10 Essentials: The Bear Grylls Survival Guide
As the superfit daredevil host of the Discovery Channel’s hit show
Man vs. Wild, Bear Grylls has run Class V rapids in the lower Zambezi
(without a raft); plunged naked beneath the ice of a frozen lake in
Siberia; twisted and shimmied out of quicksand in Utah; evaded
alligators on a slog through the Everglades; and, most famously, eaten
a vast array of utterly repulsive vermin he has dug out of rotting
trees, caught slithering underfoot, or squeezed from animal scat. Yet
if there’s one thing that distinguishes Man vs. Wild from the
burgeoning field of shows featuring manly and slightly deranged
prime-time adventurers, it’s that even when he is throttled by the most
difficult terrain or choking down rhino beetle larvae, Grylls appears,
against all reason, to be having a blast. The 34-year-old exudes so
much enthusiasm, in fact, that it’s easy to discount the very real
danger he puts himself in, or to forget that he earned his bona fides
as an adventurer long before becoming a TV personality.
Taught to climb and sail at an early age by his father, Grylls
earned a black belt in karate as a teenager (he now favors yoga and
ninjitsu), then joined the British Special Air Service right out of
Eton College, the elite British prep school. In 1996, he came “within a
whisker,” as his surgeon put it, of being paralyzed for life when his
parachute failed him on a training exercise in Africa. During an
agonizing 18-month recovery, he vowed that if he walked again — an open
question at first — he’d climb Mount Everest. Two years later, at 23,
he became the youngest Englishman (at the time) to reach the Earth’s
highest point. He has since flown a motorized parasail as high as
Everest’s summit, crossed the North Atlantic by rigid inflatable boat,
and completed the notoriously brutal French legionnaires desert course
for one of his first significant TV documentaries in the UK.
On the strength of that show, Discovery approached him with the
concept of dropping him into a wilderness survival situation and
filming him as he effects a self-rescue. “I said no three times,”
Grylls recalls. “I really didn’t want to have any part of being slick
and smiley. But Discovery assured me they wanted it rough, raw, a mess.
We’d show what didn’t work as well as what did. Finally my wife said,
‘Do one, so you know what you’re saying no to.’ ”
The 2006 pilot, set in the Rockies, did surprisingly well in the
ratings. Thirty-nine episodes later, the program now reaches a million
viewers in the United States, and Grylls has signed on for a fourth
season: 13 more episodes, set all around the world. It seems the
reluctant host has found his calling. “I love the wild. I love all the
stuff we do,” Grylls says. “It’s like letting a chef loose in the
kitchen. There might be a bit of a mess afterward, but basically he’s
going to get on and cook something good.”
The episodes take about a week to shoot, and prior to each, the crew
does a week of reconnaissance, then Grylls himself does a fly-over of
the terrain and undergoes two days of intensive briefings before
parachuting in. He’s tailed in the bush by a cameraman and sound
engineer. Some encounters are staged: If they’ve gone several days
without, say, a hoped-for cobra, a member of the crew might place one
in Grylls’s path so he can deal with it. Still, when it comes to the
physical stunts, Grylls says, “If you see it, I’ve done it.”
If he seems a bit insistent about the authenticity, it’s no wonder:
The series nearly derailed because of some tabloid-fodder faux pas.
Among other things, Grylls was busted for staying at a comfy mountain
inn when viewers thought he was roughing it, having a raft built by an
unseen consultant, and trying to mount a “wild” mustang trucked in from
a local riding stable — disclosures that led the Discovery Channel to
add disclaimers to the show. Some critics point out, correctly, that
Grylls departs from textbook survival tactics that encourage those lost
in the wild to stay put; Grylls keeps moving, in part because it makes
for better TV.
Others question his choice of stunts, many of which
would get a less alpha castaway killed.
But all this clouds an important point: What’s truly remarkable
about Grylls isn’t his “bushcraft,” but the way he has used the series
as a vehicle to take all these amazing trips. He has improvised an
insanely great life for himself.
“When I hear people say he’s a fake, I just see red,” says Lara
Fawcett, Grylls’s protective older sister, who gave him the name Bear
(as in Teddy) as an infant because she hated the one his parents gave
him (Edward). “He is exactly the guy in life that he is on the show.
He’s a bit of a nutter. An eccentric. It’s funny, but I can’t even
imagine him having a job, and yet we always knew he’d be successful. He
was really very naughty as a little guy, and our mum always said he was
going to be ‘Hitler the second’ or prime minister, but he was never
going to do the expected. He works it all out in life the way he works
it out on the show.”
