Original subtitles

Let's say you're driving on the highway and the worst possible thing happened.

Nuclear explosion.

EMP.

Your car doesn't work. You're alone.

You're in the woods. You have no water, no food.

You need to survive long enough to get back to civilization.

What are you going to do?

Hello, Pablo.

You're lost, Pablo.

You're in the forest and you have nothing. You need help. You can't do

alone. What do we do?

What about food?

Get out,

Pablo. It's going to be dangerous.

Wake up, Pablo.

Wake up, Pablo. Wake up!

Come with me if you want to live.

This is meant by you.

I'm lucky enough that he emerged from the wood to show me how to survive.

Oh, hi, Mitch. Nice to meet you, Mitch. You too, Pablo.

What am I doing here?

That's a great question. We're going to try to make sure you don't die.

I'm Mitch. I'm a prior U .S. Air Force SEER specialist.

I've spent the last 12 years of my career in the military specializing and

focusing on how to train anybody, how to survive anywhere in the world,

regardless of the situation.

We're going to show you everything that you need to know in order to be able to

survive out in the woods at least for 24 hours and be able to get back to some

form of civilization.

How much time we have here? We'll be here for 24 hours.

24 hours? The entire night.

That's fun. So it will be nice to find a place to sleep.

Yeah, that's going to be part of it. We're going to have to make that.

So we've got to build shelter, source water, start the fire.

What about food?

We'll make it.

We'll make food.

Yes. We'll make food.

Yes.

Well, I'm looking forward to that.

What are you allowing me to have tool -wise?

What do you got on you?

Tumbler and a fixed knife.

It will do. All right.

It'll do.

Home Depot.

We are wildly unprepared for this situation.

One of the worst ideas I've ever done is bringing this useless dog on a shoot

like this.

We're going to start with shelter. So we're going to be building what's called

debris shelter off of an A -frame base.

We'll start off with a large, long ridge pole. That's going to be at least your

height plus a little bit extra.

And then we'll build what we call whale bone on top of that in order to give

it...

Kind of like rafters. General rule of thumb for shelter site locations is

to find someplace that's good and elevated. We want to get above where the

water's going to be sitting and standing.

And ideally, we want a set of live trees that kind of make a V.

These natural Vs are amazing starting points for structures because it gives

something to lodge off of.

Check the ground first. Make sure that it's free of any ant hills or holes of

other ground -burning animals.

Oh, look at this thing.

Tick right there on your pants. Look at that. He's going towards my sponge.

The things that are going to be more of a hazard to you than just that tick,

dead branches, dead trees.

How do you recognize those from the healthy trees? Good healthy trees will

have all of its bark on it. However, if it's sloughing off like this, this is

dead. So that one's not even attached to the ground anymore.

Holy shit.

It would have just blown right over. If I know this is where we're going to be

putting in for the night, I want to hold my arm out at about a 45 degree angle

and look down the arm and rotate.

If I see...

the top of those dead branches above my arm, I'm in its fall path.

I think we go to outside of this guy, but it's far enough.

Right? No?

Okay, now we're good. Now we're good.

We are building a house for me.

We need to find a tree that will support it with a little Y.

If we can push it down, we can break it up, and we can use what we need. Then

we're going to build a structure for it.

So, Smith is breaking trees.

Mitch! Yeah, let me build my house, sir.

I appreciate it. So, shelter is probably something I can build. I do stuff

around the house all the time, build shit. The hardware store is like my

favorite, favorite boutique.

So, shelter?

Let's see.

Hell yeah.

What the f***?

Yep. So.

All right.

Doing a great job. Look at that.

All right. So we have this.

I love that you did it all just using your hands when you have that sweet

knife with a saw on the back of it.

That is a valid point. It's okay. You have tools. You can use tools.

He's doing all right.

He's kind of figuring out where things are and everything and whatnot. So he'll

be fine.

Well, the dead things above him, that could fall directly on top.

That's not great.

Not great.

