Original subtitles

The fishing situation has been a little maddening.

No fish.

There hasn't been much protein in the diet,

so scorpion time.

What do you think?

Out here, I've got no choice but to just keep trying stuff.

It's good.

I mean, it's burned, but it's good.

I saw a mouse running around,

so I'm gonna build a figure-four deadfall trap.

The main reason I want a mouse is for catfish bait.

There's some monster catfish.

There we have it.

I'm kind of consumed right now with catching one.

Last two nights, it just gets cold.

Right now, my shelter-- that's my priority.

Yeehaw.

Rain is probably not gonna be an issue

because of the dry season.

I hope I'll be able to see some type of change

and not be freezing.

I am building my shelter in a dry riverbed

because there's no rocks.

Unless a giant storm comes, this will suffice.

And if a giant storm does come,

then I'll be washed away in this dried riverbed.

As long as I get it on film.

Oh, my God.

In three days to a week, there's gonna be proper rain.

Storm's a-circling.

They call this place the land of great thirst.

The Great Karoo Desert, South Africa.

We are in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth.

Ten participants--

whoever can stay the longest wins.

It's pretty simple.

Oh, I found the baboons.

There's ten of them, but I only have five arrows.

This place is dry, dry, dry.

The sun's beating down on you every day.

I'm so tired, and I'm so thirsty.

Oh, man.

I really don't feel safe drinking this water.

This is a place to be, if not feared,

treated with a lot of respect.

I changed my mind!

Ahh.

Look at the size of that thing.

There's the big herd of wildebeests right there.

Rhino tracks.

Meat's back on the menu, boys.

They call Cape buffalo the black death for a reason.

They'll just straight up kill you.

We don't control the game.

Here we go.

Flooding.

This is nothing compared to what's coming.

This hurts so much, man.

It's freaking ice.

So the question is, how strong of a mind

do you need to have to win this?

Whoo!

What the did I get myself into?

A long, cold night.

The last one to tap walks out of here with 500 grand.

This is one of the hardest things

that a person can do in their life.

Oh, my gosh.

It's another great day in Africa.

Ah, yes.

Looks like the figure-four deadfall worked.

Exactly what I was hoping for today.

We didn't catch a mouse.

We caught something bigger.

What in the world is that?

So there's something here called an elephant shrew.

This whole thing is gonna go on one hook.

I'm gonna try for one of those giant catfish with it.

That's really good news.

From the research I've done, it's extremely rare

for it to rain this time of year in this location.

So I feel no pressing need to build a shelter.

I'm just gonna spend my time focused on food.

Staring at it won't help.

I'm gonna go take a bath.

So I brought a bar of soap.

It was one of my ten items.

I think sanitation is really important.

We've got high density of animals.

They're pooping and peeing on everything.

And so staying clean, I think,

has positive long-term consequences.

Just laying here on this rock,

enjoying the sun.

So is this little guy.

Oh, that bath was a little cold.

I'm chilled.

Put some warm clothes on and check out my fishing pole.

I definitely got something here.

Wow.

I finally figured something out.

I thought the sharp tooth catfish was cannibalistic

and would eat their own flesh.

But they will not.

Every fish I've caught so far has been on a bait

other than catfish.

So to keep these guys coming in,

I keep pursuing other baits.

Super happy.

So this is my little crappie killer.

So I want to make a ponytail holder.

I'm just going to cut some elastic and see what happens.

Ooh.

Elastic.

Okay, hair tie.

Let's try it out.

Oh, my gosh.

I have a ponytail holder.

You guys, look at that.

Ponytail, ponytail!

Now we can rock.

Okay, I don't really know how to rock and roll.

Okay, well, now let's go fishing.

I'm doing really well in the first ten days.

My food strategy is working.

I have my warthog jerky to eat, which is amazing.

But you also need fat, and fish is where

you need to get your fat.

Casts better than I thought, which is good.

Oh, man.

