Dangerous television: trekking to safety alone
LAST YEAR, survivalist and former British Army officer Ed Stafford got himself Marooned at several sites in the world, including Coron in the Philippines and the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Left there with only a medical kit and his camera equipment, the goal was for Mr. Stafford to survive and thrive in those desolate areas and he succeeded.
This year, he would be — quite literally — Left for Dead as he tries to escape some of the most dangerous places in the world armed with only the clothes on his back and his camera equipment.
“Left for Dead is deliberately a challenge, is much harder than Marooned. It’s — in addition to obviously surviving, I now have to do a very big journey. I’ve got a target to get to, so I essentially have to escape from whatever environment it is, which obviously means that I’m burning more calories, and physically it’s much tougher,” Mr. Stafford told BusinessWorld during a phone interview in September.
He added that the addition of the “escape” makes the new show more dynamic as “there’s far more decisions to be made.”
“I used to love it in Marooned when I’d spend a whole day building a little house for myself, or building a shelter. But unfortunately, there isn’t the time to do that now, and, you know, it would be ridiculous to build a shelter and then, you know, I’m just sleeping somewhere completely different the next day,” he said.
The show, set to air on Oct. 17 on Discovery Channel, drops Mr. Stafford on some of the “most extreme environments” in the planet including Bolivia’s Atacama Desert, Panama’s Darien Gap, the Asian forests of Laos, the coastal mangroves of Madagascar, Mongolia’s Altai Mountains, and Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountains. Armed only with his camera equipment, he is then tasked to find his way back to civilization within 10 days (the number of days — he determined — it would take the human body to shut down without food).
Among the sites, he mentioned that he looked forward to the Darien Gap the most. The area is considered one of the “most dangerous stretches of jungle on the planet... home to dangerous wildlife and has been used for decades as drug-runners’ thoroughfare between North and South America,” according to a company press release.
“The jungle is somewhere that I’ve always considered to be sort of my favorite environment. I really love being amongst the trees. And Darién Gap is a very famous, you know, and lawless part of South America,” he said.
“[The road] runs the full length of the Americas, and there is only one little break. And that’s between Panama and Colombia, and this stretch of forest has been infamous over the years for drug smuggling, for human smuggling as well, you know, the trafficking of all sorts across this area. And there’s been a lot of violence in the past. And as a result, it has become — amongst explorers — it’s been this almost dream ultimate sort of jungle destination, where it’s not only the danger of the jungle but the people as well,” he explained before adding that they did err on the side of caution and decided to take on the Darien Gap on the Panamanian side which is the “much, much safer” part instead of the Colombian side which is “almost impossible to operate in.”
Left for Dead starts airing on Oct. 17, 8:10 p.m., on Discovery Channel.
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