As I mentioned last week, I have just been enamored with survival shows lately. I wrote about Man vs. Wild last week. This week, my featured survival show is I Shouldn’t Be Alive, another aired by the Discovery Channel.
The show is a reenactment of events as told by the survivors of some really serious nightmares, such as:
- A couple and their baby driving through a blizzard to reach a funeral, only to get stuck for days in a Wildlife Refuge that is closed for the winter.
- A father and son go rafting in Alaska in late spring, only to discover the river is still frozen over… and they end up under the ice.
- A hippo upsets a family’s boat on the Zambezi River. With crocodiles all around, they spent the night standing in the middle of the river.
- A young man is flying a friend and their fathers to a fishing trip when their 4 seater plane gets caught in a freak thunderstorm. The pilot is able to climb out of the thunderstorm, and everything is fine until… the plane’s engine dies. They descend back through the storm, and crash into the Sea of Cortes, where they survive for days.
- Three people shooting video over Kilauea are stranded in the volcano’s crater after their helicopter’s engine stalls.
First, this is a reenactment show, so it’s all very ultra-dramatic. I wonder how much of this is actually that big a deal. But I guess I can’t really argue much since I’ve never spent the night in the Sea of Cortes hugging an ice chest.
The narrator often stops in the middle of the story to explain what is happening to the persons body in simplistic terms. He does an excellent job of explaining dehydration, hyperthermia, frostbite and other common maladies to the non-medically trained. I really like this because it helps me anticipate them and ward them off.
All in all, I Shouldn’t Be Alive is a great show, usually climaxing in an unexpected rescue. The endings are at least somewhat happy… at least one person had to survive to tell the story.
Have any of you seen I Shouldn’t Be Alive? What are your thoughts? Does watching it help you mentally prepare for the unthinkable or is it merely entertainment? Is there another show I need to be watching?