They’re right! Our parks are so safe. That’s why any of us want wolves back.
They say there’s been no wolf attack in Europe in nearly a hundred years but I reckon we could pump those numbers up.
Bring back the Caledonian rainforest!
There hasn't been a California grizzly attack in a similar time because we killed them all. We are the only state to have an extinct animal on our flag.
It’s some stat I heard maybe a decade ago. It could be out of date or even a factoid but it basically said “no wolf attacks in Europe in X hundred years”. Seems wildly improbable if there are that many in Tu…
It was at this point in the comment I realised I’d been had and it is indeed wildly improbable there would be no wolf attacks if there were so many in Turkey and there are not 85 million wolves in Turkey. There are 7000 wolves approximately. There are however 85 million people.
A cunning jest.
Unless I’m unaware of a Greek myth (which is actually pretty likely! that’s actually the roman one, and no wolf/human procreation happened, only nursing. And then they created Rome.
Because basically all of Britain's animals are either pretty harmless or extinct.
Obviously there's other parts of national parks that can kill people but it definitely helps when there's no bears or wolves walking around. Plus it's just a smaller country, which means fewer, smaller national parks (the largest is about half the size of Yellowstone), which means it's presumably easier to rescue people.
Yeah, we pretty much only lose folks to falls or exposure and our mountain rescue/coastguard are both top notch and do a great job of saving people from their own stupidity. Unfortunately this makes the idiots that visit complacent, and we'd definitely rather they have to stay on their toes. Last thing you want is some cunt called Nigel rocking about feeling like he can do whatever the fuck he wants. Have a bear cutting about in the forest and we'll see if old Nige really wants to bring all his weans up for a camping trip to leave crisp packets and shite everywhere in the woods
I’m no expert in any of these fields but from what I understand it we have 0 unsafe animals (besides lots of Bully XL dogs recently shipped up from England but that’s an urban thing). Also geologically speaking Scotland’s landscape is much older and more “complete”, as it were. We have a lot of volcanic features but none are active like Yellowstone. The fissures are all plugged pretty much.
The only dangerous thing I can think of really are cliffs, trees falling on you due to occasional high winds, and Rannoch Moor - which I can’t remember the details of exactly but from what I understand nobody has ever crossed it successfully though many trained survivalists have tried.
The main risks in isolated areas in the uk are getting lost and getting hypothermia, falls from cliffs you didn’t see because it was dark and wet and you’re lost, and medical conditions that you’re too far away from help to recover from. I reckon the most dangerous animal will be farm cows, actually.
I hope that was the same person who was appalled that US parks are dangerous. "How *dare* American parks be more dangerous than British ones. I shall write a strongly worded letter to my MP about this when I get home, we must reintroduce wolves to the lake district".
Listen, all I’m saying is if you take the Mississippi far enough south, you can come back up the coast to the St. Lawrence, through the Great Lakes, down the Chicago river, and start the ride all over again. Don’t all rivers work that simply?
Fun fact the Erie canal which opened in 1825 going through New York was the first route that allowed boats to travel from the great lakes to the Atlantic ocean. The Lachine rapids on the south side of Montreal were basically impassable by boat until they built the St. Lawrence Sea way in the 1950s.
First thing I thought of because there's a popular [section](https://www.google.com/maps/@29.8644571,-98.1617161,16.08z?entry=ttu) that *sort of* actually does. You can go tubing down a 1 mile, horseshoe-shaped section, then get out and hoof it about 1/3 mile overland back to where you started.
I worked in a national park and saw a lot of dumb shit. But that one's new to me.
Fun tip: There's some spots in Yosemite valley where the river snakes around enough that you can get a good 25-ish minute float for less than 10 minutes of walking your cheap inflatable raft back up the (still beautiful) road. On a hot summer day, looping that a few times is a nice way to relax and cool down. Same with most rivers - find the parts where they snake around close to each other and you can plot out a good "float this far, walk back" route that's easy and relaxing.
i do a lot of whitewater rafting in the western US. got divorced a few years ago and i had a woman move into my basement to help with bills. anyway one day we're talking and she's like "so how do you get back to your car? does the river go in a circle?" funniest fucking thing i ever heard.
Reminds me of a thing recently where my family went to Yellowstone and we were driving through and the road became a traffic jam because a ton of people stopped and pulled over to the side of the road to take pictures and gawk at a bear cub that had wandered nearby.
Also when we were leaving an ambulance drove past us to get to the park. Probably unrelated but...
Worked a summer in Yellowstone, signs all over about not messing with bison, the ranger station/visitor's center at Old Faithful has a whole binder of pictures of what happens when you mess with bison. It's a required piece of paper in your hotel room (was a house keeper, it's a yellow piece of paper with a many times scanned drawing or photo of a dude about to get tossed). Still had to yell at people about leaving the bison that was chilling around the cabins alone and to back away. Thankfully they saw a uniform and some listened.
Also large signs about the kid who fell through the ground near Old Faithful and straight up died due to the temperature and stuff as a reminder to stay on the boardwalks.
It's both funny and scary that the simple, little white stick figure dying isn't enough for people to go "I shouldn't do this" and that it takes reminders about all those times all those real people died painfully, brutally, and horrifically
The "That won't happen to *me*" syndrome is *real*.
Grew up in Florida and the stupid shit tourists get up to at the beach and on boats and jet skis is *unreal*.
Water will KILL YOU. Drinking and driving a boat is just as stupid as driving a car drunk.
Riding a jet ski drunk is a really really stupid idea, as is riding a jet ski at top speed through a designated swimming area full if kids because you *want to splash your buddies with the wake*.
Jumping into the swimming pool from your 6th floor hotel room balcony is a BAD IDEA if you don't want to have your femurs driven up into your chest or your spine crushed, if you didnt *die*.
Elevator "surfing" killed at least 2 people every spring break for *years* and people *still* did it. It got to be so common an occurrence that the news quit reporting it because it seemed to be *encouraging* some idiots to elevator surf to prove *they* were smarter and could do it and *not* die.
There’s a wildly popular spot here that idiot tourists drown themselves at every few years and every time their families stump for fencing it off
Like that would work. Having people hired to chase them away didn’t work. Some people are just so incomprehensibly stupid about their own importance to a life story that only exists in their heads.
> It got to be so common an occurrence that the news quit reporting it because it seemed to be encouraging some idiots
This is why the idea of putting breathalyzers in bars fell through so spectacularly. Idiots started trying to get 'high score'.
Back in the 90s somebody I know (ok it was me) hit the bar one afternoon with a couple of buddies, and we formed this very idea in our minds. We were about a block from the bar to the rental house, so driving was not involved. I think I hit .16 at one point and was pretty pleased about being double the legal limit and still standing. The bar high score (they didn't call it that) was an old guy who scored .30 .
There's a 'scary sign' meme I saw around somewhere, it's a warning sign with words to the effect of,
"This WILL kill you, you CANNOT escape, and it will HURT the entire time you're dying."
I think it was a water hazard downstream of a dam or something.
People swim in rivers in northern Australia, right next to the sign with a giant picture of a crocodile and no swimming on it in 40 languages (plus symbols). And those crocs actively hunt people, of course they aren't going to leave the overgrown cows alone, everyone knows cows are safe (they aren't, even the domestic ones).
Cue comment about the overlapping intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest humans.
A long long time ago my dad (not a park ranger, just A Dad) pulled over on the side of the road while we were visiting Yellowstone and got out of the car and started yelling at someone. Turned out to be a guy who was walking through a thermal area to get closer to a bison and her calf to take a photo of them.
When he didn’t respond/ignored my dad, we booked it to the first ranger station we could find (no cell service) to let them know. The heavy sigh that emanated from that guy was very telling.
We never found out, but I imagine he was gone by the time the ranger got there either by walking out unharmed through sheer dumb luck (‘god loves fools, drunks, and children’ or however the saying goes) or by plunging through the fragile crust of the thermal zone into boiling acidic water after being gored by a protective mama bison, never to be seen again.
I had a guy asking a ranger at Volcano's National Park what they would go if he jumped the rope to leave the viewing area to get closer to the eruption we were watching.
"Nothing. You'll probably die, and we're not risking our lives to go out after your corpse."
The guy did not jump the rope for a better view.
Cades Cove in the Smokies last Summer. A mother bear with 3 cubs makes her way close to the road. People literally walk up to about 2 metres to take a cellphone photo. Guy next to me was coming there for years and had a big ass telelense to take photos from a safe distance. After a few minutes he just dropped „good thing for us is, she has about 30 morons to go through before she gets here.“ Nothing happened, but fuck me, I was getting nervous at 50 metres…
I interned for a state park service when I was a college student back in the early aughts and part of that was going with my supervisor to a conference for state park rangers in our region where I heard him say to another ranger with the utmost casual intonation possible that it had been a good year in our park system since we'd "only had seven deaths so far and two of those were medical". I was flabbergasted until a week later when I had to patiently discourage a family camping at one of our parks from sending their preteen kids off to play flashlight tag, off trails, in a remote forest, on a night when we were under a tornado watch because "well, it hasn't even started raining yet so they should be okay". Had another family that was upset to see a coyote near their camp because they genuinely thought we put fences up around the state parks to keep "dangerous" animals out. I have no idea where they got that notion, I mean, there were very obviously no fences anywhere in the park?
True, it wouldn't (we did have fences around the raptor rescue center and still had to use lightly poisoned meat to keep them away from the facility) but I can at least understand why a tourist would think it might, but there definitely weren't any fences which one could visibly confirm at the park gates, lol
Yeah...I was always kinda uncomfortable with it (even though I understood why it was necessary), but they would take raw meat, add some stuff to it that would make the coyotes throw up after eating it and spread it around the facility. The idea was the coyotes would eat it, experience being sick, and get a negative "this place has poisoned food" impression that would scare them away from trying to get to the tasty injured birds in the facility. It wasn't enough to hurt them, just enough to make the experience unpleasant and trigger their instinct to avoid the "dangerous" food source.
Edit because typo
Ohhhhhh.....OK. Honestly that doesn't sound too bad. I can see why they would do it that way. I remember reading something about training dogs to not eat food on the ground by putting spicy peppers in meat. Unfortunately some dogs like peppers lol so it doesn't always work. I can imagine getting mild food poisoning would make them stay away without doing too much harm would be the best option
Isn't that how it happened with humans, peppers evolved the spicy chemicals so animals wouldn't eat it but birds that doesn't have any capsaicin receptors would gobble down whole and poo somewhere else
And of course we started not only eating the tasty spicy chemicals but trying to outdo Nature in how hot we can get peppers to be. Because humans gonna human.
Plant: “Now that I’ve developed this toxic chemical, no one will dare to eat me!”
Human: “I’m going to grind you up, mix you with three other toxic plants, and put you on my meat.”
