One thing about shorting out batteries is the risk of the battery gassing out and possibly exploding. It is rare, but it can happen, and the last thing you want is a spray of alkaline solution on your hands or maybe even your face out in a remote location. I've popped a couple of portable radio battery packs by inadvertently shorting the contacts for an extended period. Not fun.

Yeah, the show is crap, but I don't think that's Bear's fault, he has a contract and has to do as told, I'm sure. He could refuse to do the show and be out a couple million bucks, but how many people would take that kind of a moral stand?

Okay, I'm going to say something that might make me a pariah on this site but then hopefully, I'll explain my way out of it...

I like Bear's show. I like Les' show. I do know that both of these are TV shows that must entertain to stay on the air. That makes TV a less than ideal place learn survival but I still enjoy watching them.

I'm fairly certain that if most people, even very fit folks, tried to do anything that Bear recommended they would die a quick violent death. Climb down a tree to avoid a cliff? Scale a cliff to get a better view? Shoot rapids to rapidly move downstream? All these are just plain silly activities to undertake in a survival situation. But it's vastly entertaining to watch him do it.

Okay, maybe schmuck is a bit strong, it just seems that early on Bear's show was touted as another survival demo, and that seems quite misleading given the type of activities he undertakes. Maybe his is a delineator of just how far you can go to survive, assuming you have the constitution and elite training to do the things he does. That's what seems to me to set Les apart. He gets in more realistic scenarios and his examples are much more mundane, focusing more on reasoning your way through and tolerating discomfort rather than extreme risk activities and consuming things that would make the average person seriously ill. Is Bear's show entertaining? Obviously it has a following, and I even prefer to watch him over the usual pablum selection of primetime junk. When I watch him, my mind is usually trying to come up with less risky alternatives to his efforts, or to try and identify all the things wrong with his approach that could spell disaster for the average adventurer.

With this last season of Survivorman shaping up as it is, the contrast between the two grows even more. If Bear's objective is to entertain and amaze, then Les' seems to be more to give people more practical knowledge and demonstrate the difference between what can and can't be tolerated in a survival situation.

Well hopefully this isn't too far off the track, if it is just jump back into the flow of the thread, but comparing Les and Bears shows, of which I watch both, made me think of Josh Bernstein.

If Les is the true outdoorsman and Bear the happy extremist, then Josh is certainly the bonafide adventurer, running a Outdoor living School, (BOSS) and being a member of the Explorers club.

While his shows are not in the same vein as Les and Bear, I want to compare his two shows like I think is being done in this thread. His first series on The History Channel, "Digging for the Truth", I thought was brilliant. His current show on Discovery "Into the Unknown with Josh Bernstein", not so much. Same guy. Almost the same shows with the current series having less archaeological bend to it. However I think the current show is not as good. Its missing something.

My point is that Les and Bear have different shows. I like them both. But it appeals to different extremes in the outdoor world and what we all enjoy is the overlap stuff in the middle.

That sounds like a scene from the original Rambo movie. Except Johnny didn't exactly "climb down" in the typical manner. But Rambo was a fun popcorn movie. Maybe Bear's show is the same. I've never seen it, but it now sounds fun, in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 sort of way.

I know I'd rather be with Les than with Bear in a real wilderness survival situation. Or maybe Jessica Alba ...

Jeff

I'd rather take one of my best friends- short fiesty redhead, who knows her way around most weapons, hunts, fishes, camps, knows survival and bushcraft pretty well, and is a very good mechanic (cars, motorcycles and light aircraft) along with being a paramedic.

*laughs*