I'm reading "Three Hundred Zeros", the book about Ken Blanchard's ("K1") 2007 hike.

Wow -- the guy starts out by nearly being run over by a moose on his shakedown hike. Then he gets on the AT, and has mice fighting over his gear and a bear tripping over his hammock ties right off the bat at Hawk Mountain.

He seems to wake up every night to the sound of bears poking through everyone's gear at every shelter. Half the time he's eating lunch with a bear eyeing him hungrily. At one point he chases off a bear that has just bluff-charged a couple of fellow hikers. And then he gets stuck at Fontana Dam when the rangers hold him back because a bear has decided to take a break right in the middle of the trail. He also sees numerous rattle snakes and one actually strikes at him and misses. He stops and takes a picture.

At one point, he's at some shelter in the Smokies and the trampled ground is a "surface cesspool" (his words) of poop and toilet paper as far as the eye can see.

This thing reads like a zombie apocalypse, only the zombies haven't figured out that brains are tasty.

And I had just talked myself out of that little 3oz can of a bear mace! Maybe I need an AR-15! And an isolation suit!