Alone in the Wild is Terrible

Has anyone watched this show? My wife and I could not make it past the first half of the first episode. For those of you who have not seen it, Ed Wardle goes in to the Yukon for three months by himself, with only a knife, cooking pot, and clothing, or something like that. The first episode is a kind of test run, where he is fully equipped with gear so he can see what the conditions are like.

I’m trying to remember everything I saw, but I can at least recall a rifle, fishing rod, hammock, bug net, nice clothing, fishing gear and clothing, and a whole lot more. This looked like quality stuff, not the crap that they gave the group on the Alaska Experiment. The premise to me sounded like a really sweet vacation, minus not having my wife there, of course ( I LOVE YOU SWEETIE PIE).

The guy is out there on his own, filming everything himself Les Stroud style. Now, Les was known to complain every now and then, but he usually had legitimate gripes, such as “I’ve subsisted off of maggots for a week,” or “the jaguar that stalked me and tried to eat me frightened me a bit.” Mister Ed does not seem to be able to go three seconds without complaining about how terrible the whole situation that he willingly entered into is. He has an irrational fear of being attacked and eaten by a bear, which I supposed I can let slide, since a phobia by definition is irrational. Early into the episode, he complains about how hungry he is and how the extreme hunger (from one day) is causing him to fail at basic tasks like walking and breathing ( I might be slightly exaggerating, but not by much).

Discovery had Les Stroud and still has Bear Grylls. Les knew what he was doing, was pretty entertaining, and conveyed a lot of useful knowledge. Bear gives a lot of really terrible and dangerous advice, but he is really entertaining and is willing to do [i]anything[/i] to keep people watching his show, including drinking elephant poo juice, wrestling a live boar, drinking his own pee out of a snake (that he killed) skin. National Geographic’s answer to those two gentlemen is looking quite pathetic. Someone please let me know if the next few episodes were any better.

Man Vs. Wild does some good (sort of)

Well, looks like ol’ Bear Grylls is in the news for teaching a kid something that was actually useful. A 9 year old was separated from his group on a hike and said he used what he learned on Man vs. Wild to handle the 18 hours out in the wild while rescuers were searching for him.

From the article:

Grayson created a small shelter overnight under a fallen tree. The next day, he decided to follow a creek in hopes of finding help.

“I (thought I) might find the lake, that there might be somebody at the lake,” he said.

He made a couple of bad decisions like not staying put and tearing up his rain jacket to use for signaling, but, much more impressively, he didn’t freak out and was able to keep a level enough head that he could try to think through his situation. Sure, he could have done things a little differently, but his actions were better than half of the adult search and rescue stories that I read.

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