Original subtitles

♪ ♪

I knew there were gonna be animals here,

but I didn't think I was gonna be stalked.

I'm kind of glad I'm going home.

I have no way to defend myself,

and I am not sleeping here under a piece of canvas

with a bunch of wolves behind me.

That was enough for me.

Hello, bear. Stay on your side.

I've got a big problem. I lost my ferro rod

and I can't keep this fire going indefinitely.

I'm screwed.

Oh, . Hey, bear.

I think I found a way to filtrate water without fire.

Bottoms up.

You look back at your life and think where did it go?

Just poof.

When you get alone,

all of it comes up, every mistake you've ever made.

You wonder if the people in your life

really know how much you love them.

This is gonna be a bitch.

We have to film it, and we're totally alone.

Nobody knows what it's like here

except for the ten guys out here doing it.

Time to get shelter.

There's nobody here but me.

This is so hard doing this alone.

I'm scared to death right now.

I feel like I'm starving.

Pretty sure I just saw a cougar.

Oh,.

The last man standing wins $500,000.

I don't want to go home. I want to win.

This is the chance in a lifetime,

but it's not worth dying over.

I'm just kidding.

Hope I didn't scare you too bad.

All right, this is my little calendar.

I've got some notches on that bad boy

in case I start to forget.

Look what the weather's done to me blade.

Constantly wet.

It's dripping right now.

I actually ought to put on some rain gear.

Sky don't look good.

♪ ♪

I knew that coming here and doing this,

my mind would be the-- my biggest enemy,

and let me tell you, brother, it is.

It is ripping me apart.

My brain is--

it's just in a thousand different directions.

I really don't want this tide to come in.

When it comes in all the way,

it's about a few feet from the greenery here.

I wish I could stop it.

Once the tide comes in, I can't use this beach.

I can't have this open air.

I have to go back into the dungeon,

and it's driving me absolutely fricking insane.

It's so claustrophobic inside there.

Just working in there, or walking around,

is absolutely depressing.

Everything in there is eating itself.

It's just turned into mush.

Every tree is being bombarded by moss and moisture,

and it's just, I mean,

it's almost completely mush.

I mean, you can walk up to a stump

and just put your hand on it,

and your hand will go straight through.

It's just so wet in here.

Look at that--

mushrooms growing out of the top of the trees.

I mean, physically and mentally,

this place will drain a human body,

and I've spent a lot of my life

in places where it was just absolutely horrible.

I'm retired military,

and currently I'm a trainer in Africa.

Hello.

You know, I've done this enough over the past 15-20 years

through all my training and military training and time

in combat and my job in Africa now.

One thing I know is, some of the toughest people just snap.

Their emotions can just go take hold of them, and they're done.

I'm hoping that my training

is gonna help me survive for as long as possible,

but that flipping jungle--

it's mentally eating my brain.

Part of that could be dehydration,

or the beginning stages of dehydration.

The tide's out so I've got this semi-fresh, brackish,

hopefully, fresh water

that's been pumping out for a good while,

and I don't want to take it too early

because then all the saltwater doesn't get pulled out

and I end up drinking salt water,

and then I really will be hallucinating.

So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna go down here

and grab some water,

and I think I found a way to filtrate it here without fire.

It's my wife's 2-quart pot.

She came to the marriage with this.

I'm borrowing it.

I'll return it, hopefully.

Sure cleans it up nicely.

Bon appetite.

♪ ♪

I'm not a fan of moving around with camera gear.

This is intense.

That forest is so dense.

It's so extremely hard to navigate through it.

You have to constantly be climbing.

It's really intense.

I'm just having a hard time being here.

I'm starving.

I want to eat so bad.

I kind of have, like, a clock over my head right now,

like a starvation clock.

It all depends on if I can get fish over here,

yes or no.

Eagles.

Look at that.

Salmon.

Maybe that's why the eagles are here, for the fish.

Think I just hit the jackpot.

Look at the size of this river.

Oh, man,

if I just found a salmon river that goes to the mountains,

that's thick and pure, that has fish in it,

that's exactly what I've been looking for.

I'm gonna set the net up low

so I can try to catch the crabs walking by,

because this river is loaded with dead fish

and they love to eat on that stuff.

They love to eat on stuff that's just on the bottom,

flesh and all that.

