LinkedIn Ad Voice (6:49)

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Dr. Samantha Yamin (7:25)

Survival in the wild is all about turning knowledge into action. Starting a fire is just chemistry. Foraging is simply plant identification. Finding north from south might just be a matter of looking at tree bark. With the right knowledge, seemingly impossible situations become manageable challenges. And Rob Nelson, he understands this. He's a wilderness survival expert with a deep background in field science and biology. Rob spent decades in the wild, working in remote and extreme environments all around the globe. He deploys science to tackle survival scenarios and leads training expeditions to do the same. And he's got some advice for you. Welcome, Rob.

Rob Nelson (8:09)

You bet.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (8:09)

I'm thrilled to speak with you because I have maybe like, zero survival skills. So I'm very excited to learn from you. And maybe I could survive at least a day after our chat. That's what I'm going for.

Rob Nelson (8:22)

I think we can get you to survive a day yes.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (8:25)

Okay. Okay. That's the goal. Now you have an expansive background when it comes to both science and wilderness survival. So to start off, what are your pieces of advice when someone inexperienced like me is heading out into the wilderness?

Rob Nelson (8:39)

Sure. So one of the things that we teach right at the very beginning is what's called the rule of threes. You can survive three minutes without air. In other words, make sure if you fall through ice or something, you get to the surface right away. That's just to set the stage. You can survive three hours without shelter. In other words, cold exposure. It's not so important if you're in the tropics, but three hours is about the limit. If you're in the Arctic before you freeze to death, you can survive three days without water and you can survive three weeks without food. So the reason for teaching the rule of threes and to just set people up with that framework is the first thing you have to do probably is get yourself covered and get some shelter. Get a fire going, especially if it's either windy or rainy or cold or all three of those. And that includes exposure to the sun, because you can have the opposite of cold. You can have heat exposure, and that's bad for hypothermia, hyper and hypo.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (9:43)

So speaking of exposure, I happen to see that you recently did a polar plunge, what was it, in northern Sweden, where you lasted over three minutes, including dunking your head.

Rob Nelson (9:55)

Yeah, I just got back from the Arctic. I laid a winter wilderness survival course up there. And it's the best thing that you could do to get yourself comfortable with the cold and also understand where you can push your body is to do something like a cold plunge in controlled circumstances. Before you do a cold plunge, you have to little bit get the basic science behind how long you can let your body temperature dip and how long it takes before frostbite happens. We could talk about that in a second, but we do a cold plunge because one, it's difficult. And by pushing your body to those extremes, it helps you understand how far you can push yourself and it makes you less afraid. There's lots of talk about how beneficial or even controversial how unbeneficial cold plunges can be. When you first get immersed in the water at the very beginning, you're going to have a cold shock response. Your body wants to take breaths in, and that's difficult to inhibit. Your brain wants you to, like, suck in, even though you're telling yourself, don't do it, breathe out. So that's. It's a very difficult. 20 seconds or so after the first 20 or 30 seconds, then it's still painful. But once you hit a minute, then all of a sudden your body goes numb and you get a warm sensation. It is wonderful. You have huge spikes in dopamine, in serotonin. It is really cool. But then what happen happens is if you sit in there for too long, then you die. Even though your body. Yeah, well, even though your body at the beginning says get out, this is painful. All. There's something that switches after a while and you just become relaxed and you become calm. But the principle is very simple. You probably have five minutes to 10 minutes to like get yourself to a warm situation, start heating yourself up before you can't start to use your hands anymore. And there's real problems. And then the weird, the fascinating thing is it's real painful dunking down to say your ears. It's quite deep. The last bit of dunking, your head is not so painful. It's. There's something to like a mammalian dive response. You can go under and your body doesn't want to like suck in and breathe. Your heart rate is slowed down already and it doesn't feel bad. That last bit of dunking your head. All of this is about temperature regulation. So one of the things that we teach people when they do this wilderness survival course with us in the winter is how to dress properly. I mean, that sounds simple, but people don't realize the importance of not having cotton and getting water away from your skin. So insulating layers, your base layers are all made out of wool. When you're up in the Arctic, that wicks away water. And we know that the science is conduction, convection, evaporation are ways that you lose heat. It will also heat you up if you go for a sprint on the ice, if you do pushups. You see what I'm saying? So anything that's activating the large muscles in your body is going to increase heat. Obviously, the one thing that that does also is it burns a lot of calories. And so if you are in a survival situation, you have somewhat limited calories. So you don't want to get too cold. Cause that will start burning through all your resources pretty quickly. But from the cold, that is how you regulate body heat is you can. You can get those muscles moving. And of course, you can also start a fire, stuff like that. In the heat, it's a little bit of the opposite. You want to stay out of the sun, you want to get water on you because evaporation helps cool you down. So if you get to a certain level of heat exhaustion, you stop sweating and that's when your, your body temperature really goes through the roof. And then that's, that's not good. So yeah, those kind of things are important.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (13:55)