And so it is in that spirit that we offer, in his own words, the Bear Grylls Survival Manual…to Life.
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How to Survive…a life-threatening injury
A few of us were in Antarctica right before Christmas — just for
ourselves, no cameras around — and we were kite-skiing, and we were
flying, doing about 50 kilometers an hour. It was really blowing a
proper hoolie. I’d just put a helmet on, more to keep my hat and
goggles on, and about 10 minutes later I was in the front, and a
massive gust came along and just ripped me out of the skis, and I flew
through the air and smashed down really hard on this blue ice. I landed
with my head and my shoulders and shattered the helmet completely. If I
hadn’t had that on, my head would have been proper jam. And I broke my
shoulder. My first thought was, Bloody hell.
You never want to be injured, but I find it helps you to be focused.
Now I’ve got this one goal, which is to get my shoulder better. I’m
doing something for it, training, every day. I’ve learned that great
things come from difficult times, and if I’m limited in some respect,
how am I going to make use of the time?
Right before we left on the trip, I finished my last book, and I
started it with this quote: “Life should not be a journey to the grave
with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and
well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, covered in scars,
body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming, ‘Yahoo, what
a ride!’ ” That was a bit prophetic, wasn’t it? You take the rough with
the smooth.
How to Survive…success
I don’t feel very famous. That’s probably a good starting point. A
few times a year I come out with Discovery and we tour around America,
and sometimes people in the street recognize you, and there’s no one
more surprised than me. I’m always amazed anyone watches the show, to
be honest. I really look at it like it’s just me and Simon and a couple
of others in these jungles, and we mess around and say loads of stupid
things to the camera, and most of it hits the cutting-room floor.
I’ve been asked to be in this film, Clash of the Titans. Warner
Bros. is doing a remake of it. I’ve got to think, Do I want to do that?
There are so many cool things. We’ve been asked to do a Man vs. Wild
urban disaster 3-D feature film, which would be brilliant. I’d really
like to do that, showing cool ways to get out of burning buildings or
what to do when you’re mugged or your car goes off the bridge under the
ice, your window-cleaning basket breaks. The truth is, I need 10
lifetimes to scratch the surface of the things I’d love to do.
At the end of the day, my focus is on one thing, which is getting to
our place in Wales. We spend six weeks of every year up there. It’s
heaven. It’s just us five and literally no electricity, no telephones
or computers, and we collect rainwater off the roof. For me, it becomes
the focus of my whole year, and the rest is just fluff.
How to Survive…a scandal
I’m neither the superman nor the super-baddie I’m made out to be,
but I am human, and it was hard to hear all the criticism, because I’d
worked really hard and had risked a lot. Right in the middle of it, Sir
Ran Fiennes rung me up and he said, “You think you’ve got it bad, that
is nothing! You should have seen how they came after me in the ’80s!”
He said, “Don’t listen to them,” and “Keep your pecker up,” and I’m
sure he’s right. If I read half the stuff that is written or went on
the forums, I’m not sure my confidence could take it. But at the same
time, I’d been doing all this adventure stuff long before the TV
cameras, and I’ll be doing it long after, too, and so my interest in it
isn’t based on what others are writing. There’s always going to be the
odd missile, especially if you achieve some success, but it’ll only
take you out if you’re basing your identity on what they’re saying
about you.
Since the controversy, if I ever have any safety protection, I now
have to acknowledge it. I think it’s crap always having to say it, so I
am actually doing more free climbs. But I keep in mind that trying to
prove yourself is dangerous. You can’t live someone else’s expectations
in life. It’s a recipe for disaster. Accidents on big mountains happen
when people’s ambitions cloud their good judgment. Good climbing is
about climbing with heart and with instinct, not ambition and pride. So
is living.
How to Survive…the home birth of your child
My wife Shara and I both love home, and I have a pretty healthy
hatred of hospitals, having had a few bad experiences with my back, so
we thought, Let’s just try doing a home birth, and it was absolutely
brilliant. The cons are that you have quite a lot of blood and gore,
and you don’t have the emergency help if it all starts to go
pear-shaped. But then again, she feels safe and secure, and she’s got
me hovering over her with a toolbox. What more can an expecting mother
want?
All I was there for, really, was reassurance. I had a homeopathic
kit, and I thought, I’ll just work on diversionary tactics — so the
more pain she was in, the more I was going, “What are your symptoms?”
and I’d list all these wacky things that homeopathic pills work for.
Shara was amazing. Girls are so great in a big crisis. I’ve seen it
in the mountains, too. Men are all great when it’s quite comfy and
there’s lots of bravado, but when the shit really hits the fan, it’s
the women who often come through.
