Authorities in Siberia will go to almost any length – one medium bear's length, actually – to ensure comrades and strangers alike keep their social distance.
What's a meter and a half between friends? Survey says... a little under five feet in the USA or roughly the length of a medium-sized brown bear in Russia. Two different countries, two different ways of measuring stuff. Mind you, it's a lot more convenient to carry a tape measure around, compared to a medium-sized (or ANY size) bear but hey, we're not gonna tell the Russkies what to do and neither should you!
That said, Russians sure do know their bears: they make Dwight Schrute look like a piker in that respect. And while the erstwhile Assistant to the Assistant Manager also has an affinity for beets, nobody beets er, BEATS Russians when it comes to beet-based cuisine such as borscht in all its myriad delicious permutations. We won't get into Battlestar Gallactica as we've already digressed enough... where were we?
Ah yes, the uniquely Russian concept of using bears as a unit of measurement! The featured PSA poster was snapped by Twitter member Sergey Bobkov somewhere in Siberia but it could have been most anywhere across Russia's eleven-time-zone breadth. Indeed, the Brown Bear (Ursus arctos) is native to the entirety of Russia and has been a symbol of the nation for centuries.
Now that Russia is once again facing an existential crisis, this time in the form of the novel coronavirus (aka COVID-19), it's only natural that the personification of national spirit be enlisted into the fight. They are Russians, hear them roar... and staying a bear's-length apart while in public will surely put that puny virus in its place! (images via Sergey Bobkov and Siberian Times)