So they're gonna come walking up this river

to where they smell the dead fish,

and then they're gonna run into my net.

I'm gonna put rocks along the bottom.

My weights are holding down in the middle,

but I just feel better with rocks on it as well.

Give me extra weight in case my stakes rip up

and the current tries to take my net,

I don't have to worry about it.

It's weighted down.

So I'm gonna check my net tomorrow.

Hopefully we've got some crabs.

A fish would be nice too.

♪ ♪

Right now it's just dead calm.

The tide's going out.

It's like Christmas every time this tide starts to go out.

I got all kinds of blue kelp washed up here.

It snaps--

That wasn't as crisp as I'd like.

It should snap like...

Uh, celery.

But it smells fresh.

Now what you want to do is pull the skin off...

Like a carrot or a potato,

and then you can just eat it.

It's definitely salty.

It would be all right if I boiled it.

I don't want to eat too much, 'cause...

It's a risk of getting dehydrated,

but it doesn't really taste like much at all except sea water.

It's got to have that good crunch,

'cause you can't eat it if it's decomposing.

There's just wood everywhere.

The resources here are unbelievable.

You know, these logs just break loose from the logging.

They just wash up.

It's unbelievable.

I don't see any reason to have to chop wood up in the bush.

I mean, if I can get it up out of this tidal flat,

get it somewhere where it will start to dry out,

even still, I can split it up,

and it'll burn wet once you have an established fire,

but the fire is the hard part.

If I can get a fire going,

I know I'll be okay here in the long term.

I know this is a competition between me and myself,

and maybe that's why I'm so frustrated

by not performing better yet, but--

♪ ♪

Everything but the fire is fine.

If I can get a fire going,

I know I'll be okay here in the long-term.

I know this is a competition between me and myself,

and maybe that's why I'm so frustrated

by not performing better yet, but--

I busted my frickin' arm right off this mound of--

it's like concrete.

There's the board I was too busy looking at

instead of watching where I was walking.

Real nice telephone pole cedar.

I'm gonna go over here, dig out this one,

and get it up where it won't wash away.

This is stupid.

That's too heavy.

Whew.

I'm definitely having one of those,

"Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it."

Casting for the show started over six months ago.

And it's all I could think about.

I just really wanted to do it.

I'd be, like, super afraid.

'Cause you're afraid of the dark.

I'm not afraid of the dark.

I'm not afraid of anything on the island

other than myself, really.

There's no boogey man

that's just out there murdering people.

Well, what about, like, bears and...

-Well, bears are just-- -Mountain lions?

We have bears here.

Day to day, it's just gonna be

keeping focused on what I'm doing at the moment.

You have to be in the moment.

It's like when you're running a race,

you can't think about the 26 miles ahead of you,

you got to think about what you're doing at the moment.

You know, when it gets cold at night

and I'm at home,

I can put an extra blanket on the bed

or snuggle up with my wife or my dogs,

and here, I don't have...

anything.

It's just me and this camera I'm talking to

and nobody else to do anything, you know?

Anyways,

enough feeling sorry for myself and thinking about home.

♪ ♪

There's my pot of water.

Now that I've gotten water and my net is out,

my biggest problem right now is getting fire out here.

I am beating up my ferro rod.

I can usually get a fire with one strike.

I mean, I've probably done hundreds so far,

so I have to slow that down.

I have to figure out how to get this started

in way less strikes.

Nice, there's my rolling boil.

I'm gonna gently take this off the fire.

I'm gonna let that cool down,

and then I'm gonna have a drink.

I just had an amazing idea.

This is cedar bark.

If I scrape it with my knife, I have kindling.

You can see it fluffs up really well.

I've tried to get flame from my ferro rod with that.

It hasn't worked.

But my fishing hooks-- go in this tin.

I'm going to pack this cedar bark in here,

and I'm gonna put this in my fire and char it.

You do that with cloth-- it's called char cloth.

This should work the same.

If this works, it will take a single spark

from the back of my knife off of my ferro rod

and give me an ember right away.

That would be amazing.

That would be a total game changer.

All I got to do is char it up and see what happens.

See the smoke coming out of the middle of the hole?

That's exactly what I want.

Once it stops, immediately I take it off.

Okay, let's see what we've got.

Let's see if it cooked enough.

Ooh, it did.

Look at all that char material.

I'm gonna have to try a little bit of it.

