Panic Magazine
August 1999
 
 
 

Bear Necessities

Does a bear-proof suit protect you in the woods?

by Elizabeth Yuan

Troy Hurtubise, a Canadian who runs a scrap-metal business in North Bay, Ontario, says he will unveil his newest creation, a grizzly bear-proof suit, on August 17, 1999. A helicopter will fly him to the den of a female grizzly, he says, and, with "168 networks around the world" watching, he will enter. "She charges me. I hit her with a dart of tranquilizer, and she goes crazy until she goes out cold," Hurtubise explains. "We extract plasma samples and fly them back to the lab. Then we set up an infrared heat camera system within the walls of the den, drag the bear into the den, then sit with the computer a thousand miles away." The heat from the bear's birth canal, he says, will trigger the infrared camera, which will transmit images of the first recorded birth of a grizzly cub in hibernation.

Hurtubise, 35, is confident that he will be bear-proof. His "grizzly suit" will ensure it. Over the past 12 years, he has toiled to create a suit that would ward off attacks from grizzly bears in the wild. With the suit, scientists will be able to conduct "close-quarter" research on the grizzly bear, without harm to themselves or the bear, Hurtubise says. In his quest for the ultimate suit, which is named for the ursus arctos horribilis, the scientific name for grizzly bears, Hurtubise has already created six suits, the Ursus Mark I through VI. ("Mark," he explained simply, "as in Mark I, Mark IIÖ.") Over the years, Hurtubise has faced public ridicule, become the subject of a film documentary and gone bankrupt. The original design, he admits, was inspired by the movie Robocop.

"To refute all," Hurtubise tested the Ursus VI suit by having a three-ton truck collide into him at 30 miles per hour 18 times. An assault by ax-wielding bikers, a 150-foot free fall from an escarpment and a 12-gauge shotgun could not penetrate the dual-skeleton armor of the suit nor harm the man within it. Armor-piercing arrows from a 100-pound bow failed to pierce a balloon he placed in the suit. The 1996 documentary Project Grizzly, by the National Film Board of Canada, captured such tests. Director Peter Lynch filmed a 300-pound tree trunk as it collided into Hurtubise. "I wasn't 100 percent sure to what degree the suit was fact or fiction," Lynch recalls. "At a certain point I was wondering, is this guy going to die? Am I responsible for letting the guy do this for my film? He managed to take what came -- and do it again."

Hurtubise's obsession was fueled by a grizzly attack 16 years ago, when he was 19. As a boy he had built a mock volcano and a robot "that walked around and looked dumb." He shrugs off the ridicule and the snickers that meet his grizzly suits. "The research I'm doing, it's beyond the scope of people. I'm not chasing bears," he says. "Jacques Cousteau had the foresight to make the air breathing apparatus." In the same way that scientists need a cage to study the Great White Shark, grizzly bear scientists need the grizzly suit.
People from around the globe have contacted Hurtubise about the suit. "Somebody from India called to see if it had any applications with Bengal tigers," Hurtubise says. Other callers who have shown interest include a heavy-metal rock band and several ranchers from Texas. "They had problems with bulls," Hurtubise says. "Anyway, you'd think you can just go to Wal-Mart to pick it up. It's not a toy. It's for safety."

An average grizzly bear weighs between 400 and 600 pounds and can cover 100 meters in 6.2 seconds from a dead standstill. Its heart measures twice the size of a human heart. And although a grizzly bear has eyesight and hearing similar to that of a human being, it can pick up the scent of death from seven miles away. Still, the chances of an average person being killed by a grizzly are very, very low. "Hippos kill more people per year than grizzlies, black bears, spiders and snakes together," says Hurtubise.

The principal aim of the suit is to study the grizzly bear up close. The study of bears has shown wide future applications for the treatment of human diseases. For instance, during hibernation, bears do not defecate, urinate, eat or drink. Although they lose 25 to 40 percent of their body weight, they still retain calcium as well as their body strength and muscle mass -- even as they remain immobile for as long as seven months. A classic paper by Dr. Ralph A. Nelson, of the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign, speculated in 1987 that understanding the bear's unique ability to adapt during hibernation may carry benefits not only for the bedridden and the arthritic but also for sufferers of anorexia, obesity, renal failure and muscular disease. Moreover, unlocking the secrets of the bear's metabolism may enable astronauts to linger in zero-gravity space for long periods of time without the dangers of calcium reduction and bone loss.

