Alone and Starved

Reality shows today don’t reflect much reality – they are surrounded by Hollywood movie makers in camps and locales not far from civilization and medical help. But one series stands out, Alone, where contestants must brave alone the harshest weather conditions, film their own ordeal, deal with potential health emergencies, wild animals, poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, frogs, fish and other animals they must hunt and eat, critters which are infected with parasites, poisonous mushrooms.

Contestants can and make split-second mistakes in the wild, resulting in injuries that would require “tapping out.” When they do tap out, they can use a satellite phone to ask to rescued by boat, ATV, or helicopter, depending on the area in which that particular season takes place.

The last one standing of the ten survivalists wins $500,000

The locations are carefully chosen, quite beautiful, but frighteningly brutal to survive in: Patagonia, Mongolia, the Canadian Arctic, Vancouver Island in Canada, etc. Ten contestants are dropped off away from potential contact with each other. Natural barriers such as large rivers, lakes, mountains, and other rock formations prevent them from reaching the others.

The contestants can choose ten survival items from a list provided, a first aid kit, a satellite phone, medications they were taking previously for a diagnosed illness, heavy camera equipment with battery packs, a go-pro, and the clothes on their backs.

The last one standing of the ten survivalists wins $500,000. It is a life-altering sum for most of them. A few claim that they are doing it for the challenge or to see how far they can push themselves before they are forced to give up.

What are some of the reasons that force contestants to tap out? Injuries such as a deep cut on a hand or leg, loneliness, psychological problems stemming from isolation, starvation due to the inability to catch fish, hunt, or forage any plants, berries, fish or animals in the area, extreme cold, inability to make a fire, losing the fire stick, parasites, eating contaminated animal flesh improperly cooked, heart attack, broken back, extreme fear of bears, and actually being pulled by the medical team which checks them periodically, if the body mass index (BMI) falls below 17, the point when the human body is in the zone of potential organ failure.

The most interesting case of the nine season series was a man who starved himself so severely by eating small amounts of a large cache of smoked fish which he was saving in order to last the longest number of days thus being the winner. Sadly, his BMI was too far gone and he was rushed to the hospital. He described how he could not digest any food for three months following his forced extraction. He left behind a cache of 17 smoked fish fillets.

Reality competition became a game of who is going to starve the longest without his/her health deteriorating beyond the ability to survive

At some point, in every location where the survivalists were placed, the reality competition became a game of who is going to starve the longest without his/her health deteriorating beyond the ability to survive. Those who came with a lot of extra pounds on their bodies, outlasted everyone else unless they were plagued by loneliness or by missing their families and friends back home, wives and children.

One female survivalist was bitten by a poisonous spider thrice on her buttocks and was able to heal her wounds with medicinal plants and concoctions, without tapping out.

One military guy tapped out after only two hours for fear of bears.

One guy broke his leg less than a week into his arctic survival.

One guy was rescued in the middle of the night after being stalked and charged by a grizzly bear. The rescue team had to travel by truck on log roads for three hours then hike through a densely forested mountainous terrain in order to find the survivalist. He was safely rescued.

A prior contestant who survived to the end, just a few hours short of a win, had to tap out on a second location while successfully fishing but accidentally imbedding a fish hook into her right upper hand. This fish hook was stuck in her hand for 56 hours before she was driven to a hospital and two medical personnel in Mongolia were able to extract it.

One guy ate infected muskrat and had to tap out with extremely painful abdominal pains, vomiting and diarrhea. His dehydration was so severe that he could not take his heart medication which potentially could have sent him into another heart attack.

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Several endangered their health by losing too much weight, too fast, not calling for medical help, and being on the verge of organ failure

One guy tapped out because he was overcome by guilt and emotional remorse for killing his only companion in the Canadian Arctic, a friendly squirrel, and eating it.

One lady shot herself with an arrow in the back of the leg after successfully bagging a grouse with a bow. The wound healed.

Hard-core survivalists managed to tap out eventually out of loneliness, missing their spouses and children, longing for talking to people, or realizing that money, even half a million dollars, are not as important as being with loved ones.

Several endangered their health by losing too much weight, too fast, not calling for medical help, and being on the verge of organ failure. Some became so constipated, they suffered in agonizing pain. Starvation caused many intense dizziness, inability to see, to think rationally, became disoriented, or blacked out, even dangerously close to a partially frozen deep lake.

One contestant claimed so joyously that she was in “the game” once she found trapped animals like rabbits or squirrels or caught fish. To me, it was not a game, it was human predators trying to outwit animal predators in an area devoid of other humans. It was so unforgiving in Mongolia that animal predators did not fear the human predators.

In the Canadian Arctic, the frigid temperatures made the challenge that much more difficult. One squirrel, injured by an arrow, fought back and bit the survivalist’s hand badly.

One military guy tapped out even though he had a nicely built, warm shelter, warm and dry clothes, and enough food for a week and a half, because he realized that he was just buying time, waiting for others to tap out, time better spent with his three children and wife whom he adored.

Winners lasted anywhere from 46 to 100 days in the wilderness alone

One successful hunter from Virginia, who had lived with a tribe in Siberia for five years and learned from them excellent survival and hunting skills, killed a bull moose and a wolverine in the Arctic, yet despite eating moose meat protein every day, he lost weight by one pound a day in the absence of fat and other complex carbohydrates.

These people built remarkable shelters, built fires, fished successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully when nature fought back, made tools, wove fishing nets, baskets, carved implements, built improvised and cleverly constructed canoes in MacGyver style, with spit and dirt, improvised methods to trap animals and catch fish, and scoured the land for berries, edible plants, healing plants, snails, leeches, mushrooms, tree sap, and unusual sources of kindle. All these skills are lost to us as we live in our modern world where others perform tasks and manufacture things we need which we purchase with fiat money.

Sometimes their shelters caught fire, other times collapsed from the weight of rain or snow, high winds, or other unforeseen miscalculations. Many got flooded and wet in the temperate impenetrable rain forest of Vancouver Island, Canada. Water seeped out of the ground and flooded shelters, fire pits, while survivalists were asleep in sloshed sleeping bags on the ground or on top of makeshift beds of wood and pine boughs.

The winners confessed that they wanted to build a house or pay off an existing house with the prize money. One survivalist wanted a house because he and his family lived in a yurt. Winners lasted anywhere from 46 to 100 days in the wilderness alone. The one contestant who remained 100 days and survived alone won one million dollars, the rest, half a million U.S. dollars.

It is obvious that most of us today have become so soft and weak, and could not possibly survive alone in those harsh conditions. Furthermore, most humans would prefer to work for their own business and earn the half million or million dollars without endangering their lives around predatory and poisonous animals. Nobody is exactly sure what the long-term effects will be of such long-term starvation, or how the survivalists long-term health will be affected.

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