Bears In The Post-Oil World

So Noah Axon posted a funny picture with a charging black bear with the caption: Not a runner? You are now. This lead to a debate on the merits and limitations of self defense from bears. I will clarify that I have had bear encounters, with black bears nosing at my tent in Yosemite, trying to get in. Did not sleep well that night. Also had a momma grizzly whose cubs were elsewhere run away from me after waiting till I was unsuspectingly within about 4 feet in heavy brush in Montana. I think it smelled my Visin (predator pheromone byproduct from digesting meat emitted as scent) and thought I was armed. I was lucky. I have seen pictures of bears walking down my street. I have heard stories from friends and family of bears they've encountered inside and outside their homes. They act like it's kinda funny. It isn't.

In a car, a bear in the road is a fuzzy photo opportunity. People in cars might not realize that a bear can run 40 mph, and is perfectly strong enough to rip the car door into tin-foil given a chance. Bears are STRONG. They are omnivores, and always hungry. They raise their young to eat the things they eat. Bears train their cubs.

Bears also come down into where I live. Not often, but they are spotted around rural homes, flipping over garbage cans, climbing onto people's decks or into their garage for a nap. Ignorance of the dangers, and years of cute bear cartoons, means people don't understand that bears are moody, which means that they are unreliable in their responses. What yesterday wasn't bothering them means today they could charge and break your neck and eat you after you die. Or worse, before you do. Bears are genuinely dangerous. Not cute.

And bears are having more encounters with people. Thanks to rising numbers, drought in California, and govt policies of relocation rather than shooting problem bears, bears that aren't afraid of people are raising cubs that aren't afraid of people and people and bears are having more interactions where the bear does NOT learn to run away. Eventually bears will realize that human children are delicious and they'll start eating our kids. And the Sierra Club will tell us it's our own fault. Kinda like they did with mountain lions hunting children and joggers. Ahem.

In the future, with oil going overseas to economies with viable currency, unlike the USA and its declining dollar, eventually most travelers will be riding bicycles, slowly, up and down mountain roads where bears realize people are food. And most cyclists are pretty slow uphill. Not fast enough to outrun a bear, for example, if it decided to ambush in an uphill charge at its usual speed. Bicycles might be found on the roadside with a lot of ants and blood smeared around and the bicyclist mostly missing, having been eaten. Normally, this would be fully absurd to even consider... but in the post-oil world, with expensive real estate in the cities made worse by power blackouts and no cars to scare off the bears, eventually they will descend the mountains into the lowlands, following the food supply. Locals around here will likely burn their trash so there's little for the bears to go after but their livestock, pets, and kids, and parents that want to keep their children will actually watch them with a rifle close in hand. The suburbs leading into Sacramento, 100 years ago, had bears drift down into the Sacramento Valley. The bears were also found in the orchards near Marysville, though farmers would shoot them. Such things are illegal now. And politicians in limousines will just drive on past, ignoring the beasts and the people being eaten by them. Even post oil, and post pavement, it isn't that hard to turn a 4WD Suburban into a limousine on the inside. Relatively speaking. You just need the fuel.

So a bear in a road? Yeah, that happens here. A bear attacking a person to eat them? Not often. Not yet. But give it time. When we get poor enough, and the bears get hungry enough, and we become helpless enough, bear encounters will end with dead people and fat bears. And some govt leader will say it is our fault, that we just have to UNDERSTAND the bears. Because understanding fixes everything.

This is a good argument for a dune buggy or an Enduro motorcycle. It can go faster than the bear. While it is true that the engine noise tells the bear food is coming, the same way that jingle bells are a good way to identify bear shit, from the last hiker with jingle bells that they ate, being faster than 40 mph could end up the lifesaving advantage. The fuel could cost, but $10/gal. is cheap compared to your life. And motorcyclists wear armor. You won't taste like food, at least not at first. That might be long enough.

Naturally, the worry about bears returning to their normal predation on people as food is some years away. So this is probably something you'll have long forgotten before it matters. It's just something to keep in mind. After all, it's not like predators eat children, right?