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Survivorman
2005 · TV series · documentary · 42 min episodes · 8 seasons
Created by Les Stroud
In this harrowing reality series, “Survivorman” Les Stroud travels to far-flung locales with little more than the clothes on his back and 50 pounds of camera equipment to battle - and try to survive - insanely harsh conditions.
4 positive3 neutralfrom 7 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
This one time on an episode of Survivorman, Kalahari iirc, I watched Les Stroud use a hole in the dirt and a clear plastic tarp covering it to act as a solar still. The condensation from his pee in said hole ran off to a collection container as pure H20 once evaporated.
I just remember thinking to myself "Bear Grylls drinking his own pee is such a philistine, here is an actual pro using science to remove all the water from that pee instead first." Genuine moment of awe personally.
Isnt that what survivorman and bear grylls do in every episode?
They would probably enjoy "Alone", if they haven't seen it yet. (A dozen people get dropped off on separate parts of Vancouver island, and have to survive the longest to win prize money. No help, total isolation, and they have to film everything themselves.) One of the better done "reality survival shows" I've seen; sort of like a batch of Les Strouds (Survivorman).
I was more interested into technology rather than society. I'd love to see that episode of survivorman.
ps: random collision, I was just watching this http://typotalks.com/berlin/2012/speakers/single-speaker/?tid=376&et=TYPO%20Berlin%202012 when I realized it's similar to your vanished survivor mindset.
Very fun topic to think about. My $.02: Together with the genetic diversity you need food, lots of food. I bet if you look up the average hunter-gatherer village size, that's about the maximum size of a population you can support on just hunter-gathering and perhaps some basic farming.
To get a civilization that could support even a modest town large enough to support small mining operations and general trade you need the most important technology we've spent the past 10.000-40.000 years developing and which I don't see any technological shortcut to: The potato, banana, the chicken, the cow, etc. Superfoods, without which a civilization won't get very far and which will definitely not just exist on a planet that's never seen human cultivation.
(There's a fun survivorman episode where he gets dropped in a jungle, and after a day or two of hardship he stumbles upon an abandoned farm, instantly the whole 'surviving' aspect is gone and the rest of the episode is about him trying to live comfortably (i.e. not being eaten by ants at night), the difference between a bleeding edge modern mango and sucking on a wild berry is stark (the episode is called "Grenada Jungle"))
A lot of people seem to be extrapolating "stranded in the desert" into a scene out of Survivorman or some Hollywood movie or The Little Prince.
Alternate title: "Mechanic camps not far town, repurposes broken car as motorcycle"
Someone else with a similar attitude I find inspiring: Les Stroud. He'd go to some random remote wilderness location, take a few video cameras and nothing else, and record himself surviving for a week. Result: Survivorman, a hit TV show going into its fourth season, with at least 3 spinoff shows.
A more mundane example: my brother took a photograph every day for a year. Not a big deal, no particular subjects or goals, but getting that one picture a day was paramount. With some editing & on-demand publishing, result was a very nice coffee-table book of intriguing eclectic photos.
Same idea. Pick a topic, dive in, write/record for an audience, do it with passion and consistency and detail, the result is awesomeness. The more you strive the awesomer you get.