Bear Grylls Reveals Harrowing Footage Where He Nearly Lost His Life On Man Vs. Wild

Bear Grylls has a lot of near-death experiences on "Man vs. Wild." It's practically the whole point of the show. So when he talks about moments where he really felt like he was on death's doorstep, you'd better believe we're going to pay attention. Grylls detailed one such experience on his YouTube channel as part of a series called "Bear Uncut." This particular video featured Grylls talking about his five "closest shaves," and he ended the clip talking about being fingertips away from the end while filming "Man vs. Wild" in Sumatra, Indonesia. Grylls' worst injuries from the show may have come from his equipment, but the natural world was responsible for this particular near-death experience. 

For the first time on camera, Grylls talked about this grandiose moment, which occurred when, for reasons unknown to us, he jumped into a river in full flood. The survival expert described why jungle rivers in this state are so dangerous, saying that the brown, raging waters "hide all the strainers and hidden logs. And, uh, and I got in it." 

Grylls explained that his instincts were telling him something was off, but he jumped in anyway, and while fighting the rapids, he began to get swept under a rock undercut — a formation within a section of whitewater that can easily pin you underneath the rapids until you drown.  Grylls thought he was toast, but at the last second, he stuck out his hand and was grabbed by someone on his crew boat. "Otherwise, I would have been taken under that rock shelf, and I would never have come out," he says.

No, the lesson he learned was not that he should retire and take up pickleball. It's not that surprising, considering this is the same person who broke his back parachuting and used the injury as fuel to climb Mount Everest. Nothing will stop Bear Grylls. Being that close to death in Sumatra wasn't even the most terrifying moment of his career. Yet, he still got close enough to death to learn something. The lesson, according to Grylls, is that "Instinct is the nose of the mind. Trust it." 

Earlier in the video, he was a bit more candid, saying, "Really, the lesson is that you should never get in a jungle river in full flood," which we probably could have told him before he jumped in. Grylls has made an entire life out of doing the impossible, so he likely enjoys learning things the hard way. Grylls also detailed that while he was heading down to the river, he had a feeling in his gut that something was off. His instinct told him not to jump in, but he did it anyway, and that is the only thing he wouldn't recommend doing. Grylls finished his lesson by saying, "When in doubt, there's no doubt. Don't do something. In the wild, you only get it wrong once." Is it ironic that this quote comes at the end of a video about five different times he almost died but continued going? We'll let you decide.

If that quote sounds familiar to you, it's probably because you read "A Survival Guide to Life," a self-help book written by Bear Grylls. In the book, which was published nine years before the aforementioned clip, Chapter 29 is titled with that exact same quote. The entire chapter expands upon this idea of instinct as a nasal passage and how that can influence your life. The chapter includes lessons about his intuition that Grylls learned from extreme survival scenarios.

After talking about the nose of his mind, Grylls says, "Instinct is almost impossible to define, but it can be so important when we come to a crossroads on our journey through life." He continues, urging, "Don't fight against that inner voice if it is speaking loudly to you. It is there to guide and protect you." This is really great advice, but it is a voice we've got to imagine that Grylls has learned to fight against a lot over the years. Grylls' favorite "Man Vs. Wild" episode had him eating an entire pigeon egg raw. Whose internal monologue has ever encouraged that? 

Everyone's instincts are different, and we can be glad that Bear Grylls was the one born with the instinctual urge to jump out of airplanes, while we were born with a voice that keeps us grounded and tells us to put down that extra cookie.