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yeah its a sweet show

i personally like survivorman with les stroud better cuz he brings everything, no camera crew

and im pretty sure bear gets some food from the crew he brings along

Although I enjoyed this show I still prefer Survioman, I mean he is out there by himslef the entire time, also man vs wild guy seems like whenever he starts to see nothing for a while he just jumps off a cliff or slides down into a old salt mine for no real good reason but thats IMHO.

if the survivor man is what im thinkin of, the yank who goes out and talks into the camera alot he is far from alone, too many camera angles and different cameras for that.

but get ray mears in!

hey Drac, for one, Survivorman is not a Yank, his name is Les Stroud, and he is a Canadian. He actually does it alone, and explains it very well, the only time hes with a crew is at the end of the 7 days and when he gets dropped off. Just watch a few episodes, the camera never moves, not unless he is holding the camera. I trust that its filmed alone 100%, Les is just really devoted to producing a successful show, he will go to far lengths to achieve it. I know it seems crazy some of the shots that he takes when he is so far away, but thats part of the show, knowing that he has to survive, yet alone film those scenes and backtrack to get the camera, all to get a good shot.

For that reason, I like survivorman more then man vs wild, although that show is great, i just think if he got injured or sick, he would be helped out. that cant happen for Les, the crew will only come and get him after 7 days(although the arctic the crew stayed within a couple miles of him because of the extreme danger involving polar bears and the cold. one of the most interesting episodes was when he was stuck on a raft in the ocean, the crew were suppoed to be near by, but they werent visible anywhere, and the radios werent working, so he was really alone, if anything happened he was screwed.

Also, Season 2 is being filmed right now, with locations including: Gobi Desert, African plains, Amazon, and i think Borneo(not sure) and probably some in south america/asia too...

i'm not sure about it mate to be honest, maybe it is maybe it isnt, but say for one, like when he is leaving.. he was in the snow somewere i forget now, there was a faked plane crash and he had to survive he says
that he is going to make the journey back. There is a camera watching him leave, i'm just not sure they would leave a camera back in the middle of nowere why he walks off, and he does walk a long way into the distance.
But it is a good show, just not sure if they are being totaly honest, but hey... i well could be wrong on this one, his survival skills are always very basic but are effective, and i do like that about the show.

he actually does walk that far. the crew knows where he starts, so if he leaves anyting behind, they pick it up afterwards. He has been known to walk far, maybe a kilometer just to get that walking away shot. it does seem like its a lot of work, because it really is.

survivorman kicks ass... that is an honest show...

this one, (m vs w) seems like some funny business is going on... like where he is climbing that canyon in moab... the camera angle switches away from him right when he gets to this impossible part, the camera cuts back in on him and all of a sudden he is past the (impossible to me) part... and whenever something isn't going on or thinga are a little slow, he will go jump off a cliff or run real fast down a hill... entertaing ing yes... authentic? i doubt it... also who is this survival expert in the credits? My guess is he goes and finds stuff for Bear (or whatever that guys name is) to eat, and prolly finds the various medicinal plants for him as well... just a guess...

Survivorman is authentic...

those shots walking away from the camera are awesome... he walks a great deal farther then he needs to, just to get them...

Both are fun to watch...

Survivorman would kick man vs. wild ass, they should have a contest...

that would be cool...

I just returned from backpacking in the rockies... it is so nice to be warm again.... snowed on me...

Man vs wild guy has to know quite alot about survival seeing as he is X SAS.... that kinda certifies him as a survival expert. He goes alot further than any other show, like jumping into freezing water just to show you how to survive it!

Bear does so some really stupid things that you would never do in a survival situation... why?

CAMERA CREW-

if he is such a survival expert... why does the show give credit to a different survival expert? Seriously, look at the credits... what does a survival expert (Bear) need to pay another survival expert for?

and yes...

he jumps off things into things... he should be showing you how to avoid those situations, i think...

Did you notice that he built a fire before he jumped in that lake? You aren't going to have a fire there if you fall in... why did he? Cheating on that one? Yes...

he shoulda done it without the fire... then we would get to see his camera crew in action...

This is not to say that he doesn't have some knowledge to share...

i just do not think it is half as authentic as survivorman...

I've enjoyed this thread, everything has been spot on. Bear has done plenty of really, really dumb things. I've seen Les make stupid mistakes also, but at least he admits it immediately. All in all, Survivorman is the superior show. Les ate his camera crew


oh, and never step on what you can step over. Never step over what you can step around.
Keep safe nature fans!