Fat is very important, in a survival situation,

for brain function.

You also need fat to help break down

protein in your metabolism.

So I've been thinking, I probably have,

if I eat a lot, three to four days left.

If I don't eat a lot, five to six days left of jerky.

And if I don't get any more food after that, you know,

I could probably make it to day 30.

I feel like I'm a great fisherman

because I grew up on a lake, fishing, from a toddler on.

I fished in Costa Rica and Alaska.

I mean, I fished everywhere.

I feel like I can definitely bring some in.

I see fish swirling everywhere, except for in front of me.

Oh, my gosh, I got one.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my gosh. You guys, I got one.

Oh, my gosh.

Easy. Easy.

Easy.

Oh, my gosh.

I got one.

Ah.

Look!

Pretty sure that's a smallmouth yellowfish.

We're having fish tonight.

Oh, my freaking Lord, we got a fish.

This is so cool.

Oh, my gosh.

This is a huge boost of getting fat

and omega 3 fatty acids

and something different other than jerky.

So here's my fish.

It's a small fish, definitely can't preserve it.

There's not enough, but it's a great full meal.

Clouds are moving pretty fast.

Hopefully, this weather is nothing more

than just some clouds.

It's the dry season.

Getting rain is unheard of,

so I do not have any concerns

about being in the dry riverbed.

You guys...

This is delicious.

Num, num, num, num, num.

I'm on top of the world.

I have harvested something with my bow.

I have caught something with my paracord lure.

Definitely boosts my confidence in staying here longer.

My boyfriend would be like, yep, not surprised.

That's my girlfriend.

Shovelling food in her face.

Mm-hmm.

I'm gonna sleep extra good tonight.

We're live, live from the Great Karoo Desert.

I'll take adhesives of the world for 800, Alex.

It's a gum that sometimes exudes from acacia trees.

It's also made into edible, water-soluble adhesive.

Do you know where it's used?

Your answer in three, two, one.

Some of you may have guessed.

It's the back of postage stamps.

And that's what this tastes like,

the back of postage stamps.

Okay, let's go fishing.

I'd like to find bait, which is just things that

might be living under rocks.

The thing about this game is,

lots of stuff can be under these rocks.

Nothing.

Clouds.

More clouds.

That is a rare sight.

I wonder if weather's moving in.

But anyway, good for fishing.

Okay, worms and grubs, where are you?

Right now, I'm sleeping on the ground under a tree.

I'm running a bit of a risk there,

but I'm trying not to invest in a shelter

until I've got some regular calories coming in.

Ooh, I don't know if you caught that.

That was a yellow-colored scorpion with small claws.

If I were to get stung by one of those,

I'd be pushing the button

so that someone could come and help me.

It's just how it is.

So...

I'm not gonna mess around.

All right, time to grab my shovel.

You can know all the stuff.

You can know all the skills and have all the plans,

but any survival situation is incredibly taxing.

Ooh, fat grub.

Fat grub works.

Okay, let's catch a fish.

I'm gonna go up here on the rocks.

There are only so many things I have.

It's definitely fish rising.

I can't call a friend or try a brand-new fishing rod.

I have to try what I have.

What a show off.

So persistence is a critical component

of trial and error, which is the path

to learning and to success.

Come on.

Yes!

Ladies and gentlemen, a catfish.

Persistence does pay off.

All right, time to go to sleep, bud.

Hallelujah.

Thank you, Great Karoo Desert.

I think the tables have just turned.

I've made a makeshift lure

out of some threads from my shemagh.

And I've tied it on a hook,

hoping that I can get a fish to bite.

I'm gonna cut a groove around my pole

so that my string might not slip.

We'll see.

Every time I go fishing, I think about my dad.

My dad was my big fishing partner.

We would go every night.

If we didn't catch fish, it didn't matter.

I still got to spend time with my dad.

And here's my wonky lure.

I'm hoping when that gets wet,

that'll kind of do its thing.

I am tired.