I've always been told, like the most limiting thing is water. What do you do when you're lost in the wilderness and out of water?

Rob Nelson (14:02)

Maybe I should just start with the basics with water.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (14:04)

Please.

Rob Nelson (14:04)

We know that we need water. So one of the key priorities in anything that you're doing in a survival situation is you got to get water. And water can have a lot of problems that come with it. So if you find a puddle of water, that doesn't mean that you've quote unquote found water that you can drink. Right. Because there's, there's lot, lot, lots of things that are going to be in the water. You've got bacteria, protozoas, you got viruses, you could have worms, you could have heavy metals. And all of those are challenging to eliminate from the water. So you know, in our, in, in the modern systems, in our taps, we put chlorine in the water. Chlorine is a really good compound for eliminating most of those of those things from viruses and bacteria, but it doesn't remove potentially everything. Boiling is even better. So by boiling something on a rolling boil for one to five minutes, it a little bit depends on the altitude you're at. If you're at high altitude, you should go a little bit longer. That will kill most things. Boiling is by far the best way of doing it. But not everyone has the fuel to boil water. UV light can be used to treat water. So you've seen those fancy things at rei. They're little pens, UV sterilizing pens. They work pretty good if you have clear water.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (15:26)

Yeah.

Rob Nelson (15:27)

And then, you know, there's also filtration devices. So you can get clay type filtration systems. You pump it and it goes through a filtration device. But those can get clogged. So what you can see is there's, there's some limitations with all of these different ones. And then with all of that, it's almost impossible to get out. Heavy metals.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (15:46)

Yeah.

Rob Nelson (15:47)

So fine and particulate. If you had uranium in your water, you're in trouble. So in that case, you just have to find a water source that wasn't.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (15:54)

Even thinking about uranium being in the water. In the wilderness.

Rob Nelson (16:01)

A lot of people are prepper and they're thinking post apocalyptic survival and sure, in that case, true. You know, heavy metals might Be more important. But you're in. If you're right, if you're in the wild, you're probably fine.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (16:12)

I wasn't even thinking that, but now I am. I'm going to add it to the list of things to be concerned.

Rob Nelson (16:16)

Don't drink water downstream. I will say I did. I did a Discovery Channel show where we went to Chernobyl. Life after Chernobyl. That was a really fun one. And what was fascinating is you can. And I did this. You can swim in the cooling pond for reactor number four, which is the one that exploded, and it's totally fine because those radioactive particles have sunk to the bottom and are now covered in layers of sediment. And just like that UV sterilizing pen, it needs to transmit through clear water. If it's covered in mud, it's not transmitting. And so you can swim around as long as you don't kick up the mud. But, you know, your first question was, how do you find it? I think the first way is to look at the plants. Look at, you know, where are they growing? If you're in a deserty location and there's nothing, well, scan the horizon. And where, where is anything growing? That's where you're going to start looking. Usually it's in the basins. If you're on a desert island, sometimes you can dig down to the water level or to the, to the ground water table level. Right. So, so. And sometimes it's easy to dig because it's sand. So there are things that might be easy ways to start, but I think it would be a daunting task for anybody, especially if they didn't know where they were going and were dropped off, say, naked in the wilderness. That would be difficult.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (17:45)

Yeah. I mean, now I know you love to forage, and on your YouTube channel, you're well known for mushroom foraging.