How to Survive…a truly “raw food” diet
If I had to make a short list of the most disgusting things I’ve
tried, it would be bear shit, camel stomach juice, raw goat’s
testicles, yak eyeballs. I’ve learned what just tastes disgusting but
is okay, and what tastes disgusting for a reason. Sometimes you make
mistakes. If something’s rancid, you don’t really know until it’s in
your mouth. Things like sting beetles, they’re quite difficult to tell
apart from other stuff. I’ve put those in my mouth before, and suddenly
they squirted this acid, and you know that is not a good thing to eat,
that this is a defense mechanism of the animal — get it out.
There is a purpose to these disgusting foods. If you’re going to
self-rescue, you’ve got to move. If you’re going to move, you need
energy, and if you need energy, you’ve got to find food. The people who
survive in all the great stories of survival are people who leave their
prejudices behind and do whatever it takes, no matter how unpleasant it
is. I’m not like this at home. My kids always want me to go outside and
eat worms, and I say to them, “No, you’ve got to have a sensible job,
not like your papa.”
How to Survive…strains on your marriage
It’s funny: So many men come up to me and say, “I’ve recently taken up
climbing, and my wife is getting really annoyed because suddenly I’m
going off every weekend. What do I do?” I sympathize, but I think Shara
understands it is my work, and I don’t tell her a huge amount about the
danger or what I’ve been eating or what I’ve been doing. It tends to
be, “Hi, honey, how was it?” “It was cold, it was hot,” “You look a
mess.” Then we’re back into life. And I like that separation where my
work is my work, and when I’m home, I try to focus on really being home.
If you haven’t got work as a trump card, the point to make may be
that you will bring more to your life together through these
activities. You want to be around people who are enthusiastic, and this
is how you keep excited about life.
How to Survive…fear of failure
If, in your life, you wait for everything to be perfect, you’ll
never do anything. When I was 20, people came to me, “Oh, you’ll never
climb Everest. You have to be in your 30s for your endurance and
climatization abilities,” and all this. If I’d listened, I’d have
missed my opportunity.
Failure can be scary — especially when failure can mean death. It’s
not that I’m never scared. I’m nervous every time I start filming a Man
vs. Wild, sitting in that chopper, going to a proper hellhole. But the
fear is not there to say, Don’t do it; it’s there just to sharpen you
and make your instincts really good about whether you should do it, how
you do it, what you do, and make all your senses really fire at the
same time to work so you can do it.
How to Survive…losing your dad
My father died when I was 26. He was such a rock in my life and such
a best friend. He’s the guy who taught me to climb when I was very
young, and that was a very intimate thing for me — my way of being
close to him.
Life, to him, he used to say, was about following your dreams and
looking after your friends. It was a great thing for me to grow up
knowing — that life is about more than getting good school reports or
looking smart. It’s about that heart.
I’m always surrounded by places where him and me were, and that’s a
great sort of continuity. But there’s always going to be a hole, and I
think you can’t run from that. I wish I had the magic cure, but it’s a
rocky, awful road. You can’t be scared of the grief. It might be six
months or a year later that you really fall apart, and the thing this
has taught me is, don’t be scared to lean on people. We’re so used to
standing on our own, but I turned to my close friends, with whom it’s
okay to be very weak, very un-butch. When you’re vulnerable, it only
strengthens the bonds.
I look now, and I think, What do I love about all these expeditions
and the Man vs. Wild stuff? It’s not about what we do; it’s actually
about the bonds you create with people in difficult moments, and that’s
what I’m always drawn to. I strip that back, and that all comes from my
dad.
The day after he died, I got my first real break — a Sure deodorant
commercial that played off my Everest fame. It felt like a gift,
really, from him, as if he were saying, “I’ve done my job, given you as
much as I can of what I value in life. Here’s a break. What will you do
with it?”
How to Survive…lean times
When you focus on the money, the castle breaks down. But when you
focus on just doing your job well and don’t think about what you’re
getting paid, money will always follow. I try to give 10 percent of
what I earn to friends struggling with their mortgages or somebody who
needs a really good holiday. That’s a rule I’ve always followed, and
it’s been really good in our lives. Money is like water: If you don’t
let it flow, it’s just going to get stagnant.
How to Survive…high cholesterol
Cardiac arrest killed my father and his father. Both had high
cholesterol, so I thought I better have it tested, and mine is
naturally quite high. I’ve educated myself over the years about where
cholesterol comes from and what we can do to influence it. I used to
think: I’m training hard, so I need loads of chicken breasts, I need
the protein! The more I educated myself, the more I realized you don’t
need all of that.