I haven't eaten that much.

I would love to catch a fish.

I'm gonna try here first.

Thinking of Dad, hoping he's okay.

My dad is a role model.

He instilled in me and my brothers a sense of family

and what family was.

We, as a family, all met up on Thursdays to go to dinner.

No matter how busy life is,

we all took the time to spend

an evening together as a family.

It's a great way to spend your life.

Then, a month before we launched,

my dad had chest pains.

I took him to the emergency room

because he thought he was having a heart attack.

And they found a tumour.

It was cancer.

But he was like, this is your dream.

Go.

I've got an amazing wife.

And me and my little brother are really close.

So they're taking care of him.

And by winning, it'd set me up

where I could be there for him all the time,

not just once a week.

Well...

I think this is a... bust.

That's okay.

You just can't get depressed about stuff.

If it doesn't work, then you think of something else.

All right, I'm gonna walk back to camp.

It's getting cold.

You can see my breath, so it's cold.

I'm gonna try three pairs of socks tonight.

I've been using two.

It's very windy, like a front moving in.

I don't expect it to rain,

but, you know, things happen.

Hopefully, I'll catch a fish,

my belly'll be full,

and I can go through the motions

of gathering firewood every day,

walking down and catching a couple fish,

and eating every day.

Food is heavy on my mind.

So is my family.

When you do something like this, yeah, I'm alone

and I'm suffering, blah, blah, blah.

But my family is suffering too.

I'm still here.

I'm still happy.

So I'm still not ready to quit yet.

I don't know how far this train is gonna take me,

but I'm along for the ride.

At 57, I'm too old for this [bleep].

Oh, but we'll see.

I'm attempting a bench so I can watch my ducks.

My favourite colour is purple.

My second favourite colour is lime green,

so I'm gonna put it together with some lime-green paracord.

Just checking. This would be the height.

Out here, being alone day after day,

it is very hard mentally.

And it just depresses me to sit at camp all day.

Let's just see if this plan goes as planned.

So I'm trying to give myself something

to do to keep my mind off things

and to look at the positive.

I feel like "Alone" is 80% mental...

Look at--they're standing.

20% skills.

♪ Da, da, da, da, da, da

Winning.

You have to be mentally strong no matter what.

Ducks are laughing at me.

They're like, what are you building?

Now, the theory is to lay wood across here,

and then that's my seat.

And if it doesn't work out,

I guess I could use it as a clothes-drying rack.

Oh, man.

We have some decently dark clouds coming in.

Hope it doesn't rain.

I just found some warthog sign that was here,

digging these wild tulips.

Oh, man.

But it's beautiful.

The sky, 360.

Doesn't look like the weather's gonna break.

Ice.

It's freaking ice.

Holy [bleep].

Crap.

Oh, [bleep].

See it?

It's really raining.

But I am warm and dry.

Snug as a bug in a rug.

So it's kinda sucky.

The rainstorm appears to be getting

progressively more intense.

I didn't expect that.

I'm gonna have a lot of drying out to do tomorrow.

Dry season, my ass.

It's absolutely down pouring.

I'm holding this up because the rain

is coming down so hard that it's gonna pool up and cave in.

Oh, [bleep].

Here we go.

Batten down the hatches!

Oh, my God.

I'll hold the shelter down, and you can all pray for me.

Hope that storm's not terrorising someone else.

As you can hear, it's still raining out.

Camera's soaked.

I'm soaked.

My clothes are soaked.

Blanket's wet.

Everything is wet.

I mean, there's not a single dry piece of clothes

that I have.

Sucks.

I'm no longer snug as a bug in a rug, guys.

That's no longer a thing.

Five to six hours before daylight.

We have to hold out through the night,

which is gonna suck because the ground is saturated.

If it keeps raining like this, nothing's gonna dry.

Even with a fire, it's gonna take forever.

When I meant my bench was gonna be

to hang laundry to dry, I wasn't serious, guys.

