there’s this online discussion that i saw a long time ago that’s still bugging me. it asked the question:
"Could a typical young man, armed only with a knife, (say, six or eight inches long) be trained to consistently "win" fights with a grizzly bear? Assume no element of surprise."
the consensus seemed to be, after almost a hundred posts, that bears are just too tough and people aren’t good enough with knives. well, i think exactly the opposite, and i have compiled evidence to support my belief.
1.) the subject of vernor herzog’s movie grizzly man takes approximately ten minutes to die at the claws of a grizzly. what sort of a wussy animal can’t kill a damn hippie in under a minute? even i can kill a hippie in under a minute.
2.) a cursory google search finds two (1, 2) news stories about senior citizens killing bears with knives. granted, both bears were mere black bears and both bear slayers were canadians, and therefore preternaturally savage.
3.) finnish samis would routinely kill bears with spears. because pound for pound, nothing is tougher than the finns.
4.) this footage from the documentary mondo cane shows nepalese soldiers slicing the heads off oxen with the ease of a ginza knife slicing through lead pipes filled with tomatoes. although the knife they are using looks longer than the six to eight inches allowed in the question, it is not that the khukuri knives are very large, just that the gurkhas are only four feet tall.