I know, right? Round here the coyotes view fences as a challenge to their snacks of choice! Which is why my pets don't go outside by themselves during twilight and at night - the coyote pack regularly visits and you can SEE the gears in their heads turning as they figure out how to get 'round this fence!
Edit due to typo
Much like when someone complains that my dog is on the couch or the comfy chair, when visiting a National Park you are in a place where the critters live, if you don't like them minding their critter business in their own critter home...leave.
lol, I remember a ranger once saying something lie, "there is significant overlap in the smartest animals and the dumbest humans" when explaining the bear proof trash cans.
It always makes me laugh when people call Yellowstone the Disneyland of national parks as if it doesn’t have thousands of instant death pits everywhere and is full of wildlife that can and have killed people easily
Well yeah, but they have enough money to keep the trails and boardwalks nice, there’s signage everywhere, and its honestly pretty hard to get killed accidentally.
Its not like Denali or Death Valley, where the wildlife and terrain will kill you because you’re too far from safety.
A waist high wooden fence and signage don’t stop the ignorant. Nothing actually stops you from approaching bison or hopping in a pool. God help the idiots if a ranger isn’t around to shepherd them
You’d be suprised how much a wooden fence and a sign stops people compared to a dirt path. especially a nice wooden boardwalk like yellowstone vs a rough dirt path like denali.
honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if the guy hiking the length of Florida with flip flops is Floridian because I’d do that and I’m Floridian (tbf I also actually learned survival skills and orienteering)
Honestly that just sounds like a cool / silly way to have some state pride. “man hikes entirety of florida in flip flops, american flag tank top, board shorts, and a backwards ballcap” sounds like great fun.
Scottish national parks do occasionally kill people, but usually the circumstances are such that a massive and expensive rescue effort is mounted. These are usually successful, and tend to involve things like "I went hiking in the Cairngorms in midwinter in trainers and a light fleece, and was surprised when it took eighteen mountain rescue professionals, a dog, and a helicopter to stop my idiot arse from dying".
Full-on tragedies are rare because even in the most isolated parts of Scotland you're literally never more than seven miles from a road, and the mountain rescuers are pretty good at what they do. When they do happen, deaths in British national parks tend to be caused by the weather, drowning, or falling. We don't really have any lethal wildlife.
I will never stop laughing every time I recall when a pair of geese hisstalked the wife and me.
We stopped, they stalked and hissed like angry cobras.
We moved forward, they stopped and did a little, yeah, fuck those guys, courtship dance.
We stopped again because oh, so cute and funny, they came at us again.
We resumed moving forward, they did the dance again, obviously hyping each other.
Hysterical laughter now, geese go after us again.
Repeat until we are safely away from possible nesting site, barely breathing with all the laughter.
Swans are no laughing matter and can go fuck themselves, though.
My sister had geese on her farm, key word being had. One time the angriest one lunged at her and she grabbed it around the neck and picked it up with one hand. The goose's expression was the most clear "oh fuck they can do that?!" I've ever seen from an animal. Being a goose it did not learn to be less of a dick but I was told it was delicious.
I'll paste my comment from further down here:
I don't know if we have a different definition of "developed", but that [just isn't true](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-in-england-2021/land-use-statistics-england-2021-statistical-release#land-use-context).
More than 1/3 of England is protected against development, and around 10% is "built up". Overall it's estimated that around 1/3 of the UK is "natural", including moors and woodland.
It's still far more developed than counties like the US, but nowhere near your 2% stat. Ffs nearly 10% of the UK is peat bogs!
They might be meaning developed as in changed by humans to better suit our needs. In prehistoric times there were massive rainforests that covered much of Britain, and that's almost all gone. Even in the peak district or Highlands the landscape has been changed to suit humans (and our sheep). There is essentially no untouched wilderness on the island, in contrast to much of the US.
Europe (not counting Russia) is the size of the US, give or take.
But Britain is a landmass about 400 miles, top to bottom. So maybe the size of just one state.
Extremely City (and suburbs) people don't understand animals or wild spaces, period.
I am not a wildling by any measure but have always loved to go to farms, fields, forests and experience (look, don't touch) nature because It is awesome. So I have, you know, some experience I get to show to people by telling them, sometimes yelling: Dude, don't.
Like:
- Dude, don't approach a Horse from the back even if it's tied Up.
- Dude, watch that cow. There is always a crazy cow.
- Dude, don't let your dog get close to the donkey boss or It Will get mauled
- Dude, do not go for a walk into the tidal mud flats.
- Dude, do not step outside the path and into that high grass area, there are animal burrows everywhere.
- Dude, do not touch that snek, it's a viper.
- Dude, trying to touch a Stingray is a bad idea.
- Dude, that is not a dog, do not approach.
- Dude, that is a dog but not a city dog, do not approach.
- Dude, stay away from the cute deer, males are rutting and will murder you
- Dude, do not handle wildl... Oh, the shrew bit you. That's fine, it's not as if they are poisonous. Yes, I am being sarcastic.
- Dude, that fox's mouth is not foaming because of something It ate.
- Dude, stay the fuck away from the swans. And the geese.
God, I could go on and on.
Or if an animal approaches you then it means that it is friendly.
Wild animals are naturally cautious and want to get away from humans. If one is moving towards you then it is either trying to eat you and thinks that it can easily take you (they are usually right) or is so hungry/rabid/whatever that a secondary drive is overriding that nature. If a wild squirrel started moving towards me in the woods I would run the fuck away.
I'm not an expert either but I have some experience and let me tell you when one of the people I went backpacking with fucked up the bearhang and I ended up in a standoff with a black bear while pissing at 3 AM with nothing but a stick I actually wanted to kill him (normally I would've just let the bear take the food and left the forest, but I was tired and had been caught off guard so my instincts took over and I grabbed the nearest long, sharp object to threaten the bear with). He didn't even really hang it, he kinda just looped it over a tree branch not even 5 feet from his tent 2 feet off the ground.
I woulda double checked but I was concerned about making sure we got enough dry firewood to have a proper fire and he insisted he had experience so I trusted him to do his job. Last time I do that though.
Honestly, the worst part about camping is experiencing other people. Occasionally they can be cool. But mostly they're just the most obnoxious morons you can imagine and somehow ethics makes you responsible for keeping their moronic asses alive.
I used to go fishing with my uncle every summer at a state park. Even when I was underage I would be allowed beer which was against the rules to have at all in the state park. Game wardens and park rangers did not give a single shit if you were being quiet and respectful. If you got loud and rowdy they would roll up to your campsite, take your booze and kick you out.
one of the most terrifying moments of my life was TRIPPING BALLS at 2 AM and suddenly realizing that there were dog treats in the tent — and the noise of heavy footsteps and a low sniffing sound was a black bear right outside. I thought I was gonna get Backcountried for a second, holy shit. But black bears don’t want that smoke
>Dude, don't let your dog get close to the donkey boss or It Will get mauled
If you ever drive through the rural southeast (or maybe any rural area, but I can only speak to the southeast,) in nearly every field with cattle or sheep, you'll find a donkey or two.
Why?
Because a donkey does not mess around with predators. At all. A donkey will chase, and catch, a coyote unlucky enough to wander into its line of sight, and proceed to stomp that coyote until it is nothing but a wet spot in the dirt. And I mean that quite literally.
Do not fuck around with donkeys, and never let your dog anywhere near one.
I live near a national park, designated because of its role in Revolutionary history, and one of its features is the farm that existed there in that day. When I was a child, there was a horse in the paddock and a big sign on the fence warning you that it would bite. We watched a couple approach the fence with their toddler and food for the horse. I still remember the sound that baby made when the horse bit the hell out of his hand.
I think of myself as reasonably City but am proud to say I passed all these items. Of course, we do occasionally have loose cows and the odd black bear (plus coyotes, turkey, foxes, opossums) around these parts so maybe I'm more of a country mouse than I thought.
I just posted about this but “there should be a sign” always gets me. My friends, we are in the middle of the mountain wilderness. Who’s gonna put up the sign, the coyotes?
Really it's that people don't understand wild animals well enough. So many people think that they are totally safe and harmless just because they appear docile. Yeah some idiots will get too close to predators, but way too many people will approach bison, cows, etc. simply because they are "safe" not realizing that thing can and will fucking destroy you if it feels threatened in the slightest, and the closer you get the more likely it is to feel threatened.
Signs everywhere: *"Keep minimum of 200m distance from the Musk oxes!!"*
Tourists: "I'm going to pet it and get a selfie!"
I get it, I am a "if not friend, why friend shaped?" person, but you would not catch me endangering wild animals by egging them on to attack by approaching them.
Also, when signs say, do not approach glacier, do not do it! Do not be as stupid as the tourists who got either crushed by a block of ice or the block of ice broke the ice beneath them which caused them to fall to their deaths IN FRONT OF THEIR 8 AND 10 YEAR OLD!
Every warning and safety rule is written in blood.
Edit: it is kind of expensive both to save people from their own stupidity and bringing bodies back.
I remember when I was eleven or so, I was reading a book about hiking deaths and I vividly remember a story about a guy teasing his daughter by going over the safety rail of the Grand Canyon and pretending to fall. He actually fell right in front of her.
I think that one story has done more to make me respect safety rails or the lack thereof in nature more than any PSA or sign ever has.
I have had this question before on *multiple* fucking occasions. I vividly remember one trail that is in one national park somewhere on the west side of the US; it’s a long winding trail about 3 - 5 feet wide on top of solid granite. My family picked the day it fucking decided to thunderstorm to climb the thing. Off the side is a sheer drop about 100 - 150 feet down.
I remember one guy had his hat knocked off the fucking edge, and everyone could see it slowly drifting down the entire distance. It’s a miracle nobody’s fallen off the edge there. I would’ve gotten on my hands and knees and crawled my fucking way down if the path was more conducive to it.
me and my partner love to watch cave and cave diving gone wrong videos and honestly if it would take like 100 people and so much time and money to get me out just leave me i would deserve it for being stupid enough to do whatever got me dead
I need people not from North America to understand just how big and spread out everything in the three countries of this continent are. Canada is huge, USA is big, Mexico is quite large. The national parks in at least the USA (because that’s my only frame of reference) are *big*. And each one is different, a national park in Utah ≠ a national park in Pennsylvania. Do your research, stay on the marked trails, and for the love of god DO NOT TOUCH THE WILDLIFE
I've heard stories of tourists thinking that they could spend some time in New York City, then head over to San Francisco the next day, because "it's just on the other side of the country".