Armed with a team of engineers and the financial backing of a few investors, Hurtubise has created the latest model, the Ursus Mark VII, or the G-Man Genesis ("G," for "Grizzly"). The suit, which Hurtubise began constructing in January, will incorporate a cooling system, a full-body air bag system and a new metal, Boralyn E5, which is strong enough to withstand bullets yet lighter than aluminum. The Ursus Mark VII will be a far cry from the Ursus Mark I, which Hurtubise made from simple plastics, mesh-ball weaving and hockey and baseball equipment.

The Mark VII, Hurtubise says, will be able to withstand up to 12 times the punching power of Mike Tyson, or 6,000 pounds of pressure, and temperatures up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. (Temperatures for space shuttle re-entry only reach 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.) The suit will also contain an "impact compensation ankle system" that will allow the wearer to fall a story and a half -- and land on his feet safely.

The suit will contain, among its 23 gadgets, an airplane black box recorder to record bear sounds -- and, if necessary, the user's last words. It will also contain oxygen tanks, surveillance capabilities, a bear deterrent system and an on-board computer.

The G-Man Genesis does not have the problems of inflexibility that the Ursus Mark VI had, in part because of the suit's state-of-the-art joint systems. "You can drive a car [with the suit on], eat within it, do what NASA could do," Hurtubise says of his new suit. "You can defecate and urinate. NASA uses Depends. It took me three years to come up with that one."

Hurtubise believes the suit will be relevant to more than grizzly research. The offshoots of his product may save people who fight fires, engage in land-mine rescue missions and conduct volcano studies. The only way to stop it, he says, would be a tank or a bazooka.

Still, Hurtubise is a grizzly bear scientist, and his first concern is the collection of plasma from a pacified bear. The sample will be examined for the elusive "trigger hormone," which Hurtubise believes allows bears to conserve energy and mass once they revert to their hibernation state. If such a hormone were found, and eventually synthesized, the medical possibilities for humans would be endless.

But is a bear-proof suit really necessary to extract a blood sample? Couldn't a scientist more easily shoot the bear with a tranquilizer from afar? "There's a lot of heavy rock and bush where the den is," Hurtubise says. "You'd be lucky to find it. People think they can call from the chopper and yell for the bear to come out. The tranquilizer takes two to five minutes to work. In that time, you'll have 500 pounds of fury on you."
 

The relentless pursuit of a goal

A number of grizzly bear specialists question whether the suit will have any applications for grizzly bear research. "We try to do our research in the most unobtrusive manner. You do not want your behavior, your presence, to influence what the animals are doing," says Dr. Chuck Schwartz, head of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team at the U.S. Geological Survey's Biological Resources Division. "In over 25 years of trapping and studying habitat use by grizzlies, no crew member has ever been hurt by a bear."
Many experts see the suit as little more than a curiosity and marketing ploy, and the suit has prompted concern about up-close grizzly research. "It seems improbable that any state or federal agency here in Alaska would permit Troy to conduct his work close up with grizzlies, given legal and ethical issues," says Dr. Tom Smith, a bear research ecologist for the USGS in Alaska. "I worry about how the bear would react to the next person who enters the area."

In a field dominated by Ph.D.s, Hurtubise faces many doubts about his credibility. He was 22 when he returned to school after having left it at 16. He studied natural sciences at Sir Sanford Fleming College in Lindsey, Ontario, but never attained a higher degree. Yet the absence of a scholarly degree does not detract from the scientific nature of his work, says Gary Dryfoos, information systems consultant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and "co-conspirator" at the Annals of Improbable Research. Last October, the Annals, regarded as the MAD magazine of science, awarded an Ig Nobel Prize to Hurtubise for his work in safety engineering. The awards ceremony, which coincides with the announcement of the Nobel Prizes, recognizes serious scientific work that is "goofy but pretty wonderful," Annals editor Marc Abrahams says.

