Ok....I admit it....I watch 'Survivor'...They got me hooked in the first show, before I knew what to expect...

What I want to know is....Why is it that NO ONE in the show EVER seems to be able to make fire???
You would think that anyone that has EVER watched the show, and found out that he/she had been picked to be on the show, would at least learn SOMETHING about starting a fire!!!
In the newest one, they actually managed to get a GOOD ember going by actually RUBBING TWO STICKS TOGETHER!!!
But then one of them mentioned that they did not know what to DO with it!!!!

WTF???

hey jamesraykenney : i stopped watching it after the first couple of shows...when they voted off the navy seal(survival skills) and another show they voted off a former airforce SURVIVAL instuctor and kept some yuppie bone heads....the show is not about survival as i /we know it, its just a LIVE SOAP OPREA set in a remote location....i refuse to watch it.......vince g. 11b infanrty....

i admit i used to watch it when the series first came out and they looked like real people not some old navy commercial.

i gave up on it after 2nd season.

but since they each get to take a comfort item why hasnt anyone taken a SAK with built in magifying lense?

Every 'comfort item' has to be aproved by the producers, so that it cannot be something actually USEFULL.

Actually, I QUITE enjoy the show... Some of the people realy do surprise you..
Some of the people that SHOULD know what they are doing had a LOT of problems....I think the survival instructer proved to be useless to them(at least in what we were shown)
The 'Camping' lady on this series seems to know what she is doing...Suposedly she has camped all around the world.

The funny thing in the first episode was that the 'natives' brought a big pig to rost and killed it right in front of the ladies and they freaked(all except for the sheperdess..she did not even blink...She sounded like she thought it was funny how the others reacted <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />)

If the people of the United States and some other "civilized" countries had to kill their meat before they ate it, there would be no "McDonalds".

I think I was about 7 years old and living in West Allis, Wisconsin when my father took me down to the basement to cut off a chickens head before preparing it for the meal. Held the chicken by its feet and manuvered the neck onto the wood chopping block and did a clean cut. The reaction of the chicken caused the headless body to break free of my grip and it ran around bumping into things in the basement, and spraying blood all over the place. I can not to this day understand how the body of that headless bird could balance itself and run around. I have never asked anyone about that untill now.

Human balance is in the inner ear and I understand that if our heads are cut off, we can not balance ourselves and stand or run around. Anyone know about chickens?

Bountyhunter

When I last watched (in an earlier season) fire-making was tested, but they gave them flint and what looked like WetFire.

It's too bad that the survival aspects of living on a remote island are completely ignored for more "dramatic" conflicts. And it is a shame that the most (presumably) useful people are voted off because they are a threat, or not part of some awful alliance, or to save someone else's butt. But the show brings out the worst in its competitors, and Americans like to watch that.

If there was a show about REAL survival techniques and stories, I would watch it. Hopefully that'll be Doug's next project! <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

And all along I thought that the phrase 'running around like a headless chicken' was just a euphamism. Imagine that.... <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I don't know why, but the story of "Mike, the Headless Chicken" always cracked me up. Strange but true. You can read about him here:

http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/headless_chicken/

wasnt there a few shows in the UK (or holland?) that were realistic survivor shows?

maybe our members overseas an add to this one.

I think the Bush Tucker Man shows aired in the UK for awhile....

holland ? nope.

BBC 2 does have a a series about bushcraft, by ray mears. 8 pm thursdays ( uk time ).

bountyhunter, your post brought back a pleasant memory for me. I was living with my Grandmother in Sheridan Illinois when I was about 6 years old. (Bless her heart, she died at 62 from Lung Cancer and never smoked a day in her life)
Anyway, she asked me to go catch a chicken and chop its head off so she could show me how to prepare it for dinner.
I had never done it before, but wanted Grandma to be proud of me. Out I went, managed to catch a chicken, took the trusty hatchet and couldn't get the chicken to keep its head still so I could do the right thing. AFTER several attempts, I went in and told Grandma about it. She took me back out and DEMONSTRATED (people still don't believe me, but it works).Take the chicken, plump it breast down on the ground, sorta stretch it head out so its beak is on the ground, take a stick drawing a line in the dirt from the beak for about a foot. That darn bird lies there just as quiet as can be and WHACK. Then it gets up and starts running.
I'll never forget that moment with my Grandma. Been a long time since I thought of it, tho.

