Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

Something as stupid as cutting myself with an ax

took me out of this unbelievable experience of a lifetime.

That's the catch of the day.

Some kind of gnarly looking seaweed.

If I don't start catching fish and soon, I'm a goner.

There's a bear.

All right, bear, you stay over there.

Please stay away from my camp.

Thank you.

They don't call this "Alone" for no reason.

It's like a whining and a really deep

sniffing right here at the back of my head.

Get on out of here.

[growling]

Who are you when everything's been stripped away?

[bleep]

It's scary out here in these woods.

I have not had a serious meal in a week.

If I can't get a fire, then I can't stay here.

It's always in the back of your mind-- well,

I could tap out.

Putting up with this filming bull [bleep]..

Running into a predator.

It's not an if, it's a when.

Get the hell out of here.

I see you.

Get out of here.

I'm living a hand to mouth existence.

Yes!

$500,000 is a lot of money.

It's just going to keep getting harder.

It's not the world that needs to change.

It's me that needs to change.

[groans]

[dramatic music]

[air horn blaring]

Get on out of here.

Get.

You heard me.

Get.

[air horn blaring]

[growling]

OK.

Get the hell out of here.

I see you.

Get of here.

Go on.

Get.

Oh, man.

That is a cub.

OK.

All right.

I couldn't figure out what in the hell it was.

I've never heard a noise like that come from an animal.

Turned out it wasn't one animal.

It was two.

It was mama and a cub.

The mama was making the huffing noise,

and the baby was making the neighing noise.

Hope baby is OK.

You know, this just brought back the rage monster that I had.

I hate that part of me.

I can't stand that part of me.

Being good at violence is not good.

And it kills me that that's exactly what the hell I

reverted back to here tonight.

You know, I hate to do it, but I'm going to tap.

It's just starting to feel peaceful here, you know?

That quietness, you know?

[bleep]

Sorry.

[bleep]

Hey.

I'm rattled.

I'm not going to lie.

When I saw the little bear, it was just this feeling

of remorse hit me for being so aggressive over it

because that's the way I've always been.

I've just been uber aggressive.

And I just felt really bad.

My heart aches for tapping because I feel like I quit.

And I don't quit stuff.

I feel like I'm leaving a little bit undone.

It's just that I know that I don't

want to be in physical confrontations

anymore in my life.

That part of my life is gone.

And it's over.

I can't do it.

Mother nature is going to bring everything out.

And maybe this is her way of telling me

it's my time to go back.

I don't know.

As they say, one hell of an amen.

[dramatic music]

Last night, well, I suppose about midnight,

I was sound asleep and dreaming.

I don't know what I was dreaming about.

Most likely Barbara.

But I felt her kiss me.

And so I kissed her back.

And then, I woke up, and a slug was crawling across my lips.

And I kissed a slug in the middle of the night

thinking it was Barbara.

That's nasty.

And I hope that didn't scar you for life.

Got myself all fed.

I had fish because of the gill net.

But now, I've got plans for my shelter.

And I can't wait to get on them.

You know, I want to build the drying rack over the fire.

Everything is so super wet.

Firewood won't burn.

It'll just be a matter of driving in four stakes,

and then tying two poles to that.

And then, the racks crossed it.

We'll just have it all above the fire.

So on long, rainy days, I can be busy drying out wood like this.

So I've got the basic three piles going here.

The bigger wood.

Sticks about that thick.

And then, sticks not quite as thick.

And then, much skinnier, thinner sticks.

That's just me.

I'm a neat freak.

I just like everything orderly.

I like to know where stuff is.

And I don't want stuff in the way.

And if it's all disorderly, then I

don't feel at peace or at rest with it.

And I don't know why I'm that way.

Perhaps it was being in the orphanage

and having so few things, and--

and wanting them just so so.

My mind needs to stay busy.

This morning laying in bed, I started thinking about tacos.

Oh, my goodness, tacos.

That's the two things I miss the most.

Fried chicken and tacos.

I get thinking about this bucket of chicken,

and I just can't stop thinking about it.

