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Did 'Man vs. Wild' help or hurt lost boy?
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A resourceful 9-year-old boy rescued Sunday after a night lost in the Utah backcountry credited the show Man vs. Wild with his rescue, according to an interview with the Deseret News.
Young Grayson Wynne tore up his rain jacket (despite intermittent showers) and left pieces of it tied to trees, apparently following the example set by show host Bear Grylls. “Man vs. Wild tells you how to survive all different terrains,” he is quoted as saying.
Wonderful.
It’s a great thing that this child was rescued. But having seen exactly one episode of “Man vs. Wild”, this writer was somewhat annoyed to find that the host demonstrated a remarkable facility to perform stunts which, in my opinion and experience, look great on TV but are the wrong things to do in a real-world survival situation. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the episode I saw contained some phenomenally bad advice--running down a scree slope, jumping off a cliff... real Butch Cassidy stuff--and as a result I have studiously avoided the show ever since.
Now, admittedly, outside of the boy's account there's no independent confirmation that such bad advice--like, say, staying on the move when you're lost and tearing up your rain gear when it’s raining (or any piece of clothing in any weather while in a survival situation, for that matter)--was actually presented on the shows Grayson saw. But given that rescuers followed the torn-jacket trail to him, it's obvious they would have found him even faster if he had stayed put. Perhaps this is why staying put is widely accepted as one of the fundamental rules to follow when you’re lost.
And what if he’d been forced to spend another night out after shredding his raingear? Now he has no wind/rain shell, and he’s wet. Perfect hypothermia conditions.
One thing he did right was burrowing under a log during the night. This is actually one of the factors that makes kids pretty good survival prospects: they’re not afraid to get dirty and dig into things, which gives them more insulation than sitting out in the cold. If he learned that from the show, then maybe it's not all bad.
So kudos to this resourceful kid, and kudos to the SAR teams that brought him in. But the evidence suggests he would have been better off following the example of Hug-A-Tree rather than Man vs. Wild. Not as exciting to watch, but far more effective.
For more information: NASAR's Hug-A-Tree program
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