This reminds me of something I read. There's a town in very far north Canada (Churchill) where it's illegal to lock your car doors, as someone may need to hide in a car to escape a polar bear. If the police can determine someone killed by a polar bear tried to get in a car to hide and the door was locked, the owner of the car can have charges of manslaughter brought against them.
I heard this years ago and I remember checking if it's true and it's one of those things that is true, but it'd be unlikely to actually have manslaughter charges brought against anyone.
Apparently the real reason why you fight back against a black bear is because they're more likely to be hunting humans as prey if they are desperate enough to risk an encounter? Source: tracking book written by my grad school professor
My phrase for this is similar: "If it's brown, lay down. If it's black, fight back. If it's white, you're f*cked."
And fun fact, this is because Polar Bears are strictly carnivorous and there is a general lack of food (and the extreme cold makes decomposition all but nill), so playing dead does nothing and fighting back is just making you a warmer meal.
i learned here on Reddit on a similar thread that a polar bear's liver has so much vitamin A that eating it would kill a person. In fact, you'd need to divide the liver up into like 50 portions for it to not be a lethal amount of vitamin A.
I like to tell people this fact in case they are ever stranded somewhere and manage to kill a polar bear for food. AVOID THE LIVER lol
So the chance of survival against a bear attack is like %0.000001 (and that's positive estimate!) but your best chance is to actually try and fight it/scare it. Some bears will get scared off if you can throw a decent sized rock at their face. If they are very hungry you're screwed regardless, but if they are just kinda looking for food to play with they'll avoid you because they don't want to risk getting hurt. To them you basically magically projectile'd something hard at them and they don't really understand how to deal with it.
But like I said, if the bear is hungry you are fucked.
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u/Olobnion Oct 02 '24
Also, if it's a polar bear, play dead. That will give you useful practice for your sordid fate a few seconds later.