• last year
Survival expert Les Stroud, the host of "Survivorman," rates desert survival scenes in movies.

Stroud breaks down the accuracy of natural phenomena like sandstorms and flash floods as seen in “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” (2011), starring Tom Cruise; and “127 Hours” (2010), starring James Franco. He describes the best ways to avoid desert heat and sun while watching “Holes” (2003), starring Shia LaBeouf; and “Dune” (2021), starring Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, and Zendaya. He speaks on the accuracy of myths surrounding hydration seen in “Better Call Saul” (2015-2022), starring Bob Odenkirk and Jonathan Banks; “3 Godfathers” (1948), starring John Wayne; and “The Way Back” (2010), starring Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, and Saoirse Ronan. He explains the best way to get yourself out of quicksand, as seen in “Hidalgo” (2004), starring Viggo Mortensen. Finally, he discusses the surprising dangers of sand dunes seen in “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” (2019), starring Keanu Reeves and Halle Berry.

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Transcript
00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 I have seen a canyon go from a trickle to 10 to 15
00:10 or even a wall of 20 feet of water.
00:14 It's scary and it does happen all the time in the deserts.
00:17 Hey everybody, I'm Les Stroud, also known as Survivorman.
00:20 For well over 35 years, I've been studying,
00:23 training and teaching survival throughout the world.
00:25 Today we're gonna take a look at desert survival scenes
00:28 in the movies and in television
00:30 and judge just how real they are.
00:32 Showing the difference between the sunny sky that you're in
00:42 and the sandstorm overtaking that as a big dark cloud
00:46 to me is very realistic.
00:47 It is blocking out all of the light.
00:49 It's what happens when we have smog and smoke from fires.
00:52 Things get dark.
00:57 They are getting them right.
00:59 A sandstorm happens incredibly quickly.
01:02 Think about when a hurricane comes in
01:04 or a tornado comes in.
01:05 It's the same thing with sand.
01:06 You can have the same wind speeds
01:08 and this is a wall of sand and it's coming in at you
01:11 and it's coming in fast.
01:12 Tom here puts on some glasses and makeshift scarf
01:19 that he steals as he's running through the market.
01:21 You do what you've gotta do
01:23 and that is actually the key to survival.
01:25 It's not about what's better or what's best
01:28 or what's not as good.
01:29 What is working right now?
01:31 And for this character, he was lucky to have goggles
01:34 and he covered his face any way he could.
01:36 Your air intake on your vehicle
01:44 is gonna be sucking up all that sand
01:46 and it's gonna choke out your engine and your vehicle.
01:48 So that I think is the harsher reality
01:51 of trying to drive in the middle of a sandstorm.
01:53 I'd rate this clip a six out of 10
01:55 because the depiction of the moving sand
01:58 truthfully captured what you might actually see.
02:00 That is not the way that I would travel
02:08 through the desert on any given day.
02:10 Just traipsing up a sand dune,
02:13 back down it along the ridges.
02:14 Those dunes can be easily the size of apartment complexes
02:19 or city towers.
02:22 They can be massive.
02:23 It is difficult to walk in sand dunes.
02:26 It's like walking in some kind of weird snow.
02:31 It's just every step forward is a slide back.
02:34 The trick in traversing the sand dunes
02:37 really is looking for that path of least resistance,
02:39 which is not always going all the way up to the top.
02:41 The beauty of most wilderness areas,
02:48 whether it's the ocean or the middle of a desert,
02:50 is that star expanse.
02:52 And it is far more illuminating
02:54 than you'd ever give it credit for.
02:56 You can literally walk in the night through the desert
03:00 and see exactly where you're going without any moon,
03:04 just with the starlight.
03:05 If you can't do it at night and you need some daylight,
03:08 fine, early in the morning, that's gonna be your best bet.
03:11 Once you get to mid morning and even late day,
03:14 it's just too hot.
03:21 The tripping and the stumbling
03:22 when it comes to all of our favorite heroes and actors
03:25 as they try to walk on sand dunes, that's all Hollywood.
03:28 You don't succumb that way.
