96 Hour Island Survival (no food, water, or shelter)

For the next 96 hours, we are going to be stranded on a deserted island in the middle of the South Pacific with no food, no water, and no shelter.

Growing up, I loved watching survival shows. And last year in Panama, I got to live out my childhood dream as we attempted to survive on a deserted island for 72 hours.

I don't even think I've slept at all.

It turns out it is way harder than it looks on tv. This year we're in a completely different location attempting to survive for even longer. And we have two new new people joining us.

Don't really look forward to being filmed very much.

Our group consists of myself Kara and my mom and dad. We just completed four days of training by survival experts.

During which we learn to make a bow drill that will be used for fire, coconut bowls and a fishing cap. In addition to these items that we've made, we've each chosen one more item for the group. A knife, a machete, a sleeping bag, and a headlamp. This is all that we have to survive with for the next four days. And the 96 hour clock starts now.

I cannot believe we're doing this again.

Oh, crab holes. Let's not make our camp there. We don't want a repeat of last year. One, two.

Right now, I have nothing but excitement for this trip. So our goal for today, as it would be in any survival situation, is to get food, water, shelter, and fire. If we can get some form of those four things today, I'll count it as a major success.

So we're thinking this is where we're going to build our shelter. Nice and shaded, but we have easy access to the beach. Last year when we did this, we found a gigantic spider living in our shelter.

He's like, no.

So we're going to make sure and clear this one out nice and good. What'd you find?

The biggest hermit crab I've ever seen. It grabbed my finger.

Apparently the fish love these things. Ah. So we found this box washed up on the island. Looks like it's some kind of science experiment. This came from Westminster, Colorado. If this was your science experiment, I'm sorry, but we're gonna use it for a crab box.

Oh, gosh, he's coming out.

He's calling out, that's big enough to eat.

Oh, gosh. It was just on the ground, like right behind where we're supposed to be sleeping.

Sorry, buddy.

Well, right now I would say I'm really excited, but I have no idea what I'm getting myself into.

So.

Ignorance is bliss. I've heard it's really hard.

I'm probably most interested to see how my parents handle the hardship of survival.

Nate's parents are super cool, super adventurous, but this is definitely the most adventurous thing I've seen them do.

Sweet first step. That's the start of our shelter.

Just a girl in her machete.

Last year we learned the hard way how quickly your energy levels plummet when you don't have any food or water. So even though it's only day one, we're not quite done with our shelter prep yet. We decided to go on a little walk to look for some fresh green coconuts. There are some so many coconuts on this island. I'm feeling a little better about my coconut tree climbing abilities this year. So hopefully drinking water is not going to be an issue. In case you missed our Panama video, we struggled to find any reachable coconut. The only reason we survived is because it rained and we were able to collect rainwater in trash bottles we found lying on the beach.

We're fixing to go get some coconuts. We'll let you know how that goes. Do I hit this red button to turn it off?

Oh, no.

That was a bad idea.

Nice. There you go.

Oh, nice. One more. Oh, there you go.

Two down.

Yeah.

Three down.

This tree looks so short. That was honestly way harder than it looked.

Jungle James is giving it a shot.

Nice, nice, nice go, James. I just got shown up by my 60 year old dad. So even though climbing trees does look cooler, we've decided to work smarter and not harder. We've gotten two long poles, we've tied this piece of rope that Kara found on the beach in between, and we're going to attempt to use this to pull the coconuts down out of the tree.

Four coconuts.

Oh. I'm not sure how quickly we're gonna get sick of drinking coconuts. I'm not sure if we're going to be forcing them down by the end because we need water or if they'll continue to be refreshing for the next four days. Who wants first?

Kara.

She climbed the tree. All for you.

It's so good. It might be the best coconut I've ever had. Probably cuz I chopped it down myself climbing a tree.

Wow. These have so much water.

Cheers.

Cheers to water.

Nice work.

The first of four essentials. Unlocked.

Four hours down.

Four hours down. We have a few coconuts and no shelter. Lunch.

All right.

Not right here. After Panama last year, I never ever wanted to eat coconut flesh ever again. It's still too soon.