Yes, I'll have four original recipe thighs, the potato

wedges, and big old Coke.

Oh, yeah.

When you're this hungry, food like that

grabs a hold of your brain and it just doesn't let you go.

Starvation really does get to you.

And I am starving.

A lack of food has really put me at a low burn.

I just don't have the energy to do anything.

I'm just numb with hunger.

I haven't eaten in--

what day is it?

I haven't even been counting.

It's terrible.

Going to go check my gill net.

Disappointing.

There is nothing in my commercially made gill net.

Nada.

Zip.

Zero.

Zilch.

No fishies.

Nothing.

Just a big hollow sucking sound from my net.

It mocks me.

I'm not really impressed with that gill net.

The mesh size on it seems very small.

Fish will just bounce off that net.

If I can't get fish, I'm not going to make it.

It's day 276.

I've learned how to communicate with the animals.

[laughs]

See, I'm going to take a walk, check my net.

I know there's not going to be anything in it,

but we're checking anyway.

Already my stomach's growling.

I'm really hungry.

Getting stuff from the water is going

to be tasking because the fish aren't just running

up and jumping in your arms out there.

Oh, [bleep].

We got a fish.

[laughter]

We got a fish.

Woo hoo!

Oh, you're a ugly [bleep],, aren't you?

So the net actually worked.

I brought hammock.

Transitioned from using the hammock

as a hammock to a gill net.

Anything that I use for survival situations,

I try to have at least two uses for it.

And it is the military type mentality of survival.

No idea what kind of fish that is.

So we need to cook him up pronto.

You know, there's people out there laughing

at how I'm filleting this fish.

This is definitely not my strong suit.

And in case any of you were wondering, like,

is this dude only bring-- no, I have--

I have pants.

I just like wearing shorts.

My legs and my feet don't get necessarily as cold

as the rest of my body.

Quite a bit of meat there.

I'd say probably 30, 40 grams of protein.

And all the fats and fish oil.

We're going to go over, try to get a fire started so we can

cook this fish.

Not a bad first meal from the sea.

About [bleep] time.

Now that I've got my drying rack over the fire itself,

I'm going to build an elevated platform for my kitchen fire.

Just kind if tired of sitting on the ground.

I'm going to build it up, I don't know, maybe--

maybe three feet.

And then, I can just work with my fire.

I love these little kinds of projects.

They give me something to do to keep my mind occupied so I can

make it for the long haul.

I'm looking at this for a full year.

All right, so I got the four poles driven in.

Now I'm lashing the cross pieces that will support the plank,

upon which I will put gravel and a rock and build the fire.

My uncle was big time into outdoor bush craft and survival

skills.

And he turned to me onto it.

And I'm very thankful for it.

All right, got my bucket of gravel

just from the beach here for cooking.

So it'll withstand heat for quite a while.

And that's my stove top.

It's a one burner.

It's all I need now.

Very nice.

Nice indeed.

I feel, like, charmed or something because everything

is just going so well.

All right, all finished.

And I'm ready to wash up.

I built a hands free foot operated gravity flow water

faucet out of a gallon jug and some cord.

I tied this stick to the tree.

And then, I tied the one gallon bottle that washed up here

on the beach right here to the stick.

Then, I tied this longer stick here around the bottle,

and I extended it that far so that the line would come

up and over, and then down to the pedal.

You just step on this lever down here.

It'll tip it up.

And then the water flows out, and I can wash my hands.

It's not pretty, but it gives me running water hands free.

You know, the projects keep me busy throughout the day.

And so time just flies by because of that.

And so I'll need to keep thinking of projects

in order to maintain that feeling out here.

Yeah, so I got my fireplace.

My drying rack over the fireplace.

My kitchen over there.

And, you know, my water is simple.

I don't have to work for it.

Just simply walk over there and fill up my containers.

So right on.

I have achieved modernity here.

I just need Barbara.

[gull calling]

[dramatic music]

Protein, man.

I just-- I'm still perplexed about the whole fishing deal.

I'm not Lucas.

I'm not going to make a canoe.

I'm not going to make a yurt.

