This movie was one of the most flagrant violations of reality I've yet seen from Hollywood. They'd have died night 1 if it were real, and that's without the wolves. Had they any survival training, they'd had been able to beat the wolves, every single one of them.
Any human being trained for a couple of days and armed with either a baseball bat or a spear can defeat a wolf or three. There's a reason dogs are man's best friends, and it's not because we can out-do the wolf in it's natural habitat. It's because some of us today, and most of us three hundred years ago, are in the same natural habitat as wolves and every other creature roaming planet Earth. Grizzlys? Yes, scary, but they're not the king of the forest.
We are.
People forget that, primarily because Hollywood likes to paint a false picture that we humans are at the mercy of the wild. What I learned in U.S. Air Force Survival School is that if that were so, we'd have been plowed under 50,000 years ago. As evidenced by cave paintings throughout the world, and by cliff carvings here in Colorado I've seen for myself, we humans conquered wild animals tens of thousands of years ago. The paintings/carvings indicate that it was usually in groups, er, "packs," same as used by wolves, but unlike them, we have access to things like spears, bows and arrows, nets, snares, trip-wires, fall traps....
And that's just in North America. We came from Africa, home of the elephant, giraffe, and lion. Wow - king of the beasts. Yet we're the king of the planet, while they're the endangered species.
My point is that The Grey is Hollywood nonsense. I've encountered one wolf, two bobcats, one mountain lion, numerous black bears, one brown bear, one grizzly, three moose, and countless dear in the wild. Add to that more than three dozen poisonous snakes, mostly in Florida, where I grew up.
OMG! I SURVIVED!!! I must be some sort of hero!!!
Nope. Just an average joe, as any hunter or outdoorsman who's spent any time in the wild will attest. It is what it is, and what is, ain't Hollywood.
And when it comes to outdoor survival, I still consider myself a neophyte. Yes, I could hike from here to the west coast living off the land, even in the dead of winter.
But why? I'm watching Life on Mars, season 1, ep 1 on Netflix, and enjoying my own good cooking!
People...