03:29 And then if you do trip and fall,
03:31 you don't just go rolling on down a big dune like that.
03:34 You do that if you want to.
03:36 You make a sport out of it.
03:37 It's a recreational activity.
03:39 But if you're succumbing, that's not the way it happens.
03:42 I'd rate this clip at three out of a 10.
03:44 Three because it's just kind of silly.
03:48 [man grunting]
03:50 I'm not really certain they got it right at all.
03:54 And the reason for that is quicksand primarily exists
03:59 at riverbeds, estuaries, close to the ocean.
04:03 That's where you get your quicksand.
04:06 This particular scene is set
04:08 right in the middle of the desert
04:09 where everything is completely bone dry
04:11 and yet he just drops into it kind of magically.
04:16 [man grunting]
04:18 That stuff is so thick.
04:22 You're not just lifting your arm up saying,
04:23 oh, let me die, just leave me here.
04:26 That's not happening.
04:27 Not when he was already up to his neck
04:30 and just barely sort of breathing.
04:32 My first move in falling into quicksand is immediate.
04:37 And that is this, real simple.
04:39 Don't panic.
04:40 That's the first thing you do.
04:42 When you can't move your body,
04:44 insane, intense claustrophobia,
04:45 because you can't move.
04:46 It's like you're tied.
04:47 So you have to breathe and not panic.
04:52 And then think about, okay,
04:54 how do I slowly and cautiously get my body
04:58 back from being vertical to being horizontal
05:01 and slither my way out of this?
05:03 And you end up using, it's like your fingers
05:04 become like little grappling hooks.
05:06 You just wanna do this.
05:07 It's literally an inch at a time.
05:10 [man grunting]
05:14 Even to pull somebody else out requires a lot of leverage.
05:17 In this case, he had a horse, so he had the leverage.
05:19 Falling into quicksand can be a very slow death.
05:22 If you really can't pull yourself out
05:24 from all that suction, it doesn't mean
05:27 you're also going straight down instantly.
05:29 People have been stuck in quicksand for minutes,
05:31 for hours, and even days.
05:34 It can take a while.
05:35 I'd give this scene about a three out of a 10.
05:38 It's the wrong ecosystem.
05:39 His portrayal being stuck in the sand
05:42 was just a little too over the top.
05:44 [man grunting]
05:46 The thing I love so much about this movie
05:50 and this particular scene is the realism
05:53 of his desperate attempt to get a little bit
05:56 of rainwater with his water bottle.
05:59 He's holding it up, trying to get these drops.
06:01 And that feeling I know, that feeling of dehydration
06:04 where just a bit of rain would give me some relief.
06:07 [water splashing]
06:10 [dramatic music]
06:13 Flash flooding in the desert is not to be underestimated.
06:15 It's incredibly dangerous.
06:17 It happens very quickly.
06:19 You're rarely prepared for it.
06:21 And I have seen a canyon go from a trickle
06:26 to 10 to 15 or even a wall of 20 feet of water
06:31 in a very short period of time.
06:32 And when I say short period of time, I don't mean days.
06:34 I mean hours or minutes.
06:36 It's scary and it does happen all the time in the deserts.
06:40 [dramatic music]
06:43 The way to prepare for flash flooding
06:49 is knowledge ahead of time.
06:51 What's going on with the weather outside
06:53 of the area you're in?
06:54 Because the flash flooding doesn't occur usually
06:57 from the rain that you're standing in in that moment.
07:00 It happens miles away in some kind of thunderstorm
07:03 that's going on in a mountain range.
07:05 It all gathers and starts coming down
07:08 through all these creeks and cracks and crevices
07:11 to be right where you are.
07:12 And that's why it ends up being a wall of water
07:14 when it's coming at you.
07:15 I'd rate this scene nine out of a 10.
07:17 The depiction of the rapid flooding
07:20 and his desperation in the beginning of that
07:23 to just try to get a few little drops of water
07:26 I thought was spot on.
07:27 - I mean, shouldn't we keep walking?
07:33 It's cooler at night.
07:35 - Mike in this scene is trying to create a solar still.
07:38 In my opinion, he's doing it really badly.