Still dont agree with u wombat lol, but i really like bear and the way his show is done, dont get me wrong though, i much prefer ray mear's to any other show out there, guy is a legend.

but never the less yeah he does have a survival guy and probably doesnt know everythin he is going into but never the less i think survivorman would consult a survival expert aswell... i mean the guy might know alot but i still think he would have to consult from time to time.... now giving the fact that he has the camera crew there so what, they follow him about... he does alot more dangerous stuff than other people, its good that he has back up BUT he does everything on his own no help from them! (to what we know of anyways) but it all comes down to preference and mine lie's with that and your's is the other

bear is a special forces guy he was taught to survive differently than les

les is more of a camper there are huge differences on what they know about surviving

bear is amazing and because of his camera crew he is able to do more
sometimes it is better to go through the hard stuff to find civilization
after all you dont want to be out lost for months


they are just different no one is better than the other

the only real difference is that les is alone so it would effect him differently

Discussion over.

Les has bigger balls.

For fucks sake if he gets lost in the forest and they can't find him he will actually die!

Unlike Bear(overthetopwanker) who always has his camera crew a few feet away. Les's dedication to walk a KL to get a shot only to come back grab the camera gear then walk on is (to me) the biggest deciding factor.

Yeah, Les is fatter than Bear i guess his balls are bigger and weight a bit more.

Come on, there is really no discussion to be held here about who has bigger balls and which show is better than the other.

It all comes down to taste, and the biggest deciding factor is how smart the producers are to reinvent a show about surviving without us getting bored and change channel.
Les dedication to walk 1km to get a shot? I hope it's heroin beacause he is supposed to be surviving, not loosing time and energy in filming.
Personally watch both, i find both helpful but man vs wild much more entretaning. Yes, welcome! it's called TV.
They both have lots of flaws, but hey nobodys perfect.

Be safe.

this is the most pointless argument i've ever seen. get over it.

Bear is much cooler than Len. Len has to backtrack to catch a camera shot and bear is real-time. I know Len has more work to do but lets face it both show degrees of the true reality of survival.

if one of the people was named len..... lol

Les Straud

the whole alone thing is what makes les stroud the more impressive survivor. Bear does stupid, stupid shit, i mean, jumping into ice water, swimming under that stuff in the canyon, eating dead animals... if Bear gets sick, he has the crew. If he gets injured, the crew can help him. Another thing about a camera crew, Wild animals are less likely to attack or anything if theres a group of people. It would keep away the bears(no pun intended..) or even lions. I also dont like how Bear chooses his locations. Notice when he is skydiving or whatever to get to his location, the camera crew is right where he lands. We dont see them skydive with him, and even if they did, why would Bear be the one to get stuck in a tree.

No doubt Bear Grylls is entertaining, and the show is great, but it just feels too manufactured. Survivorman Les Stroud is so much more impressive because of what he does. Sure he does a lot more work filming, but he is really dedicated to the show, he wants the final product to be good. Imagine being in the jungle in the middle of a pitch black night, no fire, all alone. Thats some scary shit, having massive spiders walking around, all sorts of creepy crawlies, and strange noises. Id much rather have a camera crew then be alone. Dont forget, if there is a camera crew, they arent surviving, they are doing their job. Im sure they have a good food and water supply, not to mention knives, lighters, flashlights etc...

Another thing, Bear Grylls always has that flint with him, makes fire starting much easier. The only time Les had anything was in the arctic, he had like 3 matches and some blubber to start a fire, but not even a real fire. Bear had a machete i believe, knife, that flint... I like how less does it, with his multi-tool and random stuff in his pocket or on his person...

I guess I just find the man vs wild shows a bit more entertaining in scale. Les reminds me of every Outward Bound leader I had. We use to have to do solos all the time and trust me every little noise you were convinced was a Sasquatch or a bear. I agree being alone is a much scarier experience and Les keeps his crew miles away. The only time I ever saw either have interaction with there crew was when Les had to be pulled into port when he was doing the lost at sea episode. Les has made a few mistakes as well and he talks about them in his narration. Now keep in mind I love both shows and I get just as much from each.

