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A bear gets stumbled upon by a backpacker in the woods. And the backpacker is a little too close when they notice each other. And the backpacker is you.
Two options are suggested, and you have under 2 seconds to decide and act on one of them: play dead or run. Mostly, they suggest running until the bear catches you, then playing dead. But you also have to know when the bear is not going to stop because it thinks it has killed you, because it that case you have to fight. But you might also just opt to fight from the start (nose and eyes, right — not too much else you can hurt a bear with).
But now running might be a little better. A new invention by a former stuntman and Marine named Billy Lucas.
Its called a Bear Attack Pack. It’s not a backpack. It attaches to the back of a backpack; perhaps to something like a bag for hunting.
“I’ve seen bears in Yellowstone Park walking around but never had one run out on me when I was fishing, and it scared me to death,” Lucas said of his invention. “I started doing research on bear attacks and found out that most people, when they’re attacked by a bear, they do what you think a person would do. Immediate reaction was to get down and protect your vitals and get on your face on the ground. I started thinking, how can you deploy bear spray in a defensive position?”
How does it work in practice? You pull a ripcord (while you’re running away from the bear). A bunch of bearspray shoots out the back of your backpack. That much bearspray, you can expect you might get some of it in your own eyes.
The invention costs around $150 online.
I wonder if you could also use this device for rape/assault prevention for humans (who harm other humans a lot more often than bears do), although bear spray for this purpose was made illegal in some nations. I’m pretty sure its use to protect women and men in Canada is illegal.
