty much exponentially decreased as everyone probably considers you dead, and it is a lot less urgent from the perspective of rescuers when they think they’re looking for a corpse (which won’t go anywhere) versus a living person who needs saved.
I agree there’s never really any reason to do the acrobatics Bear Grylls does. Most of the time in nature, no stream/river/etc is lacking in some relatively safe, natural areas to cross. There’s few situations when climb down sheer cliff walls or crawling across a precarious fallen tree to cross a raging rapids is remotely a good idea. Any injury you sustain in the wilderness will probably be fatal if it has any chance of getting seriously infected or it leads to limited mobility. But, hunkering down can’t always be your only game plan, you have to have something else on the plate.
That’s pretty dissapointing, I love the show. He’s not entirely faking it - I mean squeezing elephant shit for water, free climbing over obviously dangerous cliffs, eating maggots, and that sort of stuff is clearly real. It definitely does cheapen the whole thing, though.
I wouldn’t have thought he was the sort to resort to that. He’s the kind of driven guy that accomplishes hard things just to do them - making it into special ops, climbing everest less than 2 years after having a broken back, etc. I don’t know why he wouldn’t just rough it out, it seems like the sort of thing he’d love to do. Which is part of what added authenticity to it.
No one isn’t denying that this guy is one tough SOB who has fantastic survival skills. In fact, even though I think Surviorman is a much, much, better program, Les would probably get his ass kicked by Bear if they ever went toe-to-toe in a fight.
It’s just that some of the dream has died. We’ve learned that Santa doesn’t exist!
I was willing - nay eager - to suspend my disbelief regarding the assistance and benefits available from the accompanying cameramen, so long as I could believe that Bear was actually putting himself in a miserable situation. So long as I “knew” he was actually trying to sleep in the cold and rain, and going for day(s) without drinking or eating, I was happy. Take that away and it loses so much of the appeal…
It’ll be interesting to see the new episodes of “Survivorman”. According to the trailers they’ve been showing on Discovery, he’s “surviving” worldwide in some of the most extreme places (desert, etc.) much like Bear does. Hmm.
OK, so Les doesn’t do the acrobatic/extreme situation thing like Bear. However more realistic Les may be, he’s also rather anticlimatic. I caught the “Canada Woods” episode (where was it, northern Ontario?) a few weeks ago, and although Les gave a lot of practical advice, the whole show, to me, was…well, eh. Not that I was expecting to be like Bear, but, well…YKWIM.
Just different strokes I guess.
I watch Les fashion tools out of everyday objects and think “I never would have thought of that!”
I see Bear scale 25 meter cliffs with his bare hands and think “I never would have been able to do that!”
Different strokes.
I’m explicitly not going to tell you.
This is disappointing news, but not a total deal-breaker for me. I’ll keep watching.
FWIW, I did have my doubts about the show from a while back. Every episode seemed to consist of a sequence of survival challenges that were just too neat. You know, chapter one is the search for water; chapter two is the fording of the river; chapter three is the creation of the shelter; etc., etc. But, frankly, I was okay with that. I figured that BG and the producers scouted out each starting place and route of escape to create a predictable sequence of problems to be solved. Fine.
But two things really set my BS meter flickering. One is the aforementioned episode in which Bear randomly encounters the wild horses. The other was the episode in which Bear gets the horrible stomach sickness in the jungle – the jungle that contains the tree with the stomach-settling sap! Yeah, right.
Anyway, I just shrugged it all off in the name of watchable TV.
The thing that did break my heart about this news, however, was remembering the interview with BG on Letterman (or Leno) a couple of weeks ago. Bear had a golden opportunity to confess he got a little extra help now and then, but he never admitted it. He and Dave (or Jay) talked about the presence of the film crew, and how the crew would sleep in camps or hotels while Bear stayed behind. Bear sheepishly confessed to Dave (or Jay) that the crew did him out once during a particularly rough challenge – they gave him a sip of tea, which, being a “good Englishman” he was happy to have. Obviously he had a little more help than the occasional sip of tea, but he didn’t 'fess up to it.
Since this has had a lot of comments, I hope I may be forgiven for a hijack…
The Scrivener, I’ve been there too, how strange that I was probably next to you at check-out!
P.S. You forgot to mention the can of roach spray kindly provided by the management sitting on the vanity.
Meh, I like Ray Mears. Eccentric and filled with child-like wonder at the world. Especially when he travels to see how various peoples in far-flung corners of the globe survive, he always seems respectful and happy to learn new things.
Agreed. Ray Mears > Les Shroud > Bear Grylls. I’ve always enjoyed his series more because of the story telling and great bushcraft skills. The skills Mears shows you are much more practical.
Hes brave ,determined has strong endurance and an irreverent sense of humour but Eddie is most definitely not the worlds greatest survivalist and most definitely not the worlds greatest mapreader.
If I were stranded out in the middle of nowhere Id prefer to have Ray Mears as my mate ,he teaches the people who taught Eddie.
For clarity, Eddie = Bear?
I totally agree. What really bugs me about MvW is how he acts with the exact opposite of common sense in a lot of situations and then passes that off as good advice. The episode that irked me most was the one where he was in “Grizzly Country”. He found grizzly “footprints” (which were questionable in their own right) and heard weird noises in his camp as he was in his shelter trying to sleep one night. So what does he do? Gets up in the middle of the night and flat-out runs blindly through the woods for hours on the off-chance there might be a bear in pursuit. Then, after daybreak he decides he needs to get down off the hill he’s on so he runs at break-neck speed down the side of a hill through a burned off area covered in half-visible tree trunks and limbs. And he advocates this as the best response if one thinks there might possibly be a grizzly around.
I’m no wilderness expert but even I know that it’s probably not the best course of action to run blindly and loudly through the woods attracting even more attention and probably some more bears in addition to the one that may or may not have been chasing you in the first place! I have tried to walk through burned off areas in the woods and it’s barely doable in broad daylight at a slow walk. I wouldn’t think falling and breaking a leg and/or an arm a very good solution to the being chased by bears problem either.
I won’t even go into the scene wherein he tries to “tame” a “wild” horse. That horse was so tame he was practically wearing a halter.
Whoops ,yes.
I’m interested to see what Bear has to say about this.