Bear Grylls may claim he's an expert survivalist, but it's important to remember that Man vs. Wild is a reality show and Grylls retires to a comfy hotel many nights. What we're saying is, whatever you do, do not take his advice. Grylls has given so much bad advice over the years that it's hard to narrow it down, but we've selected the most infamous, most likely-to-be-tried advice that you should not follow under any circumstances. From his gross suggestion of what to drink to the zip line tip that could get you killed, let's take a look at some terrible advice Bear Grylls has given.
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00:00If you're going to be lost in the wilderness, you probably don't want Bear Grylls with you.
00:05The Man vs. Wild host has built a brand of survivalist techniques in TV shows.
00:10His tips make for decent TV, but his survival advice, they're kind of terrible.
00:14Here's the worst advice Bear Grylls has given.
00:18There's a reason why the FDA says you should cook meat at a safe minimum internal temperature.
00:23It's because raw meat can make you sick.
00:25Sure, you've seen Bear Grylls eat raw meat on TV, but you don't know what was happening
00:30to him gastrointestinally a couple of days later, and that's reason enough for caution.
00:35It might be tempting to think that bacteria like Salmonella and E. coli are mostly just
00:40a problem in overcrowded factory farming conditions, but the Illinois Department of Public Health
00:45says those dangerous microbes can also be found in wild game.
00:48And if the vomiting and explosive diarrhea doesn't finish you off when you're out there
00:52without access to clean water and a toilet, the parasites probably will.
00:58So you're out hiking one day, you turn a corner, and there's a bear standing in the trail.
01:02You have two options.
01:03Do you A. remain calm, keep quiet, and wait for it to move away, or B. throw food at it?
01:10We're going to guess that you would probably lean toward option A, but that's not what
01:14Grylls would recommend.
01:16Grylls' reasoning was that throwing a pack full of food at the bear would create a distraction.
01:21The bear will check out the pack and you'll be able to make your escape.
01:24But when you throw food at a bear, you've just let him know that you are a willing source
01:28of food.
01:29That's maybe not what you want.
01:31According to the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club, many bears are wary of people and will
01:36probably move away on their own.
01:38An aggressive bear may require active deterrence, so stamping your feet, waving sticks around,
01:44and making yourself look big can be effective, but your best defense is to carry bear spray
01:48whenever you are in bear country.
01:50The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Organization says it best.
01:54"...convince the bear that you are not worth the trouble.
01:57Black bears are naturally shy and retiring, and even a sow with cubs will most likely
02:01retreat when confronted."
02:03Don't throw your food-filled pack at the bear, because that's just stupid.
02:08Bear Grylls sometimes picks up a leech or two.
02:10It happens when you're swimming around in jungle waters, and when you deliberately put
02:15leeches on yourself so you can gross out your audience.
02:18In one episode of Man vs. Wild, Grylls falls in a river in Borneo.
02:23After surfacing, he finds a leech stuck to his midriff and gives the audience some truly
02:28bad advice.
02:29"...best thing to do is grab them by the head and then twist them off."
02:34But Borneo Eco Tours says that's a terrible idea, because when you pull on a leech, it
02:39might regurgitate into your open wound.
02:42Leech vomit in an open wound is generally considered bad and can cause much bigger problems
02:47than just having a leech attached to you.
02:49So what should you do if you do happen to find yourself covered with leeches?
02:54Either put up with it for the 20 minutes or so the leech needs to fill up, or use your
02:57fingernail to gently push the leech's sucker until it detaches.
03:01Once you've detached the oral sucker, you'll need to also detach the posterior sucker at
03:06the fat end of the leech.
03:07Then you can throw it back into the river while shrieking in horror.
03:11Bear Grylls does a lot of terrifying things, but this one is probably the worst.
03:15The mere thought that you could one day get lost in the wilderness and have to drink your
03:19own urine to survive is enough to make a lot of people want to give up on nature forever.
03:23The first time Grylls did this, he was running short on water in the Australian wilderness.
03:28It may seem disgusting, but your own urine is safe to drink.
03:34So is he right?
03:35If so, everyone who has ever died of thirst is a sucker because they had a perfectly good
03:40source of water and didn't even know it.
03:42According to Slate, Grylls is only sort of right.
03:45Provided you're healthy, your urine is sterile and about 95 percent water.
03:49But the other 5 percent is the part you have to worry about.
03:52There's also nitrogen, calcium, and potassium in your urine, which is the stuff your kidneys
03:57were trying to get rid of in the first place.
03:59So if you drink your urine once, you're probably fine.
04:02But if you keep doing it, those waste products will become concentrated, forcing your kidneys
04:06into overdrive.
04:08After a few days, your kidneys will probably fail, and you'll die.
04:12You may have heard that following a stream is a good, basic plan for finding your way
04:16out of the wilderness.
04:17But the trouble with following streams is that they don't always meander gently along
04:21until they finally arrive at civilization.
04:24Sometimes they plummet over a pile of rocks into a pool ten feet below.
04:28In an episode of Bear Grylls' Escape from Hell, Grylls is reenacting a scenario in which
04:33a lost hiker climbs down a waterfall.
04:35He uses what appears to be a tree root to get close to the pool below, and then he jumps.
04:40Now, it's worth remembering that Grylls almost certainly knew how deep that pool was.
04:45But he didn't actually say that either he or his producers had already walked down to
04:48it from the safe side and checked it out, which could give impressionable viewers the
04:52idea that jumping blindly into a pool at the bottom of a waterfall is no big deal.
04:57But there's more than just pool depth to consider.
