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If you need help look for a cop.
Lol!
You'd never find one of you went looking over here, I've not seen a cop on foot or parked up in YEARS. Only ever see em driving somewhere. Strange.
When I spent some time in the USA though it was creepy, they'd drive their cars around real slow, just watching you, and they're everywhere. It felt weirdly oppressive/threatening to have them always around the next corner, always over your shoulder....watching o.O
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The brightest star in the sky is not the North Star (Polaris). If you follow the brightest star in the sky you will follow a planet and travel some curved path.
How to really find Polaris:
Cool, now how do I find those thingies?
Look up
I always struggled with that, too, until my cousin taught me to use Cassiopeia. The other constellations use way too complex of shapes and require accuracy, and they're not super-bright.
Cassiopeia looks like a W or M. Look for 5 dots that could possibly form an ugly W where the left side is wider and more shallow than the right. It'll genuinely stand out like this.
There it is!
Now, mentally draw a straight line across the tips of the shallow side of the W. Then, draw a straight line through that starting from the bottom of the shallow side. You'll get something like an arrow shape. Keep following that perpendicular line away from the W until you find something nearby the line that is noticeably bright. That's Polaris!
After you find that, you can confirm you found the right star by looking for the dippers and shit.
Great question! Use https://stellarium-web.org/ and set it for your latitude or location, according to your preference, and then look toward the northern sky. You can set the app to highlight the constellations.
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Drink alcohol to stay warm.
Is that an actual, existing survival myth?
I mean, it definitely makes you warmer. In that it shunts your blood to the outer layer of your body, warming your skin and making you feel less cold. Problem is, this actually makes you lose heat more rapidly, and increases your susceptibility to hypothermia. But since you can experience "drink alcohol, feel warmer" yourself, the myth will probably persist indefinitely.
It is calories too so can be drunk for energy if you're out of food.
Sadly, I think some people believe it.
But other people think you get sick from being outside in the cold
Yes. It's where the old meme of St Bernards carrying little flasks of alcohol came from. The idea was if you were injured in the cold, alcohol would warm you up.
You may feel warmer. But it actually lowers your core temp, IIRC.
It actually was the case, in the olden days.
The classic image of St. Bernard rescue dogs carrying tiny barrels of brandy for the benefit of hypothermic travellers was a myth though.
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I don't know how much so practically, but it perseveres at least in tongue in cheek references to "putting on your whiskey jacket"
Can't say I have ever heard that expression.
Alcohol is antibacterial, thus medicinal.
"If it's black, fight back. If it's brown, lie down."
That's shortened to the point of being useless and leaves out the parts that actually matter.
First of all, there are black grizzlies and brown "Black bears" and the sizes of the species overlap. It may be hard to identify a bear that's coming at you.
Here's what you should do: Carry pepper spray whenever you're in bear country!
When you encounter a bear close up, stand still, take out your pepper spray (or anything you can use as a weapon) and start talking to it calmly. Let it know you're a human and neither aggressive nor afraid. Ask it how its day is going.
If it backs down, you walk backwards slowly till it's out of sight, then find a different route.
If it stays put, advances or charges, you stand still facing it. Don't run or climb a tree. Most charges are mock charges where it'll stop before you.
If it doesn't stop and gets within 20-30 feet, shoot your pepper spray, which was shown to stop 95% of bear attacks.
In the other 5% fight for your life. Lying down might sometimes be better if it's a Grizzly, depending on its motivation to attack you, but there's no way you can know that.
Source: worked as a ranger in British Columbia
Just want to add, because as an outdoorsy guy in Pennsylvania, I'm a little dumbfounded by how many people seem to think we might have brown/grizzly bears in our neck of the woods.
There aren't. If you're reading this, odds are pretty good that you don't live in brown bear country, because you're probably in an English-speaking country, and just going by numbers you're probably not in the parts of western Canada, Alaska, or the tiny part of the Continental US (mostly just Yellowstone) where they can be found.
Everywhere else in North America it's black bears (or polar bears, but I really hope you don't need help identifying those, and maybe a handful of grizzly-polar bear hybrids)
If you're in Europe you have brown or polar bears.
If you're in Asia, you have a few species with a bit of overlap- brown, polar, panda, sun, and 2 or 3 other species I don't remember off the top of my head.
If you're in the Andes, you got spectacled bears.
If you're anywhere else in the world, read the sign by the cage because you're in a zoo.
Also, I have never encountered a black bear that didn't immediately fuck off the moment it noticed me. There are certainly bolder ones out there, and you should always take any reasonable precautions, but when I'm camping and hiking, bears are basically at the bottom of my list of concerns, squirrels, chipmunks, mice, etc. generally rank higher, I've had chipmunks try to get into my pack while I was sitting there watching it.
All my years of camping I've had exactly 1 incident with a bear back when I was in scouts, and it happened when we were all away from camp, it got into a box of cookware, and I suspect it probably immediately scared itself away when the pots and pans went clattering everywhere.
My experience with black bears as well. They fuck off as soon as they see you.
Grizzlies seemed more annoyed, like "Why's there a human in my woods? I just wanna chill."
So depending on their mood, they'll usually check you out, maybe try to get you to fuck off, and failing that, grudgingly walk away.
I actually missed the number one protection against bear (and cougar) attacks in my post:
Have a hiking partner and talk to them. Or sing to yourself.
That reduces the chance of even encountering a bear by a lot cause they hear you coming and avoid you well in advance.
The drawback is you won't get to see a bear.
Our bear safety trainer actually said step 1 in a bear encounter is: Take out your camera.
It puts you in a more reasonable mindset, cause almost no encounters lead to attacks. And you can take some sweet pictures.
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In the other 2%, fight for your life. Aim for the nose. Good Luck!
I mean, I guess, yeah,, that's what you should try. But I'd like to point out that whoever it was Romans or whatnot who used to pit bears against lions and they got bored of the matchup because the bears always won. And those won't have even been grizzlys, but likely European brown bears.
But yah guess one could get lucky and it's not like not-fighting will help either,
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Is you're lost but someone knows where you're supposed to be it's probably better to stay put.
Also moss can grow on any side of a tree.
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Drinking your own pee will end up dehydrating you faster, contrary to how confident Bear Grylls is in it being a decent strategy.
I think Bear Grylls has a fetish and managed to fool people into thinking it was a survival skill.
I think even Bear admits that it should be an absolute last resort. Like a "well I'm like 99% sure I'm dying in the next ten minutes, why not?" sort of situation.
So I'm gonna die anyway, but with the taste of piss in my mouth? Fuck that.
Sometimes it annoys me when I both need to pee and am thirsty. Like, damn you body, why wont you just keep that water for other stuff i need instead of wasting it on producing pee.
This is a joke, I know peeing is important.
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PCP makes you better at fighting cops
Well it's not wrong, but it will get you killed
it makes you stronger too.
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Run outside into the street during an earthquake
I think it very much depends on the building
If you get bit by a venomous snake sucking the venom out doesn't work and is likely to make things worse.
ask AI slop for advise
TL;DR: If you post here, please emphasise the true text, e.g. put that up front!
I've noticed that I don't remember text literally, so if a post says "the sky isn't green" then I might tomorrow remember having read something about the sky and green but was this the correction or was this the myth? Was it even in the myths thread or did I read it elsewhere?
Better for me to read only true things, e.g.: "the sky is blue, don't believe the myth about a different color". Or mention the myth is in a spoiler tag or elsewhere in the text where it doesn't act like the headline or main takeaway
Apparently most people have this, see e.g.: https://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/6/1/38/114468/Repetition-Increases-Perceived-Truth-Even-for
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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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