07:41 The concept of a solar still is that you encase materials
07:46 such as plants or even you could have saltwater
07:49 from an ocean and then you cover it over
07:51 in the heat of the sun and you have a cup there
07:54 and you have this taut material across the top
07:58 with a weight in the middle and then you get
08:00 the condensation on the underside of that tarp.
08:03 It trickles along, hits the center,
08:05 drips down into the cup.
08:07 It's very, very difficult.
08:09 It's very time consuming.
08:10 And the reality is in this scene,
08:12 they do it just before nightfall.
08:14 It doesn't work at night.
08:15 It's something that has to happen during the day in the sun.
08:18 So that's why they're not getting a pass
08:20 on this particular scene.
08:21 They did it wrong.
08:22 I've done it exactly like the scene that they show here.
08:31 I've done it at the edge of the ocean.
08:33 On many occasions and after 24 hours,
08:37 I maybe have collected an ounce at best
08:41 in perfect conditions.
08:42 I'd go easy on that.
08:45 When it comes to conserving water in the desert,
08:53 the reality is you can't.
08:54 And so if you only have a limited amount,
08:56 the best thing you can do is actually consume it
08:59 and carry it in your bladder rather than trying
09:02 to ration little tiny amounts of water.
09:06 Rationing food is one thing.
09:07 Rationing water is something else altogether.
09:10 If you have copious amounts of water, then great.
09:12 Ration it out, plan it out.
09:14 You can last without food for about 10 days.
09:17 But in the case of water, you're good for about three days.
09:19 After three days, you can't function.
09:21 So the urine question.
09:27 I know that there are certain survivalists
09:30 who have said, "Oh, it works, it works."
09:32 The way it works, first of all, is primarily psychological.
09:35 So it's a matter of you're putting liquid in your mouth.
09:37 But you have to remember all of those toxins
09:39 that are coming out of your body
09:40 are coming out often through your urine.
09:43 So you're toxifying your own self when you ingest it.
09:46 Secondly, and this is an important point here,
09:49 when films and many survival shows
09:52 want to portray drinking your own urine,
09:57 you look at what they've collected
09:58 and they're peeing like a racehorse.
10:00 When you're dehydrated, you dribble and it's Tawny Brown.
10:04 - I got two of these, you want one?
10:07 - No, thanks.
10:08 - Gets cold fast.
10:11 - This is the paradox of the desert
10:12 that you can freeze to death, and that's gonna be at night.
10:15 So during the day, it's insanely hot.
10:18 And so the heat just dissipates very quickly
10:21 and it gets very, very cold,
10:22 to the point of frost on the ground.
10:25 I don't wanna underestimate the value of a space blanket.
10:28 They do serve a purpose.
10:29 They can literally save a life.
10:31 They can be warm.
10:33 I've found the better way to use them
10:35 is to actually create them into a shelter.
10:37 And if you create a shelter and use it that way
10:40 and then crawl in, I found that actually works better
10:42 than trying to wrap it around my body
10:44 when they're all crinkly.
10:45 And the type that you wanna have
10:47 is the type that you can't tear.
10:49 The ones I see Mike and Saul using,
10:51 you could rip them open accidentally
10:54 just by stepping on them the wrong way.
10:56 I'm gonna give these survival clips a five out of 10.
10:59 But they showed a lot of cool things to do.
11:01 Solar still, they brought up the concept
11:03 of drinking your own urine.
11:05 (dramatic music)
11:07 When you're in the expanse of any desert
11:14 and all you want is a break from the sun,
11:17 then anything is a break.
11:20 It's incredible the difference in temperature
11:23 from being under a few slats of wood
11:27 or being out in the sun, that difference can be massive.
11:31 Finding a safe place to sleep in the desert
11:33 is really gonna be a matter of options.
11:35 You go with the best option you can come up with.
11:37 If you can make a grass mat and sleep on that, you do that.
11:39 If you can be on a rock outcropping that is smooth
11:43 and comfortable, as much as rocks can be comfortable,
11:46 but it was heated during the day, then you do that.
11:48 The thing that you don't really have to worry about
11:50 so much are the creepy crawlies.