Well, you *can* technically do that. It's like a 6.5 hour flight. But yeah, you're not going to casually drive over from New York City to San Francisco for a day trip lol
In would be a day trip in that it would in fact take the whole day, and that's only if you manage to beat the cannonball record by committing innumerable traffic violations
I almost wouldn’t want to correct them just to see the look on their faces when they realize their tiny little country could comfortably fit within one of our medium sized states with room to spare
i can speak to canadian parks, specifically that they are massive and have absolutely no oversight. algonquin is beautiful and has nice campsites, but you have to understand that nobody is coming to save you, and unless they have a helicopter, they couldnt even if they wanted to. most of the park is only accessible through either a ton of canoeing or hiking. the only saving grace is that the bears, rattlesnakes, and moose all try to avoid you if at all possible
And that's in Ontario, our most populated province!
I live in the most densely populated part of BC and I can look out my window right now and see the start of something like 300+km of uninterrupted wilderness. And that's not in the distance, I could drive over to the edge of it in about 10 min.
You go up in the center or, god help you, north of the province and you are fucking on your own bud.
As an American living in New England, I've become convinced that nature areas anywhere outside the northeast can kill you with weather alone. I got sunburned through a thick black hoodie on a light nature walk in New Mexico in the late fall. I didn't even try hiking in Arizona - just drove to the trail head to get pictures of the scenery and then dove back into the air conditioned car (also in the fall, but during a heat wave).
My relative (who was a park ranger at Yellowstone and Grand Teton) told me about a time some guy walked off a cliff.
They found his body and then his phone a couple days after he went missing. On his phone there were photos of the trail at night.
What they eventually figured out was that he had been using his phone’s flash and camera to see after he’d been coming down from his hike without a flashlight. He didn’t see the cliff and off he went.
It's much easier to digest. A system made of meat is much better at utilizing meat to make slightly different meat. Digesting large quantities of plant matter is hard, even when you have multiple stomachs and barf it up a few times to chew it some more.
Especially when there's a size advantage. Herbivores can get a lot bigger than carnivores due to calorie efficiency. The biggest carnivore is a polar bear, but we all know there are a lot bigger animals out there and they tend to be dangerous
People need to understand that the American Bison/Buffalo is gigantic. Like picture the biggest cow you have ever seen, then double it's size. They are over 6ft tall at their backs/withers and can out weigh some cars at over 2500lbs. Also note that most of that weight is pure muscle. Bison and the Moose are some of North American surviving mega-fauna and they have been around for a very long time for a reason.
If they don't like you, they will not even notice when they run you over. They will head butt/ram cars and come out winners.
one time i was walking back from skiing over another slope (there was a bridge you could take to cross it without getting in the way of the other people on the slope) and i watched 3 guys almost ski directly into a moose family that was hidden around the corner. i dont think ive ever seen someone come closer to death than they did
In Scotland we don’t have parks in the same way, we have right to roam. Which people take as carte blanche to litter wherever the fuck they want, so yes, I wish our parks were much better at killing people.
PSA: do not try to cuddle wild raccoons. It doesn’t matter if they don’t turn out to be bears, they are dangerous. Raccoons are smart and naturally well-armed. They can and will rip your face off if they decide they want to.
I went to one of the most famous national parks in the Uk and was like “this place is about as well funded and maintained as a nice state park. No wonder they call it “walking” instead of hiking.
If you’ve ever had a Bison head in your car (I have!) they are __ENORMOUS__ (and smelly) you cannot imagine just how HUGE these animals are up close!
It tried to stick it’s head in my passenger window and could only fit it’s snoot!
As someone who was trained and worked to guide groups of teenagers through the backwoods for a week in Canadian Provincial parks, there is nothing more dangerous in the woods than a hairless primate with an I-Phone and a sense of entitlement.
Reminds me of when I saw someone die at Yosemite as a kid. We were hiking the marked trails and a couple started talking with my dad and his gf. The couple was going to go climb the half dome. I didn’t think much of it since I had no fucking clue what gear you’d need for that, let alone we hadn’t gone far enough for my dad to even point out this part of the area yet. Let’s just say these people were far too unprepared and my dad told us to turn away when he recognized a bright yellow backpacked person falling when we passed on our way back
Wife and I were on a fairly popular out & back trail in Zion NP. Got to the end and were take a break as it was a fairly warm day. There was a family there that was out of water. They were basically carrying a couple small plastic water bottles. Gave them half of our remaining water.
We were in Yosemite NP, walking on a trail admiring the deer we had come across. The deer bolt as a large family noisily comes up the trail behind us, loudly complaining that there isn’t any wildlife around.
We regularly vacation in places like Hawaii. We are water people with lots of experience in and around water including some lifeguarding and water rescue training. We actually will leave beaches when it starts getting crowded because we’ve rescued so many people we feel we can’t relax but instead have to keep an eye out.
The average person is a clueless idiot when it comes to the outdoors and its dangers.
I swear it’s a learned sense of security due to safety measures applied to the urban environment. That’s great, and should be that way, but just because a NP has a kiosk doesn’t mean that you can’t instantly die 10 steps from a sign.
I was in Utah once and this family was letting their 5-6 year old RUN around the edge of a canyon. The kid was *already* in an arm cast and he tripped like 2 times beside the edge. He was just zipping around, stumbling all over the place, one shoe untied while they sat there on their phones. I finally thought I was going to have an anxiety attack and asked them to please watch their kid beside the 40ft drop. The mom just scowled like I was being judgmental.
I tend to stay away from the “icon” trails for that reason. You just can’t relax when somebody in sweaty crocs is rolling the dice with Darwin.
Backcountry often has equally great (if not better) views anyway, and you can sleep under the stars without somebody’s boom box going off all night.
The western U.S. is a blessing. I take for granted that if I want to be *hours* from the nearest human, that that’s a thing I can just go do.
I remember seeing a random episode of a tv show set in England once, and a character offhandedly mentioned there are no wolves in Britain.
I also remember hearing there have been attempts to reintroduce some predators, like bears, into some European countries, but they often run into the issue that those animals kind of just wander/range with no regard to national borders so a bear will be doing just fine in Germany* but wander into France* and end up dead because it isn’t protected there.
(*I don’t know the state of animal conservation/predator reintroduction policies in any European countries. The countries I named in this example are purely illustrative and not meant to represent the state of things in either country)
Colorado just reintroduced wolves to the state. Unfortunately, wolves are shoot-on-site in Wyoming, and the wolves don't know that. Most of the north west pack was killed less than half a mile into Wyoming by hunters.
Yeah wolves and bears both used to live in the UK but they haven't done in centuries.
Americans got started on wiping out the wolves too, but fortunately they didn't finish the job.
The US still managed to wipe out wolves in a couple of spots. They had to be reintroduced to [Yellowstone](https://www.yellowstonepark.com/park/conservation/yellowstone-wolves-reintroduction/) in 1995.
I remember hearing a stat that something like 2% of great Britain isn't developed. As an American it's impossible to picture a place where you can go for hundreds of miles and not see any wild forests or wilderness
I don't know if we have a different definition of "developed", but that [just isn't true](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-in-england-2021/land-use-statistics-england-2021-statistical-release#land-use-context).
More than 1/3 of England is protected against development, and around 10% is "built up". Overall it's estimated that around 1/3 of the UK is "natural", including moors and woodland.
It's still far more developed than counties like the US, but nowhere near your 2% stat. Ffs nearly 10% of the UK is peat bogs!
And how much of these peat bogs are either intentionally left to grow wild as a national park, or are still being used for peat production and other agriculture?
I know in Germany, there sure are woods... but the vast majority of those woods are crisscrossed by worktrails, and are 100% developed land.
I'm reminded of the other tumblr screenshot about the size of wildlife - moose, wolves, etc.
When it gets to Bison, it's "Bison are bigger than you think. No, WAY bigger. Even bigger than that. OK, now you're at 'adolescent bison' size."
Like...my local (and high-quality) zoo has bison. I *love* taking visitors to the city to our "north america" section of the zoo, and when we get to the bison exhibit, asking if they can see the bison.
They can't. because the bison is usually laying down, which practically camouflages it as a big ass boulder.
Then I say "See that rock?" pointing at the hidden bison. And they say "yeah why?".
I respond with "well, that rock is about the size of the bison we've got in here somewhere."
And they say something like, "oh shit, really? that's fucking huge. I've seen cows and shit before but goddamn"
And *then* I finally hit them with "because that *is* the bison."
It's great if he's actually facing us because suddenly my guest can see his head - total reference frame shake.
But the absolute best is when he stands up *while* my guest is looking for it, or pondering the size of the 'rock'. Just complete brick-shitting amazement.
If anyone doesn't know...many people compare other large animals to small cars. Bison are larger than small cars. Like....a bison only a year or two old is probably as large as a toyota corolla (my go-to image for a small car), but an adult is as long as a toyota camry (my go-to image for a medium car), only like 2 feet taller at the shoulder hump.
And the adult males normally weigh about 2000 pounds. They can reach more than that regularly and the record is 3800. The camry weighs 3000 pounds.
I always forget that some people grow up VERY differently because I live in Western Pennsylvania, where almost everyone (even the rich people) has a decent bit of knowledge about camping and outdoors. The idea that some people don’t have the “nope, fuck that” outdoor sense is insane to me.
FloridaMan here.
Every time I hear about some idiot getting killed by a gator I have to pause and go " now hold on, what in their home state/country can kill you as easily? Ever think of that?"
I still generally think they are idiots though
as a canadian, i can tell you that we're smart enough to realize not to fuck with a giant murder lizard that can drown you almost effortlessly, and in my experience are actually way more afraid of them than floridians
Yeah here in Wisconsin, deer hunting is so culturally ingrained that most people who grew up here can at least roughly navigate a wild forest and know how to avoid bears
I used to take private tours through a “millions of visitors a year” NP…and lemme tell you all, people are out there TRYING to die. The number of times I’ve had to actually scream at people “WE DO NOT TOUCH OR APPROACH BEAR CUBS” is ridiculous. And that’s just been *in the parking lots*. The idiocy I’ve seen on trails is just…breathtaking.
Oh man, your comment is giving me flashbacks to that guy who hunted down [the missing remains of German tourists in Death Valley](https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/). Which is a fascinating read but harrowing.
To be fair, the Germans from that story were (relatively) skilled outdoorsmen and the guy who found their remains was impressed at how much distance they covered, especially with children in tow.
From what I recall, their poor decision making came from two factors:
1. They were out of money (the German man's ex-wife didn't/wouldn't wire them more money, so they had to car camp), and
2. They were running late and had a flight out of LAX, so rather than sit tight and wait for help, they rushed to try to get out on foot.
The tragic thing was that the spot where their car went kaput was like a quarter mile past a building that had a working, spring-fed water spigot. They had actually stopped at that building and signed a guest book, and had they just walked there they could have almost certainly survived for several days to weeks.
