KristoriaBlack wrote:Day Hiker wrote: For me it's not about the relative likelihood of injury or death from bear versus injury or death from car. I am just A LOT more fearful of dying by being MAULED and EATEN than I am by simply being slammed really hard into the dashboard of my car.
I wouldn't be too worried about that. It sounds horrible to be eaten alive, but a car can mangle your flesh up pretty badly as well. If its not teeth and bear claws its crumpled metal and shards of glass that tears through your flesh. When I rolled my car I had a branch protrude through the windshield missing my head, car kept rolling, and I kept bracing myself for the hood to collapse, to crunch down and break my neck, or for the metal parts of the car to pierce through my body, to feel that debiltating pain one feels before death. Luckily the car got hung on tree at the bottom of the ravine and I walked away with only a scratch.
Point is: irrespective of weather the precipitating agent is a bear or a car one's flesh would still get mangled up by a foreign entity.
Though I partially agree with you. I think that in a bear attack the screaming would be the worse part. I think the screaming would highten the fear and build up the anticipation of pain. And the screaming during a bear attack would be prolonged---for the duration of the attack. I don't think I would be able to cope with the screaming.
Apart from the screaming, I don't think a bear attack is any worse than any other traumatic injury.
. . .
I urge you to reconsider your stance. The unknown often plays a big role in fear. Though if you sit and think it through, a bear attack is not that much worse than a really bad car accident. Remove the screaming, the terror and the emotions from the equation and think about it level headedly: what can happen? How would you cope? What sort of first aid can you give? Once the horror and the unknown component are removed from the equation a bear attack is only just another traumatic incident. Not worse than a car accident. Everyday Joes, survive being mauled by animals all the time. We're just unaccustomed to knowing what to expect or how to cope. But there are ways to cope. ITs been done before.
Doesn't matter. Given
exactly equal pain and
exactly equal damage and
exactly equal duration, the thought of being mauled and/or eaten is much more horrifying than the thought of a car crash. In 1977, I had the misfortune of seeing the movie "Grizzly" when I was not yet 10 years old, and I experienced the horrible misadventure of seeing "Jaws" in the theater in 1975, when I was around 8 years old. I will never have a "level-headed" perspective on being mauled and eaten by an animal.
But like I wrote earlier, I still don't hike with a gun. If the environment is risky enough, I just wouldn't go in it.
I don't think my fears are too extreme, because I still do hike in places where there are grizzlies, including a recent Yellowstone hike where we KNEW there was a mother and cubs visible from the first part of the trail before we set out on our hike.
I would likely avoid a more-remote trail knowing there are mother and cubs nearby, though. The one we were on was the Mount Washburn trail, and it's heavily used. I was absolutely sure that
somebody on that trail was a slower runner than myself.