But I'm Gonna do it because this is survival.

It's just kind of like. Like, gooey white jelly without very much flavor.

Thank you. It looks pretty sloppy.

Boom.

Nutrition.

I would say I'm most worried about the sleeping situation. Last time, it was the crabs. I'm nervous that this time it's going to be the rain. So, admittedly, in Panama, we just threw our shel as quickly as we could, and it didn't really turn out to be anything that we were super proud of. But my dad has worked in construction his entire life. I have a feeling our shelter is going to be a lot better this time. This is a miniature version of the bigger vision that we have. So these two sticks represent the trees. This big one in the middle is our ridge beam. That's the tree that my dad cut down earlier that we carried out of the forest. And we'll line up a bunch of little sticks along the back here. They go all the way down to the ground. And then we'll also lay some palm leaves across the top to build a nice little awning and give us a little more protection from the rain, hopefully. So to hold everything together, we're gonna be using hibiscus bark, which you can just easily pull off the trees, and it turns into this beautiful cordage. So we'll be tying everything together using this. I'll show you something super cool about a palm leaf. So this little v right here, those are the last two leaves on the palm. If you just grab those and start pulling.

You, can literally unzip the entire palm leaf. That way, you can layer them.

Like that. Theoretically, that should make us a watertight shelter.

Hopefully it just doesn't rain at all, and we don't have to worry about that.

So the shelter is coming along. We have the majority of the back structure already set up, and then a giant pile of split palm leaves that are ready to be put on the roof. The only problem is we have two and a half hours until the sun sets.

Some of us are going to continue working on the shelter, and Nate is going to work on starting our fire. And then if we have extra time, he might try to also catch us fish for dinner.

We'll see if we get fire, shelter, water, and fish all on day one.

Man, it's so funny how just the skeleton of a shelter already looks so much like a house.

I will say we had our shelter up by this time in Panama. This was taking a lot longer, But I think in the long run, it's going to be a lot better.

I appreciate the effort One, because Panama was awful.

Sleep.

Worst sleep of my life. And this is four nights instead of three. I'll let you guess whose idea that was.

What?

I really didn't hear you.

As far as the island goes, there is a small handful of things to be nervous about here.

They have wild boar.

We've been told to climb a tree if we see one. There are dinosaur sized bats that live on this island, and they're everywhere.

Okay, so this is the bow drill that we built during training. This is the bow, the spindle, and your fireboard. The idea is you stick the spindle between the bow and you pull it back and forth, which turns it in a circle inside of this notch. And if you're able to spin it fast enough, long enough, and you have the perfect amount of pressure, a bunch of really hot wood dust is going to start to pile up in the middle here and slowly work its way out through this notch where an ember will form. And then that's what we use to catch this coconut husk on fire, which will ultimately be what you use to start our fire.

I know you're going to be sick of me saying last time. Last year in Panama. But last year in Panama, Nate and Dusty had to do this at the same time. It was just the only way they could get it to work. But in training, both Nate and I got it on our own, so we'll see if we were just lucky.

You go first. Nah. You sure?

You do it?

Should we put a timer on it?

Yeah.

All right. I have my cell phone out here, like, for filming, but we have no service.

On your mark, get set, go.

Oh, I'm smelling it.

Did you get it? Dang it. Round two. You got this.

Don't give up.

Think I might have one smoking.

I'm gonna try to transfer the tinder into this bundle.

It's hot. The air has less moisture than what I'm blowing out of my mouth, so theoretically, this should be better. Oh.

Ow. Good night.

Less than five minutes.

Honestly, the hibiscus wood, that's what we used to make. The whole kit out here just gets so dry, and it makes it so easy after you've had a little practice.

Oh, so humble. I think that with pure skill, we're professionals.

Almost like we learned something the first time with time to spare to go catch a fish.

Water.

Fire.

Check. Shelter. Almost. Food.

Next.