It worked. I have a nice ember.

I'm gonna put that inside my tinder bundle.

Yes!

This looks very promising.

I think I finally cracked the code,

fire-wise, to this place.

This has been quite the journey.

Life will get easier every day.

♪ ♪

I've been having a lot of cramps--stomach cramps.

It's just-- it's just this gut-wrenching,

like, tensioning of my stomach muscles.

Anyway...

I'm gonna crawl back into this sleeping bag

and see if I don't feel a little bit better.

Also, I've seen these flashing lights.

Every now and again I'll see a flashing light out there.

Is it my--what could--

I mean, is it lightning? Is it--

They don't have lightning bugs here.

What in the heck is it?

I guess you see things when it gets as dark as it is here.

You see things that just-- you wouldn't see anywhere else.

It's freaky.

But the, um--it started making me think while I was sleep--

or I was laying here-- I wasn't sleeping,

but I was thinking about the-- about the water, you know?

Is the water fresh

as it pumps out of this marsh, you know?

It makes me wonder if I'm ingesting sea water.

If I'm drinking salt water, I'm gonna go insane.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

c]

♪ ♪

So, uh...

I had a pretty horrible night.

I didn't sleep any

until a little bit this morning.

I've been having a lot of shakes,

extreme shakes, and I--

which is--

I'm not--I wasn't hungry.

I wasn't thirsty. I wasn't--I wasn't cold.

So I really don't know what that's all about.

The fact is, I'm thirsty, but I'm just bloated.

I just feel like I just don't even know if I have room

in my stomach for water.

That's not a good sign.

Shakes in the middle of the night without hypothermia

is not a good sign.

I'm concerned about this-- the quality of this water,

this fresh water source.

I don't know what else it could be other than this water.

And I've been looking at it right now,

and the water coming out of here is brackish.

It's actually salt water mixed with fresh water.

I can see the tint that it produces...

And I drank about ten,

probably about ten quarts of it yesterday.

It could have higher levels of sodium in it,

plus it's got extremely high amounts of bacteria

because of the temperature of this water.

It's got to be in the 50s.

It's got to be in the perfect range for bacteria growth.

So I've been drinking from, basically, a brackish pond here.

I have been waiting till the tide is at its lowest

for this creek to drop out

so I could get the freshest water possible,

and then I filter it through sphagnum moss,

but it doesn't really appear--

I mean, just based on the way I feel,

I think I possibly have some type of a--

oh, that stinks.

Oh, my gosh. Whew.

So...

I've been drinking water out of a creek

with dead fish

rotting on the side of the bank.

This is a nausea I've never felt before.

Exhausted. Out of energy.

Oh, my gosh.

This is one big sandwich...

And I'm the only one here to take a bite.

Oh, there it almost came.

♪ ♪

Today is a great day.

On the hike I found chanterelles.

And not just a few-- quite a bit.

Some of these are beauties.

Look at these guys.

I might just have to have mushroom soup

for the next two days which is fine with me.

What a find.

I couldn't be happier about it.

♪ ♪

I found this bull kelp laying here,

so I'm gonna give it a rinse and have a nibble.

I'm gonna roll that up

like a mini burrito.

Mmm, mmm.

Delicious.

Mmm.

I'll tell myself that that's a number 21

down at the Mexican restaurant.

Mmm.

Mmm.

♪ ♪

Today is a pretty special day.

It's the hardest day for me to be out here,

by far.

It's my little girl's birthday.

She turns four years old today...

And it--it wounds me...

To be out here.

We're proud of Daddy, huh?

Yes, we are.

He's so strong.

Yes, he is, and he's--

and he's very-- and he's very lovely.

He is very lovely.

You gonna cook one now?

-Thanks, Dad. -You're welcome.

Let me stand with my mom.

Okay, oh.

I'm sorry I'm not with you on your special day.

I miss and love you both.

Happy Birthday, Pumpkin.

I'm not sure when I'll be home...

But Daddy misses you.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

I went to bed with pretty good spirits last night,

and then, uh,

I don't think I slept more than a couple hours.

The solitude and the quietness of it--

my heartbeat was waking me up in the middle of the night.

I actually hallucinated.

I'd wake up to flashes of light.

Middle of the night, it was dark, I mean,

when I say dark-- it was dark.

And I look up at the top of my tent,

and as clear as day,

I can see these symbols in the roof of my tent.