Oh, well.

We just gotta see what tomorrow weather brings.

Okay, well, I think I can try to go back to sleep now.

I was not concerned about putting my shelter

in a dry riverbed

until the 3-plus inches of rain came.

Wow.

Look at this.

But the dry land couldn't saturate that much water,

and then it all came down to me.

As much as I love my bench, I need to dry out my blanket.

Everything is so wet that a fire is not an option for me.

I really need to dry out all my gear

if I'm going to be able to continue

to sleep warmly at night.

Okay, we have lots to do today.

Okay, you know what?

I'm happy with just building a shelter right here.

I'm super over it.

I'm super over it right now.

So we're gonna build it right here and be done.

During the storm, I moved my shelter up on the bank.

I had to do something rather than be

soaking wet in the riverbed.

The storm definitely had an impact on my mental state.

But it's okay to fall down, as long as you get back up.

The hardest thing I've ever been through in my life

was my divorce.

I was very, very down, very, very, very depressed.

I had nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep.

I just felt like a failure.

I felt alone.

That was my deepest hole.

But I got out of it by myself.

And if I can come back from that,

I can come back from anything.

Oh, sunshine.

Hallelujah.

I'm happy with that.

I just hope the weather shapes up,

because I can't do this crappy weather.

That was a big storm last night.

Everything got wet.

There was lightning and thunder

literally, like, on top of me.

And my whole body, with the thunder, was vibrating.

It was crazy.

I'm feeling very motivated to keep working on my shelter.

It's crazy, this weather.

I expect that after this rolls through,

there'll be a shift into colder weather.

That's typically what happens back home

when winter starts coming on.

But I've started the shelter, which is great.

And I'll just see if I can't start putting--

collecting and just putting-- weaving saplings

really tight around the frame.

Okay.

When the rain came in, it's feeling to me

like this is another step in the country showing

its power to everybody.

I'm gonna need to do something about this

and create a little bit more safety for myself.

It stopped everything.

There's no fishing, there's not much hunting.

Everything sort of pausing now at this point

because I'm having to attend to this weather event.

It'll be another vegetarian dinner tonight.

That's okay.

But I'd like to be able to get the space set up.

But it's a bit ramshackle.

I'll put this canvas back up here

to make a bit of a protective barrier

until it's time to pull it down and go to sleep.

I think that'll feel really comforting.

Hang on.

Turn you off, and then we'll--

we'll just get all those basics done.

I'm just completely in love with the craft of weaving.

And I came across this one website,

and there was this beautiful Aboriginal woman

just staring out, holding a bunch of coloured pandanus.

And so I rang up.

And I was like, I'm coming.

And the minute I got out there,

I just felt like I'd found a home.

And so I got adopted into this amazing family

of women who have inherited weaving

from the beginning of time.

I mean, they're literally like elders to the world.

And the wisdom that they carry is phenomenal.

I hope every woman who weaves can appreciate this shelter.

The way that Western people look at survival

is very different from the way

that Indigenous people look at survival.

It's not so much that it's a particular skill.

It's more a way of being, and it just feels

really important to honour that.

I think there's more rain coming.

That's as far as it'll go tonight.

Look at that, a little bit more protected.

You're so beautiful.

It's day 14 today, guys.

It rained all night, and it's drizzly this morning.

I thought this was the dry season.

Indoor day today.

Decided to go ahead and build a temporary shelter here.

The ground is so saturated that I could just pull it out

by the root, and it left grass in nice bundles

for putting on the shelter.

It rained like hell again last night.

Everything's wet.

I got one emergency tinder and kindling,

and I can start one fire.

But after that, you know, I can't start any more.

I checked around for dry tinder.

I can't find anything.

It's windy again.

It doesn't look like it's gonna...

give up.

Without a fire, I can't keep myself warm.

Survival is about playing smart.

Don't try to be a badass and go, well,

I'll just go out and do this, or I'll go out and do that.

Nature is unforgiving.

