Survivorman vs. Wild?

Survivorman Logo, via YouTube

The TV show Survivor is described as a “reality-competition”, but it never struck me as realistic, and I never really understood the appeal. It seems overly contrived and almost cruel, as cooperation is the primary reason why humans survived as a species, and this type of series seems to focus on trying to sabotage any attempts to cooperate. Probably just a matter of personal taste.

When I think about “actual” wilderness survival, my introduction was Bear Grylls’ Man vs Wild, but once I saw Les Stroud’s Survivorman, I was hooked!

Man vs Wild has great scenery and interesting stunts and situations, but I never considered it particularly “realistic”. Even before criticism arose about contrived situations and about the show being misleading about being a “solo survival” show, it was clear that Grylls had a camera crew with him, and seemed obvious that he was taking risks which looked impressive and would certainly appeal to many people, but would be near-suicidally stupid if he were truly alone.

In stark contrast, Les Stroud worked very hard to make it clear that he was truly alone, and clearly described the scenario he was following. In episode 1, he staged a canoe turn-over – ie, flipped the canoe he was in, let it disappear downstream, and then crawled out of the water with only his clothes and a small pack. At this point – and this is important – he showed his support team leaving. This is important because it would be (in my humble opinion) extremely stupid to deliberately flip in a canoe with no backup. Doing this just before his support team left established the scenario in a realistic way, but but did so in such a way that he would have had backup in case of life-threatening injury, such as a head-injury when the canoe flipped. Smart!

Being soaked was also extremely dangerous, but that was the scenario he was following, and he managed to get a fire going with his one match. This allowed him to dry his clothes, and keep him warm through at least part of the first night. The following day, he set up a shelter and managed to get a fire going without matches, which is much harder than it looks (and he sometimes fails, even after years of experience).

Overall, I found Survivorman extremely interesting and informative, particularly since a primary focus of the series was on prioritization, and on how panic kills. While most of us will not need to survive in a wilderness survival situation, the thought process is helpful in many other situations.

I once wrote about the graphic novel the US CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) wrote describing disaster preparedness in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. In the end, it turned out to be “only a dream”, but illustrated the value in being prepared for a variety of different situations, and considering what might be needed.

Our collective experience with COVID-19 highlighted the value of having a supply of toilet paper, if nothing else, and recent experience with various weather events keep considerations of this nature top of mind. You can search the Canadian government’s official website (https://www.canada.ca/en.html) for information around emergency preparedness, or go to the dedicated site Get Prepared. There’s a page dedicated to hazards and emergencies as well, which is very interesting.

Most people (with obvious variations depending on where they live) would list things like drought, earthquake, and thunderstorms, but some are a bit more thought-provoking, such as permafrost degradation and space weather. Other emergencies listed include things like cyberattack, pandemic influenza, and power outages, but I wonder if we should start preparing more actively for civil disorder and related issues?

There have been “preppers” (or survivalists, or doomsday preppers) for years, but many people considered them strange, or worse - think about the characters Burt and Heather Gummer from the movie Tremors. More recently, however, being better prepared for civil unrest, extended utility outages, and more extreme weather events seems a lot more sensible than it did previously.

There is, of course, a continuum between “basic” preparations, like having enough food, water, and other supplies to stay in your home for a week, and being prepared for “the end of the world”. Everyone should probably have a basic emergency kit in their car, enough supplies at home for a week, and maybe a “bug-out” bag in case of fire or similar event.

But consider access to information as well. In years past, most people had access to at least a few books, and a fair number of people had reference books, up to and including an encyclopedia at home. But what about now? Everyone just checks the internet to find things out. How to fix a pipe? What, actually, WAS in the box? How to deal with a medical emergency when you’re snowed in? Just check the internet.

But what if you can’t?

What if you lose power? Or internet service? Or, what if bad actors start removing or changing information in trusted sources? What if, next year, you want to learn about the LGBTQ community, and find that the page is gone, or replaced with one that replaces facts with ideological fiction?

Fortunately, Wikipedia is aware that there are risks to the platform, and has made it possible to download free copies, for mirroring, personal use, informal backups, and offline use. There are a number of tools available to read Wikipedia offline, including Kiwix (https://kiwix.org/en/), which supports not only Wikipedia, but other projects as well, such as Project Gutenberg and Wiktionary.

Some of the files are large, but not as large as you might think, and certainly nothing particularly difficult to deal with nowadays. For example, Wikipedia is about 100GB, while Project Gutenberg is about 85GB. It took some time to download, but means that I not only have access even if I lose my internet connection, but I also have a (relatively) “clean” version in case of future attacks on the platform.

Taking things a step further, you could consider Internet-in-a-Box, which is basically a Raspberry Pi with a replaceable storage card and a battery-pack, which can provide wireless access for multiple people. The next step would be to build your own, or buy one.

For now, though, having a copy of Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg seems sufficient. Let’s hope we don’t get to the point where it’s not!

Cheers!