People are the most ill-equipped animals(for wilderness survival)

Liebling said:
Actually, it depends on the bear. For a grizzly, it would be better to play dead unless he starts charging, in which case the best plan is to fight back with your legs spread far apart and your elbows up to avoid clawing and to prevent the bear from flipping you over for any reason. Once he has you on the ground flipped over, all bets are off as to your survival. If it is a black bear, the best thing to do is to fight back making a lot of noise. You cannot outrun a bear, and you are safer facing the bear than you are being attacked from behind.
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Hmm I hope you don't mind me being a skeptic. I don't think you can avoid being clawed by putting up your elbows. And if a Grizzly wants to flip you over, you flip over.. :p
There's not too much a human can do against that kind of strength.
I'd say fight back if all else fails. The bear might just be surprised, but I wouldn't count on it.

Liebling said:
If you are going to play dead, lay on your side in a ball, or face down flat with your hands behind your head protecting your neck. But if he's already stalking you, and treating you like dinner, it's already too late to play dead.
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True, that won't work if he's already considering you food. But do bears actually hunt people (apart from Polar bears) ?

Liebling said:
As I said, community is important. Always travel or camp together because most bears will not attack a camp or group of six or more.
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Yep, and keep your camp clear of any food.
 
Orleander said:
If a bear thinks you are dead, why wouldn't it eat you?
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Because humans are not on the menu. Bears attack humans because they feel threatened.
Most large predators will attack as a first response to being startled. Sort of an 'offense is the best defense' strategy.
 
Enmos said:
Because humans are not on the menu. Bears attack humans because they feel threatened.
Most large predators will attack as a first response to being startled. Sort of an 'offense is the best defense' strategy.
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??? Bears eat meat.
 
Enmos said:
Yes. But it highly depends on their location. Some bears almost solely live off berries, plants and roots, while others have access to fish. They are opportunists....
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right, when they have the opportunity to eat a person, wouldn't they take it?
Its kinda like saying bears don't eat sloth. Well, if they were in their environment and they had the opportunity.....
 
Orleander said:
right, when they have the opportunity to eat a person, wouldn't they take it?
Its kinda like saying bears don't eat sloth. Well, if they were in their environment and they had the opportunity.....
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I happens, but not as a rule. Usually bears are aware of humans way before the humans are aware of them, and they keep clear of the humans. But sometimes a bear is surprised and attacks in self-defense.
 
Orleander said:
right, when they have the opportunity to eat a person, wouldn't they take it?
Its kinda like saying bears don't eat sloth. Well, if they were in their environment and they had the opportunity.....
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Actually there is evidence that to most bears humans are not tasty. I mean there are meats that we humans just do not like to eat as they are just nasty or an acquired taste.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
People who care about wilderness survival skills put great effort into learning them and apparently they become very good at them. As far as I'm concerned this proves that our species has not lost its natural ability for wilderness survival, merely that we no longer teach our children to exploit it.
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Many people care about it until they find they can't do it. Some die trying.

Fraggle Rocker said:
Actually, at the close of the Mesolithic Era in 9500BCE the life expectancy of an adult human who had survived the rigors of childhood (no mean feat, to be sure) was in the low 50s. The cause of death for the majority of them was violence, since the inability of a hunter-gatherer "economy" to generate surplus food made every tribe an enemy of every other tribe during hard times.
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I'd wager more were killed by someone(s) in their own tribe than an enemy tribe.
 
Liebling said:
If you want to know how poorly people adapt and survive, turn off their power for long enough for their food supply to spoil and/or run out. I think it's safe to say that the majority of us living in first world countries would be absolutely screwed, save for a few who really know how to live off the land and have done so.
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In that situation, even if everyone knew everything there is to know about how to live off the land, most people would still be screwed since the land surrounding the average city doesn't generally provide enough food(food that can be renewed after the supply is exhausted for the amount of people who live in the average city. Unless you were lucky enough to live in an area where there are farms within a few hours walking distance. The amount of people who survived really wouldn't be a measure of how well a person could survive in the wilderness, as it would be a city experiencing famine(which happens all the time, almost always with some survivors), not the wilderness.
 
This topic reminds me of a man who was jetskiing on 1 of the Great Lakes, ran out of power & couldn't get to shore. When they found him, he was dehydrated due to thinking there was no water to drink.
 
There was this great sign i saw about a bear warning on a hiking trail.
The beginning said to always bring pepper spray or mace.
Towards the end it said you should look at bear poop to see which kind of bear was nearby.
It said that black bear poop smelled like fruit and berries, and Grizzly bear poop smells like pepper spray or mace.
:p:cool::p
 
StrangerInAStrangeLa said:
I'd wager more were killed by someone(s) in their own tribe than an enemy tribe.
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Very unlikely. Humans are a pack-social species like most of the other hominoids. The pack-social instinct is the engine of survival for the pack: every member instinctively relies on and cares about his pack-mates. He would be more likely to risk his life fighting a lion for its kill to bring back to camp, than to kill a pack-mate.

The ten-thousand-year history of civilization has been a struggle to overcome that pack-social instinct: to live in harmony and cooperation with anonymous strangers and to avoid regarding other tribes as hated enemies. In other words, to transform into a herd-social species.

Some animals allow their young to die during hard times. The adults can always have more babies but the babies won't survive if the adults starve to death. I don't know if humans have ever done that.
 
Some animals allow their young to die during hard times. The adults can always have more babies but the babies won't survive if the adults starve to death. I don't know if humans have ever done that.
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Chinese abort their daughters if they can only have 1 child so they want a boy so he could support them when they grow older, In india girls get aborted because the family has to pay rather large amounds if the girl get's married.

In the west they abort their unborn (not that often) when they show signs of deformaties that would make them mentally handicapt. (like down syndrome)
 
I would imagine Neadertals and other early tribes practiced infanticide in times of low food.
Weren't there rumours of children being cannibalised in China during times of famine after WWII?
 
We have earth, we have nature, we have animals = all three equate - then we have humans, there is no place here for us, we don't fit in.
 
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