Survival expert Laura Zerra rates 10wilderness survival scenes in movies and television shows.- Zerra discusses the accuracy of wild-animal attacks in "The Grey" (2011) and "The Edge" (1997).
- She also analyzes "The Revenant" (2015), "The Office" (2007) and "Rambo: First Blood" (1982).
Following is a transcript of the
[screaming] [bear roars]
Really glad that the wild is not like that, because I would be dead a thousand times over.
My name is Laura Zerra. I'm a survival specialist, and I've been practicing and teaching wilderness survival for over 17 years. I participated in five seasons of the Discovery show "Naked and Afraid." Today, I'll be looking at wilderness survival scenes in movies and judging how real they are.
[yelling]
The Revenant" (2015)
Unexpected falls and falls in general are actually one of the biggest ways people die when they're in the backcountry. It doesn't always have to be a cliff face, it can just be a steep slope. It's definitely something to look out for. As far as climbing into a horse as a means of survival, it would totally work. The length of time it would work for is going to be limited, and I think the biggest mistake that he did was not taking that gut pile and cuddling it, because there's so much bacteria in guts that continue to stay alive and produce heat once the animal's already dead. So the guts are really where the heat is. There are certain kinds of clothing, like wool, that will still keep you warm and add some heat, even if they're wet. I think being naked, you're already dealing with losing heat through being wet and any gusts that are getting in through that hole, so it seems a little risky to take your clothes off if you don't have to. As he's pulling that gut pile out, he realizes it's warm. And why would you not have it at least kind of sealing up the door that you're in?
I would give this clip a 7.
Rating: 7/10
"The Office" (2007)
I think that it's pretty smart. It takes a lot of guts, no pun intended, pun intended, to be able to do something like this. I brought with me only the bare essentials. A knife, roll of duct tape, in case I need to fashion a shelter. I actually think someone on "Naked and Afraid" once brought a roll of duct tape as their survival item. And they're supposed to be professionals, so. And take a look at this. I tented my pants. I've made myself a nice pants-tent shelter. I love that clip. I think it's clearly ridiculous. And yet, at the same time, he probably did better than a lot of people in his situation would do. He was looking at what he had and trying to figure out how he could creatively use it. Now, I think taking your clothes off, like, your clothes are already a shelter, they're already like your first form of shelter. So taking them off to make a secondary shelter probably isn't gonna be great. But it's better than running around in circles until you're completely dehydrated and exhausted. Michael: Those are nature's best mushrooms! These little buggers are damn tasty as well. Eating the mushrooms is a terrible idea. Even when mushrooms are edible, a lot of them in the wild you have to cook. So, yeah, he would have died pretty quick in that situation. If it wasn't for the mushrooms, I would have given Michael's survival skills a 4, because he's at least thinking about what he needs to do and trying to be creative about it. And that's a great start.
Rating: 4/10
"The Grey" (2011)
[wolf growls] [laughs]
Well, he's in trouble. But how many times do wolves actually attack humans? And the answer is almost never. I think there's, like, a couple documented cases of that happening in North America. And I see wolves pretty much every single time I'm out in the woods. Wolves are terrified of people. If wolves wanted to hunt people, people wouldn't go in the woods, because they're amazingly effective predators. They outmatch us on every physical front. They just don't have any interest. We don't look like food. If you did run into a extremely desperate wolf who was thinking about the possibility that you might be a food source, then you want to make yourself look as big as possible. Put your arms up, start yelling, make some noise, kick some rocks at it. Wolves can run over 30 miles an hour, so running is going to do nothing.
[glass shatters]
I don't know who else has ever used electric tape, but it's not this rigid stuff. That stuff's just going to end up breaking off further probably before it penetrates the wolf's really thick fur and hide. And I could see him getting more hurt from doing that than any benefit it would serve. Creative. Again, really like his mindset. He's kind of just willing to do whatever and be creative to survive. I would give this clip a 1, because you're already starting on really false pretenses.
I don't like when this myth of wolves being man-eaters, man-hunters is perpetuated.
Rating: 1/10
"Rambo: First Blood" (1982)
[trap snaps]
Ah! Somebody help me!