At first, my first thought was they were water marks.

'Cause I mean, the thing is, they were random.

They kept changing.

I don't know, they're like perfect Mayan or Indian symbols

or native symbols, I don't know.

Now was that dehydration,

or was that...

the beginning stage of insanity?

You know, I just--I felt unsafe, physically, mentally unsafe.

It's just--it just--it's--

it's driving me insane.

I mean, literally.

I don't think I can close my eyes again in this place.

I think I'm too far gone.

I called for a medic.

This journey may be coming to an end abruptly.

There is no way that

even something as beautiful as this

is worth dying for.

I never feared for my safety

the way I fear for it in that jungle.

It is the craziest thing I have ever seen.

It really is.

Whew, I'm getting nauseous.

This place has completely beat me down.

Here's the boat.

My guts are turning inside out

and I'm just-- my nerves are shot.

This creek right here. Once it dumps,

when it dumps out, when the tide goes completely out.

At least ten quarts.

It's hard, dude. It's hard.

I've been in some hard places.

I've been in combat.

I work in some of the worst places in the world.

I will not spend another night in there.

I was petrified.

I couldn't stay out here tonight.

I can't stay out here tonight.

I don't think I can go any further.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm tapping out. I'm done.

I'm not a bushcrafter.

I'm not a frontiersman.

You know, I believe in military survival.

You do what you got to do to stay alive,

then you get off the X.

Girls, I'm coming home.

The isolation was a killer to me.

You know, I thought I could handle it,

but until you've been by yourself, completely alone,

in something this harsh,

it's just--it just-- it completely broke my spirit.

It broke my will.

So good-bye to my cove...

McGee's Point,

and hello to my rescue.

I think of myself as pretty strong mentally.

It's chewed-- it chewed me away,

just--you know.

♪ ♪

There is no dry kindling in the forest.

You find fuel and you process it down.

That's the only way to get dry stuff out here.

Processing wood is almost therapeutic in a way.

It's really easy in this type of environment

when the rain is pouring down

and you're hunkered down in a shelter,

to just become your own worst enemy,

and that's the last thing that I want to do.

Fire also gives you a big sense of security.

There are a lot of predators in this area.

There's, you know, bears,

I've heard the wolves several times,

and the highest density of cougars

in North America.

There was actually a cougar attack in this area

about three weeks ago.

A guy was sea kayaking, you know,

got out to go to the bathroom or something

and a cougar attacked him.

I think he had to be airlifted out of there actually.

It was a big deal.

But, yeah, it's just a matter of always,

always being aware of your surroundings.

And I think cougars are afraid of fire.

♪ ♪

Just heard a twig snap.

Hopefully it's not a skunk.

I'm not afraid of bears or cougars

or any of that stuff getting me in the night,

but I spent some time in northern Arizona,

and I woke up face-- nose-to-nose with a skunk.

I'm terrified of skunks.

♪ ♪

Man, it's late.

I am hungry, and my body is reminding me it's late.

Man, I want to eat so bad.

I'm starving.

Okay, so my net has been out for a couple cycles

of high tide and low tide.

Let's go see if we got anything.

There's my net.

Looks like there's a bunch of seaweed or something.

Are you serious right now?

I see a huge fish in the net.

Look at this fish.

Holy , it's monstrous.

I hear a strange noise.

That was a weird sound.

I didn't like that sound at all.

That sound was bizarre.

It was like something was pulling its paws

out of the mud or something.

Hope that wasn't a predator.

I'll just take everything and run.

I don't even care about pulling it nicely.

Just get out of here.

That was not cool.

My net's gonna take a beating

dragging over all these sharp rocks and everything,

but I don't even care.

I just want to get back to my camp and be safe.

Out here in the middle of the night,

it can get really dangerous.

There's bear in the area. There's cougar in the area.

There's wolves in the area.

It's not a joke.

♪ ♪

That was a weird sound.

I didn't like that sound at all.

I'll just take everything and run.

I don't even care about pulling it nicely.

Just get out of here.

That sound was bizarre.

It was like something was pulling its paws

out of the mud or something.

Hope that wasn't a predator.

That was not cool.

I just want to get back to my camp and be safe.

Out here in the middle of the night,

it can get really dangerous.

There's bear in the area.

There's cougar in the area. There's wolves in the area.