But if we build it strong enough, actually, no, that one will probably

No, I'm not dying here.

Yeah, no, we're not. We're going to do somewhere else. I'm taking this with me

because it sounds like a good roof. It's a good one.

So where are we going?

This way there. We're right back over here.

That's going to give you some more height.

I think that's a great idea.

Whatever you tell me.

We're starting to collect materials for our frame structure.

Oh, shit. We still have to build the rest of the structure, put the whale

up, put the insulation layer on.

Ow, fucking shit.

Make sure that it's packed enough with enough insulation. And it's already

getting close to noon. And we still don't have water. Guys, you guys be

We still don't have food. Heads up.

Still don't have fire. So all things that we still need to do and don't have.

should have been doing this hours ago.

What was the most challenging thing you've ever done to survive?

Well, I can tell you the most terrifying thing I've had to do. I'll take it.

Open ocean survival training.

Yeah, you heard that right. That's a thing. And just for people who don't

you don't drink ocean.

Correct. Salt water will dehydrate you and kill you very, very quickly,

especially like ocean water.

All right, so now that we have all the whale bones set and the framework for

structure is already there, we need to add in our insulation layer. What we're

going to be using is debris, which it can be literally anything. We have a

of dead leaves and everything else around, so we're going to collect as

that as we can. We're going to pile it on top of this.

Ideally, it should be thick enough to the point from the inside you can't see

sunlight. And that will block the water coming through?

Correct.

It's looking pretty good. It's nice and packed. It's insulated.

There's hardly any patches that we had to really patch up inside of there, so

it's looking really solid. You can even just tell just by the sound when you get

in there. It dampens everything.

It means that all the critters and coyotes tonight aren't going to wake him

Overall, I'd say it's about an 8 out of 10. Oh, shit.

This is a solid start. It's a good platform.

It should hold up, keep him nice and warm throughout the night.

So building shelter was probably the easiest part of the day.

Knocking over their trees, breaking them, carrying them, no problemo. But

it without any food or water all day long, well, that was not easy.

How's your decision making?

I'm undecisive.

Well, that sounds like you're dehydrated.

I'm probably.

You're going to start getting a headache. I already have a headache.

here? Yeah. Uh -huh. That's a dehydration headache.

Yep. I have that for an hour.

He needs water.

He needs water. What usually happens is you start getting overworked.

And when you're working too hard and you're not taking care of your needs,

you're low on calories, you're dehydrated, you get into what's called a

fog. What?

You make poor decisions even though you know better. And you don't start

establishing things like you know you should be doing. And it makes more work

for yourself because you're not taking care of it.

We have lost the lav mic.

So he's got the headphones on, pinging it like a submarine to track it down.

Found it.

There we go.

Well, we've got to find water first before you can drink it. So the best way

do that is know where water collects.

Go downhill. Gravity will provide.

You'll start seeing more vines like these guys, where they just kind of grow

of the ground more often. You'll see more ground vegetation.

You'll have more moss, like at the base of the trees here.

More moss.

Eventually, you'll just see the water itself.

There it is.

And then you'll also start feeling that temperature shift.

The water looks fairly clear.

It does. How do we know if it's okay to drink?

You never actually know.

how clean it is without actually doing like chemical tests we don't know if

there's like a deer carcass that fell into the creek upstream yeah you

definitely make me want to drink that water for sure yeah well we are and it's

going to happen we're going to filter out as much debris and everything else

we possibly can when we're collecting it shirt fair enough if you don't have a t

-shirt you have other problems that is fair enough

Hell yeah, dude.

We have some water.

What about brain amoeba bacteria?

This does not make your water safe to drink right away. Yeah, yeah. It just

removes the majority of the debris from the water to start. The other thing that

we're going to do to it is boil.

And it's one of the oldest ways in order to clean the water is to boil it, which

is going to also kill all the bacteria and anything else that might have been

living inside of it. It will just be dead.

We spent about three hours building shelter and half an hour to...

Thankfully, we have a creek next to us. And then we're going to have to make a

fire with bare hands, which we don't know how long that's going to take.