05:00As North Carolina State Parks points out, the rocks around a waterfall are usually more
05:05slippery than they look, so for goodness sake, just go around the waterfall.
05:09Maybe you'll add ten or twenty minutes onto your ordeal, but you also won't break every
05:13bone in your body and die from hypothermia.
05:16Besides questionable survival techniques, Bear Grylls is also known for building things
05:21out of random objects that he happens to find in the wilderness.
05:24Not that we doubt the reality of his reality show or anything, but sometimes Bear's finds
05:29do seem a little suspicious.
05:31Take that time he found the wreckage of a hang glider in the desert and used it to build
05:35some weird parachute-powered car.
05:38The wreckage did not look like it had been out there in the desert for more than an hour
05:41or two, which makes us seriously doubt the accuracy of Bear's show.
05:45Then there was the time Grylls scavenged electrical wire from a downed utility pole and used it
05:50to make a rope.
05:51Now anyone with a brain understands that you don't approach downed power lines, and you
05:56certainly don't try to salvage wire from them.
05:59Because even if they look like they're not electrified, you really have no way of knowing
06:02that until you touch them, and you really shouldn't be touching downed wires at all.
06:08In another of Grylls' most memorable moments, he disembowels a dead camel and then climbs
06:13inside the carcass.
06:14He doesn't sleep in the camel or anything, but he does tell his audience that a disemboweled
06:19camel is a great place to shelter during a sandstorm.
06:22Never mind that it takes hours to disembowel a camel, so it's not like it's a speedy solution
06:28to an incoming sandstorm.
06:29Weirdly, we were unable to locate any scientific studies on the advisability of sheltering
06:35inside dead animals.
06:37We're going to guess that the fresher your disemboweled camel is, the better.
06:41Beyond that, though, you're not Luke Skywalker, and there's no chance you're ever going to
06:44get a starring role in The Empire Strikes Back, so you can just cross that one off the
06:49list.
06:50Also, wild animals are attracted to dead carcasses, so you really don't want to be inside one
06:54when the jackals show up.
06:56Finally, animal carcasses that have been baking for hours in the hot sun are full of
07:00bacteria and other things that can make you sick, especially if you happen to somehow
07:05touch any of the dead decomposing parts of the camel as you're climbing inside.
07:09One time, Bear Grylls ate a camel spider.
07:12Now, from an anthropological perspective, eating large spiders isn't really that strange.
07:17There are people in South America who regularly eat tarantulas, and some even use tarantula
07:21fangs as handy little toothpicks at the end of the meal.
07:24So maybe that's why Bear Grylls decided it wasn't just shocking enough to simply eat
07:29a live spider.
07:30I'm not particularly looking forward to eating this one, but it's gonna be good.
07:36First, the spider he ate wasn't technically a spider at all, but a camel spider.
07:41Camel spiders are sulfugids, so they sort of look like a cross between a spider and
07:45a scorpion.
07:46Also, camel spiders are venomous.
07:48Their venom won't usually kill a person, but it hurts.
07:51Getting bit by one would hurt.
07:53Getting bit by one in your throat while it's on its way down to your stomach would hurt
07:57a lot.
07:58So, at least you'll be happy to know that Grylls chopped off the biting part before
08:01he ate it, but it was still totally squirming.
08:04We're sure he had a very good reason for not waiting for the thing to die before eating
08:08it.
08:09Maybe spiders lose their nutritional value immediately after death?
08:12Nope.
08:13We can't think of a single logical reason why one might need to do that.
08:16There is never a good reason to eat a live spider.
08:20Bear Grylls runs around a lot.
08:22He also does a lot of climbing things, rappelling down things, building things, swinging over
08:28things, and paddling things.
08:30And doing a lot of calorie-burning things is really not a great idea when you're lost
08:34because you've just given all your beef jerky to a bear, and giant camel spiders are scarce
08:39in the American wilderness.
08:40Unless you have an infinite source of food, or you're really good at hunting and game
08:44is super abundant in the place where you happen to be, lost people have to conserve calories.
08:50Hunting around is great for staying fit, but in the absence of sustenance, it's not
08:53great for staying alive.
08:55In fact, survivalist Jason Marsteiner doesn't even recommend hunting because it may burn
09:01more calories than it provides.
09:03Instead, Marsteiner says, eat a handful of cooked bugs.
09:07You'll get more calories from bugs than from meat you've burned calories to get.
09:13So there is one ridiculously terrible thing Bear Grylls does that overshadows climbing
09:17waterfalls, scavenging power lines, and throwing meat at bears.
09:21Even worse than drinking his own urine or climbing inside a camel corpse.
09:25In fact, pretty much everything Bear Grylls does in his television show is incredibly
09:29dangerous and poor advice for surviving outdoors.
09:32But the one thing he does that really is the worst advice of all is risk-taking.
09:36Because as long as you have no broken bones, no raging case of explosive sickness, no spider
09:41bites inside your throat, and you haven't electrocuted yourself, you just might be able
09:46to walk back to civilization.
09:48If you do stupid things and get injured, though, you're going to freeze to death in a ravine
09:53somewhere, or get eaten by that grizzly bear once he's finished off your backpack full
09:57of beef jerky.
09:58Bear Grylls knows this, too.
10:00In fact, he once told an outside magazine writer that he was perfectly aware how bad
10:05his advice is.
10:06Textbook survival is boring.
10:08You just stay where you are, don't take risks, and wait for help to come get you.
10:12That doesn't make for interesting television.
10:14It does, however, make for great advice.
10:16Thanks, Bear.