How about instead of arguing, someone goes out and finds survivorman episodes already.

okay, i think personally they're both being monitored.
Man vs. Wild makes it a little more known, and he gets some really good action shots because of it. I don't know if there's a camera crew actually filming survivorman to get some of the footage, but there have to be people monitoring that guy either on site, or using a one-way gps transmitter... simply based on the fact that these are tv networks he's working for... they have the funding and they're concerned with his safety too, even if they don't help him... just observe.

edit: thanks for the links!

im pretty sure he doesnt have a GPS, i mean, the show has its integrity to keep up, so if the fans find out that there were camera men and a GPS, they would be pissed for sure and not want to watch, which means lower ratings, which means less money for the networks, and thats what they care about.

Dont get me wrong, I love Man Vs Wild, its very entertaining, and i wish there were more episodes. I started watching Survivorman long before MVW, so since i waiting for a second season of survivorman, MVW was definetely good enough to help tide me over. I know that both of them know their shit, they are both good at what they do, and what id absolutely love to see, and i think everyone posting in this thread would love to see:

Les Stroud and Bear Grylls- 1 month in the wild. im thinking somewhere in Northern Ontario area, perhaps the Rockies or BC area too. Basically they have to survive for 1 month in the wild with whatever they have with them when they arrive, perhaps they both get a knife and a canteen or something. Im thinking that they either have no camera men(and they need a solar panel setup to charge camera batteries) or they have a crew that follows strict rules to not assist the survivors in anyway.

This would be awesome because they could show techniques for longer term survival, like building a longer lasting home, building tools, making better methods of hunting tools etc. It would be like the show "Lost" with 2 real people needing to survive for a longer term... that would be awesome, id pay to see it in the form of a 3 hour documentry in the theaters! but i think it could be stretched into a seasons worth of film, atleast 8 episodes!

There is no way man vs wild is real... for example when he set himself adrift in the ocean only to randomly come uppon a ship out there.... common. It happend twice (also in the alaska show). Futhermore there is no way any network would allow him to test the things he does (ice water jumping, robe knot security) without safty measures in place. Its called vicarious liability. Survivor man has alot of balls to do what he does, man vs wild is more intresting but in no way real.

I think you maybe missed the point of what the guy meant. I think he's saying the guy maybe has a gps tracking device, so people know where he is, not a gps system that tells him where he is

It is with great excitement that I finally send out a current newsletter.

Survivorman is back in action! In just under one week I will be flying to the Amazon jungle in Ecuador to do the first shoot of the new season. It has taken quite a while to get to this stage but I, along with my production partner Dave Brady and our production team are thrilled to be in the middle of a ridiculously hectic schedule right now, ramping up the activities for Survivorman.

And don’t worry – same set up – just me – alone with only my camera gear. But the locations have become a bit more exotic. Along with the Amazon – I am expecting to go to the Australian Outback, the African desert – the African bushland, the Alaskan coast and the rough scoured rock of northern Labrador.

One extra we are hoping to include this time, will be my live journal updates to a blog from location so you can follow my progress as it happens! www.lesstroudonline.com/blog

I checked out Bear's website http://www.beargrylls.com/index.html. He has made a mint traveling around as a public speaker. He is a little more commercial than Les Stroud and seems to have more of a James Bond mentality than Les Stroud's survivalist mentality.

from site:
Bear spent three years with the British Special Forces. During this time he had a horrendous parachuting accident whilst in southern Africa and broke his back in three places. Yet two years later, after severe rehabilitation, he overcame the odds to become the youngest British climber ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest and return alive.

His book on this extraordinary story soared into the Top 10 of the Bestseller list. He has since written two further best-selling books and lead numerous other record breaking expeditions. Bear has also hosted several hit TV Series both in the UK and USA.

Bear is one of the youngest and most successful motivational speakers in the world. In the words of one newspaper, Bear is "the ultimate modern day adventurer - the real deal!"

Surprise, surprise... "reality" TV not so real.
Its all about the entertainment factor though, and maybe you can actually learn a thing or two (more so than watching Dancing With the Stars, or one of thooose "reality" shows)... plus Bear Grylls is easy on the eyes, end of story

Thanks hoss!

Oh and i don't care whether Bear's a fake, if you eat treemaggots, climb UP a waterfall and decide to swing across a sixty foot cliff on a slippery vine you can call yourself the president of Uzbekistan for all i care. ^^

But yeah, lest there be no ray of hope, Les and Ray would probably grill bear when the going gets tough. When they're stripped down to the bear necessities. Bear with me here.

And if he ever gets cancelled... Grill the network executives as to why, and demand to bring bear back to television!

Bring bear back! Bring bear back!