So we're looking at, you're going to have about five to six hours before you

drink some liquid.

Sounds great.

In times like that, you start to appreciate modern society.

Because at this point, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, and there's nothing I can do

about it until I finish the job.

Home sweet home.

So we're building fire right here. Yep. So what's the method here?

Whenever you're going to build a fire, you need to clear it down to bare

soil. So we definitely don't want to get the photos fire going.

Nope. We're not going to have a really big fire. It's going to be pretty small.

And now we want to find dead standing trees that are going to be dry all the

through to the core, ready to be pushed over. So we want all the bark to be on

it. The bark is what's going to actually prevent water from soaking into the

grains of the wood. So what we're going to do is we're going to open up the

cambium layer of the tree in order to see if it's alive or dead. And if it

strings and bends really easily, it's full of water.

Uh -huh.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

There's a lot of no's before you get a yes. Yeah, I've noticed.

This is definitely good. That looks... Okay.

That's a hard wood, which is good.

Perfect. There we go.

What we're also going to do is start breaking this down into smaller pieces.

That is interesting.

Let me try that. Yeah, get in there.

Make sure you're always pushing.

So much faster.

And you break it down until you can't break it down anymore.

That's good.

Harder.

Get it started. We need to split this down into all of our different stages.

Kindling and everything else like that.

Yeah, it's definitely hard wood.

They burn hotter and they last a lot longer.

It's more work at the beginning, but it will last for a longer period of time.

So we're looking for the biggest pieces for our kindling. It's going to be about

the size of how thick your thumb is.

The next stage is going to be about the size of a number two pencil.

And then pencil lead.

To do that, we're going to use what's called the beater stick method. We're

going to take our log, use my knife, and...

In order to split it in half.

I'm trying to just ox it.

I might have broke my hand, actually.

You good?

Getting Dean to cut scrapes, all that sort of stuff, it just happened.

Do we need to cup it more?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All of it.

Push down, not pull.

There you go.

Not all knives are made equal.

This thing broke.

Completely broken. I can't even close it anymore.

Just remember, if you're going to do the beater stick thing, you need a fixed

blade knife.

Boom. So we are in front of my house here in Kentucky.

I haven't eaten anything all day long. And we're going to drink that magic

that we took from the river.

It's kind of exciting.

I will use some water.

And then we're going to eat something.

So we're going to eat something. I don't know what it is.

I'm going to eat it regardless because at this point my stomach is sucking my

ass in.

And I'm very hungry.

Teamwork.

The next part is what we call heartwood shavings.

Build a platform that we're going to be building our fire on.

So I'm going to use the flat portion of my blade like this.

Prop this underneath my belt. Prop it onto the platform.

I'm going to press it down.

As we're doing it, we also want to make sure none of this gets on the ground.

Because it's going to get wet. Yep.

It's not easy.

It's not a race, but I'm helping.

Mitch knows everything and he can do anything.

I bet you that he can chisel up a car here and do some flint and shit and

us away from here.

So the next part is actually lighting it.

Fire needs three things to exist.

Air. Yep.

Fire.

Heat. Fuel, oxygen. If you remove any one of those three things, your fire is

going to die. Okay. So that's our fuel. We have our air.

Yep. And now we have to apply heat. So many different ways of generating heat,

including a ferrocerium rod and a piece of steel.

And I can send sparks into it. Jeez.

I'm definitely getting one of them ferrocerium rods and keeping it in my

thousand percent.

Wow.

It's there.

There it is. It's there.

And then from that little flame, we're going to take all those curlicues, put

them directly into it.

Once those go, then I grab on to my next smallest stage of prep, lay it on top

so that it can consume and continue to work its way up.

That is unbelievable.

That is a lot of prep for it. It is a lot of prep, but it's just... When you

all the hard work in advance, it lights that easy. If you skip steps, you will

fight for hours to get it to light.