I'm not Alan.

I can't eat just whatever frickin' crawls by.

I just-- I am what I am.

You know, I'm trying the things that I know how to do.

And that's all I can do.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do for protein.

It's kind of perplexing.

I set up my gill net and my fishing line,

but they haven't given me anything.

Just like everything else in this place, nothing comes easy.

Nothing comes easy.

Today, I want to make a spear of some sort

just in case I do see something while I'm climbing

along these rocks at low tide.

I'm not just, oh, hey, there's something.

Too bad I didn't have a spear.

Hard on your forearms.

And I'm not very good with my right hand.

Survival here is not easy.

It's-- it's work.

It's just everything takes time.

There's just never enough time in the day.

If I got proper rest, proper food,

you know, maybe it wouldn't be that big a deal.

But I think it would be.

This terrain is insane.

The spear shouldn't this hard.

Only in this frickin' place is a spear like this this hard.

[laughter]

Oh, my god.

So I split it down the middle.

Then, I just start taking sections off

like slices of the pie.

I'm just going to shove these down inside these little slots.

But you got to force it down in here.

There's one.

I want to do another one.

The object is just to spread these fingers out

as much as possible.

So you can see it's starting to spread out a little bit.

God, I wish I'd get a fish.

Frickin' starting to get hungry.

Like, really hungry.

Like, that's all I can think about is food hungry.

I don't-- I've never been this hungry ever.

Done.

Now I've got a spear point for when the mammoth comes.

And then, I have more of a shotgun approach for if I ever

see a fish or a crab that's big enough

to utilize the spear for.

And all the while I'm doing these projects,

my mind is just racing.

I don't know, man.

I just-- I'm doing the best I can.

And sometimes, it's just not good enough.

Kind of shocked at how little I'm getting

done to be quite honest.

I had envisioned being farther along in the process than this.

I've got solve the food problem.

I've got to learn how to fish here.

I'm going to make another gill net.

That should produce fish.

Thinking about setting up across there once I get it built.

Get two nets working for me.

In my opinion, the gill net is probably the number one food

producer out here.

And I can only take one gill net.

Nothing says you can't make a second one.

That's what I'm going to do.

It's probably my best find so far on this beach

has been rope.

I have to kind of take it apart to get the inner strands of it.

In order to make my gill net, I have to have a large volume

of fine thread.

So this is the exciting world of wilderness survival.

A guy sitting in a beautiful forest playing with old rope.

Bucket of chicken right now would be really, really good.

Mic check. Microphone.

Microphone.

Yeah, I got a microphone.

I'm good.

The net needle I made out of cedar.

I carved that couple of days ago.

The first step of the process is to tie a series of loops all

the way down the net.

And then, I'm going to come back and start netting through them

back and forth, switching sides on the net.

Back and forth.

Just going and going.

To tie the knots, you have to pass the entire ball of string

through the loops.

And that's what the net needle's all about.

It holds all the string you're working with,

and allows you to pass the giant coil of string

through the knot.

Tired, underfed, and dehydrated.

Making net.

The act of tying net is not normally a tiring process.

This is not a great deal of physical exertion here.

It's just I need to eat food.

Now, this is going to be an ugly gill net.

And it will probably only catch ugly fish.

But that's OK.

OK.

Empty net needle.

Now, just got to refill it and keep going.

It's a long process.

I had so many high hopes of doing so many cool things.

I just feel like I'm just treading water.

[bleep]

Oh, my god.

I got something in my gill net.

And rather than wait till tonight to get it,

I'm hoping I can race and beat the tide and get it right now.

Oh, my god.

I'm so thankful.

I have no idea.

Tide's coming in fast.

OK, I get to have a good meal.

I'll probably fillet him up.

Little baby fish.

Oh, and I let it go.

I should waited till frickin' low tide.

Damn it.

He squeezed right through there.

Damn it.

I better get out of here before the tide gets me.

The aloneness and the hunger kind of compound to make it way

more difficult. Right now, it's--

it's the frickin' hunger, man.

It's always in the back of your mind--

well, I could tap out.