Well, in the first season, the Navy Seal (Rudy) was never voted off as such, he was one of the last three contestants and he lost an immunity challenge. By that time it was pretty much everyone was trying to outmaneuver the other two.

The ex-USAF survival instructor, who is apparently the only contestant ever on the show to get a fire started, was the first person voted off, not because she was a liability, but because she was a threat. (Prior to that, everyone who was voted off was "the weakest link", to plagiarise another show.)

But I never bothered watching the last couple of episodes of the first season, and I've never watched any of the subsequent seasons.

If you're going to watch it, then you should simply accept that it's not about survival as we discuss it here; it's about tribal politics. If that turns your crank, fine; if not, don't watch it.

(It was apparent from the first few episodes that many of the season one contestants had read up on survival skills - they knew, at least in theory, how a fire plough worked, for example - but had no idea of how difficult it was to do in real life without having practised it.)

Hey...Last night they actually got a 'native' as a 'PRIZE'.
The Woman 'WON' him.
It was amazing...He came in and found food EVERYWHERE!
Turns out their camp was surrounded by sugarcane!!!
Of course, they will probably kill themselves if they try to so things exactly like he did...
He would hold things in his hands and chop them up with a machete.
Also he climbed a tree with an unsheathed machete in his hand!
You could tell that this guy had been doing things like this since he was a kid!

LOL sounds like an episode I might have actually mildly enjoyed. I have seen a person crack oyster shells in their hand like that with a machete and he would talk to you while he did it, often looking right at you rather than the shell in his hand that he was wacking with the machete. It was pretty neat to watch. Obviously that guy has cracked A LOT of shells with that machete. Of course it's not like it was exactly razor sharp either. <img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

I have noticed one recurring thing in the survivor series. The people they pick must be the most poorly prepared people in the world. Seriously, where do they find them?
If I knew I was going to spend 40 days with no help out in the middle of nowhere, I would make is a point to prepare myself as much as possible. Actually, I am trying to prepare myself now, and I don't even plan to go anywhere.
I know that they are restricted as to what they can take with them, but they aren't restricted as to what they can learn before they go. Why aren't they studying up on what kinds of edible and other useful plants will be in the areas that they are going to? How come no one knows this? How come no one can make a snare? Why hasn't it occured to anyone to make a pair of boot laces out of 550 cord? If you made them long enough, you could cut one and use it for both boots. That would free the other up for your bow&drill, bow string, snare, fishing line, whatever...

I do not think that they KNOW where they are going beforehand. WE know where it it at the end of the prevous edition, but I think they are filmed before the prevous episode is aired(with the exception of the all-stars edition.

Sometimes they do not even get to take their own clothes with them.
Also, I bet that that 550 cord trick would get to fined or something(probabally in the contract you have to sign.)

The thing I REALLY HATE about the show, it that(from what I have heard) there are a LOT of RULES they have to follow...There was one where there was wildlife all over the place and they were starving??? From what I heard, some of it was listed as 'endangered' and so they could not touch it <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> (sure was a LOT of it, for it to be 'endangered')
Of course some of this could be for their own safety...I remember playing Microsoft's 'Age of Empires' for the first time and sending my vilagers out to go hunt some hippos with their spears...Ohhhh, there was some killing done...It just was not done by the villagers <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

LOL .. see video games sometimes do teach valuable life lessons. When armed with spear, hunting hippos is a bad idea! <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I like the chicks in swimsuits