I think this is our lesson to understand that shortcuts are not the best thing

always. No. Sometimes you legitimately... You gotta do the job.

the work.

I think men are meant to endure hardship.

I used to hear that as a kid, and I always wondered why men are meant to

struggle. It's because good things worth doing are hard to do. If you want to

build something worthwhile, you're going to struggle to get it done. So we built

the fire, and now we're going to boil the water.

What do we need to boil the water? I'm assuming we're not just putting a cup on

top of that.

Well, with mine, we can.

Okay. Mine's a titanium cup, so it transfers the heat really efficiently

directly into the water, and it'll boil it directly.

You brought an insulated thermos.

Yep. which has a vacuum -sealed layer.

What happens to a gas in a vacuum when it's heated up?

It's going to explode.

Yeah. Yep, not great. So we're not going to do that. So in order to boil the

water inside of your cup, we're going to make what's called stone soup.

So we've got to find stones, and you said we're not looking for stones that

near the creek.

Stones, nothing. Correct, because the water in those stones can create small

pores, and if you put them in the fire, they also can...

potentially explode you would think it'd be so much easier just to find rocks i

know right hey that's a good one we have stones so wash them off so that we

don't have dirt on them mitch water smells like probably in it

you can put the rocks on there right now here you

know what

Mitch, I got off the couch. Love it. Look at you.

Forest to go.

Oh, it's so good to sit down.

The rocks are boiling.

Rocks are getting hot. And they're at the temperature that if we drop them

this tumbler, the water will boil.

Oh, yeah. I heard it. And after that, the water should be drinkable. There's

definitely fiber in it.

Correct. Yeah, put the lid on, and it'll trap all that heat in. You want to keep

it closed because it's going to allow it to boil faster.

Oh, my f***ing God.

What about your cup? That looks like it's a little here and there bubbling.

Yeah, we're getting there.

You know, that's a great moment to start on rabbit, to get this thing over with.

The boy hungry.

It's been a very long day. We have fire, we have shelter, we have water. The

question is, what are we going to eat?

And where is it coming from? So we lost a lot of our daylight building our

shelter and collecting our water. We were really hoping to build some traps

snares, but time is a limited resource and we ran out of a whole bunch of it.

the next best thing is when you see something living, just throw something

at it.

So... What we're going to do is we're going to process this guy. We're going

make sure that all of his organs and everything else is good to go. We're

to get the maximum amount of nutrition out of him as we possibly can. But

we have to take the skin off.

Oh, dude.

Lord, we thank you for that creature, and we apologize for what we did. You

know, the first animal sacrifice was done by God.

Genesis chapter 3.

In order to cover up our shame...

of sin in the Garden of Eden, the Lord went and dispatched an animal and

proper clothing in order to clothe us and hide us of our own shame.

And it is through his grace and his mercy that we learned the penalty

of our sin and the cost is death and not necessarily our own, even though it's

what we deserve.

So as aggressive and brutal it feels, That the circle of life, the burger

eating, meat coming from somewhere.

All of it comes from somewhere. It doesn't just magically appear on your

This just looks unreal.

So part of our calling as men on this planet is to provide for our families.

And to do that, you got two options for food. You got vegetables or you have

meat. And the other part of the meat is you have to get it somehow. And the only

other way of getting it is to kill.

There's no way of getting around it. You don't get meat without killing.

And it needs to be done morally, ethically, and for the right reasons.

If you hold the front legs, I'm going to pull the fur off of the bottom half.

Did you just broke its bone?

Yep.

Well, it's more at the joint. I separated it. So if you did jiu -jitsu,

wrist -locked the shit out of it. Next part is getting through all of the

organs. When we're doing so, we need to make sure that the rabbit was healthy

before we commit to eating all the internal organs.

All right, so this is the liver. It's responsible for processing illness and

sickness and everything else like that. Yep, this one is healthy. This one looks

great. And it's big. Which tells me that every one of the other organs on this

animal is good for us to eat.

My eyeballs are also edible.

I'm good.

I'm good. I'm so good, dude.

