Right, better to let his kid get eaten while he’s figuring out how to Maguyver a tranquilizer gun from a paperclip, chewing gum and a tampon.
Yeah, because a Marine would never have a .45 out in the wild. Or not take his family out into the wild in the first damn place.
I’m only snarking on this because the Neanderthal picked the first, brutist, dumb fuck, he-man way he could think of. Instead of a little planning or thought. I guess his sargeant wasn’t there to plan the trip for him… :rolleyes:
Despite the upbeat description of the survival chances of a team using a DC for real the common opinion amongst both the Brits(though we would have declined any kind offer of the U.S lending us any)and Yanks was that it would take somebody who had had a seriously unpleasant “Dear john” from their other halves to actually use one ,or maybe at a pinch someone who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had only days left to live .
Dude, he killed a bear by throwing a log at it. You aren’t going to top that with snark.
if6was9: OK, you come up with a way to save your child - and then you - from a bear attack, that doesn’t involve violence.
if6was9, his son was being charged BY A BEAR!!!
I assume his plan was “get bear’s attention/hurt bear so that it will leave my son alone”
Honestly, WTF? Do you have a problem with Marines, or people who do the quickest thing they can to save their children, (which worked, by the way), or what?
Yes, much better to let the kid get eaten so that one can fulfill some sort of ego satisfaction of knowing that they used their mind. Where I am from, the effective solution to the problem is the smartest solution. YMMV.
if6was9, in the time it took you to type that, the bear would have eaten your three-year-old. Twice.
It’s not like the guy had a “pause” button on his life. He picked up the nearest thing he could and threw it at the bear. Probably luck rather than skill that killed the bear, but your anger or snark or whatever it is, it’s misplaced.
Besides. this guy did something in a split second that is cooler than anything you could ever plan. Give him his props and be on your way. There’s no need to piss in someone else’s Cheerios just because you need a garden hose to kill a spider.
That Marine?
Which Marine would it be a good idea to piss off?
Right now, maybe General Pace. 
… No, wait, you meant piss off the Marine, not TELL the Marine to piss off. Never mind …
And I have to agree, this is not something that bears ( 
) deconstructing as to how it should have been unnecessary to get to that point through careful planning. Because I don’t think most of us would, in preparing for a fun trip into the woods, have included in the plans “Scenario 26-A: Son #1 annoys bear with shovel: options.”.
I have the notion that immediately or shortly after the threat was down, Dad must have thought to himself: *"Holy &^%$#… by all rights and reasonable likelihood, the kid should be alive now only because the bear would be too busy eating MY torn-apart corpse…"
Wasn’t there a mom in Canada who held off a polar bear with her bare hands?
Ah, the story is old, but this site references it, as well as an Aussie grandma who wrestled a crocodile.
Badass, indeed.
The idea that the father should have “used his mind” is ridiculous, for one, he did use his mind. And the vast majority of people out there have bad reaction times in a crisis situation. A lot of parents would have tried something to save their child, but a lot of them probably would have tried something dumb like running towards the tyke and trying to carry him off (running from a bear is not a smart thing to do.)
The idea that the guy was dumb for not having a gun in the wilderness is also ludicrous. I’m a hunter and a gun owner. During hunting season (unless it’s bow season) yeah, I’m going to have a gun with me in the woods, primarily because I’m well, hunting. However, I love the wilderness and love hiking. I try to get out some of the wonderful forest-land in the mountains on the western edge of my state (Virginia) as often as possible, and I own a small cabin there.
When I’m hiking, I never carry a weapon. Why? Well, because I’ve been hiking these woods for like 45 years, going all the way back to when I was six years old and was hiking with my dad. I know the threats and I know that I don’t really need a gun.
The most dangerous animal, as far as ability/desire to attack and kill a human in the forests of the eastern United States are mountain lions (a type of panther to people not familiar with them.) When hungry, they will stalk human beings as prey and kill them, one of them killed a female jogger in California a few years ago and was spotted from a helicopter stalking a park ranger who was out looking for it. However the number of these animals in the woods around here is incredibly low. In all those 45 years I’ve seen exactly zero mountain lions, we know they’re out there, but they are a small population. If one of them approached me, yes I’d want a gun. But since the incidence of them attacking people in the United States is virtually zero, and I’ve never seen one in 45 years of hiking the wilderness, I feel no reason to carry.
