If you are in an open area of the Arctic tundra and are approached by an aggressive polar bear, what should you do?

If you are in an open area of the Arctic tundra and are approached by an aggressive polar bear, what should you do?

While backpacking in the Marble Mountains of Northern California I encountered a fully-grown black bear, face-to-face. I had my head down, making time, and he was doing the same, when we met at a bend in the trail. By the time my mind had burned up a tiny fraction of a second, trying to remember whether you should run uphill, or down, to get away from a bear, the bear had made it about thirty feet up the nearly vertical mountainside, and kept on going. Granted, he was startled, but if he had been hungry, and looking to eat me, I have no doubt he would have moved just as fast. Do not underestimate a bear. 

A polar bear will kill you, stone dead, without provocation. It does so because it is both a hyper carnivore and an apex predator. It does not recognize you as anything other than a potential food source. It was not a polar bear, I grant that polar bear is more of a predator and threat. 

One thing makes me curious: is there no way martial arts can work against them? I think it can not work against them, they can resist to the pain of your kick as if it is an ant bite, they have more muscles and energy. Even if you can keep it far from you with effective kicks, you will get tired after, say, 30 minutes as it will constantly be attacking you. 30 minutes of fight is a small step for a bear but a giant leap for a man. In Alaska there is an understanding that if you are carrying a handgun to protect yourself against bears, especially grizzlies, before you leave home, you need to file the foresight off the front of the gun. This way it’s less painful when the bear shoves the gun where the sun don’t shine.

And polar bears, being pretty much exclusively carnivorous, are a much more deadly prospect than a grizzly. A grizzly isn’t really interested in eating you, unless it’s really hungry and there’s nothing else. A grizzly may even ignore you. But a polar bear needs meat.

With the rapid shrinking of the area of sea ice, polar bears are missing out on seals that rest on the ice and were regular prey. They also have fewer places to rest at sea. So more are coming ashore, and they are lean, mean and very hungry. Polar bears can sprint at 25 mph, which is faster than humans can manage. They can out-swim you easily. They are not a nice bear and definitely not cuddly.

You must remember there are only three things up in the Arctic: Ice, water, and potential calories. Guess which category people are in.

Without a fairly serious gun or chemical bear deterrent you are going to die. You are going to be eaten. This is both natural and inevitable.

Look mom! I killed a whale!

“I would run away!” you protest.

I understand. That is your fight or flight response correctly identifying you stand no chance of fighting a polar bear and therefore choosing to run. Depending on the distance at which the polar bear spots you I give you about 5 seconds before it chases you down and kills you with the casual ease with which you and I eat a cookie. 

Although we think of other bears and animals stalking human beings, it is untrue, except for one, the Polar Bear. Others animals will protect it’s young, and if feeling threatened, will attack and kill humans, but only this son of a bitch will go out of it’s way to stalk for the sole purpose of killing a human being for food. They also have an incredible sense of smell and can pick up the scent of a human from 20, I said, 20 miles away. I agree with the warnings by Arne; it’s the most deadly mammal we know of. That's why in Churchill, Manitoba they put their garbage dump one whole mile away from the town. These geniuses have this serious problem with polar bears strolling into town and breaking things. Either put out better garbage or maybe shut the dump down. Like all bears, polar bears are unpredictable. I read an article by a scientist who was using a hypodermic tranquilizer gun to knock out polar bears so he could check their condition, measure and weigh them, and tag them. Once day he shot a polar bear sitting on the ice. She didn’t fall over as expected, so he thought he had not given her enough of the tranquizer. He crept up on her so he could determine how woozy she was so he could deterine how muchmore to give her without killing her only to freeze in terror when he got close enough to see that the dart was hanging in her fur; it hadn’t penetrated her skin.

He had 2 choices: shove the dart into her & hope he could escape while the drug took effect or just try to escape—neither offered much hope of survival. He opted for shoving the dart into her. She turned her head to look at him. He froze. Then she turned away and a few minutes later passed out while he lay there unmoving.