With the eyeballs, they are packed with so much sodium and electrolytes that

it's better than like a liquid IV or a Pedialyte in order to get your

electrolytes back up and running.

And the best part is you can do it raw.

Holy shit.

Check, please.

It's got two.

Oh, yeah.

Check, please. I'm good.

No, I'm serious.

That's not going to happen in the end of the world. At this point, ladies and

gentlemen, I'm vegetarian.

Thank you. There are things I have no problem doing.

I'll crawl through the building on fire. I'll get my face smashed by a

professional boxer.

This is just too far for me. Not for my crew, though. This is the craziest shit

I've ever done, by far.

I'm Alex.

Be a man with me.

Yeah, buddy.

Oh my gosh.

Ross even ate the stomach contains.

Not as bad as I thought it was going to be. No, it's really not that bad.

It's all about the head space.

Now, and that's one of the smaller eyeballs that I've had to do.

We've had to do this with goats.

You can do it with cows.

Like, uh -huh. And those are big eyes.

It is insane.

I got the eye on my teeth one second.

So we just killed the animal.

Then we skinned it, and then we took all the insides out.

Um, question, are you boiling organs?

Yeah. Okay. We're making organs too.

And now we're going to cook it.

It's been a very long day, but overall, I am very happy how it went.

Man, it's actually pretty cozy in here.

You're hearing the sound dampening too, aren't you? Like, it's quiet in there.

It's quiet, bro.

Good shit.

I'm ready to eat some f***ing food.

All right, Mitch.

We survived the day.

I am exhausted.

I haven't eaten anything all day since I woke up. It didn't taste so much

better.

There's a little bit. I'll get more.

It is definitely interesting.

It's kind of like chicken, but not quite.

Not quite, because the texture is tougher.

It's a reward for the hard work all day.

And everything we did today, nothing's like... astronomically complicated about

it. It's just time consuming.

Yeah, this is just stuff that people had figured out for centuries.

For me, it's very eye -opening because it shows me that I am capable, but I'm

unprepared. But it is very, very rewarding and satisfying because we got

from nothing to something.

We built a shelter from nothing to something.

This is awesome. We got the water.

cleaned all of that, got that set up. We were able to use it and boil the organs

down and make a nice little soup out of it. Like, it's good.

It's good.

It's really good. I believe you. You know, what I'm thinking about it is, I

think, you know, I think every man should do something like that. Should.

There's been multiple times where I've ran into full -blown adults in their

30s, even further.

and they've never seen a tree outside of concrete.

That's just so sad, man. And they have no idea. They've only seen burgers

of packaging or over at McDonald's or something else like that. They don't

what real meat looks like.

They don't know where it comes from. They don't know what animal it comes

They don't know how to take care of themselves.

For all the men, get your ass outside. Do something manly. Doesn't mean you

to kill the animal, but if you kill the animal, eat it and do it the right way.

Okay, let's eat some fucking chicken rabbit and have some vodka, I guess.

Damn.

Ross, we gotta find some potatoes.

I cannot not have potatoes with this beautiful rabbit.

Holy shit.

The forest is new. It's vodka.

Liquid fries.

Is it made of potatoes?

I think I've learned not to take for granted what I have. Not to forget all

struggles humanity went through. To be able to provide a modern society so we

don't have to struggle anymore.

If you want to support Mitch in his awesome classes, go to agonicllc .com

check it out. Hopefully someday I'm going to be able to pass on those

I've learned to my children.

But for now, I sleep.

Whoa. good morning 6 36 in the morning yeah

mitch is doing his thing with the rabbit i slept through the majority of the

night i woke up four times to just get some more wood so this was going i just

felt internal need for the fire to keep going for some reason it was an

experience fun experience actually do you think i'll survive the day in the

forest no yeah yeah without a doubt you got all the parts and pieces even You

know everything that you need to do. It's just about doing it.

Well, Mitch, it's been a pleasure.

Thank you.

Thanks for hanging out.

We'll see you on the next one.