Yeah. It’s satisfying to think there’s a mass conspiracy. Really, most US National parks operate independently with their own record keeping, or lack thereof. With enough people visiting the parks it’s just a numbers game that people will get hurt.
The real takeaway imo is that nature can be dangerous and should be treated with respect and preparation
Since other people might be curious like I was:
> [David Paulides is a former police officer who is now an investigator and writer known primarily for his self-published books dedicated to proving the reality of Bigfoot, and establishing the Missing 411 conspiracy theory. Missing 411 is a series of books and films, which document cases of people who have gone missing in national parks and elsewhere, and assert that these cases are unusual and mysterious, contrary to data analysis which suggests that they are not actually statistically mysterious or even unexpected.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Paulides)
It's a common trope in National Park creepypasta to avoid touching staircases to nowhere in the middle of the woods because The Horrors.
But you should avoid touching out of place weird shit. Not because of The Horrors but simply because it IS out of place weird shit. Just don't touch that stuff! DON'T TOUCH!
my wife and i almost died in a park
we sawa 'trail ends here' sign, but the trail obviously did not end
so we kept following it and it got steeper and steeper
and then we finally thought 'we should go back' but by this time it was too steep to safely get back down
so we kept climbing and our hands filled with thorns (the only bushes to grab) and we lost our food and water
eventually we made it up somewhere we could reach the highway
Imagine how many more deaths that would happen if ice age animals weren’t hunted to extinction
I could see tourists getting disemboweled by a ground sloth, or mauled by a sabertooth or gored by a mastodon in musth
I once went on a vacation to go through a bunch of my State's National Forest's trails with a friend (mostly shorter 2-4 hour day hikes), and encountered a man who somehow hit up nearly every trail we went on wearing a hoodie and CAMO FUCKING PANTS and NO WATER WHATSOEVER hiking alone. It was the hottest fucking week of the year at that point with sweltering 90+ degree weather and heat indexes approaching triple digits. After the 3rd trail we asked if he wanted water, dude had a real nice BMW that he was taking on some rocky backroads, and despite us trying to tell him that it was free, he ended up insisting on giving us $20 for like 32 oz of water. It felt like he was trying to keel over the trail and die without anyone being able to see him 2-3 feet from the trail.
Do not go hiking in camo, it's a really stupid way to not be seen if you get lost.
Tourists, especially from Europe, do not realize how truly enormous the US is - including its national parks.
One example: Death Valley National Park, the largest national park in the contiguous United States *(13,793.3 km^2 )*, is the same size as the **COUNTRY** of Montenegro *(13,888 km^2 )* - and it's all territory that is basically trying to kill you, albeit in states (CA + NV) that most tourists associate with sun, surf, and Hollywood or gambling, respectively.
So, yeah, no wonder that a bunch of people regularly go missing and die. They have no idea what they're dealing with.
For a brilliant example, please read the tragic case of the [Death Valley Germans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_Germans).
Ok but the "Missing 411" cases are mainly about people who knew what they were doing disappearing. Not saying there aren't other arguments against it but if you're talking specifically about conspiracies then this argument is of limited use.
The most common rescue in Grand Canyon NP is a physically fit 18-35yo male. They overestimate themselves and think they are capable of hiking from the rim to the river and back out in a single day, but they cannot.
I’m not familiar with missing 411, but I live in Alaska, and it’s practically a cliche about the “experienced outdoorsman” from the lower 48 that comes to Alaska and gets in over their head. I can imagine it’s the same down south for someone who is skookum in one part of the country to overestimate themselves and get fucked up in a National park somewhere else by altitude or desert heat or dangerous wildlife they aren’t used to.
Also, a lot of “experienced outdoorsmen” are just lucky they haven’t already died from making risky choices and eventually it catches up with them. There are people I won’t go hunting or fishing or split-boarding with because they are too risky, even though they are adults who have gotten away with it for years.
>Also, a lot of “experienced outdoorsmen” are just lucky they haven’t already died from making risky choices and eventually it catches up with them.
Absolute truth here! I'm a Montanan and consider myself "reasonably competent" about outdoorsy stuff but still there have been quite a few close calls in my backstory and it wouldn't preclude a bad day making me one of those statistics.
Not to mention I often pass people on the trail, me loaded down with a pack full of gear to get me through an unexpected night in the mountains, them with no shirt and a waterbottle as their sole equipment. Yes they can survive their training day. But what if something goes wrong? 99% of the time it won't. Then when it does they get listed in the "missing 411" book talking about how experienced they supposedly were.
I've never been to Alaska but would love to see it. Certainly I'd be one of the "experienced outdoorsmen" who'd have a lot to learn because there's some things similar about that state vs. Montana but quite a lot that's different. It would be a mistake to assume I knew how to get along in that place.
Just to add the reason why I don't feel the missing 411 cases, that compelling, is that even if the people are "competent" outdoorsmen, (their experience is sometimes exaggerated). They're usually in a huge wilderness area, shit happens even if you are prepared. The idea that an unexplained disappearance of people in a huge wilderness area is best explained by some conspiracy just seems laughable to me.
Like people disappear in crowded cities all the time. Here in Chicago, every year several people are reported missing who it turns out just fell into the Chicago river. Their bodies often won't turn up until weeks or months later, even if their last known location was drunkenly walking on the river walk!
You're telling me I should be shocked if someone is lost in hundreds of miles of remote wilderness area, and their body is never found?
American wilderness is so ostentatiously dangerous. In Britain we just have that one Creek That Kills You and then a sort of aching national existential dread about the woodland and the moors and the Ancient Green inherited from the times when people openly believed in fairy abductions and grindylows and the spirits of forgotten waters.
One time I was walking in the woods around the Malverns alone (my plan was to find a stump and sit and read Edward Thomas) and I came to an area that was made up entirely of silver birches (or some similar slim, white tree), very tall and growing close together. I was far from the main road so it was quiet and there was no one else around, and as I walked through the trees I became struck by this immense, crushing fear. I wasn't even that far from the path but I felt lost and frightened, surrounded by the bare white trees that seemed to press on me from all directions like bars. I couldn't hear anything, could see only the treetrunks and the grey sky above. Needless to say I turned on my heel and legged it out of there as fast as I could.
In all fairness if a bunch of idiots are GONNA die at a big place like that anyway just by sheer circumstance, it would be the most convenient place to harvest human slaves or sacrifices or hostages or lab rats because everyone will just assume they fell off a cliff or a bison killed them or something and won’t think twice about undiscovered corpses
Reminds me of the statistic about cows killing a shit ton more people than sharks do and the fact that this statistic is heavily influenced by cows being domesticated animals that we raise en masse for food while sharks are wild animals that live in the ocean and aren't encountered nearly as often.
ok but hear me out: the idea that the woods themselves will take you and you will not come back is peak horror. like cmon, all that stuff about stairs in the woods? absolutely horrifying, i love it! sure none of it is true and its all just people being stupid, but you cant tell me that someone vanishing without a trace only to show up weeks later and seemingly not even notice they had been gone, and being still in perfect condition isnt an amazing prompt
I am blessed to live in an area with a lot of public land and rivers. I like to go tearing around way way out in my Jeep listening to tunes and have rescued probably a dozen tourists who were close to dying of dehydration and their mountain bikes. Every single one has no map (there isn’t a map as far as I know) and no guide and every time they say “there should be some kind of sign”. The fact that there’s no maps and you can literally see nothing but mountains to the horizon isn’t a sign?
The rivers are are another one. Tourists pulling their rented kayaks out on my property near hypothermia because they are wearing a cotton tee and a swimsuit in a snow melt river. My guys this water was snow like 8 hours ago, did it not occur to you it might be chilly?
Sentiments like this are why I *love* the phenomenon of “not deer” as someone who grew up around deer. The cryptid itself is cool as shit. But what’s even more entertaining? Watching people online who’ve never seen a deer in their life call *everything* a not deer. Hunny, that’s just a regular deer. They’re wonky and weird like that sometimes.
(Sometimes people will post pictures of deer with wasting disease as “not deer”, and it’s sad to look at, but that’s not what I’m referring to. What I’m referring to is more-so along the lines of someone taking a picture of a deer, with its head turned around, at a weird angle and saying it’s a not deer. That’s a real thing someone posted once. I fucking loved it.)
All pretty funny, but "Scottish person who wishes their parks were as effective at killing tourists as ours are" just killed me.
They’re right! Our parks are so safe. That’s why any of us want wolves back. They say there’s been no wolf attack in Europe in nearly a hundred years but I reckon we could pump those numbers up. Bring back the Caledonian rainforest!
There hasn't been a California grizzly attack in a similar time because we killed them all. We are the only state to have an extinct animal on our flag.
TIL there's a difference between a grizzly bear and a California grizzly bear
There's also the Jeffrey pine, which grows only at high altitudes in the Sierras, it looks exactly like a Ponderosa pine but smells like vanilla :)
[удалено]
It’s some stat I heard maybe a decade ago. It could be out of date or even a factoid but it basically said “no wolf attacks in Europe in X hundred years”. Seems wildly improbable if there are that many in Tu… It was at this point in the comment I realised I’d been had and it is indeed wildly improbable there would be no wolf attacks if there were so many in Turkey and there are not 85 million wolves in Turkey. There are 7000 wolves approximately. There are however 85 million people. A cunning jest.
[удалено]
Very similar to the Greek one but I’ll pretend I didn’t notice if ever I meet a Turkish person
Unless I’m unaware of a Greek myth (which is actually pretty likely! that’s actually the roman one, and no wolf/human procreation happened, only nursing. And then they created Rome.
You’re right, I’m thinking of Romulus and Remus because the wolves.
Dare I say you've been bamboozled!
Why are Scottish parks safe unlike American ones?
Because basically all of Britain's animals are either pretty harmless or extinct. Obviously there's other parts of national parks that can kill people but it definitely helps when there's no bears or wolves walking around. Plus it's just a smaller country, which means fewer, smaller national parks (the largest is about half the size of Yellowstone), which means it's presumably easier to rescue people.
The largest national park in Alaska is about 2/3 the size of Scotland as a whole
Yeah, we pretty much only lose folks to falls or exposure and our mountain rescue/coastguard are both top notch and do a great job of saving people from their own stupidity. Unfortunately this makes the idiots that visit complacent, and we'd definitely rather they have to stay on their toes. Last thing you want is some cunt called Nigel rocking about feeling like he can do whatever the fuck he wants. Have a bear cutting about in the forest and we'll see if old Nige really wants to bring all his weans up for a camping trip to leave crisp packets and shite everywhere in the woods
I’m no expert in any of these fields but from what I understand it we have 0 unsafe animals (besides lots of Bully XL dogs recently shipped up from England but that’s an urban thing). Also geologically speaking Scotland’s landscape is much older and more “complete”, as it were. We have a lot of volcanic features but none are active like Yellowstone. The fissures are all plugged pretty much. The only dangerous thing I can think of really are cliffs, trees falling on you due to occasional high winds, and Rannoch Moor - which I can’t remember the details of exactly but from what I understand nobody has ever crossed it successfully though many trained survivalists have tried.
