I don't think bears like us.
Click to viewGlacier National Park, to BC, this is my favourite part of the country. I think the bears around there are pissed at us for two reasons: 1 - Climate change and man's encroachment means they have less food, and, 2 - Most of the time they are not angry, they keenly know we are fucking up everything.
Black bears usually don't attack people, but you cannot depend on that. Grizzlies apparently like to attack people, and by "attack people", I mean, "execute people." They are so big and fat and lazy, sitting around eating berries and salmon, then out pop two-pound cubs - they really have no life, and nothing better to do, so they think it's the end of the world if they smell people. But, if you think bears are bad, how bad might it have been for your ancestors, 12,000 years ago, when you had very little chance of surviving Saber-Toothed Cats, and monstrous beavers and sloths and Mammoths, and so on. Our greatness is both in our frailty and in our luxurious insulation from reality.
Bears are very, very smart, but in the Old World, Pre-Bible way. They think in terms of dominance versus threats. And they are sick to hell of ascendant sapiens primates. It's a damn shame, but we should probably kill them all. Because when human civilisation collapses, which it will do within the next 100 years, there will be shitloads of bears to deal with, unless we do something about that. I mean, if we genetically engineer this and that, and merge species with species, and so on, why would it be so unethical to get rid of these monsters I really don't want anywhere near me? And - the way they think - so animal - so flight-or-flight - like - ALL the time...
This is how animals think, on the brink of extinction. Animal thinking. Dominance versus threats. And, we all think this way, as well, when we are also put on the brink of extinction. But, I don't think w are there, yet, unless you think we ought to be, do you? Interestingly, this is how Psychopaths think ALL THE TIME. Except, psychopaths usually have it pretty good. It's just that, in their maniac primate heads, they imagine that everyone is out to get them, and so what do they do? They turn this Animal Thinking into a law of Animal Logic. More on this, later.
You cannot use a formidable .357 Magnum against a bear. Probably, the best thing you could use, with any chance of success, would be an AK-47, hand-held. Coincidentally, this would also be the best defense against an invading billion people who have adopted the psycho mentality of Animal Logic. Some guy in Indiana just held nixed a mass-shooting at a mall, all because he had a gun, strong enough to push back a human. We need to have guns strong enough to push back bears, and EMPIRES.