[Nyerges is the author of “How to Survive Anywhere” and 9
other books. He has taught practical survival skills and wild food
identification to ordinary folks since 1974. He can be reached at
www.ChristopherNyerges.com.]
For the first time, I watched an episode of “Man vs. Wild”
with Bear Grylls. Yes, I have heard
about it for years, and yes I have seen young teenagers drooling over their
Bear Grylls knives, and yes I even saw Mr. Grylls doing some silly act on the
Jay Leno Show. But I had never watched the “Man vs. Wild” show.
I expected some great lessons on survival, and relevant topics on how to protect myself and my
family from the many threats within and without. I expected entertainment also;
I mean, it’s television after all. But I naturally assumed that with all the
popularity of this show, it would have
something useful, interesting, relevant, and imminently valuable to share. Boy was I wrong!
During the one episode I watched, I don’t think I saw any
useful survival skill that I would ever be in a position to employ. In fact,
most of it would be categorized as what NOT
to do! Furthermore, there
was no sense of purpose or reason to what the man was doing. OK, he was dressed
a bit too neat and clean and he was on this quest for water in the desert.
He jumps into a deep rocky hole looking for water. Really?
A “survival expert” would never have jumped into such a chasm in his
dangerous manner since a real expert could have seen there was no water in
there merely by looking. But you do get to see him scramble out of the hole.
OK, so he has athletic abilities, but not the wisdom to demonstrate what not
to do.
He then dug a little hole in a dry stream, which is indeed a
spot where you’d find water. I have done just that many time and dug deep
enough to where water would seep in, clarify on its own, and then I could drink
it. But Mr. Grylls instead proceeded to pack wet sand into the sock he just
took off his foot and squeeze the sock to get out a few drips of water. Really?
Again, a real expert would not do that, and the bad thing about the show is that someone will leave thinking
that is a bonafide survival skill. He’s
appealing to the lowest common denominator of thrills and grossness but he
didn’t show real useful skills, and he could have, and he should have.
Folks, it only got worse.
Next, he is purportedly wandering along and found some
debris in the desert. Looks like some
hang-glider crashed here, he tells us. Really? All the gear was relatively new
– not worn out and weather worn like you’d expect to find in the desert. And lo
and behold, he found just the right amount of debris to rig together a little
three wheel cart and then the old parachute was used so the wind could pull him
along. Very ingenious yes, but the debris was most certainly planted there, and
the likelihood anyone ever actually fashioning such a vehicle from found
objects is so remote as to be laughable. In fact, I began to ask my friend if
the show was intended to be comedy.
There were numerous dangerous maneuvers when one could have
take a safe route. He chooses to whirl around edges of a mountain on his
supposedly-found parachute cord, rather than just hike the safe and sure way
around. He squeezes through holes in rock when he could have safely gone
around. And he quickly makes a bundle bow to shoot a rock tied to a string to a
distant hill so he could hang on the rope to get to the distant mountain. Really?
He would have done far better simply by tossing the rock. But most of the purported skills seem
faked. I could not help but wonder how
many naieve teenage boys will die when they try to duplicate what the “survival
expert” on TV did. And part of my point
is, there was no point! Grylls chooses
danger when there are obviously many safe ways. You survive not by taking
ridiculous and unnecessary risks, but by thinking your way through a situation
and choosing the wisest route. This was bad TV, bad advice, and there was no
real drama and no point to Mr. Grylls wanderings. Is the show really
popular? If Mr.Grylls is really the
expert he is made out to be, why does he allow himself to be paid to
demonstrate the antithesis of “survival”?
Before we turned off the pointless show, my viewing
companion and I watched as Mr. Grylls took two aluminum tubes and purported to
make a fire piston. He stuck a little bit
of some sort of tinder in one end, and hit one tube of aluminum into another
and magically produced a glowing ember.
Folks, that was as phony as they come. If any of you have tried to get
an ember with a fire piston, you know
that everything has to be “just-so,” and even then it will be very difficult.
This was just one more staged aspect of a phony show that is not even good
entertainment.
We turned off the TV and found it far more enlightening and
enriching to discuss Paul Campbell’s latest book on the Universal Tool
Kit.
And what of the hour or so I spent watching Bear Grylls?
Well, as Alan Halcon likes to say, that’s an hour of my life I’ll never get
back.
The
