I was watching this video of a young guy doing survival stuff in the wilderness of Montana, USA in YouTube. For the landscape in the video, I can tell that it was pretty wild stuff he was into, and not only shot in his backyard. Wolf tracks, Grizzly bear tracks and hair and the kind of shit you find only in remote places. He was doing a one-week survival stunt for his YouTube channel and he was pretty much into all those Bear Grills paraphernalia (testing his Bear Grylls (BG) Gerber pants, his BG Gerber pro-survival knife, his BG survival kit, etc... etc..). He is a young American guy (called El Director something-into-the-wild), so I understand that all that Discovery Channel garbage about BG is catchy among young people. I know. I know. It is catchy indeed. But so is gonorrhea.
You really, really, really got to be careful about that garbage if you plan to go into the wild alone. All that garbage is all about marketing. That is it. Marketing. Selling stuff. All about selling Gerber and other kind of garbage stuff. And you got to be careful because...IT IS FREAKING GARBAGE!!. The knives are garbage (I broke one a while ago -that was given to me as a present- trying to cut some wood with it. The steel the knives are made from is totally rubbish), the backpacks are garbage (I read somewhere that they come apart in a couple of weeks of use), the clothes too (probably with the only exception of those made by Cryhoopers -don't know if it is the correct brand name- that is an excellent British outdoor gear manufacturer. I just cannot understand how they got into this Bear Grylls rubbish). And even more importantly all that surviving show and advice that BG say and prays on TV.....IT IS ALL BLOODY GARBAGE! AND EVEN WORSE, IT IS DANGEROUS GARBAGE!
I am humble ecologist and an avid outdoor enthusiast, but I have spent probably half of my 50 years of life in the outdoors, or a third at the very least. Pretty much. I have got adventures that involved some kind of survival stuff (from recreational survival to life or death situations) in the Mexican wilderness, the Canadian wilderness, the Guatemalan selva maya, Peru (Andes and the Amazon) and even in Morocco Bere-Bere's North African desert land. And from those experiences I can tell you one thing: when I accidentally watch some Bear Grylls TV show, I immediately need to go to the bathroom to throw out or at least to get some Pepto. It is freaking disgusting!. I don't care if he takes Barack Obama or the Pope into the wilderness of Timbuktu, it is still television rubbish. Garbage. Basura. Turds. La Merde. Caca. All Pure Marketing Crap. Period.
So please get well informed first. Read a lot. Read good bushcrafting stuff. Read it again. Practice your abilities. Practice your survival skills. Practice again. And again. Get a certified survival course and then get a certified first aid / outdoor medicine course or even better...get together with and experienced outdoor guy....
BUT PLEASE DO NOT FOLLOW THAT BEAR GRYLLS SHIT AT ALL
You are going to get killed if you do. You will.