I'm really super focused at this moment on what he used for a mechanism to get that much force on that trap, because that was impressively fast and strong. There's a lot that goes into making a trap like that. Sharpening a bunch of stakes and setting them into another log, I mean, we're talking hours. And then just setting the trap and coming up with the right tension on the mechanism that you're using to trigger it, and then finding a place to put it. A trap only works if you have someone walk into it. So the way you get around that is either to set a lot of traps, which would take a lot of time, or by funneling the movement in. So it's not something you can just do on the fly and expect to work.
[yells]
Don't push it. Camouflage is absolutely useful in survival, whether it's, you know, in a situation where you're clearly trying to run from someone, or maybe you're just hunting. He had, I think they were hemlock branches on his back. But unless he's hiding with his back towards everyone, it's not going to be useful, because the idea is to break up the form so that you don't look like a person. And I could say the same about his face camo. Like, maybe do a better job of, like, working with your face to make it look less like your eyes are standing out, and your eyebrows. I mean, his eyebrows were so dominant still. So creating some kind of color scheme on his face where his eyes and his eyebrows were less dominant would have done better than just, like, smearing stuff everywhere. I would give this a 5. Realistically, I struggle with the time invested in the trap. Some really accurate portrayals of survival skills in here.
Rating: 5/10
"The Hunted" (2003)
The hand drill is amazing. Like, spot on, totally would work. I think the biggest problem I have is when you're trying to forge, it's really hard to get a temperature that's high enough to forge metal when you're using wood. I think wood, a wood fire can burn at about 900 or so degrees. You need about 1,500 to start moving metal. Otherwise, to get the metal that hot seems really unlikely to me. If I'm in a survival situation and I don't have a knife, I will use stone, all the time. It's obviously ideal if you have a steel knife, but by adapting the way that you do things, a stone knife or stone tools can actually accomplish the same tasks. Dealing with metal requires so many specific things that stone's going to work for whoever you need to kill or whatever task you need to accomplish. I basically just want a knife that has an edge that is going to be able to carve wood. So for traps, for skinning animals, having a smaller knife, anything where you're carving or doing fine, intricate work, something smaller is going to be better. I would give this clip probably an 8 out of 10. I think it was really surprisingly accurate. The one thing was the fire.
Rating: 8/10
"The Edge" (1997)
[screaming]
[bear growls]
Ugh, another example of animals just being out to get you in the most dramatic fashion. Really glad that the wild is not like that, because I would be dead a thousand times over. Grizzly attacks are definitely more common than wolf attacks, and it can happen. Usually a grizzly is attacking in a defensive situation. Either you surprised it, there's a mother-and-cub situation. Basically, you got too close, and it wants to get you away. It's not going to hunt you and consume you, per se, it's just trying to get you on the ground so you're not moving, and then it's going to take off and run away. Normally I think it would be more a case of that happening when it was a single person walking along versus, like, a whole group around fire, but it can happen.
[screaming] [bear growls]
Stay back! Depending on where the bear is, a lot of times they're pretty used to fire. If they're coming into camp and they're used to stealing food, I have a hard time thinking that if you have a log that's burning with embers at the end and you're shoving it into a bear's eye, that it's not going to at least slow him down a little bit. I wouldn't just wave it in his face. I think that's where they messed up a little bit. And everyone else, like, throw some stuff at him. They didn't even make contact. If they're gonna stay and fight, then fight. If it was a situation where you surprise the bear and the bear starts attacking and it's just trying to get away from you, then that's when you want to play dead. Stop moving. Don't move until the bear is long gone. Try to be in areas where you can see further than, you know, 20 feet, and carry bear spray. I would give this scene a 1. Not saying it doesn't happen, but this was very unrealistic, and the way they responded was just like, come on. There's better things you guys could've done.
Rating: 1/10
"The Mountain Between Us" (2017)
Ben?!
[yells]
First of all, is that Kate Winslet? Which is just funny that she didn't, like, find a door this time to float on. There's a lot of things I'm not buying in this clip. She basically falls through a perfect hole of ice. I really struggle with the fact that the second she hits the water, she's just peacefully passed out. There's no struggle. There's no hyperventilating. Like, is she just, like, one of those fainting goats who comes into a bad situation and is no longer conscious? That's what it felt like watching this. She was immediately just out. And it can happen. You can pass out, and you can hyperventilate, breathe water, whatever, but it happened so soon. How did he find her in there? It's obviously deep water, and she apparently just is comprised of mostly fat underneath her clothes, because she was so buoyant. It seemed very improbable for someone to just float back to the surface and not float away to the sides of the hole and be able to be grabbed. He had to run so far to get to that hole. And her body is just right there. It's a little too convenient for me to be OK with. When he was pulling her body out of the ice, it was good that at least his body was kind of spread out. His body weight wasn't just centered on the edge. I would rate this clip probably a 1. I just don't understand any of it.
