To make it clear, Grylls is a fairly reliable survival expert who should be listened to in general.

On some of the specifics, though, you should not follow his advice unless there is no other alternative.

Drink Urine

This is perhaps one of the worst survival tips that is constantly repated. While it might be okay to drink your urine one or two times in a severe dehydration situation, it is a very bad idea.

Urine is one of the ways that your body passes out waste. The more dehydrated you are, the more concentrated waste in your urine will be. By drinking the waste-filled urine, you are forcing your body to process it again. And guess what your body needs to process waste? Yep – water.

Throw Your Food At a Bear

Bear Grylls comes into contact with bears a few times on his show. And, in multiple situations, he gives some really bad survival advice.

Grylls sees a black bear. First off, he makes the stupid mistake of staying around to stare at and film the bear. He could have just slowly backed away and would have been completely safe (black bears aren’t as aggressive as brown bears). Then Grylls gives the even dumber survival advice of throwing your backpack of food towards the bear. The idea is that the bear will go check out the food and lose interest in you.

Throwing food at a bear is a really bad idea. Aside from teaching bears to come to people for food, it might piss off the bear and it could come attack you out of self-defense (you started it,

Eat Raw Game

On at least one episode, Bear Grylls has caught an animal and bitten right into the dead animal.
This might make for good TV, but it is bad survival advice.

As Adventure points out, raw meat can contain all sorts of bacteria and parasites. Eating raw meat in a survival situation is practically a death sentence because you could end up with diarrhea, then severe dehydration. The only reason that indigenous groups like Eskimos can eat raw fish is because salt water and cold temperatures kill bacteria and parasites. So don’t risk it.

Either cook your game, or find another source of survival food – like eating insects for survival.

Swing Your Way Across Streams, Ravines, Waterfalls…

In countless episodes, Bear Grylls comes across something like a raging river. His response is always something along the lines of,

“It would take too much time to go around. Let’s go over it!”

In one episode, he lashes poles to his hands and uses them to vault down a mountain! In real survival situations, you don’t get to scout out the terrain beforehand (as Bear Grylls does), nor do you get to do a re-shoot if your first attempt doesn’t work out, nor will you have a camera crew ready to whisk you away to a hospital. So, if you ever come across an obstacle like a big ravine, spend the extra few hours to hike carefully around it instead of ending up with broken bones.

Undoubtedly, Grylls’ experiences or training have given him a confidence in some of these situations that you as an amateur should not possess.

While Grylls does mean well and his show is very sound on basic survival, you need to take any advice on specific situations or his behavior with a grain of salt.

To read some other things Grylls recommends that you probably should ignore, check out Primal Survival.