Rob Nelson (17:53)

I would never recommend, I would never recommend mushrooms to people. Now, I'm a huge advocate of mushrooms. They are so beneficial in so many ways. But I am surprised at how little people know about mushrooms. Like when I present, truly, fungi see, scary. And I'm like, this one you can eat, remember, but this one you can't. And people are like, I can't even tell the difference between those.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (18:12)

Yeah.

Rob Nelson (18:13)

And I'd be like, okay, well, don't ever attempt to eat these until you can get a little bit more familiar. Hopefully in a survival situation, people don't start down that route of eating mushrooms. I think the best thing is you, if you're going to do this in your own local area, this is different than, like, you're in a survival situation.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (18:28)

Yeah.

Rob Nelson (18:29)

Learn which plants are poisonous first.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (18:32)

That's a great place to start.

Rob Nelson (18:34)

And also find a club. You know, go foraging with. A foraging club.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (18:38)

Rob, I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions. Things that I've heard, things that come up a lot when we talk about survival, things that would be certainly relevant to the contestants on Naked and Afraid. We'll go through a bunch and you let us know. True or false. Ready?

Rob Nelson (18:51)

Okay, great.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (18:53)

Okay. Truth or myth? You can suck the poison out of a snake bite.

Rob Nelson (18:58)

You shouldn't, but you probably could a little bit. No, It'll damage the tissue.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (19:03)

Okay.

Rob Nelson (19:04)

Makes it worse. Don't suck.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (19:07)

I'm gonna say myth. Sucking on a button or stone helps with dehydration.

Rob Nelson (19:14)

I would say false. You gotta have water going into your body.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (19:18)

That makes sense. Yeah. Okay. You can heat snow up to make water if you're dehydrated.

Rob Nelson (19:26)

Yes.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (19:27)

Okay. The first thing you should do when lost in the wilderness is find food.

Rob Nelson (19:31)

False. You should make sure you have shelter.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (19:35)

Okay.

Rob Nelson (19:36)

Yeah. Get out of the elements. Moss and water.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (19:41)

Yeah.

Rob Nelson (19:42)

Food's the last thing.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (19:43)

Yeah. Three weeks without food. Why? Who cares? Deal with that later. Moss always grows on the northern side of a tree.

Rob Nelson (19:50)

If it was to grow on any side, it would be the north. If you're in the northern hemisphere, you.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (19:55)

Can drink water from the inside of a cactus.

Rob Nelson (19:58)

Some cactus, yes.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (20:00)

Okay. That's what I had. That was great. I learned a lot in just that one minute.

Rob Nelson (20:06)

There you go.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (20:08)

Rob, I've loved following your work for years. I've learned so much from you. And you're one of the first science communicators that I came across that was really doing stuff in the media in really different ways. And so I've really admired your career and still continue to learn from you. I know you've put out so many resources on the science of survival. Where can our listeners learn more from you?

Rob Nelson (20:32)

Well, I think there are a couple places. I do have a book on survival, so, yes, I wrote one called Mother Nature is not trying to kill you, which is really a guide to understanding animals and plants better. Most of the time they're not trying to kill you. And as long as you understand the behavior, it'll be perfectly fine. I also run Stone Age man, both the YouTube channel and the online portal where you can see all the courses that we offer. Because I'm really trying to get people out into the outdoors to stop being afraid of nature. It's so important for our mental health. And so, yeah, I'm trying to facilitate as many people to get out and start learning what I would say are the old ways, like understanding to walk in and with nature and not see ourselves as separate from it. And so those are the ways that I think you could follow what I'm doing and hopefully join in on the journey to learn how to reconnect with nature.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (21:31)

Thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise and survival skills with us, Rob. We really appreciated learning from you.