11:52 To some extent, that doesn't mean
11:54 that a scorpion might not go up your pant leg.
11:56 When I'm sleeping in the desert, if I take my boots off,
11:59 I hang them upside down or I put them on a stick upside down
12:02 so that I don't have scorpions going up in them.
12:05 If I have my pant legs and they're loose,
12:07 I'll tuck them in with my socks
12:09 so nothing goes in my pant legs.
12:11 (dramatic music)
12:13 He was supposed to be asleep,
12:17 but he was holding his hands in front of the chest.
12:19 You don't do that while you're sleeping.
12:21 There's bugs.
12:22 I mean, there's water.
12:24 When you start to see any kind of life,
12:30 insect life, wildlife, plant life,
12:33 it usually indicates there's got to be water somewhere.
12:36 That's where they all survive themselves,
12:39 the insects, the creepy crawlies, the flying birds,
12:42 the walking mammals.
12:43 The other thing you look for in the desert,
12:45 it's simply plant life, growth, trees, greenery.
12:48 And generally speaking, the landscape is brown
12:52 and gray and dry,
12:53 but you see a little bit of greenery over there,
12:55 that's the place to go and check for water.
12:58 There we go.
12:59 This is absolutely a place you could find water.
13:04 I have found the cleanest water to drink
13:07 halfway up a mini mountain
13:09 in the middle of a Mexican desert.
13:11 And I could plunge down into it and drink it,
13:13 and it's safe.
13:14 Sometimes that's because it's a rain catch,
13:16 and sometimes it's because it's bubbling up
13:18 as a spring from the ground.
13:20 The problem with water is that people are quite afraid of it
13:24 to the point where they won't drink
13:25 and they'll become dehydrated.
13:27 But the reality is that most of the places we're going to be
13:30 is going to have water that,
13:32 in the worst case scenario, has giardia.
13:34 And giardia is a waterborne parasite.
13:36 You aren't going to feel it for seven days,
13:38 and then when you do, you take some pills and it's gone.
13:40 And so that fear of is water safe to drink,
13:44 unfortunately, is over pushed in the face
13:48 of dying from dehydration, which is much worse.
13:51 I'd rate this scene about an eight out of 10.
13:53 As far as the clothing you're going to wear
14:02 when you're in the desert,
14:03 the opposite of what you might think is what is the reality.
14:07 In fact, more clothing is better.
14:10 And the reason for that is convection.
14:12 In a dry desert wind,
14:14 all of the moisture is sucked out of your body.
14:17 And it's actually your clothing that can keep that in.
14:20 Same thing for the head.
14:21 Sunburn, you can be scorched pretty quickly in the desert.
14:24 So covering your head and covering your body
14:26 is actually a real good idea in the desert.
14:29 I think that caves are so overplayed
14:39 when it comes to survival,
14:40 because most of the time caves are dank,
14:43 they're damp, they're musty,
14:46 they're filled with creepy crawlies.
14:48 The floors are jagged and rocky.
14:51 There's no place to sit, let alone lie down.
14:53 So we often get this beautiful Hollywood image of a cave
14:57 for surviving in.
14:58 Those caves are few and far between.
15:01 The wet ones that are not appealing at all
15:04 when it comes to survival are much more common.
15:06 There are a lot of caves in certain areas of the desert
15:10 that are quite nice to survive in.
15:12 The thing that you have to worry about sometimes in caves,
15:15 actually and strangely, is what you're breathing in.
15:18 Because there are an awful lot of rodents
15:20 that hang out in caves.
15:21 And those rodents, such as mice
15:23 that might carry hantavirus, are pooping.
15:27 And when they poop, you're breathing in all that dust
15:30 and that manure, or bat guano.
15:33 And that can knock you down really quickly
15:34 if you get a real bad lung infection.
15:36 I'd rate this scene a three.
15:38 It's pretty hard to judge a scene
15:40 that is based on so much fiction.
15:42 The way he catches the lizard in this scene
15:50 is a little unrealistic.
15:52 The reality is, lizards are quite fast.
15:54 They don't amble about.