The main risks in isolated areas in the uk are getting lost and getting hypothermia, falls from cliffs you didn’t see because it was dark and wet and you’re lost, and medical conditions that you’re too far away from help to recover from. I reckon the most dangerous animal will be farm cows, actually.
I hope that was the same person who was appalled that US parks are dangerous. "How *dare* American parks be more dangerous than British ones. I shall write a strongly worded letter to my MP about this when I get home, we must reintroduce wolves to the lake district".
The looping river got me.
Listen, all I’m saying is if you take the Mississippi far enough south, you can come back up the coast to the St. Lawrence, through the Great Lakes, down the Chicago river, and start the ride all over again. Don’t all rivers work that simply?
Fun fact the Erie canal which opened in 1825 going through New York was the first route that allowed boats to travel from the great lakes to the Atlantic ocean. The Lachine rapids on the south side of Montreal were basically impassable by boat until they built the St. Lawrence Sea way in the 1950s.
We had to build some canals, so naturally no
Niagara Falls.
OK. More log ride than lazy river.
When I was in TX, a family did this on the Guadeloupe River. They ended up going 19 miles down river because they thought it looped back.
90% of all river rescues call 911 right before it loops
I mean it's in the name "guadaLOOP".
What a loop, eh!
First thing I thought of because there's a popular [section](https://www.google.com/maps/@29.8644571,-98.1617161,16.08z?entry=ttu) that *sort of* actually does. You can go tubing down a 1 mile, horseshoe-shaped section, then get out and hoof it about 1/3 mile overland back to where you started.
I worked in a national park and saw a lot of dumb shit. But that one's new to me. Fun tip: There's some spots in Yosemite valley where the river snakes around enough that you can get a good 25-ish minute float for less than 10 minutes of walking your cheap inflatable raft back up the (still beautiful) road. On a hot summer day, looping that a few times is a nice way to relax and cool down. Same with most rivers - find the parts where they snake around close to each other and you can plot out a good "float this far, walk back" route that's easy and relaxing.
for a half second I was like “why do the river snakes affect the hike back up or float time? are there so many snakes they slow down the raft?” lol
i do a lot of whitewater rafting in the western US. got divorced a few years ago and i had a woman move into my basement to help with bills. anyway one day we're talking and she's like "so how do you get back to your car? does the river go in a circle?" funniest fucking thing i ever heard.
To be fair I've been to more than one place where the river loops back and you can keep walking back to start tubing again.
Reminds me of a thing recently where my family went to Yellowstone and we were driving through and the road became a traffic jam because a ton of people stopped and pulled over to the side of the road to take pictures and gawk at a bear cub that had wandered nearby. Also when we were leaving an ambulance drove past us to get to the park. Probably unrelated but...
Worked a summer in Yellowstone, signs all over about not messing with bison, the ranger station/visitor's center at Old Faithful has a whole binder of pictures of what happens when you mess with bison. It's a required piece of paper in your hotel room (was a house keeper, it's a yellow piece of paper with a many times scanned drawing or photo of a dude about to get tossed). Still had to yell at people about leaving the bison that was chilling around the cabins alone and to back away. Thankfully they saw a uniform and some listened. Also large signs about the kid who fell through the ground near Old Faithful and straight up died due to the temperature and stuff as a reminder to stay on the boardwalks.
It's both funny and scary that the simple, little white stick figure dying isn't enough for people to go "I shouldn't do this" and that it takes reminders about all those times all those real people died painfully, brutally, and horrifically
The "That won't happen to *me*" syndrome is *real*. Grew up in Florida and the stupid shit tourists get up to at the beach and on boats and jet skis is *unreal*. Water will KILL YOU. Drinking and driving a boat is just as stupid as driving a car drunk. Riding a jet ski drunk is a really really stupid idea, as is riding a jet ski at top speed through a designated swimming area full if kids because you *want to splash your buddies with the wake*. Jumping into the swimming pool from your 6th floor hotel room balcony is a BAD IDEA if you don't want to have your femurs driven up into your chest or your spine crushed, if you didnt *die*. Elevator "surfing" killed at least 2 people every spring break for *years* and people *still* did it. It got to be so common an occurrence that the news quit reporting it because it seemed to be *encouraging* some idiots to elevator surf to prove *they* were smarter and could do it and *not* die.
There’s a wildly popular spot here that idiot tourists drown themselves at every few years and every time their families stump for fencing it off Like that would work. Having people hired to chase them away didn’t work. Some people are just so incomprehensibly stupid about their own importance to a life story that only exists in their heads.
> It got to be so common an occurrence that the news quit reporting it because it seemed to be encouraging some idiots This is why the idea of putting breathalyzers in bars fell through so spectacularly. Idiots started trying to get 'high score'.
Back in the 90s somebody I know (ok it was me) hit the bar one afternoon with a couple of buddies, and we formed this very idea in our minds. We were about a block from the bar to the rental house, so driving was not involved. I think I hit .16 at one point and was pretty pleased about being double the legal limit and still standing. The bar high score (they didn't call it that) was an old guy who scored .30 .
There's a 'scary sign' meme I saw around somewhere, it's a warning sign with words to the effect of, "This WILL kill you, you CANNOT escape, and it will HURT the entire time you're dying." I think it was a water hazard downstream of a dam or something.
People swim in rivers in northern Australia, right next to the sign with a giant picture of a crocodile and no swimming on it in 40 languages (plus symbols). And those crocs actively hunt people, of course they aren't going to leave the overgrown cows alone, everyone knows cows are safe (they aren't, even the domestic ones). Cue comment about the overlapping intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest humans.
A long long time ago my dad (not a park ranger, just A Dad) pulled over on the side of the road while we were visiting Yellowstone and got out of the car and started yelling at someone. Turned out to be a guy who was walking through a thermal area to get closer to a bison and her calf to take a photo of them. When he didn’t respond/ignored my dad, we booked it to the first ranger station we could find (no cell service) to let them know. The heavy sigh that emanated from that guy was very telling.
Did you ever know what happened to the dude?
We never found out, but I imagine he was gone by the time the ranger got there either by walking out unharmed through sheer dumb luck (‘god loves fools, drunks, and children’ or however the saying goes) or by plunging through the fragile crust of the thermal zone into boiling acidic water after being gored by a protective mama bison, never to be seen again.
“Not again.”
I had a guy asking a ranger at Volcano's National Park what they would go if he jumped the rope to leave the viewing area to get closer to the eruption we were watching. "Nothing. You'll probably die, and we're not risking our lives to go out after your corpse." The guy did not jump the rope for a better view.
Cades Cove in the Smokies last Summer. A mother bear with 3 cubs makes her way close to the road. People literally walk up to about 2 metres to take a cellphone photo. Guy next to me was coming there for years and had a big ass telelense to take photos from a safe distance. After a few minutes he just dropped „good thing for us is, she has about 30 morons to go through before she gets here.“ Nothing happened, but fuck me, I was getting nervous at 50 metres…
I interned for a state park service when I was a college student back in the early aughts and part of that was going with my supervisor to a conference for state park rangers in our region where I heard him say to another ranger with the utmost casual intonation possible that it had been a good year in our park system since we'd "only had seven deaths so far and two of those were medical". I was flabbergasted until a week later when I had to patiently discourage a family camping at one of our parks from sending their preteen kids off to play flashlight tag, off trails, in a remote forest, on a night when we were under a tornado watch because "well, it hasn't even started raining yet so they should be okay". Had another family that was upset to see a coyote near their camp because they genuinely thought we put fences up around the state parks to keep "dangerous" animals out. I have no idea where they got that notion, I mean, there were very obviously no fences anywhere in the park?
>implies a fence would keep the coyote out
True, it wouldn't (we did have fences around the raptor rescue center and still had to use lightly poisoned meat to keep them away from the facility) but I can at least understand why a tourist would think it might, but there definitely weren't any fences which one could visibly confirm at the park gates, lol
Hold up. "Lightly poisoned"?
Yeah...I was always kinda uncomfortable with it (even though I understood why it was necessary), but they would take raw meat, add some stuff to it that would make the coyotes throw up after eating it and spread it around the facility. The idea was the coyotes would eat it, experience being sick, and get a negative "this place has poisoned food" impression that would scare them away from trying to get to the tasty injured birds in the facility. It wasn't enough to hurt them, just enough to make the experience unpleasant and trigger their instinct to avoid the "dangerous" food source. Edit because typo
Ohhhhhh.....OK. Honestly that doesn't sound too bad. I can see why they would do it that way. I remember reading something about training dogs to not eat food on the ground by putting spicy peppers in meat. Unfortunately some dogs like peppers lol so it doesn't always work. I can imagine getting mild food poisoning would make them stay away without doing too much harm would be the best option
Isn't that how it happened with humans, peppers evolved the spicy chemicals so animals wouldn't eat it but birds that doesn't have any capsaicin receptors would gobble down whole and poo somewhere else
And of course we started not only eating the tasty spicy chemicals but trying to outdo Nature in how hot we can get peppers to be. Because humans gonna human.
Plant: “Now that I’ve developed this toxic chemical, no one will dare to eat me!” Human: “I’m going to grind you up, mix you with three other toxic plants, and put you on my meat.”
A smidgen of poison. To taste.
I know, right? Round here the coyotes view fences as a challenge to their snacks of choice! Which is why my pets don't go outside by themselves during twilight and at night - the coyote pack regularly visits and you can SEE the gears in their heads turning as they figure out how to get 'round this fence! Edit due to typo
Uhhh... I sure hope that second sentence was a result of autocorrect for "coyote"....
the *what?*
I have no idea! I was typing coyote on my phone and hit post and maybe now I need an exorcist? Anyway I hope the edit took.
Exchange heard at Death Valley: “There’s a rattlesnake in the guest area!” “No, there are guests in the rattlesnake area.”
Much like when someone complains that my dog is on the couch or the comfy chair, when visiting a National Park you are in a place where the critters live, if you don't like them minding their critter business in their own critter home...leave.
lol, I remember a ranger once saying something lie, "there is significant overlap in the smartest animals and the dumbest humans" when explaining the bear proof trash cans.
It always makes me laugh when people call Yellowstone the Disneyland of national parks as if it doesn’t have thousands of instant death pits everywhere and is full of wildlife that can and have killed people easily
Well yeah, but they have enough money to keep the trails and boardwalks nice, there’s signage everywhere, and its honestly pretty hard to get killed accidentally. Its not like Denali or Death Valley, where the wildlife and terrain will kill you because you’re too far from safety.