Rating: 1/10
"Into the Wild" (2007)
This is -- this is Vaccinium uliginosum?
So this is, um. If I'm trying to learn an area, I will absolutely bring some kind of book to help me identify what I'm looking at. Whether it be plants, animal tracks, things like that, it's super useful to learn. It's also very limited. You might get one picture at one time of the year of a plant, so to just have one resource and then use it to consume something that could potentially kill you, in my opinion, isn't a great idea. Out in the wild, you just have to be really careful. You are not going to be consuming something that you're not 100% certain of its identity. It's a really bad idea. And, furthermore, you're probably not getting that many calories. It's not going to be the matter between life or death. You can't really exist off of the few meager calories you're going to get from a lot of plant foods. So to run the risk of eating it, not knowing 100%, it's like a risk-versus-reward thing, and it loses out every time. You really can get into trouble very quickly, and there are certain things you can do that will really increase that. There's very few things you can actually control, but what you put in your body is one of those. So don't mess around with anything that you can't identify 100%. I would give this clip a 10. Honestly, it's definitely something that can and did happen.
Rating: 10/10
"Those Who Wish Me Dead" (2021)
Hannah: Can you swim?
[fire crackling]
This is a remarkably unsmoky fire. Wildfires can travel really fast. They can basically travel as fast as the wind. That being said, it really seemed to be traveling on the ground a lot, and it didn't look like there was any brush there to catch on fire. But it can happen. And fires are super scary, and being caught in one would be absolutely terrible. If you can, getting upwind of that fire, trying to figure out the direction it's moving in and kind of move perpendicular to it and get out of the path of it, because the smoke can take you out. Anyone who's ever stood in campfire smoke, you know what that's like. A
[takes deep breath]
I think the one thing I would have done differently would be wetting an item of clothing. And then when I did have to come up and surface, you have a wet piece of clothing over your face, so it's cooling down that air. 'Cause that air is going to be super heated. Like, that goes into your lungs, and even if there's not smoke, just the superhot air can burn the inside of your lungs. That cool cloth over your face is going to not only protect your face from any falling embers, but it's going to cool down the air and just keep your skin cool as well. I would probably give this scene a 7. There's a lot of things with the fire I have trouble with, but they did try. They put thought into it. This could work. It's better than nothing, but there are ways it could have been improved.
Rating: 7/10
"The Way Back" (2010)
[ice cracks]
Irena, no!
[ice cracks]
Ice is funny. So, you can't always tell the thickness of ice. You want it to be at least 4 inches to support your body weight. And there's a few factors that make it more dangerous, whether it's still or moving water, where it is, if it has snow on top, which can actually insulate it like a blanket and prevent it from becoming really thick. If you look at ice, generally, if it's clear, then it's going to be thick, but if it's kind of that milky color, it means it's gone through processes of thawing and freezing and probably isn't that thick or safe. And if you do have to go out on it, you don't want to be running. What you have is your entire body weight coming down hard and fast on one point that's small. So if you had to cross something, getting flat, spreading your body weight out, there's a million ways they could have done it.
[ice cracking]
There's definitely a risk of wet clothing. If they were to swim across and everything got wet and they couldn't start a fire, they could be in a bad situation. Being way back then, I think a lot of it would have been wool clothing, which actually will keep you warm when it's wet. It's not ideal to have it be wet, you're not going to have as much of the insulating properties, but you'd still be OK if you were moving, and they could just keep moving until their body heat dried their clothes out. People die in a few minutes in cold water. It's not from hypothermia. It's from going into that shock and drowning or losing mobility in their limbs and drowning.
I would give the accuracy of this a 1.
Rating: 1/10
I think the biggest movie myth in wilderness survival is that it's always something big and dramatic that's coming and trying to get you. And in real survival, it's not like that. It's the little things. It's the hypothermia, it's dehydration, but it's not as exciting as a grizzly bear.