Rob Nelson (21:37)

Glad to be here. Thank you.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (21:41)

Survival is more than a challenge. It's resilience. It's grit, it's determination. Few embody that spirit better than Mandy Horvath. Mandy is a seven time world record holder. She's the first female bilateral amputee to summit the Manitou Incline, Pikes Peak twice, the Statue of Liberty, stairwell to the crown, Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro, and the world's tallest natural pyramid in Colombia, South America, Cerro Tusa. And she did all of that without the use of prosthetic equipment, using her arms and hands to crawl, brushing her shoulders off. What can't this woman do? She's also a public speaker, a writer, an actress, and now she gets to add that she's a naked and afraid survivalist to her cv. Naked and Afraid is so much more than you expect it would be. To compete, you have to have extreme mental, physical and emotional fortitude. So it takes a lot more effort and preparation than a typical reality show. Mandy's prep was grueling, but she accepted that challenge and proceeded to compete as the first double amputee in the show's history. Another thing to add to the already impressive resume to prep for the show, she went all in, working with a survivalist to study plants and wildlife and physically training to build her strength and endurance for the kinds of adversities they'd experience. But Mandy is no stranger to that. Years ago, she suffered a devastating accident that led to the amputation of both her legs above the knee. Losing her legs meant losing a lot of muscle and with it, a significant portion of body weight, which caused profound changes to her physique. Through it all, Mandy is so dynamic and engaging as a person, and that's why watching her on Naked and Afraid is going to be so compelling. Even though her physical presence is different from most people her age, Mandy presses on. She takes on challenges that push limits most people could and would never do. And her determination speaks for itself. Welcome to Curiosity Weekly. Mandy, congratulations on your appearance on Naked and Afraid. I'm so excited for your season. What motivated you in the first place to take on this particular set of challenges?

Mandy Horvath (23:54)

So, formally, I climb mountains and monuments for charity and conservation, and one of my bigger feats is accomplishing ascending Mount Kilimanjaro in 2021. And after that, a lot of people started asking me, you know, like, what's next after Kilimanjaro? And Naked and afraid is known as the Everest of survival challenges. And so taking on the Naked and afraid challenge was a unique way for me to display some of my skills and take on an entirely new kind of challenge.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (24:33)

And I saw you intentionally bulked up to prepare for Naked and afraid, which I don't think you'd done for your previous, you know, summits, for example. So I thought that was really interesting.

Mandy Horvath (24:44)

Yeah, the training regimens are completely different for climbing as it is for Naked and Afraid. For pre Kilimanjaro, I weighed probably 70 pounds, sopping wet and pretty. Naked and afraid, I bulked up to 120 pounds just because my body expends calories at such an exponential rate. I had to have that reserve. You know, after you get to a certain point in starvation, you reach ketosis, and your body experiences a whole realm of other side effects. And so I was really trying to be as smart as I possibly could while also balancing energy conservation and really trying to remain cognizant of every movement I was making out there.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (25:38)

Yeah, I mean, we're talking about the science of survival on this episode. I love that you were just tapped into that science and preparing, thinking proactively. Was there any other element or any particular element of your experience surviving on the show that was more difficult than you anticipated?

Mandy Horvath (25:55)

I have never been put into quite as an extreme circumstance as I was being dropped into the Belizean rainforest with, you know, no legs to motivate myself around the jungle. That was extreme. But the vulnerability that accompanies that, not only in a sense of being emotionally vulnerable with this entire camera crew that you are naked in front of, but there is the nudity aspect of it and how exposed you are in that realm as well. So it was like a. A triple whammy. I don't. I wouldn't even consider it a triple whammy. It's like an. An octagon hitting you. I don't know from your perspective, what.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (26:43)

Was your biggest takeaway from the experience?

Mandy Horvath (26:46)

Naked and Afraid taught me that sometimes winging it works better than actually preparing.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (26:56)

Did you have a strategy going into this and then decided spontaneity? Worked better or you went in kind of with the idea that you couldn't prepare?

Mandy Horvath (27:06)

No, I, I went in with a rocks. I had over 400 flashcards of different reptiles and plants that I was going to encounter as long as, as well as insects. Like a whole realm of things that other people wouldn't generally consider. But I have to because I am in contact with these things. I also was tanning pre challenge because before I knew where I was going, I wasn't sure if I was going to be dropped in a location that had, you know, less tree cover. And I didn't want to get knocked out of the challenge by a sunburn. It was a little bit extreme, if I do say so myself.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (27:51)

I mean, as we said, you. You don't do anything halfway. You are all in challenge to the max.