The way to be healthy and keep your cholesterol low is to have loads
of fruit and veg and whole-grain rice and pasta and potatoes, whole
food things. There have been articles saying I’m a vegan, but I’m not.
I eat a lot of crap when I’m working, because it’s my job. And I love
nothing more than getting to the weekend and having a big family roast
or going out and getting sozzled with my good friends and having a big
burger. That’s a really important part of training — that you have to
let loose, as well. So I’m not superstrict, but it’s like training;
it’s about what you do the majority of the time, and the majority of
the time I eat really healthy.
I was speaking to an Olympic athlete recently, and she said,
“Fifteen years ago, they used to think your performance was 80 percent
training, 20 percent nutrition. And now they reckon it’s 75 percent
nutrition, 25 percent training,” which is unbelievable. As somebody who
does a lot of physical stuff, I’m really aware of that.
How to Survive …a life-threatening injury, part 2
My back was a real, proper life-changing injury. I had three big
breaks in the middle of my back and was in traction and braces, and the
doctors didn’t know if I was going to be able to walk properly again.
You take your movement and your health so much for granted, and
suddenly I couldn’t do anything. It was a really dark, fumbling,
difficult, painful road of doubt and everything. But you slowly piece
your confidence back together, and it’s all about little chunks and
little bites.
I look back now and think, Would I have done any of this stuff if I
hadn’t had the accident? Sometimes in life it takes a real knock to
make you realize what you really value and what’s really important to
you, and I think for me, that was my knock.
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Bear Grylls Survival Tips
How to Turn a Watch Into a Compass:
If you are in the northern hemisphere and your watch is still on your
wrist (and still works!), the cardinal points can easily be deduced.
Point the hour hand at the sun. Then form an imaginary line directly
through the center of the “wedge” that is created between the hour hand
and 12 o’clock. This is your south–north line. The height of the sun in
the sky and the time of day will then show you which end of the line is
north and which is south, remembering that the sun sets in the west and
rises in the east. In the southern hemisphere, point the 12 o’clock
mark at the sun and bisect that with the hour hand for the north–south
line. (from his 2008 book Man vs. Wild)
How to Build a Log Armchair Raft:
This is one of the simplest and most effective flotation devices there
is. Select two branches or the trunks of young trees. They should be as
straight as possible and at least 18 inches thick. Lash them together
with vines at both ends but leave about two feet of slack vine between
them. Either cover this area with a tarp or sit directly between the
two trunks armchair-style and float downstream. A long straight pole
can be used as an oar: Either pole along or use it like a canoe paddle.
How to Build a Snow Trench:
The simplest and quickest type is a shallow scrape deep enough to give
protection from the wind and wide enough for air to circulate around
you. The snow you dig out can be piled around the sides and compacted,
then covered with a tarpaulin for a roof, which can then be covered
with more snow. Leave one end of the trench open for an entrance and
block the other with a rucksack or more snow. If the snow is compact
enough, a more elaborate construction can be made by carving blocks of
snow like thick paving slabs (about two feet thick). Lay them flat over
the trench or lean them against each other for an A-framed roof that
will give more headroom. If no tarpaulin is available and the snow is
the wrong consistency for blocks, make a three-foot-diameter snowball,
cut it in half, and lay both halves over a narrow trench. Then burrow
in from one end and dig the trench wider the deeper you go.
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What Others Say About Bear
Simon Reay, cameraman: “There are definitely times
where we’ll look at certain scenarios, different stunts he’s thinking
about doing, and Bear’ll say, ‘I’ll reckon I can climb that,’ and I’ll
think, But why? But he has the confidence to do it, and enough
confidence to help me do it too. And that’s the nice thing about us
working together for so long, because I do trust him, so I just take
his lead and hope for the best.”
Lara Fawcett, his sister: “He’s never been
squeamish. Bless her, my mother was really not the best cook, and we
got used to trying all kinds of weird things to get away from the
tasteless fare at home, so he developed a tolerance early.” Simon Reay,
cameraman: “I do take some personal enjoyment in Bear eating these
things, and he’s said that a sort of gauge of how good an eat is, is
how big the grin is on my face when he does it.”
Shara Grylls, his wife: “When I met Bear, he was
training for Everest, so I always knew our life was going to be
different. He’ll get back from an expedition, and I’ll see he’s
planning another one, and he goes, “It’s not until 2010,” and I go,
“That’s next year!” And it’s not really a conversation about how it
will go; I get more sort of told. I wish I could get him to stop
risking his life, but I can’t.”
