The Maldives are indeed overflowing with trash and have problems with lots of it washing up on the beach in places. I agree with you, though, that trash that just happens to be very convenient for the show seems deliberately placed.
There’s lots of jetsam. Finding what you need would just be tedious, so they cut that step out.
Haven’t seen the show, just commenting in general. Finding something you could wear would just take time.
And yeah, you can’t live on coconuts alone… and getting them down and eating them is harder than it may look.
Yes, I’ve seen it.
I think the idea is that people are at a disadvantage when they are naked…they (we) feel more vulnerable. And in fact, we ARE more vulnerable, especially to the elements.
To me, the nudity doesn’t detract from the survival elements, which are quite real. One of the shows I watched had the male nearly die after drinking some unfiltered river water (he basically had to drink it since it was take the chance on river water or pass out from dehydration).
This show is certainly for real. I could see someone dying easily on the show if they continue to put people into these extreme situations. I’ve often joked that a REAL survival show (as opposed to shows like Survivor) would drop a person into Borneo with a butter knife…but it’s no joke when they actually did something very similar to that on one episode. It shows you that even with good survival skills (all the participants have those) you just never know.
I’m pretty sure this would be the least of my worries. There’s the whole “staying alive” issue at hand. I’m not modest though. If someone doesn’t want to see my poop butt in the wild, they should turn their head.
Survivorman and Naked & Afraid both show how brutal survival can be. Even with training these people basically starve for days and days at a time. Making fire isn’t always possible in wet conditions. Several of the people on Naked & Afraid are survival instructors and they’ve been really humbled by their experience. That big 6’ 4" woman gave up after 18 days because she couldn’t catch any food and her partner had been rushed to the hospital after 9 days. The occasional worm or bug just isn’t enough over 21 days. Nearly all these people on N&A drop 20 to 30 lbs.
I’m surprised the “survival instructors” aren’t choosing iodine as there one survival item. Standard 2% drug store works pretty well. 5 to 10 drops per quart of water and wait a minimum of 30 minutes. It’s also important to wipe off the bottle or container where your mouth will touch with the iodine water. Pathogens can hide there and make you sick. You should also filter the water through cloth first but N&A people are naked. 
Instead the big 6’ 4" woman brought a pot. Couldn’t get a fire started and they didn’t have safe water. But they had the useless pot.
update That was Julie and Puma in Borneo.
I saw a few episodes the other night. Interesting premise, but either the people are forced to go with the conceit or they’re idiots. Specifically, in the African episode, they hop out of the jeeps, shuck their clothes and start hiking three miles to a water hole through thorn-infested grasslands. I don’t care * what * they call the show, if there are four inch thorns on the ground, the first thing I’m going to do is make myself a pair of sandals, even if I have to cobble them together out of tree bark and the remains of dead zebras.
I get it that they were in a hurry to get to water, but if you’re gingerly creeping through the grass, you’re not going to be making any speed. And one foot injury or infection and you’ve just sunk to the bottom of the African food chain.
Not to mention if there are Fer de lances (pit vipers) about, you don’t want your junk hanging out like a meal-sized thermal pinata. They may not look like REI gear but I’m getting my feet, head and organs covered.
I came across the show last night and could not believe people would do this. I thought it must be for money but apparently they are just doing it for bragging rights. I watched another episode tonight to see if it got any better and it looks like they spend most of the time utterly miserable and just trying not to starve to death before they can get out of there. There aren’t a whole lot of survivor skills on display. I don’t see the appeal of many episodes of that.
I caught Discovery’s reruns last night – I hadn’t seen the Borneo episode, but god, that was scary between Puma contracting whatever-it-was from drinking untreated water and being airlifted out of there to Julie nearly freaking out a few days later from being totally alone. Two totally believable scenarios IF you were ever caught as a castaway on a jungle island.
And that’s the point, IMO, about survival shows. In some cases the scenarios may be manufactured, but they’re ALL plausible. I’d like to think that, in all my years of watching them, I’d remember a lot of it, but who’s to say that I wouldn’t choke IF I ever found myself IRL in a survival situation, naked and afraid?
Yes, the premise is supposed to be that they start naked and afraid, not that they have to remain that way.
So Mythbusters did a show where they put Jamie and Adam on a “deserted Island” with duck tape as their only survival tool. They had shirts and pants, but no shoes. The conceit was they had as much duck tape as they needed to do anything they conceived of, so they staged it with a shipping pallet of duck tape “washed up on shore”. I.e. a shitload of duck tape.
