There’s a new survival show premiering this weekend on the Weather Channel, and I was lucky enough to sit down for a Q&A with the show’s host: survival expert Creek Stewart.
You may know Creek from his popular survival program, “Fat Guys In The Woods,” and I’m eager to check out his new show. This time around, Creek and a team of experts look at real life survival stories and present us with the skills and choices to make it out alive. “SOS: How to Survive” premieres Sunday, August 20 at 8 p.m. ET.
TM: I loved your show, Fat Guys In The Woods. It was clever, funny and often touching. How is your new show different from your last? CREEK: Well… the new show is clever and touching, but rarely, if ever, funny. It’s different in many ways, but the biggest is that we analyze and study past survival situations that actually happened to real people, ripped from the headlines. We go to where those stories took place, interview those involved and find the teaching moments in those incredibly gripping narratives, and sometimes-fantastical circumstances. I, along with many other experts in their fields (psychology, first aid, botany, etc.), try to learn from not only what these people did do, but also from what they didn’t. Hindsight is always 20/20, but the result is a unique perspective that provides life-saving information that could absolutely save a viewer’s life should they find themselves in a similar scenario.
TM: In the stories you’ll present this season, what do these survivors have in common? Is it a survivor’s mindset, some level of skill or response, or just rank luck? CS: I’ll start with the mistakes. So many of the stories we studied have these two mistakes in common: One, they did not tell at least three people where they were going and when to expect them back, and, two, they kept moving (attempting to walk/drive themselves out of a situation) when the better decision would have been to stop and wait for rescue. Although not everyone in the stories we studied made it out alive, the survivors do have one main thing in common. That thing is the sheer will to survive. I’ve always believed that survival is as much mental as it is physical and after studying these stories in such detail, I know that to be true without a shadow of a doubt. At some point in each of these tragic stories, the survivors made the decision ‘not to die’ and I believe they are still here today because of something very psychological. The psychology of survival is often a facet that is overlooked in…