Before we go any further, let me say a huge thank you to our lovely sponsor, AG1. If you have watched any amount of our videos, then you already know that Nate and I are obsessed with this stuff. And leading up to this whole survival experience, I've been even more adamant than usual that we make AG1 a priority every single morning. Right after my morning coffee, I've just been trying to load my body up with as many nutrients as possible so it survives and doesn't get too mad at me during this whole thing. Because I am pretty positive that there is no way I'm getting a daily dose of of 75 vitamins, minerals and whole food source ingredients including prebiotics, probiotics, adaptogens and superfoods on this island. By drinking AG1 every single day, I'm supporting my gut health, my immunity and my energy levels. And we think it tastes great, especially with an ice cube and a little bit of lemon. I honestly miss this so much on the island. I'm so happy to have it back in my life. I guess this is a little spoiler alert that we did survive, but keep watching. Honestly, I would not stuff my bag with as many travel packs as possible if I was only drinking it for these ads. I would probably just carry around these five and reuse them every time. But I seriously bring as much with me as I can while we travel because I just can't get enough of it. So if I have convinced you to try AG1 for yourself, if you use our link in the description below, you can get our special offer. Your first purchase will include the shaker, the jar, and they're throwing in five free travel packs and a whole year supply of immune supporting vitamin D drops, which Nate and I also take every single day. We hope you love it as much as we do.

So while the rest of the group continues to put the roof on the shelter, I am going to attempt to catch dinner using this fishing pole that I made a few days ago. Calling it a fishing pole is also a stretch. It's basically a piece of wood with a handle, some fishing line wrapped around it, weights a hook on the end, and then for bait, I use the hermit crabs that Cara caught earlier. Sorry, guys.

This place is like the Garden of Eden. I literally caught this guy. First cast. Look at the teeth on that thing.

What in the world?

First cast?

You're joking. It's so beautiful. Thank you, Fishy. Oh, we're gonna eat. We're gonna eat. Now we just need our shelter.

Feels like a good one.

Oh, yeah.

Napper, let's go.

Whoa.

Nate caught not one, not two, not three, four fish, one for each of us. And he just sat in the burning hot sun and descaled Them and took their guts out. And all the other things that you have to do in order to eat a fish, I'm not quite sure. Christy and I went and gathered some noni leaves, and you may remember in Panama, we ate the noni fruit. That's where these came from. Fortunately or unfortunately, the fruit is not ripe, so we can't eat it yet. So we are gonna put the fish in these leaves, wrap them up like a Christmas present, and put them in the fire.

Okay.

First time with that.

Not so pretty.

Near that hot.

Whew.

What do you think? Just throw them right on it?

Yeah.

I cannot believe we are each getting a whole fish to ourselves on the first night of survival.

Nice work. We are thriving.

Wow, it is so hot down there. Yeah, it is another beautiful sunset here on the Garden of Eden.

All right, bon appetit. I'm not sure how much you're going to be able to see, but this is what it looks like when it comes off the fire. All the leaves are nice and charred and starting to peel back. And then there's just this beautiful white fish meat inside.

A little fishy, if I'm being honest, but I'm very grateful for food.

Oh, my gosh, it's so good.

Life is good.

This is luxury.

All right. And that's all that's left of it. Going to sleep with a full belly tonight.

Wow. This is the biggest hermit crab I've ever seen.

Unfortunately, that is the first of several gigantic hermit crabs that we've seen. We're hoping they all stay down on the beach and they don't make their way into our shelter this evening because right now we have no protection around the outside edges.

Okay, so I just went back in the woods to go to the bathroom behind a tree, and unfortunately, I heard some movement, and I looked over, and two mice ran right past me. And we're sleeping on the ground, like, oh, I ain't thought about that. 30ft away from where I saw him, I also saw lots of spiders.

I'm just going to try not to think about it. I'm going to zip my sleeping bag all the way up to my face, and nothing can hurt me in there.

All right, well.

I've had come to your bets. So tonight we have to hope a jungle rat doesn't run over our face. We don't get bitten by a poisonous centipede. The crabs don't make their way to our shelter.

A bat poop on our face, a spider crawling our mouth. I'm going to sleep with my knife.

That's actually not nice.

If I hear a pig, I'm just going to start swinging my machete as.

Wild as I can all over.

All right? I've got a stick, a machete, and a knife in case the pigs come. Good night, everybody.