Mandy Horvath (27:57)

I was also, like, starting fires and fishing every day. Like, just things that, like, in the end, like, was it good to like, you know, re familiarize myself with some of these things and like, acquaint myself with the knowledge? Absolutely. But at the same time, did I encounter everything that I wrote about or like, researched on? No. No, I did not.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (28:22)

What adventure are you planning for right now?

Mandy Horvath (28:26)

Right now I am preparing for the release of a documentary that details my life story and ascent of Kilimanjaro that is expected to be released sometime this year. I am also about to graduate with my bachelor's in English and a minor in anthropology in May. And while it's yet to be, like, determined or concluded, if I made it through my initial 21 day challenge, I will say that I have thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity to participate on Naked and Afraid. And I hope that my story with discovery is not over yet.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (29:11)

I imagine the mental and emotional struggle of a show like Naked and Afraid is just as intense as the physical struggle. Are there any tools or methods that you used when you were feeling low or when things were particularly challenging?

Mandy Horvath (29:26)

So I struggle with ptsd, CPTSD specifically, and it's a profound challenge to overcome alone. But you add in cameras and people that don't understand context and a woman who has issues trusting and, you know, all of these different complexities into a situation and an environment. And I struggled a lot out there. Like, I cried often for the. My participation in the challenge. I was not sure how my mental health medications would affect my body in a sense starved state. I mean, I really leaned on my partner and I learned a lot from him and grew to love him in ways that I didn't anticipate.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (30:33)

You have an incredible story and it's no surprise to me that you're a fan favorite going in.

Mandy Horvath (30:38)

I need people to understand that I'm a human being and also not put me on a pedestal because I want people to understand that my story, my recovery from limb loss, my recovery from alcoholism, all the. All these things, it's been a massive journey overcoming all of these obstacles. I read that butterflies cannot see their own wings. And through these experiences and seeing, like, other people's perspectives of my life and the things that I have done and the hard work that I have put in, it's showing me my wings.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (31:24)

Let's review what we learned. Explorer and biologist Rob Nelson shared a few of his experience surviving in, let's just say, inhospitable conditions. And we investigated what's really going on within the body when someone is in a survival situation. We explain, explored what might be happening inside our bodies if we found ourselves naked and afraid. And Mandy Horvath shared some insight into her story. She's the first bilateral amputee to compete on Naked and Afraid, and her episode premieres this Sunday, March 9, on Discovery. So check it out. I know I'll be watching. And remember, whether you're in a lab or lost in the wild, knowledge is the ultimate survival tool for Warner Brothers Discovery. Curiosity Weekly is produced by the team at Wheelhouse DNA. The senior producer and editorial correspondent is Teresa Carey. Our producer is Chiara Noni. Our audio engineer is Nick Kharisimi. And head of Production for Wheelhouse DNA is Cassie Berman. And I'm Dr. Samantha Yuin. Thanks for listening. I would die instantly if abandoned. Without Internet connection. I would. I have no survival skill. I've, like, lost entire days to Naked and Afraid, so I'm kind of an expert at it. It's fun.

Rob Nelson (32:50)

Like, it is a fun show.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (32:52)

It's so addicting. I think I would do really well. I feel like you would. I think I would also do well. Kiara would become like a woman of the woods.

Mandy Horvath (33:04)

I'm basically already there.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (33:06)

Instantly gathered all her supplies. I'm just withering away on the side. So if you were on Naked and Afraid, which Curiosity production team member would you take with you? I would take Kiara.

Mandy Horvath (33:18)

Oh, my God.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (33:19)

I should be picked. Blessed.

Captain (33:30)

Race the rudders. Race the sails. Race the sails.

LinkedIn Ad Voice (33:33)

Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching.

Rob Nelson (33:36)

Over.

Captain (33:36)

Roger, wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution?

LinkedIn Ad Voice (33:41)

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