Bear Grylls’ near-death experiences from boa constrictor attack to falling 16,000 feet

Bear Grylls has officially almost died 21 times – here are all his wildest stories (Picture: Netflix/@beargrylls)

Bear Grylls is a man we all know for eating raw deadly snakes, drinking his own urine, eating goat testicles, and generally finding truly disgusting – yet oddly admirable – ways to survive in the wilderness.

Through his years entertaining audiences on his various shows – most recently Celebrity Bear Hunt – the 50-year-old daredevil has encountered some situations that made him grateful to be alive.

Even before he hit our TV screens, Bear was pushing himself to the limits of what humans are capable of – all the while clocking up an almighty 21 near death experiences.

Chatting to Louis Theroux on his interview series, Bear said: ‘There was a lot of danger in the early days, we had so many narrow escapes.

‘I was bitten by snakes, caught in rapids, parachute failures, avalanches, you name it.’

Bear is starring in new hit show Celebrity Bear Hunt alongside stars including Holly Willoughby (Picture: Karwai Tang/WireImage)

Louis asked Bear about his claim in his book that he’s had 21 near-death experiences, to which the survivalist replied: ‘Yeah, and it was starting to happen all too regularly.

‘The show’s got to push the boundaries, everything’s got to be bigger and better, and I’ve got three young boys who were super young at this stage – I was like, ‘”why am I doing this?”‘

Why indeed…

Bear almost died as a child

Before Bear was prodding venemous snakes with sticks and chopping their heads off on TV, he wasn’t your regular 20-something, teenager, or child.

He had a penchant for danger even in his early years.

‘One of my first close shaves was as a kid,’ he revealed on his YouTube channel teaser for Bear Uncut.

‘I tried to cross the harbour at low tide and it was always this sinking mud,’ he said.

Bear has always enjoyed living life on the edge – even as a child (Picture: Samir Hussein/WireImage)

‘Everyone always said never go near the harbour at full tide so I thought, “I wonder if I can get across it.”‘

About half way across it, Bear knew it was ‘a bad idea’. He began to sink, and could see people gathering to watch and call the emergency services.

‘Eventually I managed to get my feet out, wriggle like a seal, and made it across.’

He got away with his life, but was in ‘so much trouble’ with his mum, who made him do chores for the emergency services who were called out due to his foolhardiness.

He was strangled by a boa constrictor while in a river

In March 2021 Bear revealed that coming face-to-face with an eight-foot boa constrictor while filming for his show Animals on the Loose was his scariest moment yet.

A video snapshot of the incident saw the massive snake choking him underwater.

He told The Sun: ‘We were in this deep, dark, flooded ravine. We knew we had this big, maybe eight-foot, boa constrictor in there. They’re incredibly dangerous and unpredictable.

‘Once they wrap, you can’t breathe or move, and if it takes you down you’re in big trouble. I had two safety guys nearby, but they were on edge about doing it.

‘They said, “If this thing gets you underwater you’ll be in trouble, fast”. I got in, couldn’t touch the bottom, and suddenly I felt that thing grab me and start pulling me down.

‘Then it got a grip around my neck. It caught me out. I hadn’t anticipated how fast, powerful and heavy it would be. Every time I surfaced I saw the guys giving me the thumbs-down rescue signal, but I said no.’

As the snake gripped him tighter Bear recalled running out of breath, describing the encounter as ‘terrifying and very intense’.

‘I’ve never been so scared in my life,’ he said, adding that it all happened very fast and he managed to break himself free.

Bear fell 16,000 feet in a parachute accident

Aged just 21 in 1996 – before anyone had ever heard his name – Bear was skydiving over Zambia during an SAS training exercise when he very almost died.

His parachute failed to inflate and he fell 16,000 feet and broke his back in three different places, narrowly avoiding being paralysed.

In 2021 Bear revealed he was still in pain years after the fall, as he wrote on Instagram: ‘People sometimes ask me if my back ever hurts having broken it all those years ago in a parachuting accident.

‘The answer is every day. And the treatment I get for it can be quite intense but life can at times be a battle for everyone and most people have their stuff to carry with them through the adventures.’

Bear spent the best part of the next year in military rehabilitation, learning how to move again.

He almost died climbing Mount Everest

In classic Bear form, he used the parachute accident as fuel for his ambitious adventures, and plotted to climb Mount Everest.

At 23 in 1998, he became the youngest Brit at the time to summit. Bear has since credited Spencer Matthews’ oldest brother Michael Matthews for beating him to the record. However, somewhere on his return journey, Michael died.

After falling 16,000 ft and breaking his back, Bear decided to climb Mount Everest (Picture: Ben Simms/NBC/NBCU Phhoto Bank)

Bear’s journey up the world’s highest mountain was not without fatalities, as he lost four climbers in the three months he was up there.

In Bear Uncut, the TV star admitted he had ‘a bunch of close calls on that mountain’ himself.

‘I very nearly lost my life down a deep crevasse, I was almost taken by an avalanche that missed me by 100ft,’ he said, listing the many dangers of such a climb.

Bee stings and EpiPens

In 2008 the adventurer was filming an episode of Born Survivor in Baja, Mexico when he discovered his severe allergy to bees.

While cutting honeycomb from a nest he was stung, and his face quickly swelled up, leaving him almost unable to see.

In 2023 Bear reminded fans of how his close encounter with a bee was one of his most dangerous.

It turns out Bear is also allergic to bee stings (Picture: Bear Grylls/Instagram)

‘Throwback to a bad day in the wild! Man Vs African Bees… Man lost. #manvswild #adventure #anaphylacticshock #nevergiveup,’ he posted on Instagram.

In 2019 Bear was also stung while filming Treasure Island. He was travelling to a remote island on a boat when it happened and went into anaphylactic shock. Thankfully he was treated with an EpiPen.

‘The irony is, out of all of the massive, lethal, aggressive, man-eating crocs, snakes, alligators I’ve dealt with over the years, the one that gets me is a bee. It’s typical,’ he joked.

Trying to cross the Arctic Ocean in an inflatable boat

On his YouTube, Bear admitted that one of his most lethal missions was when he attempted to cross the Arctic Ocean in an open inflatable boat in 2003.

3,000 miles into their journey, and Bear and his team were caught in some ‘horrendous storms’ off the Greenland coast.

He’s just a little bit extreme (Picture: Ben Simms/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)

‘We were caught out 500 miles off shore in these horrific gale force conditions,’ he remembered, explaining how all they could do was pray.

‘It was a truly terrifying experience,’ he reflected. ‘The power of nature and the sea in freezing cold conditions is a tough one.’

He almost drowned in an Indonesian jungle

While Bear was filming Born Survivor in the Sumatran jungle, he ignored his instincts and got into a fast-flowing river that was in full flood.

‘The reason they’re dangerous is it’s brown water so hides all the strainers and hidden logs,’ Bear explained in Uncut.

Recalling the incident to The Telegraph, he said: ‘One of the crew said it would be suicide to jump in the river in the state it was flowing – angry class-four jungle rapids – and he couldn’t be part of this if we proceeded.

‘But I felt confident we could do it if we stayed together and kept to the main flow. In retrospect, the cautious crew member was right and I should have died that day.’

As he ventured through the river with the crew floating with him, Bear was rammed under a rock ledge by the ‘immense’ power of the water.

‘I could just reach my hands out and above me,’ he continued in the publication.

‘The camera raft then smashed against the rock above me, and by the grace of God one of the guys could see my hand just above the water and grabbed it as they passed, pulling me free from the strainer.

‘That hand saved my life. And it taught me a critical survival lesson: you only get it wrong once.’

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