What If You Got Attacked By A Bear?
Bear attack! Friend of the show and guest Eric Mayson comes aboard the What If? train for a ride through the wilderness as we discuss the unlikely but terrifying subject of getting attacked by a bear. Ryan literally screams at a horrible internet pictures, Spencer recounts his adventures with an Alaskan wilderness search and rescue worker, and Mayson makes more bear puns than you thought could even be possible.
Hot Topics: Please Bear With Us. No Police In Alaska. Extremely Grizzly Photographs. Eating A Whole Rottweiler Every Day. “Hello, I Am A Bear”. The Worst Marathon Trophy Ever. “A Mean Left Hook.”
Spencer’s Bear Attack Story
I was in Fairbanks and was at a bar and started talking to this dude named Steve at the table next to me. We were talking and most of the people I’ve met to that point in Alaska either were not native to Alaska or would like spend summers in Alaska and then be somewhere else the rest of the year. This dude was stationed at the military base in Fairbanks and had been for a few years.
I asked Steve, what do you do during the winter, because especially in interior Alaska, winter is very long. It’s very cold.
There’s a month in the winter where the sun does not rise in Fairbanks, Alaska.
“I start doing all the typical outdoor winter stuff. I started skiing and I bought a snow machine”
Warning: don’t google these images unless you want to see something REAAAALLLY gross
“This last year, I started getting into doing search and rescue work.”
A lot of places in Alaska don’t have police. The state troopers basically act as police for the entire state. There aren’t a lot of municipal police departments. There’s basically one actual city in Alaska. Fairbanks, we’ve all heard of Fairbanks, Alaska. After Anchorage, it’s probably the other place that comes to mind in Alaska. 35,000 people live in Fairbanks.
It’s really hard to get emergency services anywhere because you can’t drive most places. So getting out into the middle of Denali is not super easy. You’ve got to fly there. They rely a lot on search on rescue which is often just a couple of dudes who were willing at a drop of a hat to go find somebody.
So, my follow up question was “How the hell did you get into doing that and why is that something you wanted to do?”
Steve finds Glenn
He says he’s out snow machining one day and he was 2 or 3 hours from wherever he had started, and this is Denali National Park which is a huge nature reserve around Denali/formerly McKinley Mountain. Lots of bears live in this area.
He’s out riding his snow mobile, he’s a couple of hours from any sort of civilization. He comes across these two guys, father and son. The father is 77 years old and his son is 40 or so. These guys are bear guides. Bear guides apparently help people who want to hunt bears find bears to hunt.
The way that you hunt bear apparently is, this is winter so bears are hibernating in a den. One person runs into the den and chases the bear out. Another person shoots the bear as it runs out.
For whatever reason, it’s the 77 year old man’s job to run into the den. His name is Glenn, I actually know his name and we’re going to put it out there because it’s on the internet and this is public.
If you put “Glenn,” two N’s. If you only put one N you get something different for some reason. Type in “Glenn,” with two N’s, “Bear attack Alaska-“
WARNING: EXTREMELY GRUESOME IMAGES
Glenn runs in there, scares out the bear. The bear has been sleeping for 3 months and some dude just ran up in its house yelling at him. Bear’s really not into it. The bear starts mauling the ever loving shit out of Glenn. Full blown grizzly bear attack.
This bear comes at Glenn, he shoots it twice, bear doesn’t really mind. Bear gets on top of Glenn and just starts going to town. The grizzly is ripping Glenn’s face off. His son is shooting at said bear, and he eventually kills bear. RIP Bear.
Bear’s dead, immediate threat neutralized. The son goes over to look at his dad, Glenn. Glenn’s entire face is gone. That sounds like an exaggeration but this you would be the point in the podcast where you might want to Google “Glenn bear attack Alaska.”
If you’re Googling this right now, you’re going to see 2 pictures. One is a close up of a man that literally, it’s just like a red mush where his face should be.
That one’s going to immediately get your attention. If you look at the second photo, it’s a man sitting on a snow mobile next to a dead bear. When I first looked at that photo, I thought it was a dude with a ski mask on, but if you zoom in, that is just a human being with no face. There’s just like a brownish-reddish like oval where his face should be. The bear literally ripped his entire face off. His eyes are gone, his nose is gone, his mouth is gone, his ear is in his hand. He’s holding his own ear.
FOR REAL, IT’S INTENSE
Glenn is alive but he’s literally missing his face.
This is the point in this story where Steve shows up. Steve comes across where he thinks he’s going to see no people, he’s just out snow mobiling around. He comes across the 77 year old man with no face. There’s blood everywhere. There’s a dead fucking 1500 pound grizzly laying on the ground, and then there’s this 40 year old dude.
The other part of the story is that, so Glenn and Dave rode their snow mobiles out to where they found this bear. One of their snow mobiles broke down, so they now have 2 snow mobiles for 3 guys and they’re 2 hours from the next closest anything. Steve comes across these guys, he’s like, “All right, you’re still alive somehow. We’ve got to get you to help. You don’t have a snow mobile. If you did, you wouldn’t be able to drive it because you can’t see anything.”
You’d probably drive right back into that bear den.
Steve has to throw this faceless 77 year old man on to the snow mobile and drive 2 to 3 hours back to the lodge that they had started from, and then they have to wait another 3 hours for like emergency services to show up.
Within those 2 months he decided to start doing search and rescue work. Stumbling upon a bear attack had a positive effect on him somehow.
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