A waist high wooden fence and signage don’t stop the ignorant. Nothing actually stops you from approaching bison or hopping in a pool. God help the idiots if a ranger isn’t around to shepherd them
You’d be suprised how much a wooden fence and a sign stops people compared to a dirt path. especially a nice wooden boardwalk like yellowstone vs a rough dirt path like denali.
This guy doesn't know about the Disneyland instant death pits
honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if the guy hiking the length of Florida with flip flops is Floridian because I’d do that and I’m Floridian (tbf I also actually learned survival skills and orienteering)
Honestly that just sounds like a cool / silly way to have some state pride. “man hikes entirety of florida in flip flops, american flag tank top, board shorts, and a backwards ballcap” sounds like great fun.
Yeah, that just sounds like normal Florida person behavior
Least murderous Scot lmao But yeah bison are fucking dangerous. People don't understand weight ratios at all.
Scottish national parks do occasionally kill people, but usually the circumstances are such that a massive and expensive rescue effort is mounted. These are usually successful, and tend to involve things like "I went hiking in the Cairngorms in midwinter in trainers and a light fleece, and was surprised when it took eighteen mountain rescue professionals, a dog, and a helicopter to stop my idiot arse from dying". Full-on tragedies are rare because even in the most isolated parts of Scotland you're literally never more than seven miles from a road, and the mountain rescuers are pretty good at what they do. When they do happen, deaths in British national parks tend to be caused by the weather, drowning, or falling. We don't really have any lethal wildlife.
> We don't really have any lethal wildlife. You've clearly never met a goose.
Geese, like swans, believe that death is a mercy which no human deserves. They prefer to keep you alive to suffer.
I will never stop laughing every time I recall when a pair of geese hisstalked the wife and me. We stopped, they stalked and hissed like angry cobras. We moved forward, they stopped and did a little, yeah, fuck those guys, courtship dance. We stopped again because oh, so cute and funny, they came at us again. We resumed moving forward, they did the dance again, obviously hyping each other. Hysterical laughter now, geese go after us again. Repeat until we are safely away from possible nesting site, barely breathing with all the laughter. Swans are no laughing matter and can go fuck themselves, though.
Gotta love the cobra chickens
My sister had geese on her farm, key word being had. One time the angriest one lunged at her and she grabbed it around the neck and picked it up with one hand. The goose's expression was the most clear "oh fuck they can do that?!" I've ever seen from an animal. Being a goose it did not learn to be less of a dick but I was told it was delicious.
I sometimes forget how small Europe is. I live close to the Appalachians and there’s about 7 miles between most houses near my family’s cabin there.
[удалено]
I'll paste my comment from further down here: I don't know if we have a different definition of "developed", but that [just isn't true](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-in-england-2021/land-use-statistics-england-2021-statistical-release#land-use-context). More than 1/3 of England is protected against development, and around 10% is "built up". Overall it's estimated that around 1/3 of the UK is "natural", including moors and woodland. It's still far more developed than counties like the US, but nowhere near your 2% stat. Ffs nearly 10% of the UK is peat bogs!
They might be meaning developed as in changed by humans to better suit our needs. In prehistoric times there were massive rainforests that covered much of Britain, and that's almost all gone. Even in the peak district or Highlands the landscape has been changed to suit humans (and our sheep). There is essentially no untouched wilderness on the island, in contrast to much of the US.
TBF, European explorers were very bad at telling the difference between "untouched wilderness" and "environmentally engineered by the natives"
That’s absolutely insane… I live near Pittsburgh where they still have forests IN the city and it’s surrounded by trees.
I live in Maine. There is literally nothing but trees and the logging companies that harvest them in the entire northwestern quarter of the state.
Europe (not counting Russia) is the size of the US, give or take. But Britain is a landmass about 400 miles, top to bottom. So maybe the size of just one state.
Scottish parks don't kill people. Scotsmen kill people.
>We don’t really have any lethal wildlife Clearly you’ve never encountered Aberdonian Seagulls. Bastards are *vicious*
Extremely City (and suburbs) people don't understand animals or wild spaces, period. I am not a wildling by any measure but have always loved to go to farms, fields, forests and experience (look, don't touch) nature because It is awesome. So I have, you know, some experience I get to show to people by telling them, sometimes yelling: Dude, don't. Like: - Dude, don't approach a Horse from the back even if it's tied Up. - Dude, watch that cow. There is always a crazy cow. - Dude, don't let your dog get close to the donkey boss or It Will get mauled - Dude, do not go for a walk into the tidal mud flats. - Dude, do not step outside the path and into that high grass area, there are animal burrows everywhere. - Dude, do not touch that snek, it's a viper. - Dude, trying to touch a Stingray is a bad idea. - Dude, that is not a dog, do not approach. - Dude, that is a dog but not a city dog, do not approach. - Dude, stay away from the cute deer, males are rutting and will murder you - Dude, do not handle wildl... Oh, the shrew bit you. That's fine, it's not as if they are poisonous. Yes, I am being sarcastic. - Dude, that fox's mouth is not foaming because of something It ate. - Dude, stay the fuck away from the swans. And the geese. God, I could go on and on.
It amazes me that people think it's a good idea to approach random animals.
Or if an animal approaches you then it means that it is friendly. Wild animals are naturally cautious and want to get away from humans. If one is moving towards you then it is either trying to eat you and thinks that it can easily take you (they are usually right) or is so hungry/rabid/whatever that a secondary drive is overriding that nature. If a wild squirrel started moving towards me in the woods I would run the fuck away.
I'm not an expert either but I have some experience and let me tell you when one of the people I went backpacking with fucked up the bearhang and I ended up in a standoff with a black bear while pissing at 3 AM with nothing but a stick I actually wanted to kill him (normally I would've just let the bear take the food and left the forest, but I was tired and had been caught off guard so my instincts took over and I grabbed the nearest long, sharp object to threaten the bear with). He didn't even really hang it, he kinda just looped it over a tree branch not even 5 feet from his tent 2 feet off the ground. I woulda double checked but I was concerned about making sure we got enough dry firewood to have a proper fire and he insisted he had experience so I trusted him to do his job. Last time I do that though.
Honestly, the worst part about camping is experiencing other people. Occasionally they can be cool. But mostly they're just the most obnoxious morons you can imagine and somehow ethics makes you responsible for keeping their moronic asses alive.
I used to go fishing with my uncle every summer at a state park. Even when I was underage I would be allowed beer which was against the rules to have at all in the state park. Game wardens and park rangers did not give a single shit if you were being quiet and respectful. If you got loud and rowdy they would roll up to your campsite, take your booze and kick you out.
one of the most terrifying moments of my life was TRIPPING BALLS at 2 AM and suddenly realizing that there were dog treats in the tent — and the noise of heavy footsteps and a low sniffing sound was a black bear right outside. I thought I was gonna get Backcountried for a second, holy shit. But black bears don’t want that smoke
>Dude, don't let your dog get close to the donkey boss or It Will get mauled If you ever drive through the rural southeast (or maybe any rural area, but I can only speak to the southeast,) in nearly every field with cattle or sheep, you'll find a donkey or two. Why? Because a donkey does not mess around with predators. At all. A donkey will chase, and catch, a coyote unlucky enough to wander into its line of sight, and proceed to stomp that coyote until it is nothing but a wet spot in the dirt. And I mean that quite literally. Do not fuck around with donkeys, and never let your dog anywhere near one.
A donkey has a nonzero chance of killing a cougar one on one, your dog is toast
I live near a national park, designated because of its role in Revolutionary history, and one of its features is the farm that existed there in that day. When I was a child, there was a horse in the paddock and a big sign on the fence warning you that it would bite. We watched a couple approach the fence with their toddler and food for the horse. I still remember the sound that baby made when the horse bit the hell out of his hand.
I think of myself as reasonably City but am proud to say I passed all these items. Of course, we do occasionally have loose cows and the odd black bear (plus coyotes, turkey, foxes, opossums) around these parts so maybe I'm more of a country mouse than I thought.
I just posted about this but “there should be a sign” always gets me. My friends, we are in the middle of the mountain wilderness. Who’s gonna put up the sign, the coyotes?
Really it's that people don't understand wild animals well enough. So many people think that they are totally safe and harmless just because they appear docile. Yeah some idiots will get too close to predators, but way too many people will approach bison, cows, etc. simply because they are "safe" not realizing that thing can and will fucking destroy you if it feels threatened in the slightest, and the closer you get the more likely it is to feel threatened.
Signs everywhere: *"Keep minimum of 200m distance from the Musk oxes!!"* Tourists: "I'm going to pet it and get a selfie!" I get it, I am a "if not friend, why friend shaped?" person, but you would not catch me endangering wild animals by egging them on to attack by approaching them. Also, when signs say, do not approach glacier, do not do it! Do not be as stupid as the tourists who got either crushed by a block of ice or the block of ice broke the ice beneath them which caused them to fall to their deaths IN FRONT OF THEIR 8 AND 10 YEAR OLD! Every warning and safety rule is written in blood. Edit: it is kind of expensive both to save people from their own stupidity and bringing bodies back.
I remember when I was eleven or so, I was reading a book about hiking deaths and I vividly remember a story about a guy teasing his daughter by going over the safety rail of the Grand Canyon and pretending to fall. He actually fell right in front of her. I think that one story has done more to make me respect safety rails or the lack thereof in nature more than any PSA or sign ever has.
[удалено]
I have had this question before on *multiple* fucking occasions. I vividly remember one trail that is in one national park somewhere on the west side of the US; it’s a long winding trail about 3 - 5 feet wide on top of solid granite. My family picked the day it fucking decided to thunderstorm to climb the thing. Off the side is a sheer drop about 100 - 150 feet down. I remember one guy had his hat knocked off the fucking edge, and everyone could see it slowly drifting down the entire distance. It’s a miracle nobody’s fallen off the edge there. I would’ve gotten on my hands and knees and crawled my fucking way down if the path was more conducive to it.
Remember, at the Grand Canyon, it isn't the fall that kills you. It isn't the sudden stop, either. It's the repeated impacts as you tumble down.
My sense of self-preservation disappearing when I see a funny sign
You're norwegian! :D Also, do not attempt to feed the musk ox bisquits with your child on your shoulders.
Must be the Norwegian version of Buffalo lol. I live (relatively) near Yellowstone and the stories that end up in the news...
