Omission of critical survival skills

From BearWiki

Claim: Bear often omits or skims over talk of critical survival skills.

Who but Bear gets lost with a commercial flint, a parachute, many layers of top of the line clothes, a canteen with a pot on it, and a knife? In the real world, you never know what you'll get lost with, but it is doubtful you'll have everything he has to work with.

• Commercial flint: This makes the painstaking and difficult task of firestarting trivial. Quality commercial flints are nothing at all like natural flint. Starting a fire with natural flint and steel is challenging. With natural flint and no steel (say, with pyrite), it's near impossible.
• Parachute: The "free gift" of a large amount of cloth and rope is impossible to ignore. Few get lost parachuting into the wilderness.
• Many layers of top of the line clothing: Getting lost tends to strike those who are often unprepared.
• Canteen with a pot on it: Now what percentage of hikers have something like that?
• A knife: While one *should* carry a knife when in the wilderness, many don't. Going on vacations with a knife these days can be inconvenient at times -- for example, airport security.

What are the real challenges that those who have to scrape out a paleolithic existence facing?

• Firestarting: The two main primitive methods are friction and flint. Natural flint is almost impossible to get to work without steel, and a challenge with it -- if you can find a suitable flint at all. Friction methods tend to be laborious and require a great deal of skill and experience. If you don't agree with this (and even if you do), one should be encouraged to try these methods out from the comfort of their own home. There's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that Bear hasn't developed this skill -- see the fire saw, hand drill, and bow drill incidents. Going into each firestarting method is too long of a discussion for here and is an exercise best left to the reader.

• Cordage: Making cordage is an important survival skill. Single strips of natural fiber, if decent ones of useful length can be found at all, have poor failure patterns. Often, flexing encourages them to break. Breakage tends to accelerate -- the break weakens the binding, encouraging more breakings. Ropes don't work this way. In a rope, the individual fibers are held together by friction. If one fiber breaks, the other fibers, and even the rest of that one fiber, remain just as strong. They can also bend freely against each other. The best way to make natural cordage is the reverse-wrap. Take two fibers or twisted bundles of fibers and hold them next to each other at their midpoints. Pinch with two fingers from each hand, and start twisting in opposite directions. The rope will start to "kink". Let it, and keep twisting. The kink will keep winding itself up behind your fingers; this is your rope. It helps to hold this kink in your mouth. When your fibers or twisted bundles of fibers start to run short, feed new fibers or bundles in; once they're bound in the wrap, friction will hold them in place as though it were a continuous segment. Keep going until reaching the desired length (or longer if you need to double up your rope with another reverse wrap). Fibers can be found in plants like nettles, velvetleaf, milkweed, and even (suboptimally) grasses. Most cambium (inner bark) works great, as do many roots. Animal sinew is excellent. To remove the frayed fibers that stick out, if desired, singe them off with fire.

• Cutting: If you're stranded without a knife, things just got an awful lot harder for you. There are two main types of primitive cutting tools: blunt and sharp. Sharp tools, such as obsidian blades, are incredibly sharp -- sharper than most knives. Unfortunately, they get this with the penalty that they are incredibly brittle, and are often unsuitable for working wood. Woodworking tools end up being blunter than knives; sometimes the chopping process involves more bashing than cutting. Making these tools through "knapping" is an acquired skill.

• Purifying water: Most people who are lost don't have a pot with them. If they do, they probably also have food, shelter, and other things that makes their survival much simpler. For the unfortunate many, "boiling water" for purification just became a lot more challenging. There are a few options. Flammable containers (even paper) can boil water if indirect, radiant heat is used; this is challenging. Aluminum foil or other trash can be molded into a pot for boiling. Many primitive "settled" societies purified water through simple ground filtration (having it drip through clay or mud), but this can take a long time. Dew can be collected with cloth, moss, and from other plant sources in moist areas. If in one area for a long time, a "solar still" (pit with plastic trash over the top, a cup at the center/base, and a rock making the plastic form a cone, preferably with green plant matter or dirty water around the cup to evaporate) can purify water (evaporation, condensation, dripping down the cone and into the cup), but the amount of water lost during digging the pit should be weighed versus the trickle it provides.

Too Bad Bear won't tell you any of that.

[edit] Analysis

Neutral: In the Ecuador episode, Bear does make rope -- but he does it wrong.

Support: He spends WAAAAY to much time in the water. One of the main survival priorities is to stay warm& dry. It's ALWAYS easier to STAY warm & dry than to have to GET warm & dry. The risk for hypothermia is HUGE under the circumstances that Bear places himself in. I would like to point out that Bear apparently was suffering from hypothermia in the Sierras when he spent the night in a lodge. If Bear can't SURVIVE using his advice, how are viewers supposed to do it?