(i'm sorry)

I get what you are saying, i mean, he might be a little fake as far as what the survival aspect, but he really does eat those things and do the dangerous things we see. I guess he is kinda like a pro baseball player that uses steroids, he might have an unfair advantage but he still knows what he is doing and he does have talent.

The real problem with MVW is that Bear has a safety net to fall back on. If he gets injured, he has a camera crew with him, Im pretty sure the same thing goes for food and water. There is no way the Camera crew follows him without having water and food for themselves. Another thing, since he isnt alone, he is with a group of people(not sure how many, but i think 2), but when he is in the wild, groups of people will scare off any predators more then a lone person. Bear really does some over the top things that he only does to show you how to deal with it(like jumping in ice water). Although its informative, it takes away the suspense of thinking he could get seriously injured or worse by making a simple mistake.

Thats why I personally like Survivorman more, it just feels like survival is much more of an urgency, and we as the audience learn from the real ordeals he faces, rather then the simulations from Bear. Oh and i hate that Bear has that flint with him everywhere, lol...

That being said, I still like MVW, Its a great show and you do learn a lot from it. Im about to watch the latest episode and i cant wait!

Yeah, whereas Les usually opts for the safest option, Bear tends to explore the very worst case scenario. Doing that without a safety crew would be rather irresponsible towards his kids. ^^

But! The camerawork is definitely going in the wrong direction. Every camera on the planet is getting closer and shakier, i understand you can't drag a steadycam through the jungle but guys, it's pretty annoying. Used to be much more serene. : ) This is where survivorman beats the pack, pretty much every shot is compelling in some way.

yea Les knows his way around a camera, and the fact that some shots have him walking off into the distance and he has to go back for the camera is even more awesome. He is clearly willing to take chances just to get the best shot, gotta give him credit for that.

Id love to see a tv competition with Les VS Bear, each is given cameras, no crew and the goal is to survive as long as possible. Each person has an emergency button that they only press when they are in an emergency or they are ready to give up. Each person is placed in a similar region in the middle of nowhere, 200 miles apart and they have to meet certain challenges to gain points. Catching food, building a shelter, making fire, all these things are worth points(and there will be lots of other things too), Each person has 1 hatchet and 1 multitool, 1 strike anywhere match, 1 outfit suitable for the environment. To make it interesting, make it in winter!

S05 special
http://xtshare.com/toshare.php?Id=15850&am...Ferrell-Special

Thanks much Zaarco. Missed this bad boy last night, looks good.

Loved the special! was great stuff

That was great!

I've watched a few MVsW episodes lately. They are fun to watch but you wouldn't ever think of doing any of the stuff he does if it was an acutal survial situation.

I imagine the production meetings of M vs W include a lot of stuff like; "ya, you remember that one part in Rambo one where he does that thing?" "Lets do it!" Bear?" "I'm down!"

For people who are saying he's fake and all this bullshit..

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category...7269392wbcXpcty
BEAR VS SHARK!

Now sorry to all Bear haters but, this is not fake. Why say he's fake?
Because he stayed in a hotel? Who gives a shit!
Watch that video, i dont care if his crew are near by, or whether he sleeps in a hotel room, the bloke is a Legend!
Who else would go out in the ocean on a raft (and jump in) with tiger sharks near by?
Ray mears? Survivorman?
Now i havent watched survivorman, and forgive my ignorance when i say that no-one comes close to Bear, doing what he does...

Keep hating...

Ray Mears would out survive Bear in any non combat situation,the reason Bear gets the flak he does is because he was a lying arsehole but in his defence imo he would have been forced to lie by the muppets in suits.

ray mears > bear

bear tells u to strip naked and do jumping jacks in the arctic, i think that would kill anyone trying to actually survive in that climate

i can just picture will ferrel in gander mountain buying some expensive knife for his "adventure" anticipating its uses

thanks for the posts

Indexed

Please leave Grylls alone. On 16 May 1998, Grylls achieved his childhood dream (an ambition since his father gave him a picture of Everest when he was eight) and a record, as the youngest Briton, at 23, to summit Mount Everest, just eighteen months after breaking his back. However, James Allen, an Australian/British climber who ascended Everest in 1995 with an Australian team, but who has dual citizenship, beat him to the summit at age 22. The feat has since been surpassed by Jake Meyer and, at age 19, by Rob Gauntlett. So...do it yourself if you can...


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military survival / wilderness survival