Kings Of Pain
Season 2 History (*186) 19:25 Reality
Do not try this at home! And especially not when you’re out in the wilderness because the chances of dying an agonisingly painful death are excellent. The Kings Of Pain are back as biologist Adam Thorn and animal handler Rob “Caveman” Alleva deliberately get stung and bitten by insects and animals. And it’s more dangerous than they make it seem on the show!
“We have a team of experts and physicians at our side with a variety of cures to make sure that we don’t suffer severe consequences,” says executive producer David Carr. But then why put yourself through such pain? “For science,” says David, adding, “It evolved from entomologist Dr Justin Schmidt’s book The Sting Of The World, which documented his research getting stung by more than 80 different insects and then measuring the pain. For the show we came up with an index measuring pain in three ways: Intensity, duration and damage, each going from 1 to 10. Then we added those up and created a composite score between 1 and 30.”
That score means it’s easy for both the hosts and the medical teams to know what they’re dealing with in terms of discomfort. Like in season 1 when they travelled to South Africa to be stung by a giant bark scorpion. “It was one of the most painful by far. And it was instantaneous, this huge wave of burning, like my skin was on fire,” says Adam. “We knew that Africa was wild, but I felt like I was going to pass out from the pain, it was that unbearable.” And that, kids, is why you don’t put your hands near things that can sting, bite or poke you – you will get hurt!