15:56 The proper way to get a lizard is with what we call a switch,
15:59 where you have a long stick and you sort of whack it
16:02 like that, and you really want to dispatch the creature
16:06 before you go down and pick it up
16:07 and take it off and eat it.
16:08 There are a lot of creatures that you can eat in the desert,
16:11 but you do need to know which ones are poisonous or not.
16:14 When it comes to something like desert insects,
16:16 is it brightly colored?
16:17 Is it advertising to you that,
16:19 "Hey, I'm poisonous, look at all my fancy colors"?
16:22 Is it moving along slowly, along the sand,
16:24 like it doesn't care about anybody?
16:26 Why is it doing that?
16:27 Probably because it's poisonous,
16:28 and most of the other creatures know,
16:31 "Yeah, don't eat that guy.
16:32 "That slow-moving millipede, he's poisonous."
16:34 These are methods of learning about the insects
16:38 or even the plants, for example,
16:40 and figuring out whether or not
16:41 something is poisonous or edible.
16:42 - During the hot summers,
16:46 we used to suck on small stones like these.
16:49 Made us feel less thirsty.
16:51 - If you pick up a stone and you suck on it,
16:53 it has a way of stimulating saliva
16:57 to be produced in your mouth, and that's what you want.
16:59 And so it's not doing much of anything
17:02 for your actual physiological dehydration,
17:04 but psychologically, it's a great help.
17:06 - I'm thirsty.
17:11 - It's so cliche that in the desert,
17:13 people always just fall face first.
17:15 Most of the time, what we do is we go,
17:17 "I gotta sit down, I gotta sit down."
17:19 And then we sit down, and I'm feeling woozy,
17:21 I'm feeling woozy, and then we faint.
17:23 But of course, Hollywood's gotta make it happen
17:25 within four seconds, so we fall face first.
17:28 I'd rate this scene an eight out of a 10.
17:30 (gentle music)
17:33 - Ain't no use there, kid.
17:35 - With every survival book you read,
17:39 they show an image of somebody
17:41 digging down in the desert to get water.
17:43 I've tried it so many times,
17:45 and I've never found water yet.
17:47 You gotta remember when it comes to desert survival,
17:49 you always have to weigh the effort you put into something
17:52 against the something you're going to get.
17:54 - Only water we're gonna get's right over here.
17:58 - Ain't the best water, and it'll take time.
18:01 - Ah, here we go, the barrel cactus trick.
18:05 Once again, we look at a survival cliche
18:07 when it comes to the barrel cactus,
18:09 that you can get water out of a barrel cactus.
18:11 Yes or no?
18:12 The answer is, yes, you can.
18:14 There's only one species of barrel cactus
18:16 that is somewhat safe for humans to drink from,
18:19 the fishhook barrel cactus.
18:21 Other species of barrel cactus are somewhat toxic
18:24 and can cause diarrhea.
18:26 The reality is that if you do it right away, it's awful.
18:30 It's terrible tasting.
18:33 But what this character gets right is that
18:36 it isn't gonna taste great,
18:37 and it's gonna take a long time.
18:38 That is the reality of a barrel cactus.
18:40 [gentle music]
18:43 People think you can just cut it open and start drinking.
18:47 That's not the way it works.
18:48 It takes a long time to get water out of a barrel cactus
18:51 because the water's not just readily available
18:53 just there in a pool.
18:55 It's water within the fibers of the plant itself.
18:58 And I've done it where I've squeezed it into my mouth,
19:00 drops at a time, and even that does not taste good.
19:03 But it can keep you alive.
19:04 I'd rate this clip eight out of 10.
19:06 I would say my favorite desert survival scene
19:08 was "Better Call Saul."
19:10 Not because they got it right.
19:11 What they did, they didn't get right.
19:13 But it was almost like one of my own shows
19:16 where they were showing you examples
19:18 of what you could do and should do to survive.
19:20 They didn't do it well, but they were still showing them.
19:23 [gentle music]
19:25 [upbeat music]
19:28 [upbeat music]
19:30 [upbeat music]
19:33 (upbeat music)
19:36 (upbeat music)