There's just not anything dry.

Who would have thought this freaking crap would rain for--

for days and days and days?

The reality of this is,

I could be home, seeing my dad.

I've been thinking about my father

the whole time I'm out here.

I'm worried about what's going on.

Maybe the storm happened for a reason.

When you practice primitive skills,

you're getting into the mind of a primitive person.

And they believe that stuff like that happens for a reason.

So maybe it was a sign saying,

hey, maybe you need to get out of here

and find out what's going on at home.

Hey, this is Douglas.

I'm officially tapping out.

The last three days were--

Pretty bad as far as the rain.

And, you know, I mean, it was-- it was rough, so--

and then I don't I have no idea how long this is gonna last.

I'm looking forward to seeing my wife and seeing my--

my dogs, my family, my dad.

I'll get to spend Father's Day with him.

So--

so that's good.

You know, just, you know, I get to spend time.

And I can do all the stuff for him now

that my brother and wife had to do because I was gone.

And so that--you know, that makes me feel good.

This place was beautiful.

I wish I could have stayed here longer.

But like I said, I got to do the smart thing.

I found out about my dad less than a week before I got here.

And I decided, yes, I am gonna do this,

and I'm totally committed to this.

And it cleared my mind, because all I had

to concentrate on was my day-to-day stuff.

It did make me happy, and now I can

go home proud of what I did.

You know, if you did the best you could,

and you know in your heart that was the best you could do,

there's nothing to be ashamed of.

I feel that this whole experience was an expression

of gratitude for my dad.

He told me, go.

And I'm glad he told me to go.

I had a great time.

Another catfish.

Oh, that's really good.

My catfish dinner last night seems to be sitting just fine.

Hoping I can continue to get fish like that for a while.

That would be--

that would be huge.

In terms of just the moment, it's chilly.

The air is now damp,

and the wind makes it feel quite cold.

When I got here, it was all sun all the time.

And now it's like I'm in some coastal village or something.

All I'm missing is like the sound of a lighthouse

in the distance, the foghorn.

It's a radical change.

Speaking of which, I have to figure something out.

That shelter, that's part of the plan,

and I'm gonna stick to it.

Unfortunately, I didn't pitch the tarp perfectly,

and the storm made things pretty damp.

So I need to start to think seriously about making

a more permanent shelter.

Given that the rain has been pretty consistent

for several days, I've got to come to terms with the fact

that the desert can be wet.

Being wet out here at night is a dangerous situation.

I need a solid roof over my head

and a place to consistently stay dry and get warm.

Step one is just a ring of stones

for a water purification fire.

I'm feeling really good about things.

I've got good plants.

I've caught two catfish.

I've got good protein.

If I can do this consistently,

I believe I should be able to stay

out here for weeks, maybe longer.

So I'm thinking a dome,

start to put down the base layer of stones.

The new shelter location is a lot like the old one.

It just has more of the good things.

There are large rocks there, so I can build a foundation

that will support the structure

and, you know, keep the big animals

from stumbling over me in my sleep.

It's a little further from the water,

which feels good in terms of staying

safe relative to buffalo.

Cool that water off.

I'm gonna need that drink sooner or later.

Yeah.

It'd be great if I could get up,

chip away at the shelter,

maybe boil water midday,

get a little rest,

head out for an afternoon fishing excursion,

land something, eat it, go to bed.

That would be a good model, if I could sustain it.

Oh, rain.

Again.

Time to put on more of those clothes.

Whew, yeah, I'm tired.

All right, let's give you the walking tour of the progress.

I need a long-term shelter.

Building a shelter out of stone just makes sense,

but the type of shelter I've chosen to build

is gonna be a huge calorie expenditure.

I need to do some hunting

or I'm not gonna be able to last.

There is an antelope.

I'm gonna try to stalk him.

I was doing really well by harvesting a warthog,

and now I'm exhausted.

Oh, my God, look, a warthog.

Come on.