Has anyone seen the new show on the science channel? It's called survivor man. It is interesting to watch and sometimes funny but, I find some of the things he is doing to be very wrong. He seems to be very knowledgeable when it comes to starting fires, building shelters, and obtaining food, but he will make careless mistakes like building a shelter next to a river during heavy rain. What does everyone else think about the show?

I haven't seen the show, I'm on a different continent. I remember reading a previous thread in the last couple of months about this show (I Think)
Do a quick search, I think you will find a thread about it.

I haven't seen the show either (no cable). What do you think about it? When the water rose, did he get wet? Or did they cut to commercial? Seriously, give us your comments. If he makes mistakes, which ones do you think are survivable?

Regards, Vince

I like Survivorman a lot.

I suggested in another post that some of the mistakes Les Stroud makes are intentional to show the audience "what not to do". Even so, the show is about improvising in a survival situation that he and the producers of the show set up. Regarding that, he's still alive and to hear him tell it he's not yet used the satellite phone he carries other than to make sure it's working (he's mentioned that it doesn't connect about half of the time), so "wrong" is somewhat relative.

Of course that's just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

In the particular show you mention (if I remember it correctly), had he done everything "right" he would have busted out the space blanket that he had and used it on the very first night versus waiting until he made it down to the treeline and had built a shelter.

Heck, if he had done everything right he would have been better equipped for any survival situation in general. <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> I mean he wasn't even carrying anything to start a fire and he ended up breaking a video camera to get a lens with which he started a fire on the 3rd or 4th day.

But the show isn't really about having the right equipment to survive it's about improvising with what one has on hand, especially one's own mind, to give a person better odds in a survival situation.

Truthfully, by the 3rd or 4th day of most of the shows I expect to see Les make far more mistakes than he does simply from putting himself into starvation by burning more calories than he takes up. I'm generally surprised that we haven't seen him rant like a nut yet and start talking to "Harvey". <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Anyway, here's a link to that previous discussion about Survivorman:
Survivorman

I got lost once. I hugged a fir tree until my then Girlfriend showed up with a lot attendant asking if we wanted it flocked. I worry about survival experts with the confidence of Duffman on the Simpsons. They're to good looking, confident and correct. If you spotted mistakes by Les your thinking and somebody did their job.

Your parables kick my backside, CK! LOL <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

He oopsed.

The few times I've needed these skills, usually due to a sudden drop in tempurature combined with too much moisture and/or something on me got a bent a little, I screwed up some stuff to. To err is to be human. To be able to talk about it is a survivor.

This is the forum's third thread on this topic in the past 2 months, and the second one in the past 2 weeks!

According to this progression, the next thread on this same subject should be due in 2 days, then the next one 2 hours after that, then the next 2 minutes after that - by this time on Friday the forums will have crashed due to an infinite number of threads on the Survivorman TV show...

(To prevent the destruction of our virtual discussion area, please use the search function before posting!)

I can keep that schedule.

Synchronizing watch to universal time... Setting alarm for 48 hours... And Go!

Actually on a descending schedule like that, after 2 days there would be no more posts as there can't be -1 new threads on the topic at the two hour mark. Even so since it's a posts minus one divided by next descending timecount, it will stop relatively quickly or we could possibly see some kind of temporal displacement and possibly the reversal of time itself.

Eh... Probably not. I was always better in art than science.

Stopping watch... Ramping down... And breath... In through the nose... Out through the mouth... <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Fortunately, users of this particular forum are equipped for any eventuality...

<img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

(Though with a temporal displacement, you may have to solely depend on your EDC if you didn't have your BOB packed two months ago, at the beginning of this sequence of events...)