One of the first things Adam had to do was stop working in the hot sun and make a hat. He made a duck tape fedora. Because of his light skin, he was especially susceptible to the solar rays and heat. Jamie had his permanently-affixed beret.
Shortly after that, they each devised sandals when they decided they had to go exploring. Two different approaches, both made servicable shoes. Because hiking around in bare feet on volcanic rock is going to beat those babies up.
I think, if I were forced on the show, I would agree “I start naked.” As soon as you’re out of the jeep and stripped off, it’s fair game for anything you can devise from nature and your one item (and your partner’s one item).
Mythbusters made a case for ducktape if you can have an unlimited supply. If you’re limited to 1 roll or only as much as you can carry, I might be less enthusiastic about that choice.
“Survivorman” basically starved for a week for each episode. It’s not that big a deal for a fit person to go with almost no food for a week. Les would hunt and gather, but finding food was always low priority on his show.
That’s the classic rule of three, showing survival priorities:
3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food. If you don’t have shelter from the heat/cold, forget about food or water, concentrate on protecting yourself. And if you don’t have safe water, forget about food.
But this show is considerably longer, and 30 days with almost no food is bad times.
**(Bolding mine)**Except she wasn’t totally alone - she had cameramen following her around everywhere, and they had the ability to call for an airlift out, just like her partner got.
Pretty sure it’s 21 days.
Maybe if that was your sole diet for an extended period. But they had just endured several straight days of rain, so fresh drinking water would have been abundant (if they had taken precautions to collect it). They shouldn’t have a problem replenishing electrolytes since they were right on the sea and had salt available.
In the Panama episode, it seemed that they might not have been taking advantage of the smaller animals as food sources. The area they were in should have had small crabs, snails, clams, and oysters. Boil them up in water and you have a nice bouillabaisse.
I’ve been caught short a few times in the forest, and soft leaves or moss generally be found with a little looking around. Drier areas can be a problem, but dry dusty soil can be used in a pinch. But all these folks would have access to water, so you can just clean yourself that way (especially if you’re on the shore as in the Panama episode). This would really be the least of your problems.
Except even when Puma was going downhill fast with his illness, he had to wait until morning for medics to get to him. Overnight it was just them and their personal cameras.
We’ve been watching this, and my GF, a horticulturalist and a vegetarian, is always complaining that they seem to be completely reliant on finding and eating meat, and don’t seem to be bothering to find edible plants at all. While this is not entirely true, there have been a few instances where the participants came across a fruit tree, or coconuts, I agree that they do seem to be over-reliant on fishing and hunting for food, usually unsuccessfully.
However the flipside of that, I would argue, is that edible plants aren’t as common as some people would lead you to believe, and can be difficult to identify for those who are not experts (not to mention those whose judgement may be impaired from exposure/hunger/thirst).
Yes, identifying edible animals (all mammals and birds, most reptiles, the majority of fish) is much easier than identifying edible plants, especially when you are thousands of miles from familiar territory.
One thing that surprised me was how crucial the mental game is. In one episode, the narrator mentioned that dehydration and malnutrition can cause depression, which saps motivation. That can be more dangerous than the physical hardships.
The Louisiana episode was an interesting example. The man had lots of useful knowledge and skills; but emotionally, he was rather brittle. The woman was highly dependent on him; and yet it was her will to keep going that kept him from quitting.
Teamwork is essential. If the Panama couple had just swallowed their own egos, they would have been much less miserable. Once the Maldives couple stopped fighting and started working together, their quality of life improved dramatically.
One thing that struck me is how the macho alpha males tend to get themselves into trouble. They either get injured, or they get dehydrated, or they drink un-sterilized water. Then they spend several days bedridden, while the woman has to pull double duty.
That Louisiana episode was nuts with all of the poisonous snakes surrounding their camp (until it flooded). They’re really out in the shit. I wonder if that’s the episode where a production guy got bitten on the foot?
Also, we were in New Orleans in late March and it was strangely unseasonably cold, which is something they were dealing with. I’m guessing they filmed around the same time we were down there.
I’ve seen most, not all of the episodes. The men seem to have a high level of survival training but are almost universally mentally weak. The women seem more stable and tend to whine much less.
The producer was in South America, bitten by a fer-de-lance, which is a poisonous snake that does not inhabit North American (thank Og). Don’t know what poisonous snakes, but give Louisiana I’m presuming many of them were water moccassins. They can be testy and aggressive.