I could be drinking a beer and having a burger

in about two hours probably.

Missing substantial calories, and I can't deal with it

too much longer.

[dramatic music]

It is day--

I'm really glad I made this. I don't know what day it is.

I think it's day eight.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

No.

It is day nine.

So I am going to cut a notch--

my morning ritual-- into my counting stick,

which apparently I need.

Feels like it's time that I need to start thinking about bigger

food.

The limpets, and the seaweed, and the little crabs,

banana slugs, and the mushroom, you know,

they're all delicious.

But I want real, big food.

That's the way that I'm going to make it.

My plan is to put my gill net up today.

I have a log out there to tie one end of my gill net to.

And then, on the other end, I'm actually

going to need to pound a piece of wood into the ground itself.

So I'm going to use cedar because it's water resistant.

It's a pretty nice morning, I gotta say.

Bears were just there yesterday right behind those two logs.

It looked like they were fishing,

so that's where I'm going to put my gill net.

I've never set a gill net before.

Means I probably won't catch anything with the first go.

Be really nice if these salmon start actually running.

I may not have time to set this.

We'll see.

I'm running out of low tide.

And I guess I waited too long.

That was wet.

And I just got water in my boot.

[bleep]

And the tide just came in.

Oh, man.

Oh, that was, like, bad timing.

Crap.

All right, well, it's not perfect.

But we're going to see how it does.

Attempt number one looks pretty terrible.

I'm hoping at least when the tide comes in, that top line

will float a little bit more.

I want to see.

We're going to leave it.

Hey, maybe I'll luck out and get something.

You never know.

Knock on-- let's go find someone to knock on.

[sighs]

I am very badly dehydrated right now.

We had several days now without rain.

And that would sound like a blessing,

but the problem is, my rain catch is dry,

which means I have to boil water now to stay hydrated, which

takes a lot of effort to do that.

The lethargy from dehydration is absolutely the worst.

You just can't move.

You know, your body can metabolize itself, consume

body fat and muscle tissue to make energy,

but it can't do that to make water.

You've got to put it in.

I don't even feel hungry right now because I'm thirsty.

That's a bad sign.

I have to boil a gallon of water every day or I get dehydrated.

And if I get dehydrated, I have no energy.

And if I have no energy, I don't get the work done.

Part of the fire making process is

having loads of wood in camp.

But the other part is that initial flame and getting

a flame going.

And the best way to do that in this environment

is a cedar bark, which has been shredded finely,

and spruce resin, which has been mixed with the shredded cedar

bark.

I've got several spruce trees here, which are gigantic.

They're huge.

This is bleeding, oozing sap all the way

down the side of the tree.

So it's the most amazing thing.

I can come down with the axe and scrape all this stuff off.

Cedar bark lights readily, but it doesn't burn very long.

And the spruce resin burns a long time,

but it's kind of hard to light sometimes.

So when you mix the two, the cedar

lights up the spruce resin, then you have a long lasting flame.

And this is really sticky stuff, which is a good thing.

And there's a lot of resin in there.

So that little bit should burn a good long time.

Long enough to get these twigs and things going.

There we go.

See how much easier that was?

Now get this on top.

Get these on top of that.

But once I get some liquid in me,

I'm planning on getting a lot of fuel in the shelter here.

I'll probably work on my net.

Its high tide now.

It's almost dead high tide.

And it won't be low tide again till this evening.

Really, really, really looking forward

to having a belly full of liquid.

The thirst has to go.

The dehydration has to go.

No!

[dramatic music]

The thirst has to go.

The dehydration has to go.

No!

I did not need that this morning.

I did not swear on camera.

That was good.

That was good.

That was restraint.

That was discouraging.

And now, I have to do this whole thing over again.

I just don't have any way around it today.

I have to hydrate.

I have to drink water.

I am too stinking tired, underfed, and dehydrated

to get it together right now.

But I have to because the leading cause of death

in wilderness survival situations

are hypothermia and dehydration.

I screwed up.

No excuses.

I'm human.

I admit it.

It's a good thing you folks didn't hear what I said after I

shut off the camera.