The ironic pomp of the Harvard-held Ig Nobels -- which had, among its revered guests, dancing Nobel laureates -- did not deprive Hurtubise of a rare opportunity to be taken seriously. The pinnacle of his career was not the plastic Ig Nobel Prize (estimated worth: $3) or the honor of giving the ceremony's keynote address. It was the one-hour scientific lecture he gave at Harvard the next day. There he unveiled the design of the G-Man Genesis. "The reception was overwhelming. The place was packed. I had some of the best scientists there," Hurtubise says. Among the biggest compliments he received was from James Randi, founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation, known for its work in investigating scientific claims and fraud.

"I told him that we can't always tell," Randi says, alluding to Alexander Fleming's accidental discovery of penicillin from a petri dish of bacteria mold. "Some things look silly, but ... you can lose a lot of progress if you look at the work as silly and inconsequential."

Despite his extraordinary work, Hurtubise is just an average guy, his wife insists. "He's not a nut," Lori Hurtubise says. But when Troy suggested falling through ice to demonstrate how to survive, she said no. "It'd be just him with his buckskins and jacket, not with a suit at all. It'd be to show people what to do, in terms of survival tactics. I told him that people don't want to do it by mistake. Why do it on purpose?"

Hurtubise's risk-taking is not a show but the relentless pursuit of a goal, Lori says. "If he didn't succeed, he can at least say he tried, that he went somewhere with it," she says. "Eighty percent of the population may see what they want but say that it's too far-fetched of a dream and have regrets later on. Troy will not be one of them. He'll say he'd done it all."

Among the ironies of the success and acclaim that have followed the Canadian documentary of Hurtubise's work is his displeasure with it. The film, which Hurtubise says caused him to lose $8,000 from taking time off from his scrap-metal business, became a hit in Canada. It ranked among the top 10 Canadian theatrical releases of 1997 and won numerous accolades at film festivals. Ratings soared when Project Grizzly aired on Canadian national television that October.

That year, Lori Hurtubise lost her job as an operator for Bell Canada. And while the film's success continues to generate money to finance the Film Board's future projects, the Hurtubises have not seen any of it. Hurtubise expected, at the very least, to gain credibility from the film. Instead, he says, "They didn't give me three minutes about why I wanted to do the suit." Hurtubise had become a national icon of both folly and hero.

The camera captured Hurtubise as he lumbered around stiffly like the Tin Man without oil. It caught the day Hurtubise sank into mud and yelled a muffled cry for help, and then later when he fell over and couldn't get up. The camera watched as Hurtubise needed two people to lift him, like a child, into the suit's lower shell each time he put it on. It recorded his frustration over the inflexibility of the Ursus Mark VI, even as it recorded his pride at pointing out the layers upon layers of protection the suit had: titanium, chain mail, Tek plastic and air bags. Film watchers were given a portrait of a hero whose obsession unveiled a folly worthy of, if not admiration, sympathy.

The studies and multiple developments of his suit rendered Hurtubise bankrupt until recently. His Ursus Mark VI cost $150,000 to build. The G-Man Genesis will cost $1.2 million. When Hurtubise went bankrupt months after filming of Project Grizzly, the Ursus Mark VI was taken away to an auction house. The money from the bidding in June went to his creditors. In the meantime, Hurtubise is trying to convince the sports world to buy patents for "Air Johns," long johns with compressed air bags to be worn under a hockey player's uniform. Talk-show and lecture fees have helped cover most of the last year's bills.

But the neighbors don't see him as a celebrity, Lori says. On a normal day in North Bay, the Hurtubises, along with their son Brett, still head for the coffee shop where Hurtubise first met his wife seven years ago. People may laugh at his grizzly suit, Hurtubise says, but he will laugh last.
 

Epilogue

Troy Hurtubise was reached at home a month ago. He said that because of low cash flow, he will not be able to have the suit ready for next week's scheduled unveiling. He waved off skepticism, however, and said he will give a worldwide demonstration next year.
 
 

Elizabeth Yuan works for CNN Headline News in Atlanta.