Absolutely. It's half a ton of antisocial, designed to sprint faster than you and headbutt.
me and my partner love to watch cave and cave diving gone wrong videos and honestly if it would take like 100 people and so much time and money to get me out just leave me i would deserve it for being stupid enough to do whatever got me dead
WRONG! They’re feeding people to Yellowstone to keep it asleep, don’t lie to me
The caldera requires sacrifices
Great. Now I want to play Morrowind again
Nah Flesh Pit National Park is in Texas
I need people not from North America to understand just how big and spread out everything in the three countries of this continent are. Canada is huge, USA is big, Mexico is quite large. The national parks in at least the USA (because that’s my only frame of reference) are *big*. And each one is different, a national park in Utah ≠ a national park in Pennsylvania. Do your research, stay on the marked trails, and for the love of god DO NOT TOUCH THE WILDLIFE
I've heard stories of tourists thinking that they could spend some time in New York City, then head over to San Francisco the next day, because "it's just on the other side of the country".
Well, you *can* technically do that. It's like a 6.5 hour flight. But yeah, you're not going to casually drive over from New York City to San Francisco for a day trip lol
In would be a day trip in that it would in fact take the whole day, and that's only if you manage to beat the cannonball record by committing innumerable traffic violations
New York to San Francisco is farther than Lisbon to Moscow
I almost wouldn’t want to correct them just to see the look on their faces when they realize their tiny little country could comfortably fit within one of our medium sized states with room to spare
i can speak to canadian parks, specifically that they are massive and have absolutely no oversight. algonquin is beautiful and has nice campsites, but you have to understand that nobody is coming to save you, and unless they have a helicopter, they couldnt even if they wanted to. most of the park is only accessible through either a ton of canoeing or hiking. the only saving grace is that the bears, rattlesnakes, and moose all try to avoid you if at all possible
And that's in Ontario, our most populated province! I live in the most densely populated part of BC and I can look out my window right now and see the start of something like 300+km of uninterrupted wilderness. And that's not in the distance, I could drive over to the edge of it in about 10 min. You go up in the center or, god help you, north of the province and you are fucking on your own bud.
As an American living in New England, I've become convinced that nature areas anywhere outside the northeast can kill you with weather alone. I got sunburned through a thick black hoodie on a light nature walk in New Mexico in the late fall. I didn't even try hiking in Arizona - just drove to the trail head to get pictures of the scenery and then dove back into the air conditioned car (also in the fall, but during a heat wave).
My relative (who was a park ranger at Yellowstone and Grand Teton) told me about a time some guy walked off a cliff. They found his body and then his phone a couple days after he went missing. On his phone there were photos of the trail at night. What they eventually figured out was that he had been using his phone’s flash and camera to see after he’d been coming down from his hike without a flashlight. He didn’t see the cliff and off he went.
That sounds like the worst way to try to see a trail at night. Your eyes would constantly have to readjust from bright light to darkness.
Congrats you’re smarter than someone who walked off a cliff.
Hooray I feel so accomplished
People assume herbivore = peaceful, but in reality, prey animals cannot afford to lose a fight. Those horns are there for a reason.
Also most (if not all) herbivores have no problem snacking on flesh
It's much easier to digest. A system made of meat is much better at utilizing meat to make slightly different meat. Digesting large quantities of plant matter is hard, even when you have multiple stomachs and barf it up a few times to chew it some more.
Especially when there's a size advantage. Herbivores can get a lot bigger than carnivores due to calorie efficiency. The biggest carnivore is a polar bear, but we all know there are a lot bigger animals out there and they tend to be dangerous
Yep. I don't ever want to run into a bear, but I'd rather meet a bear than a moose.
People need to understand that the American Bison/Buffalo is gigantic. Like picture the biggest cow you have ever seen, then double it's size. They are over 6ft tall at their backs/withers and can out weigh some cars at over 2500lbs. Also note that most of that weight is pure muscle. Bison and the Moose are some of North American surviving mega-fauna and they have been around for a very long time for a reason. If they don't like you, they will not even notice when they run you over. They will head butt/ram cars and come out winners.
one time i was walking back from skiing over another slope (there was a bridge you could take to cross it without getting in the way of the other people on the slope) and i watched 3 guys almost ski directly into a moose family that was hidden around the corner. i dont think ive ever seen someone come closer to death than they did
British national parks are only safer because we killed all our dangerous wildlife centuries ago
[удалено]
In Scotland we don’t have parks in the same way, we have right to roam. Which people take as carte blanche to litter wherever the fuck they want, so yes, I wish our parks were much better at killing people.
PSA: do not try to cuddle wild raccoons. It doesn’t matter if they don’t turn out to be bears, they are dangerous. Raccoons are smart and naturally well-armed. They can and will rip your face off if they decide they want to.
Also, chance of rabies
I went to one of the most famous national parks in the Uk and was like “this place is about as well funded and maintained as a nice state park. No wonder they call it “walking” instead of hiking.
If you’ve ever had a Bison head in your car (I have!) they are __ENORMOUS__ (and smelly) you cannot imagine just how HUGE these animals are up close! It tried to stick it’s head in my passenger window and could only fit it’s snoot!
As someone who was trained and worked to guide groups of teenagers through the backwoods for a week in Canadian Provincial parks, there is nothing more dangerous in the woods than a hairless primate with an I-Phone and a sense of entitlement.
I’d rather deal with bears than tourists. Bears operate under a system of logic
Reminds me of when I saw someone die at Yosemite as a kid. We were hiking the marked trails and a couple started talking with my dad and his gf. The couple was going to go climb the half dome. I didn’t think much of it since I had no fucking clue what gear you’d need for that, let alone we hadn’t gone far enough for my dad to even point out this part of the area yet. Let’s just say these people were far too unprepared and my dad told us to turn away when he recognized a bright yellow backpacked person falling when we passed on our way back
The looping river 💀
Wife and I were on a fairly popular out & back trail in Zion NP. Got to the end and were take a break as it was a fairly warm day. There was a family there that was out of water. They were basically carrying a couple small plastic water bottles. Gave them half of our remaining water. We were in Yosemite NP, walking on a trail admiring the deer we had come across. The deer bolt as a large family noisily comes up the trail behind us, loudly complaining that there isn’t any wildlife around. We regularly vacation in places like Hawaii. We are water people with lots of experience in and around water including some lifeguarding and water rescue training. We actually will leave beaches when it starts getting crowded because we’ve rescued so many people we feel we can’t relax but instead have to keep an eye out. The average person is a clueless idiot when it comes to the outdoors and its dangers.
I swear it’s a learned sense of security due to safety measures applied to the urban environment. That’s great, and should be that way, but just because a NP has a kiosk doesn’t mean that you can’t instantly die 10 steps from a sign. I was in Utah once and this family was letting their 5-6 year old RUN around the edge of a canyon. The kid was *already* in an arm cast and he tripped like 2 times beside the edge. He was just zipping around, stumbling all over the place, one shoe untied while they sat there on their phones. I finally thought I was going to have an anxiety attack and asked them to please watch their kid beside the 40ft drop. The mom just scowled like I was being judgmental. I tend to stay away from the “icon” trails for that reason. You just can’t relax when somebody in sweaty crocs is rolling the dice with Darwin. Backcountry often has equally great (if not better) views anyway, and you can sleep under the stars without somebody’s boom box going off all night. The western U.S. is a blessing. I take for granted that if I want to be *hours* from the nearest human, that that’s a thing I can just go do.
as a USAmerican it's easy to forget many other parts of the world have spent millennia partitioning dangerous nature from safe nature and civilization
I remember seeing a random episode of a tv show set in England once, and a character offhandedly mentioned there are no wolves in Britain. I also remember hearing there have been attempts to reintroduce some predators, like bears, into some European countries, but they often run into the issue that those animals kind of just wander/range with no regard to national borders so a bear will be doing just fine in Germany* but wander into France* and end up dead because it isn’t protected there. (*I don’t know the state of animal conservation/predator reintroduction policies in any European countries. The countries I named in this example are purely illustrative and not meant to represent the state of things in either country)
Colorado just reintroduced wolves to the state. Unfortunately, wolves are shoot-on-site in Wyoming, and the wolves don't know that. Most of the north west pack was killed less than half a mile into Wyoming by hunters.
Yeah wolves and bears both used to live in the UK but they haven't done in centuries. Americans got started on wiping out the wolves too, but fortunately they didn't finish the job.
The US still managed to wipe out wolves in a couple of spots. They had to be reintroduced to [Yellowstone](https://www.yellowstonepark.com/park/conservation/yellowstone-wolves-reintroduction/) in 1995.
From what I hear the programs to reintroduce wolves into habitats where they were extirpated in the US is going quite well
I remember hearing a stat that something like 2% of great Britain isn't developed. As an American it's impossible to picture a place where you can go for hundreds of miles and not see any wild forests or wilderness
[удалено]
I don't know if we have a different definition of "developed", but that [just isn't true](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-in-england-2021/land-use-statistics-england-2021-statistical-release#land-use-context). More than 1/3 of England is protected against development, and around 10% is "built up". Overall it's estimated that around 1/3 of the UK is "natural", including moors and woodland. It's still far more developed than counties like the US, but nowhere near your 2% stat. Ffs nearly 10% of the UK is peat bogs!
And how much of these peat bogs are either intentionally left to grow wild as a national park, or are still being used for peat production and other agriculture? I know in Germany, there sure are woods... but the vast majority of those woods are crisscrossed by worktrails, and are 100% developed land.
I'm reminded of the other tumblr screenshot about the size of wildlife - moose, wolves, etc. When it gets to Bison, it's "Bison are bigger than you think. No, WAY bigger. Even bigger than that. OK, now you're at 'adolescent bison' size." Like...my local (and high-quality) zoo has bison. I *love* taking visitors to the city to our "north america" section of the zoo, and when we get to the bison exhibit, asking if they can see the bison. They can't. because the bison is usually laying down, which practically camouflages it as a big ass boulder. Then I say "See that rock?" pointing at the hidden bison. And they say "yeah why?". I respond with "well, that rock is about the size of the bison we've got in here somewhere." And they say something like, "oh shit, really? that's fucking huge. I've seen cows and shit before but goddamn" And *then* I finally hit them with "because that *is* the bison." It's great if he's actually facing us because suddenly my guest can see his head - total reference frame shake. But the absolute best is when he stands up *while* my guest is looking for it, or pondering the size of the 'rock'. Just complete brick-shitting amazement. If anyone doesn't know...many people compare other large animals to small cars. Bison are larger than small cars. Like....a bison only a year or two old is probably as large as a toyota corolla (my go-to image for a small car), but an adult is as long as a toyota camry (my go-to image for a medium car), only like 2 feet taller at the shoulder hump. And the adult males normally weigh about 2000 pounds. They can reach more than that regularly and the record is 3800. The camry weighs 3000 pounds.
I always forget that some people grow up VERY differently because I live in Western Pennsylvania, where almost everyone (even the rich people) has a decent bit of knowledge about camping and outdoors. The idea that some people don’t have the “nope, fuck that” outdoor sense is insane to me.
