Ultimate Survival Alaska

[ns3]

Greatest survival in the wild show EVER (National Geographic).

I love these kinds of shows but this was THE best! No barefoot hippies (Dual Survival) or a man and woman naked together (Naked and Afraid), just a group of real hard-ass Alaskan survivalists competing against each other for real.

On the last show of the season, aired last night, a member of the military team almost drowned in a class 3 rapid and since me and my wife and my grandkids all got dumped over in a class 4 rapid last year north of Atlanta I'm proposing to the family that we sign up for next year's show.

[Kshartle]

Is it realistic at all?

That's the thing i like about Survivorman and Naked and afraid, people are really trying to survive and not taking risks and going hungry.

I'll check it out.

[RuralEngineer]

I'll be honest, my wife and I love Naked and Afraid.  It amuses us that in that in every instance there tends to be one individual that is head and shoulders above the other in terms of ability.  I feel like it's very much realistic that they almost always struggle because surviving without tools (or very few tools) is stupidly difficult.  Most of the people who go on that show lose between 20 and 40 pounds in 3 weeks, so if nothing else, it's a hell of a weight loss program.  The interpersonal interaction is fascinating to me as well. 

There was a show called Naked Castaway where a British former SAS officer spent a month naked with absolutely nothing but a camera on an island in Fiji.  After it was over he did a review of the experience and mentioned how he was unprepared for how emotionally vulnerable being naked made him since he was so unused to it.

[ns3]

The interpersonal interaction is fascinating to me as well. 

Always wondered about that when you have to sleep naked beside somebody out in the wild.

[ns3]

Is it realistic at all?

That's the thing i like about Survivorman and Naked and afraid, people are really trying to survive and not taking risks and going hungry.

I'll check it out.

I think as realistic as it can be with camera crews filming the whole thing. There were some real life-threatening situations in Ultimate Survival that I never saw in any of those other shows - involving bears, glacial crevasses, and frozen river rapids with accompanying hypothermia mostly (the latter the most believable in two instances).

I think it's either fake or really pushing the envelope. I wonder what would happen if they actually filmed someone dying. I doubt we would see it.