I see black bears all the time black bears are so populous in the forests of the eastern U.S. that most States have a hunting season on them and their populations continue to grow. They’re incredibly shy and reclusive creatures. When I see them it’s because they don’t see me. When they realize I’m there, they run away. This is how they respond to humans, who are relatively unfamiliar to them. Black bears are omnivorous but in truth are very very close to being herbivores because the vast majority of their diet is plant matter. The animal matter that they do eat tends to be grubs and other insects. It’s very rare for a black bear to take down game, I think it’s estimated that your average adult black bear may kill one deer per year (this is also why deer are overpopulated in the U.S., their primary predator was traditionally packs of wolves, humans have intentionally driven wolves completely out of the eastern U.S.)
Black bears just simply don’t want to have a conflict with humans. Any time a black bear attacks a human, it’s because they felt threatened and felt they had no other choice, or because you tried to take their food. Black bears don’t view humans as prey, even when hungry. However, if they’ve discovered a delicious picnic basket, woe be to anyone who tries to take it from them. Black bears like their food, and they won’t give it up without a fight. Black bears kill more people than any other bear in the United States, the vast majority of the time it is indeed because of humans who acted improperly around them. The first mistake this family did make was leaving food out in the open, which a bear can smell from miles away. The second mistake they made was provoking the bear. The bear was interested in their food, it wasn’t interested in making them into food.
Despite my tongue-in-cheek comment about the bear eating the child, that wouldn’t have really happened, the bear was attacking because it thought the child was trying to take his food. Once the child was no longer a threat he’d have wandered off (note that this exchange would probably leave the child dead.) What the dad did was pretty much the exactly proper thing to do if you’ve already messed up and are having a close-encounter with a black bear. You throw shit at them and yell at them, it’s surprising the log killed the bear and kind of a freak occurrence.
Now, if I happened to live in Polar bear or Grizzly bear country I would probably carry some sort of side arm with me. Grizzly bears and polar bears have no fear of man and do view us as prey. Grizzlies tend to get a larger portion of their diet from plant matter than polar bears do, so a grizzly may ignore you if it isn’t hungry. But if it’s hungry, it will stalk and kill you as if you were any other type of prey. Polar bears tend to get almost the entirety of their diet from meat, and if they see meat walking around, it’s chow time.
But I’ve also never seen a polar bear or grizzly bear in Virginia (I have seen a few grizzlies in my life, but much farther north and west.) Note that this story took place in Georgia, with forests that are part of the same range as the ones we have in VA and with the same animals.
Having lived with Marines while in the Navy, I’m suprised the Marine didn’t eat the freakin’ bear. He would’ve if he had his helmet and sterno with him.
The sterno’s for desert, not cooking.
Peace,
mangeorge
When they outlaw logs, only outlaws will have logs…
(sorry)
FML
Dwight Schrute will definitely have something to say about this.
Um. Not go camping where there are fricking bears? Um. If you do, you carry like a gun or something? I mean, this jarhead was so unprepared he had to use a log???
I’m not ranting on his killing the bear, defending his family. I’m ranting on this mindless killing droid “killin’ a b’ar with his bare hands”.
And all you drones applauding the dumb fuck for it.
No thought, no planning, just an OORah and a heaved log. I’ll deal with any situation with the required amount of violence. :smack:
Dumb. Mindless. Fuck.
A personal attack. Nice.
OK, color me baffled. How would the marine using a gun be less violent than him throwing a log at said bear? :rolleyes:
Oh and about not camping where there are bears. He lives in Georgia. Bears live in the mountains of Georgia. Where would you you suggest he go camp, on Peachtree in downtown Hotlanta? :dubious:
After his son did a dumb thing, this guy thought on his feet. Then using the resources at hand he saved his little kids life. Pretty praiseworthy if you ask me.
I don’t understand your vitriol.
Because the brainwashed Marine did exactly as he was trained to. He had no plan, because this was his “mission”, not planned by his all-knowing superiors. He had no thought as to what dangers he might face, and how he might respond. And true to his brainwashing, he responded with brute force. And all ended up well. And the drones here say “Well done, Marine.” :rolleyes:
This makes no sense whatsoever. You think he threw a log at a bear because he was in the marines? You do realize that when confronted with an angry black bear, pretty much any park ranger worth his salt will tell you that you can scare the bear away by yelling at it, acting mean, and even throwing rocks/sticks at the bear. Now, they’d be foolish to advise you do this when dealing with a grizzly bear, but that’s neither here nor there.
“He had no plan?” Who said he did. Do you have a plan for every thing you do in life? People were applauding his quick, on-his-feet thinking because that is the best way to handle a crisis situation when you do not have a plan. It’d be great if we had “plans” for every contingency in the world in our private lives, but we don’t, no one does.
To be honest I find it very hard to respond to your posts because your criticisms are so illogical, and so disjointed that it’s almost impossible to reply to them.