Morning. The good news is the rats weren't a problem. They stayed away. Although you could just hear them running around all night. The bad news is the mosquitoes were terrible. It's not even that I got bit a bunch, I don't think, but they.

Just.

In each year. All night I slept like this.

And then all the way down in my sleeping bag because I was just trying to keep all my exposed skin protected from the mosquitoes. But we survived the first night. And look at this sunrise.

Kara slept with the bag on her head. Morning.

How'd you sleep?

How'd you sleep?

Terrible.

I had two panic attacks. One, I had my buff all the way over my face and my sleeping bag around my head. And all of a sudden, I was so hot, I sat straight up, and I couldn't get it off.

Okay.

Number two, the second one, I was laying on my side, and something starts running up my leg beside my sleeping bag, and I was hitting it. I think it was James Foot, though. I think I maybe. Maybe slept two hours. I remember having two dreams, so I know I fell asleep twice.

That was funny. I didn't know I was gonna enjoy that so much.

Did you sleep?

I don't know.

I guess the other major win last night was that it didn't rain, but it looks like that's on its way. The wind is coming from this direction, so all the dark clouds you see out there.

This could be interesting because I definitely don't think our shelter is waterproof yet.

What happened?

I was walking down to the beach and evidently hit some wet rocks and took a pretty hard fall.

Just a flesh wound.

Gonna make some toothbrushes.

Hibiscus tree bark is very fibrous, and when you chew on it.

Kind of cleans your teeth.

Mouth doesn't really taste clean, but it feels clean.

Just a little toothbrushing party.

Breakfast of champions.

Still too soon.

Nice.

Wow.

Easy, coconut. Today's.

It'S not as exciting as a cup of coffee, but this is pretty exciting. Whoa.

Nice block. Whoa.

Jungle James got rid of reflexes like a cat.

In, like, five minutes. How many can you carry?

We didn't have this problem in Panama.

I'd say it's, oh, that somehow the camera has a spider web over it. It's really starting to feel like survival this morning. Between the lack of sleep, no caffeine to start the morning, no sugar, no carbs, just coconut.

Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful for the water, But I do feel like your body has to go through a process. Like, it's just starving for those things that it's used to getting right now.

Like, I already feel like I'm gonna be so grateful.

Coffee.

I'm never gonna to take it for granted again.

I am very glad that we have sleeping bags instead of a bag of coffee this time.

So not only are coconuts our only source of water here on the island, but they're also our only source of carbs. The coconut life cycle is pretty incredible. This is going to sound a bit nerdy, and maybe I've been on an island too long, but basically, they start green, like the ones that we're drinking, and they obviously have water inside, and they turn brown, and they get this super hard shell, and they can float in the ocean for up to a year in the shell and still have water inside. And as soon as the coconut gets still, it knows to start putting down its roots. And as it's sprouting, because there's, like, no nutrients in the sand, it uses the nutrients from the juice that's inside the coconut to start growing. And basically, the coconut is eating this stuff to be able to sustain life until it can get its roots deep enough to get far enough down in the ground.

It's like a really soft apple. It doesn't taste at all like an apple. Oh, I don't think I want carbs that.

All right, so plan for today is to finish the shelter and then hopefully just make life a little more comfortable around camp. We've already gotten some more coconuts. Hopefully we'll catch some more fish. Our fire went out last night, so I have to get that started back up. Maybe we'll build some chairs around the fire, because right now we have nowhere to sit. Kara's been talking about building a spa. I feel like we got a really good start yesterday. The goal for today is just to make everything a bit nicer and hopefully make the shelter a bit more waterproof, because it does look like there's some rain on the horizon.

Now it's really starting to look like a shelter. The only problem is it probably needs four more layers of palm leaves in order to actually be waterproof. It looks more waterproof from the outside. When you lay down, you can quickly see all the holes.

I'm gonna attempt to provide lunch for everyone today, including starting.

Dang It. I don't know if I can do it.

I see smoke. Very slowly. You want it all to stay together as much as possible.

Feeling hot.

It's a fire. It's a fire. It's a fire. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. It's a fire. I did it.

