The tricks behind nature documentaries • Hacker News Board

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#31

Post by gregable » Sun, Sep 26, 2010, 7:10 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #11

Regarding Man v.s. Wild: The entire premise of the show is false. They claim to drop Bear Grylls in some remote location where he has to make it back to civilization. But in reality they seem to just drive around and film him doing stunts, see e.g.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UpSlpvb1is Worse, a lot of the behavior on that show is terrible survival behavior. E.g. when they did the episode in Iceland Grylls at on…

To be fair, they do point out that many of the situations are simulated to demonstrate a survival technique.

In much the same way that you generally never want to, for example, be in a situation that causes you to have to use your buddy's secondary breather on a dive, you still want to simulate that while training so that you know what to do if it does happen.

That all said, I totally agree with you in general.

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#32

Post by feral » Sun, Sep 26, 2010, 7:41 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #25

avar wrote: post #11

Regarding Man v.s. Wild: The entire premise of the show is false. They claim to drop Bear Grylls in some remote location where he has to make it back to civilization. But in reality they seem to just drive around and film him doing stunts, see e.g.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UpSlpvb1is Worse, a lot of the behavior on that show is terrible survival behavior. E.g. when they did the episode in Iceland Grylls at on…

Any more examples of terrible survival behavior?

Its very hard to find examples of good survival behaviour in Grylls' work.

Essentially, if you are on your own, with no rescue coming, you must be super conservative in everything you do. A simple and common broken ankle is now a fatal wound.

With this in mind, you don't charge around everywhere like Grylls does. You don't climb anything you could fall off, you don't make any big jumps. You move slowly and carefully, conserving energy and minimising risk.

Pretty much everything he does, from start to finish, as he runs around for the camera, while entertaining television, is a terrible survival template. You find very few experienced mountain guides that run around like Bear does.

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#33

Post by avar » Sun, Sep 26, 2010, 8:12 PM UTC

feral wrote: post #32

grandalf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any more examples of terrible survival behavior?

Its very hard to find examples of good survival behaviour in Grylls' work. Essentially, if you are on your own, with no rescue coming, you must be super conservative in everything you do. A simple and common broken ankle is now a fatal wound. With this in mind, you don't charge around everywhere like Grylls does. You don't climb anything you could fall off, you don't make any big jumps. You move slowly and carefully,…

You said it better than I could have. The only cases of genuine survival behavior I can recall on the show are the segments where he discusses what local plants are safe to eat, or how one might acquire water in some seemingly dry locations.

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#34

Post by Pyrodogg » Sun, Sep 26, 2010, 8:40 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #2

"Survivorman" is much more tame than "Man vs Wild", but I doubt "Survivorman" would actually get more rating. Who would want to watch a guy starve half of the time and subsists himself on the small flora and fauna he can catch? Nobody. But it's much more realistic and I think much more informative.

Then again in Survivorman you have him making needless treks to set his cameras up then walk back to the origin. All this so that he can get himself on camera when he actually "departs".

Not very survivior-like and incredibly energy wasteful.

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#35

Post by jeebusroxors » Mon, Sep 27, 2010, 5:00 PM UTC

feral wrote: post #32

grandalf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any more examples of terrible survival behavior?

Its very hard to find examples of good survival behaviour in Grylls' work. Essentially, if you are on your own, with no rescue coming, you must be super conservative in everything you do. A simple and common broken ankle is now a fatal wound. With this in mind, you don't charge around everywhere like Grylls does. You don't climb anything you could fall off, you don't make any big jumps. You move slowly and carefully,…

I think the entire notion of finding your way back is silly. One of the keys of survival is letting someone know where you are and when you will be back.

If you go missing, people will come looking with a general idea of where you are, and how far you could have traveled. Once you start trekking around because you saw a river and rivers always lead to civilizations, that's what Bear said, you start increasing the area you could be, while wasting calories and risking injury.

Conserve your energy, make yourself visible (fire, mirror, bright colors, signals), and try to have a decent time.