I just saw a massive fight between two grizzly bears. Why is it suggested that the best defence for humans is to ‘play dead’?
In: Earth Science
The real advice is to have a big gun and known how to use it. If you are not armed with besr spray or a gun playing dead is really the only chance you have at living. If it is trying to eat you you are dead but if it is being territorial than you just might live.
If you fight a grizzly without weapons, you lose. So the defense rules are something like
* have a weapon with you,
* don’t do anything that will get a fight started (don’t startle it, stare it down, threaten its cubs)
* don’t run, because they kind of instinctively chase and knock down animals that run from them, and they run about dog-speed so you’re probably not escaping
If the fight has started and you’re not armed, you’ve lost already. Now you’re just trying to get it to stop fucking you up before you die, and that means being boring. If you keep fighting, it will keep fucking you up until you stop. Bears don’t really think of us as food, so as long as it isn’t frantically hungry and you aren’t putting up a fight, there’s a fair chance it’ll go away after smacking you around a certain (hopefully nonlethal) amount.
Is this a cool option? No. Will you have an awesome story to tell? Not really. But people who know about grizzlies say this is our best bet.
[Edit: I should mention, the guides also say that if you’ve been taking a beating for a minute (which I’m guessing would feel like about sixteen weeks) and you’re pretty sure this animal means to kill you, then you might as well make a final effort. Get your knife or your car key or a pointy rock, and go for an eyeball or something. Just… don’t expect it to go well.]
Because you’re not going to fight a grizzly bear and win. If you fight back, it’ll feel threatened and kill you. If you run away, it’ll see you as prey and kill you. If you play dead, it might kill you, but it’ll (hopefully) realize that you’re not invading its turf and also not want to eat already-dead meat.
Grizzlies attack for two primary reasons
The bear either sees you as a threat, or sees you as food.
Playing dead can stop a bear from continuing an attack that was intended as a defense against a threat.
Playing dead will *not* stop a bear from continuing an attack against its intended prey.
As others have said, you don’t win in a fight against a grizzly. That would be as absurd as expecting a smart car to come out unscathed from a collision with a mack truck.
The best defense, though, isn’t to play dead, per se, it’s to drop to a fetal position and cover the back of your neck with your hands. You do this, partly because grizzlies are *less* likely to attack if they don’t think you’re any sort of threat, but also because you can live without your hands or arms, but can’t live without your vital organs or the arteries going up your neck into your brain. The fetal position generally protects your soft underbelly with your less-soft arms and legs, and makes it more likely that you’ll survive the encounter if the bear mauls you.
Keeping in mind, of course, that this only applies to grizzly bears: if it’s a black bear, the opposite advice is true: hit them as hard as you can in vulnerable areas if they decide to attack, preferably with rocks or whatever you can find that can inflict more damage than your hands.
And if it’s a polar bear rather than a black or grizzly bear, well…. just hope it isn’t a polar bear.
Hence the bear chart: “If it’s brown, lie down. If it’s black, fight back. If it’s white, good night.”
Because unless you have weapons, you will *not* fight a bear and win (even with weapons it’s extremely dangerous).
If you try to attack it, it’ll kill you. If you run, it’ll kill you. If you hide, it’ll kill you. Playing dead however, and the bear won’t see you as a threat, and could potentially leave you alone. It might kill you, but your odds of survival are much higher when the bear doesn’t think you are dangerous
Latest Answers