I made a fire. You didn't even tell me what to do.

Wait.

Help me. Help me.

We are not. I am so proud of you. That was amazing.

This felt so untouchable to me after last year when Dusty and Nate had to do it together in order to get it started. That just gave me so much adrenaline. It's been several days since I've taken a shower, so just gonna take a quick dip in this beautiful sea just to feel fresh.

I feel so much more awake now.

This is my kind of surviving. Yeah.

There could be worse places than Tonga to survive.

How do I look?

How's my unwashed hair?

All right.

For lunch, I'm gonna make everyone crispy kale, AKA toasted noni leaves. I dipped them in the sea. I'm just gonna toast them right on the ashes. They get nice and crispy and literally taste like kale.

These are surprisingly good.

I think it's the closest thing we have to chips out here.

All right, we are going to attempt to catch dinner again. Hopefully we can get four more fish. And yesterday wasn't just a fluke.

Turns out I might have gotten lucky last night. It is taking a lot longer to catch the dinner, but I have zero complaints because right off the shore, we're just watching whales breach. Full bodies coming out of the water just happened. Tanya is pretty incredible.

Ah. Today kind of felt like our first real day. Yesterday, we had eaten a big breakfast. I'd had coffee, and I felt pretty normal pretty much the whole day. That is not how today was.

Having water and food is a complete game changer from the last time that we did this.

It's so crazy how quickly I'll go from here to here.

With that said, we're still eating a few hundred calories a day and probably drinking 8 ounces of coconut water. It's. It's not much.

I literally feel like I haven't felt myself until, like, now. 5:30pm Anytime I was feeling low or tired or really wanting a coffee, I was just trying to remind myself why I'm doing this. I'm already clinging to that feeling I'm gonna have when we're done with this, which is just gonna feel so good.

So today's high is I caught a fish with the little hand fishing pole that we made that was fun and swam in the ocean. Doesn't my hair look good for my ocean bath today? The low today was, oh, when I fell. Got some pretty good scrapes on the rocks that this morning, first thing. But thankful it wasn't any worse than it was. It could have been a lot worse.

Well, it's been several years since I slipped. Oh, there goes a big old bat. Long time since I slept on the ground. And the ground has gotten a lot harder over the years, apparently. So that was. That was trying last night. I think I've just about saved up enough energy today to go roll around on the ground for another night. But definitely have less energy today. Probably down 50% or more from yesterday.

The group dynamic is definitely a little bit different. Nobody snapped at each other, but there's a lot less being said. You can tell, myself included, that we're all just starting to get more uncomfortable, more tired. It just kind of ebbs and flows, like how you feel, how hungry you are, how thirsty you are. Do you have a headache? You have any caffeine or sugar because you have those too much in normal life.

I'm super proud of James and Christie. Neither of them slept a wink last night. They've helped every minute possible. James doesn't know how to sit down and relax. Christy is just thriving even with her injury. She's still smiling, still having fun. I'm really glad they're here with us.

Do they feel hot?

Yeah, they're hot.

We had this genius idea yesterday. Was this my idea?

I had this genius idea yesterday to cut the coconuts that we drank in half and use them as bowls. So we put the fish in here, and then by the end of it, it's all a little sweet from the coconut. And then we get to just throw them in the ocean. No dishes. Which one's got the hook? One of them as I look.

Yeah, I want to eat the hook. In case you couldn't see well last night, this is what it looks like when you open it up. Just a bunch of nice, beautiful white calories.

It's raining now.

Even though it feels like we put 12 trees worth of palm leaves on here, I have a feeling it's still not watertight. All so being here in Tonga, winter is kind of the worst for survival. It's nice that it's cool during the day, but the nights are long. It's currently 8:30. Some won't rise until after 7 tomorrow. So if we get wet right now, we're basically just dark and wet for the next 11 hours.

All right. All right, everybody.

Wish us luck and pray for no rain.

My mom found a scorpion on her sleeping bag. We're not exactly sure what this is or where it came from, but it looks like the start of a raft. So we decided to use the second half of this challenge to try to build a raft to escape the island. Good luck.