Bear Grylls was the host of a popular TV show, Man vs. Wild, and also Worst-Case Scenario.
Regardless of what you think about the reality TV show format (hint: I hate it!), Bear Grylls deserves credit for bringing the subject of survival to the mainstream’s attention.
If it weren’t for him, many people probably wouldn’t know survival basics like that you have to filter water in the wild.
But for all the excellent survival advice that Bear Grylls gives, he also gives out a lot of terrible advice.
Here are the absolute worst pieces of Bear Grylls survival advice.
1. Drink Urine
This is perhaps one of the worst survival tips that is constantly repeated.
While it might be okay to drink your urine one or two times in a severe dehydration situation, it is a very bad idea.
Urine is one way that your body passes out waste. The more dehydrated you are, the more concentrated the waste in your urine will be. By drinking the waste-filled urine, you are forcing your body to process it again.
And guess what your body needs to process waste? Yep – water.
Read More: The Truth about Drinking Urine for Survival
2. Throw Your Food At a Bear
Bear Grylls encounters bears a few times on his show. In multiple situations, he gives some really bad survival advice.
In this video, Grylls sees a black bear. First off, he makes the stupid mistake of staying around to stare at and film the bear.
He could have slowly backed away and been completely safe (black bears aren’t as aggressive as brown bears). Then Grylls gives the even dumber survival advice of throwing your backpack of food at the bear. The idea is that the bear will go check out the food and lose interest in you.
Throwing food at a bear is a terrible idea. Aside from teaching bears to come to people for food, it might piss off the bear, and it could come to attack you out of self-defense (you started it, after all!).
3. Run from a Grizzly
For someone named Bear, Bear Grylls has some terrible advice about bears.
In one show, he encounters a grizzly bear. Again, Grylls sticks around to film the bear instead of slowly backing away before he is noticed. Grizzly bears do not like to have their pictures taken!
Grizzly bears (aka brown bears) are more aggressive than black bears! You do NOT want to encounter one of these in the wild. But if you see a grizzly, don’t follow Bear Grylls’s advice. He says to back away slowly and then start running—bad advice!
This is what you should really do if you see a grizzly and it sees you:
- Talk to the bear in a low, calm voice. Slowly raise your hands in the air to make yourself appear bigger. If you have children with you, bring them close to you so you look like one big animal. You don’t want to look like prey or an easy target.
- Slowly start walking backward.
- Never run! This will make you look like prey, and the bear will chase after you. Since grizzlies can run at 34 mph, it isn’t likely you will win the race.
- If the bear starts attacking you, you can try playing dead. But note that you don’t want to play dead with black bears—they will see you as a free lunch!
4. Pull Leeches Off Your Body
I’ve swam with leeches numerous times and had them on my body more times than I can count. So, when I watched Bear Grylls pull leeches off his body, I got angry.
If you have a leech on your body, do NOT just rip it off!
Pulling a leech off your body could leave part of its teeth in the wound, leading to a nasty infection. However, note that folk methods of removing leeches—such as putting salt on them or burning them with a match—aren’t very good either. The leech could regurgitate its stomach contents into the wound and cause infection.
Instead, to remove a leech, you should find something flat (your fingernail will work). Starting with the head, work it under the leech. It will break the suction, and the leech will safely come off.
5. Eat Raw Game
In at least one episode, Bear Grylls has caught an animal and bitten right into the dead animal. This might make for good TV, but it is bad survival advice.
Raw meat can contain all sorts of bacteria and parasites. Eating raw meat in a survival situation is practically a death sentence because you could end up with diarrhea and then severe dehydration.
The only reason indigenous groups like the Eskimos can eat raw fish is that salt water and cold temperatures kill bacteria and parasites. So don’t risk it.
Either cook your game or find another source of survival food – like eating insects for survival.
6. Swing Your Way Across Streams, Ravines, Waterfalls…
In countless episodes, Bear Grylls comes across something like a raging river. His response is always something along the lines of,
It would take too much time to go around. Let’s go over it!
In one episode, he lashes poles to his hands and uses them to vault down a mountain!
In real survival situations, you don’t get to scout out the terrain beforehand (as Bear Grylls does), nor do you get to do a re-shoot if your first attempt doesn’t work out, nor will you have a camera crew ready to whisk you away to a hospital.
So, if you ever encounter an obstacle like a big ravine, spend the extra few hours hiking carefully around it instead of breaking bones.
7. A River Is a Good Form of Transportation
In one episode, Bear Grylls’s Grylls’s advice is to make a raft and use it to go down a raging river. In another episode, he recommends body surfing down a raging river in a canyon (yes, body surfing!!!).
In many other episodes, he does other stupid things with rivers.
For example, in one episode, he walks through a river in a canyon and comes across a piece of timber. His reaction is, “I guess I will have to swim under it!”
Getting wet is one of the worst things you can do in a survival situation! Unless you have a plan on how to get dry later, this could mean hypothermia and death.
So don’t follow stupid survival advice from Bear Grylls. If you encounter a raging river, spend some extra time hiking to a safe crossing spot rather than trying to swim your way through it.
8. Take Risks
This brings me to the biggest reason I don’t like Grylls and his survival advice: he constantly takes risks.
Whether pole vaulting across a canyon or swimming across a raging river, these stunts are dangerous.
If you break a bone while in the wild, you won’t have a whole camera crew to fly you out. If you aren’t sure what is safe to do, don’t do it!
Playing it safe is the absolute best survival advice.
What do you think of Bear Grylls — good entertainment or a conveyor of dangerously lousy advice?
As a Brit, I can’t stand the guy.
I’ve grow up admired Ray Mears ability.
He goes to Bushcraft events and he’s
totally approachable, he’s always happy to stop what he’s doing to spread his knowledge to the kids.
Firstly, spending many thousands of hours in the wilderness I laughed at every one of his shows. His wilderness skills. I had a basis, but the translation was all economic.