It’s true that I don’t watch much tv, but I do get to watch some stuff on Youtube and Amazon. The Kindle Fire I bought is great for watching all kinds of free (if you pay the $80 membership) movies and shows.
My favorite survival show is “Dual Survival.” It stars two guys named Cody Lundin and Dave Canterbury and, it being a TV show, they are almost direct opposites personality-wise, but they always get through the various adventures and challenges the show puts them up against. They don’t always agree on things and Cody drives Dave crazy sometimes with his bush hippy ways, but they have come to a certain level of mutual respect – at least in the last few episodes I saw.
The reason I like to put these questions out there is because I always hear back about things I’ve been missing. There are a few good survival shows out there, but these days there are other survivalist shows I haven’t seen yet like, “Doomsday Preppers.”
Here’s my question: what are your favorite show(s)? Is there a series you like to watch? Or is there a movie or book that really got your attention?
Anything is fair game here. Feel free to mention any genre.
Let me know in the comments below.
-Jarhead Survivor
25 comments
My favorite has to be Survivorman with Les Stroud, but more recently is Dual Survival; however the sense of mutual respect seemed to be artificially eroded in the second season by scripting. Doomsday Preppers is mocking and the “preppers” have attitudes that make me ashamed to have associated with the label at least 50% of the time. Doomsday bunkers is ok, but loses my interest. Man Woman Wild seemed more oriented towards the drama, I watched it with my lady ;). Man Vs. Wild is just about the visuals and experiencing the adventure from the living room, not my type of thing. I’m hoping Dual Survival gets a third season, if not I recommend Dave’s youtube channel, which is not only educational, but allows fans to sit and hang out with Dave. http://www.youtube.com/user/wildernessoutfitters
The movie Blindness though not the best movie ever, it did give you a sense of how things could be. From the epidemic and how quickly it spread, the quarantine of the affected, the desperation and devastation to the general public and how the strong take over and rule over the weak. It gave me another way to look at how l do things here.
Another favorite was The Book of Eli. It made me again think about the importance of basic things we usually think of as throw away items.
Not to mention l decided to get worms as a way to help produce “dirt” in case of our outside dirt gets contaminated with whatever. If something like Fukishima where the plant melted down and contaminated our soil, l have inside dirt to plant sprouts in so l can still have fresh safe food. Sounds silly, but who knows right? Our nuclear plants are old and anything can happen.
l did see one episode last season of doomsday preppers where the guy used his swimming pool in Arizona to set up aquaponics and l thought that was awesome.
Reality. Life thats my favorite survival show…
I agree with Gat – Book of Eli is a real eye opener.
Also liked Doomsday Preppers as it showed the extremes.
Survivorman. Everyone else is just playing dress up.
Right now…The Walking dead (as far as a drama ), I agree with Tim, Les Stroud is the real deal. But I’ve also seen Dave’s youtube videos and he seem’s to have a good mix of primitive and modern primitive (if you will ) survival skills. A few years ago there was Jericho…also The Colony. Depends on mood I guess.
Falling Skies and Walking Dead for post apocalyptic genre. Jericho was good also. Too bad it didn’t survive into the second season.
The Survivors was really well done.
I prefer Survivorman as he takes a realistic perspective with what is most likely to occur and the fact he is solo with his cameras compared to Man vs Wild where he has a complete crew and has put himself in danger on many occasions requiring his film crew to rescue him. His “stunts” are dangerous.
Dual Survival due to the fact you have two approaches to survival and two different experiences and they both know it many times acknowledging where one has the skills in certain environments and situations and that’s where teamwork comes into play to get them through a situation and they critique each other.
Another show I had not seen mentioned which has some induced dramatics is The Colony.
I enjoy seeing them scrounge for food, purify water, face attacks and security concerns. Over the 10 weeks you see them loose weight some faster than others showing who’s working harder, people of different backgrounds, different personalities the hardships of disagreements on killing food, what to eat/drink and giving up personal food/water preps to people begging. Some of the cast hardened due to life experiences and some blind to the realities of life and are soft even after an attack wanting to believe in the best of people. They had filmed the first season near my work so it was nice to know where the orange trees were.
My favorite has to be “Man, Woman, Wild” because it has the expert and the novice. Isn’t that the way it always is?
I also like “Dual Survival” and “Survivorman”.
As for movies, I liked “The Book of Eli” so much I asked daughter number 2 to get it for me as a gift. And, after reading “The Road” in two or three days, I had to see the movie. Very good, just a little less than “The Book of Eli”.
Just for escapism, I enjoyed “The Walking Dead”; just don’t expect any serious survival stuff.
I agree with JohnDoe1999, Dave Canterbury’s channel is the BEST on Youtube.
http://maddmexx.blogspot.com
Man, Woman, Wild is mine as well. He knows what he’s doing, she’s clueless, but neither is she useless. Pretty much how it will likely be if something happens. You have your people who have prepared and learned relevant skills working with those who didn’t but are willing to learn and work to survive.
I liked the Colony for the idea that it was:
1) urban
2) multiple personality, multiple body types
3) I’m a homegrown gadget kinda person .. string, wire, clay,water? Whoohoo, a battery! (Bear Grylls is drinking his battery acid?)
Yeah there was some canned drama, but the idea of Survivalist’s version of Maslow was right on – what can you live without, what do you NEED. Shelter, Water, Sleep*, Food, Community.
People seem to forget the sleep thing. Animal tests have shown rats to die within a month from sleep deprivation. We lose productivity in 2 days (without 2 days sleep, our cognitive senses are at about 0.05 to 0.08 bac,) and we start to hallucinate after 4+ straight days without it. It’s postulated that people die without it within weeks (excluding a few with FFI/sFI), but no one has been cruel enough to push their human subjects that far. Those who have had fatal insomnia appear to have lived as long as they did due to microsleeps – periods between 1/2 sec to 10 secs when the brain just blanks out.