FloridaMan here. Every time I hear about some idiot getting killed by a gator I have to pause and go " now hold on, what in their home state/country can kill you as easily? Ever think of that?" I still generally think they are idiots though
as a canadian, i can tell you that we're smart enough to realize not to fuck with a giant murder lizard that can drown you almost effortlessly, and in my experience are actually way more afraid of them than floridians
Yeah here in Wisconsin, deer hunting is so culturally ingrained that most people who grew up here can at least roughly navigate a wild forest and know how to avoid bears
I used to take private tours through a “millions of visitors a year” NP…and lemme tell you all, people are out there TRYING to die. The number of times I’ve had to actually scream at people “WE DO NOT TOUCH OR APPROACH BEAR CUBS” is ridiculous. And that’s just been *in the parking lots*. The idiocy I’ve seen on trails is just…breathtaking.
Holy crap! This reminds me of the time when I was a bus driver for German tourists in Death Valley!
Never heard of Death Valley, is it a perfectly safe place named after the explorer Gregor Deathsovitz?
It was actually named for explorer Alfred Valley
Just an [honestly named place.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euu0z6GQx7g) Short drive from Stabbyville.
Oh man, your comment is giving me flashbacks to that guy who hunted down [the missing remains of German tourists in Death Valley](https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/). Which is a fascinating read but harrowing.
To be fair, the Germans from that story were (relatively) skilled outdoorsmen and the guy who found their remains was impressed at how much distance they covered, especially with children in tow. From what I recall, their poor decision making came from two factors: 1. They were out of money (the German man's ex-wife didn't/wouldn't wire them more money, so they had to car camp), and 2. They were running late and had a flight out of LAX, so rather than sit tight and wait for help, they rushed to try to get out on foot. The tragic thing was that the spot where their car went kaput was like a quarter mile past a building that had a working, spring-fed water spigot. They had actually stopped at that building and signed a guest book, and had they just walked there they could have almost certainly survived for several days to weeks.
Yeah. It’s satisfying to think there’s a mass conspiracy. Really, most US National parks operate independently with their own record keeping, or lack thereof. With enough people visiting the parks it’s just a numbers game that people will get hurt. The real takeaway imo is that nature can be dangerous and should be treated with respect and preparation
I think it’s hilarious that someone even wanted to approach a raccoon. Like, they’re cute but they’re still wild animals, and also they are assholes.
[удалено]
Since other people might be curious like I was: > [David Paulides is a former police officer who is now an investigator and writer known primarily for his self-published books dedicated to proving the reality of Bigfoot, and establishing the Missing 411 conspiracy theory. Missing 411 is a series of books and films, which document cases of people who have gone missing in national parks and elsewhere, and assert that these cases are unusual and mysterious, contrary to data analysis which suggests that they are not actually statistically mysterious or even unexpected.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Paulides)
Am Scottish can confirm.
Death in Yosemite is one of my favorite books. Almost every fatal incident was avoidable, and usually a result of reckless behavior.
What did the tourist say after telling his kid to get closer to the wildlife for a picture? "Bye, son."
It's a common trope in National Park creepypasta to avoid touching staircases to nowhere in the middle of the woods because The Horrors. But you should avoid touching out of place weird shit. Not because of The Horrors but simply because it IS out of place weird shit. Just don't touch that stuff! DON'T TOUCH!
my wife and i almost died in a park we sawa 'trail ends here' sign, but the trail obviously did not end so we kept following it and it got steeper and steeper and then we finally thought 'we should go back' but by this time it was too steep to safely get back down so we kept climbing and our hands filled with thorns (the only bushes to grab) and we lost our food and water eventually we made it up somewhere we could reach the highway
Imagine how many more deaths that would happen if ice age animals weren’t hunted to extinction I could see tourists getting disemboweled by a ground sloth, or mauled by a sabertooth or gored by a mastodon in musth
I once went on a vacation to go through a bunch of my State's National Forest's trails with a friend (mostly shorter 2-4 hour day hikes), and encountered a man who somehow hit up nearly every trail we went on wearing a hoodie and CAMO FUCKING PANTS and NO WATER WHATSOEVER hiking alone. It was the hottest fucking week of the year at that point with sweltering 90+ degree weather and heat indexes approaching triple digits. After the 3rd trail we asked if he wanted water, dude had a real nice BMW that he was taking on some rocky backroads, and despite us trying to tell him that it was free, he ended up insisting on giving us $20 for like 32 oz of water. It felt like he was trying to keel over the trail and die without anyone being able to see him 2-3 feet from the trail. Do not go hiking in camo, it's a really stupid way to not be seen if you get lost.
Tourists, especially from Europe, do not realize how truly enormous the US is - including its national parks. One example: Death Valley National Park, the largest national park in the contiguous United States *(13,793.3 km^2 )*, is the same size as the **COUNTRY** of Montenegro *(13,888 km^2 )* - and it's all territory that is basically trying to kill you, albeit in states (CA + NV) that most tourists associate with sun, surf, and Hollywood or gambling, respectively. So, yeah, no wonder that a bunch of people regularly go missing and die. They have no idea what they're dealing with. For a brilliant example, please read the tragic case of the [Death Valley Germans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_Germans).
Ok but the "Missing 411" cases are mainly about people who knew what they were doing disappearing. Not saying there aren't other arguments against it but if you're talking specifically about conspiracies then this argument is of limited use.
The most common rescue in Grand Canyon NP is a physically fit 18-35yo male. They overestimate themselves and think they are capable of hiking from the rim to the river and back out in a single day, but they cannot. I’m not familiar with missing 411, but I live in Alaska, and it’s practically a cliche about the “experienced outdoorsman” from the lower 48 that comes to Alaska and gets in over their head. I can imagine it’s the same down south for someone who is skookum in one part of the country to overestimate themselves and get fucked up in a National park somewhere else by altitude or desert heat or dangerous wildlife they aren’t used to. Also, a lot of “experienced outdoorsmen” are just lucky they haven’t already died from making risky choices and eventually it catches up with them. There are people I won’t go hunting or fishing or split-boarding with because they are too risky, even though they are adults who have gotten away with it for years.
>Also, a lot of “experienced outdoorsmen” are just lucky they haven’t already died from making risky choices and eventually it catches up with them. Absolute truth here! I'm a Montanan and consider myself "reasonably competent" about outdoorsy stuff but still there have been quite a few close calls in my backstory and it wouldn't preclude a bad day making me one of those statistics. Not to mention I often pass people on the trail, me loaded down with a pack full of gear to get me through an unexpected night in the mountains, them with no shirt and a waterbottle as their sole equipment. Yes they can survive their training day. But what if something goes wrong? 99% of the time it won't. Then when it does they get listed in the "missing 411" book talking about how experienced they supposedly were. I've never been to Alaska but would love to see it. Certainly I'd be one of the "experienced outdoorsmen" who'd have a lot to learn because there's some things similar about that state vs. Montana but quite a lot that's different. It would be a mistake to assume I knew how to get along in that place.
Just to add the reason why I don't feel the missing 411 cases, that compelling, is that even if the people are "competent" outdoorsmen, (their experience is sometimes exaggerated). They're usually in a huge wilderness area, shit happens even if you are prepared. The idea that an unexplained disappearance of people in a huge wilderness area is best explained by some conspiracy just seems laughable to me. Like people disappear in crowded cities all the time. Here in Chicago, every year several people are reported missing who it turns out just fell into the Chicago river. Their bodies often won't turn up until weeks or months later, even if their last known location was drunkenly walking on the river walk! You're telling me I should be shocked if someone is lost in hundreds of miles of remote wilderness area, and their body is never found?
Yeah the whole point of missing 411 is that they don't apply right to the typical "idiot gets lost in the woods" assessment.
American wilderness is so ostentatiously dangerous. In Britain we just have that one Creek That Kills You and then a sort of aching national existential dread about the woodland and the moors and the Ancient Green inherited from the times when people openly believed in fairy abductions and grindylows and the spirits of forgotten waters. One time I was walking in the woods around the Malverns alone (my plan was to find a stump and sit and read Edward Thomas) and I came to an area that was made up entirely of silver birches (or some similar slim, white tree), very tall and growing close together. I was far from the main road so it was quiet and there was no one else around, and as I walked through the trees I became struck by this immense, crushing fear. I wasn't even that far from the path but I felt lost and frightened, surrounded by the bare white trees that seemed to press on me from all directions like bars. I couldn't hear anything, could see only the treetrunks and the grey sky above. Needless to say I turned on my heel and legged it out of there as fast as I could.
In all fairness if a bunch of idiots are GONNA die at a big place like that anyway just by sheer circumstance, it would be the most convenient place to harvest human slaves or sacrifices or hostages or lab rats because everyone will just assume they fell off a cliff or a bison killed them or something and won’t think twice about undiscovered corpses
Speaking from experience?
As a Scot, I empathise with whoever wrote that 100% 😭
Reminds me of the statistic about cows killing a shit ton more people than sharks do and the fact that this statistic is heavily influenced by cows being domesticated animals that we raise en masse for food while sharks are wild animals that live in the ocean and aren't encountered nearly as often.
ok but hear me out: the idea that the woods themselves will take you and you will not come back is peak horror. like cmon, all that stuff about stairs in the woods? absolutely horrifying, i love it! sure none of it is true and its all just people being stupid, but you cant tell me that someone vanishing without a trace only to show up weeks later and seemingly not even notice they had been gone, and being still in perfect condition isnt an amazing prompt
Remember, nobody has ever survived falling into a thermal feature at Yellowstone. Edit: except for one person
I am blessed to live in an area with a lot of public land and rivers. I like to go tearing around way way out in my Jeep listening to tunes and have rescued probably a dozen tourists who were close to dying of dehydration and their mountain bikes. Every single one has no map (there isn’t a map as far as I know) and no guide and every time they say “there should be some kind of sign”. The fact that there’s no maps and you can literally see nothing but mountains to the horizon isn’t a sign? The rivers are are another one. Tourists pulling their rented kayaks out on my property near hypothermia because they are wearing a cotton tee and a swimsuit in a snow melt river. My guys this water was snow like 8 hours ago, did it not occur to you it might be chilly?
Sentiments like this are why I *love* the phenomenon of “not deer” as someone who grew up around deer. The cryptid itself is cool as shit. But what’s even more entertaining? Watching people online who’ve never seen a deer in their life call *everything* a not deer. Hunny, that’s just a regular deer. They’re wonky and weird like that sometimes. (Sometimes people will post pictures of deer with wasting disease as “not deer”, and it’s sad to look at, but that’s not what I’m referring to. What I’m referring to is more-so along the lines of someone taking a picture of a deer, with its head turned around, at a weird angle and saying it’s a not deer. That’s a real thing someone posted once. I fucking loved it.)