It's not a joke.

I can't believe the size of that fish.

Thing is huge.

I'm almost there.

All right, back at camp.

Time to get a fire going ASAP.

I got an ember.

Put that inside my tinder bundle.

Huge fish.

What a blessing.

All right, so I'm gonna start working on him

and get him ready to be cooked.

I need to make a proper butchering table.

Split stick.

Trying to make quick cordage like this.

Okay, so, I'm gonna just try to put a knot in this

without breaking it, if I can.

Just like that.

Through here.

I'm gonna do that again on the bottom.

Okay, it's not the prettiest job I've done on this,

but it was quick,

and it was at night.

Basically, the stick holds the fish up like a sail,

holds it all spread out.

So I'm gonna just let that roast.

♪ ♪

I think this has been the longest day

since I've been here.

And I think they'll probably get longer.

Once you get more things figured out

and just kind of--

it's like anything in life.

You set routines.

Even animals have patterns, routines,

and then it seems more...

More monotonous.

You know, the newness the first couple days

was enough to keep you where it was just moving along,

but I can feel it starting to slow down today.

If you spend a lot of time alone in the wilderness,

you better like yourself.

Better be good company.

♪ ♪

I know this is about survival

and everything else,

but to me it's about living here.

It's about...

becoming part of the landscape.

Nature here is a powerful force,

and I--

I don't want to disrupt that.

I don't want to fight nature.

You know, I just hope that I'm able to...

find myself and find a--

find an inner peace here.

♪ ♪

It's definitely the largest fish

I've ever done with this method.

Infrared's not gonna do it any justice,

but that is golden brown.

Dee-licious.

Heavenly Father,

thank you for this amazing meal

that I'm about to eat.

Thank you for

this beautiful fish.

On my behalf,

I thank you for all that I have

and all that I will have,

all that I've had in the past.

I thank you for all that is.

I thank you for this amazing planet

that we live on

and all the life therein.

Thank you for my family,

my wife and daughter

who I love and miss very much.

Amen.

I can't wait to eat.

I mean, it's like, I've actually cooked meat?

Oh, my gosh.

That's got to be 5 pounds of meat right there.

Epic.

Let's taste it.

Mmm.

Still juicy.

It just dripped on my pants, but I wiped it off right away.

I don't want to smell like fish.

Mmm.

This fish is just knocking it out of the park though.

This is crazy.

Things have changed quite a bit.

I know where I can find fresh water now.

I have tons of food,

out of nowhere.

So I am very thankful

for the turn of events.

'Cause I wasn't doing well.

Things have changed.

I'm pretty sure I just saw a cougar

about ten feet from my front door.

I'm pretty sure I just saw a cougarc]

♪ ♪

Definitely the biggest fish I ever caught.

It's time to dig in.

Mmm.

I'm pretty sure I just saw a cougar

about ten feet from my front door.

Two bright flashing eyes.

When my headlamp hit its face,

it moved really fast out of the way,

silently.

All my gear is outside the shelter right now.

I think I hear it out there.

That--that's crazy.

That's, like, a 150-pound cat.

You know, it's like your housecat at home--

can hide anywhere, super stealth,

and jump on top of the fridge standstill,

and, like, crazy ninja, right?

Now I have a 150 to 200-pound ninja

running around in the woods

that's feral,

that likes to eat meat, and attacks people for sure.

That's kind of like the most insane predator

I've ever heard of.

I have a flare in my hand,

and I have my knife.

Everything's buttoned up,

and I'm gonna try and get some sleep.

We'll see what happens.

If I die tonight, I just want my wife,

Crystal,

and my daughter, Sophie,

to know I think of them every day,

and my father to know

I'm glad he's my father.

♪ ♪

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret,

I want to build a boat to do some fishing.

I've never built a canoe.

I got to see if this actually floats.

This might be it for me.

Absolutely miserable weather.

Been in a pretty good mood since I got here,

but not so much today.

And I've got to hurry.

It couldn't have rained at a worse time, but here it is.

It's gonna get colder and wetter.

The storms are gonna come more frequently as time goes on.

The temperature's dropping.

It's driving me insane.

The sky looks evil.

45-mile-an-hour winds and it rained all night.

Welcome to the Pacific Northwest.

This is way out of my area of expertise.

I am scared of these conditions,

because this is dangerous.

♪ ♪