Walking Dead is fun as a show – Daryl’s my favorite character but drop the x-bow … regular bow is a whole lot faster!
***************** Spoiler Alert ******************
I do think the period on the farm where everyone, but Shane, seemed to think ‘we’re safe here’ but they weren’t, will actually happen in real life. People will think it’s over and it’s not. Sad that they killed off the sanest character on the show (well so far.) He was also an ……. but being sane does that to you :).
Man, Woman, Wild was also fun with the wife.
Dual Survival has some good stuff. Unfortunately, Cody gets into a lot of bad situations with his shorts and bare feet, and encourages imitators to dress accordingly. No telling when someone will freeze their feet or get seriously injured as a result of such inappropriate dress.
Reality is the best entertainment.
dual survival
A real cool Television Show that opened a boat-load of doors for me, in my formative years was the Terry Nation BBC Classic: Survivors, which ran for three seasons from 1975 to 1977. A so-called science-fiction series, it was quickly appreciated by both 70’s “Back to the Land” & Mel Tappan/ Kurt Saxon old-school survivalist types alike. Yes there was ‘high-drama’ but there was especially to me a high degree of realism in the group’s efforts to get their collective act together in a Post-Plague Britain. The remake was okay, more violent but at least they demonstrated the futility of continuity of government operations by despotic bureaucrats. Naturally in the same vein 1983’s Threads and its American counterpart The Day After, were cool as well because while Carl Sagan and friends attempted to portray the Post-Nuclear Holocaust as bleak, it inspired me and others to prove that those high-slopes really didn’t know everything there was to know about post-collapse environments. The Toba super-eruption which is postulated to have occurred in Indonesia between 69-77 kya, is estimated to have reduced the human-species to as little as 3 k individuals. If we humans could come back from that, we can come back from either global-pandemic or global thermonuclear exchange. Way to go Terry Nation, God Rest!
I have to admit that “Doomsday Preppers” is a guilty pleasure of mine. I watch it with my family every Tuesday. Yes, much of what is seen is on the extreme end of things but hey, it’s entertaining. Plus, it gives me a chance to pick apart and analyze the things other people do to prep and yell at the TV every once in a while. Sometimes I even get good ideas from this sort of show, even if it is just to see a new skill I need to attain (like gardening and canning). Would I ever volunteer to go on such a show? Well, no-if for no reason other than Op Sec. Plus, I am quite sure their experts would tell me I am woefully unprepared and need to spend another $100,000.
Oh the vicarious world we live in ….
What gets me is when people mention OPSEC as a real security issue exists. They sell maps to the movie stars mansions & guarantee you that they have far more in their garage than most survivalists would earn in a lifetime.
http://www.seeing-stars.com/live/index.shtml
Warren Buffets home has been on the Internet for years –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett
I think the whole OPSEC booga booga with the survivalist community is deeply & overly paranoid & from individuals who really believe that people actually care about someone having a month’s worth of food & water.
It is so easy to find anyone thru a few searches. Heck I found the location of a popular survival blogger in less than 10 minutes of digging. People don’t realize how much is available in the public domain & the government has 1,000 times the resources.
And if “they” did find you, so what – what do you expect they would really do, steal your can goods & water? And trust me, if the government wants your stuff, they’ll find you & get it – even from those popular bloggers who think they can out smart Uncle Sam.
I think it is far more effective to hide in plain sight if you are so worried about it ….
PS
My favorite survivalist show? CNN
The first sentence was supposed to read:
“What gets me is when people mention OPSEC as if a real security issue exists for them.”
Currently watching Survivorman on Netflix, actually. Also quite fond of Dual Survivor. 🙂
I would have to say Jericho! I know it is over… but man I enjoyed that show. I do watch the Walking Dead now. Not very realistic but it is entertaining. I have always loved apocalyptic movies, and my all time favorite is Road Warrior (the second in the Mad Max series).
-Dan
Dr. Zhivago with Omar Sharif (other versions left out much of the survival scenes). The added value to this movie was the way in which the popular revolution was easily stolen by the dark side. There was an excellent scene on prepping and survivng at a retreat. Numerous realistic scenes on dealing with the Zombies. An excellent scene where a government/nieghborhood “official” divided up the assets of individuals and spied on everyone to make sure no one was hoarding. If you watch this movie for entertainment it is a good movie. If you watch it for survival education it is an excellent movie. It is probably more accurate and realistic then “survivalist movies” like Mad Max or survivors.
Well, I have watched just about all the shows mentioned and my favorite one is Neil Cavuto, a different genre then most for survival. I get more insight from that I can use right now then from any of the other shows.
Doomsday Preppers is okay, but, I can’t believe all these people relying on bunkers to hunker down in for defense behind doors. It seems they forget the best defense is an offense because bunkers have one serious liability. The need for fresh air. Cut off the air supply or pollute it with smoke and chemicals and all you have to do is wait for the people to die in the bunker. What happens if someone pours 1 gallon of gas into the fresh air intake and ignites it?
One of the shows I really loved that no one else has mentioned were the two BBC shows that you can see on You Tube, Victorian Farm and Edwardian Farm. I learned a TON of practical stuff from those shows, for instance, in Victorian Farm they talked about how “painting” the walls of the dairy with lime wash sterilized the walls, cutting down on infection and milk spoilage, and in Edwardian Farm they showed you how to make the lime.
I LOVE the Victorian Farm. We haven’t gotten to the Edwardian Farm yet. My 3 year old loves the pigs and the huge horse. Parts are too dry for him, and he wanders off, but otherwise it’s perfect family entertainment in my house. The BBC makes such great programming.