You'd be shocked at what can come out

of this good Christian man.

The bears heard.

The cougars heard and the wolves heard.

But they don't speak English.

And that's a good thing.

Oh, man, this place is just one big rotten log.

Kind of disappointed in myself.

And yet, on the other hand, I haven't

done everything I can do.

But, I mean, I've tried, man.

It's not like I've been screwing off.

I am getting minor food.

Limpets and those stupid periwinkles.

God, I'm tired of those.

It just blows me away.

Why is there no fish here?

There's nothing in my gill net.

I'm just not going deep enough I think.

I'm going to check my stationery lines.

There's got to be fish here.

I got something on my line.

Got to be careful and don't let it

go like I did on that little one on the gill net.

[chuckles]

Oh, [bleep], I got another one.

Dinner tonight, man.

Woo!

[bleep] dinner, man.

Oh.

Oh, my god.

Right on.

I don't know what kind of fish these are.

To me, they're called dinner fish.

What do we have here?

My goodness.

Hello, good sir.

Hello, good sir.

Another deuce.

Another double.

Woo!

Wow.

Another one.

Don't you start to fight on me, you son of a gun.

I'm going to be skewering a lot of fish tonight.

[dramatic music]

Spilling that pot of tea this morning--

emotionally, that kind of set me back.

I was already dehydrated.

Mouth was dry.

I'd done all that work to get the fire going,

and bam, the thing falls over.

Oh, my goodness.

You know, kicking myself.

How could I be so stupid?

I was just not paying attention.

I have not eaten a single fish since I've been here.

My dad always said, if you want to catch big fish,

use big hooks and big bait.

And he caught big fish.

My dad was an excellent fisherman.

Why did I not pay attention to the man?

I'm just not a fisherman.

But that can't be an excuse.

That is now the problem.

I have to overcome.

I have to learn how to fish these waters.

And it's a major, major problem for me.

The reality of the aloneness part of it

is kind of starting to sink in.

And everything is on me and my skill set.

And there is nobody to fall back on who has greater expertise.

I haven't talked to anybody in nine days.

And knowing that that's going to continue, and continue,

and continue is starting to sink in.

I can just pick up that phone at any moment

and say, take me home.

That bucket of chicken is a phone call away.

[music playing]

This meal means so much to me just psychologically.

Just knowing that there are fish out there in that sea.

I mean, I knew that there were fish,

but just that there were fish that would come in right there.

OK, what I did was I filleted the fish.

OK, that wastes a lot of meat.

So what I did is I took the carcasses

and I cut them up, bones and all, and that will be my stew.

And I'll have a super rich broth to eat for breakfast tomorrow.

Two meals back-to-back like that, man,

that should really help me out.

Wow, how lucky to catch four fish today, man.

Every line that I put out had a fish on it today.

How frickin' awesome is that?

Well, I'm going to check my gill net.

I want to make sure that I don't miss the salmon run.

Hopefully, they're holing up here getting ready for the run.

I hope they run up one of these rivers.

That would be wonderful.

Still on?

Hey, you are.

You're on.

All right.

Oh, the bears are here.

[bleep]

[dramatic music]

I really want to go check my gill net.

But I definitely want to give these bears their space.

My gill net is to the left right in line with them.

The bears are right to the right.

So they're really close to my gill net.

So I'm not sure what to do.

I don't want her to be nervous.

I'll let them know that I'm here and see what their reaction is.

Hey, bear.

Human here.

Hi!

Don't worry.

You're safe.

Your babies are safe.

I need to go check my--

my gill net because I need to eat.

See if I go just a little closer what she does.

Oh, mama bear just stood up on her hind legs.

Not good.

Oh, my god.

I'm searching for a sense of place here.

And I'm just struggling to find it.

[tarzan yell]

That twisted branch, that's where I clean my fish.

And it's leaving.

Coming on.

40, 50 mile an hour winds.

Free tornado.

I got to go back to camp.

I can leave this experience at any moment.

But there's that half million dollar prize.

I got a mouse.

My first bit of meat in 12 days.