Man vs. Wild

I'm Bear Grylls and I'm gonna seek out some of the most extreme challenges in the most dangerous locations on Earth.

Where having the right survival skills, can mean the difference between life and death.

I've come to the Sahara desert, one of the hottest and deadliest places on the planet.

That is just ... huge.

Three and a half million square miles of burning sand the size of the U.S.

Every year people die trying to cross it,

scorched by the highest recorded temperatures in the world.

Because the sand is burning hot.

Being stranded here, is like being cooked alive.

We've gotta go there, this heat is killing.

It's gonna be my biggest challenge yet.

In one of the most inhospitable places on earth.

This place is relentless. Only the toughest can survive. We got cobra.

I'm gonna show you the extreme lengths you need to go to, to stay alive

in the deathtrap that is the Sahara.

Man vs. Wild SAHARA

I'm in Morocco, in North Africa.

Flying into the Sahara desert from the Atlas mountains.

It's enormous. A quarter of the African continent and sprawling across 11 countries.

It's a harsh arid wilderness that can cook you and kill you, if you don't know what you're doing.

There is no way out of here, just staying alive is your only hope.

If you get lost out here, the two most likely things that kill you

are dehydration and heatstroke.

And both of those can come on in a matter of hours.

The chopper is hovering at 8000 feet. And it's time to go.

I've got a few basic survival tools, and my camera crew are coming with me.

This must be the hottest desert I've ever been in.

You know, summertime in Sahara is over 130 degrees heat.

You know, just touching... touching that sand, you can almost not hold your hand down longer than few seconds

The only escape from here, is the Atlas mountains,

hundreds of miles away.

But in this furnace of a desert, you'll never get that far.

You've just gotta stay alive until you are found.

You need to keep a cool head, so I'm gonna make an arab-style headdress out of my T-shirt.

In this heat, your brain will sizzle, and your body will shut down.

Before you knew it, you will be a snack for the vultures.

And the last thing I can do, just to help keep me cool,

is just to, then, pee on this T-shirt.

And, it's not very nice, but it will help keep me cool.

And this is something I've actually done before ... in the desert ...

but really anything you can do in this sort of heat heat, to keep your head cool

is gonna prolong how long you can survive out here.

If you wrap this around your head, it will buy you a few extra hours,

in heat that feels like you're being slow-roasted.

And believe me, it works.

I've heard an extraordinary story of a mother who saved her kids' lives in the desert,

by covering their heads with clothing soaked in pee.

Zip up, ready to go.

To survive out here, you need food but above all water.

That's not easy in this barren wilderness, which gets just 3 inches of rain a year.

Only the hardiest creatures can live here,

and you've got to grab what you can.

Check out this little guy. Wanna watch out for him.

This is a little camel spider.

And these are-- I'm trying to get him to be still, there you go.

These are like a cross between a scorpion and a spider, and they grow actually up to about 6 inches long.

But they are pretty aggressive brutes.

And soldiers in the desert are known to be quite afraid of these.

Look you see what he's chasing. It looks like he's chasing me,

but it's my shadow he's after.

Even he wants to escape the burning sun.

And these guys can move pretty fast, at about like 10 miles an hour.

And it's faster than I can walk up a hill in the sand dune.

Okay, here we go.

He's edible and he does not look very nice. But the dangerous bit of him, I don't know if you can see it

But let's hold him down there, are his pincers, that can give a nasty nip, look he's just trying to even bite this.

But the rest of him, I will get rid of that,

is edible.

Come here.

And that was the nasty bit.

His front legs, and the pincers.

And then all of this ...

... is edible.

And actually-- god ,look at that, that's just ... soft, goo.

And God knows what is inside that.

I'm not particularly looking forward to eating this one.

But it's gonna be good.

Bit of protein and energy.

It's like explosion of pus in my mouth.

Pretty gross, but it will keep me going.

And because it's just a morsel, he's more of a lifesaver than you might think.

Eat little and often, and you'll be fine.

Eat too much, and your digestion burns up water, making you even more vulnerable to dehydration.

It can come on in just hours, and it's a killer.

I have only got about a liter of water in this bottle.

But really in this heat, I need to be drinking a minimum of a liter of water every hour.

But one way I can make this water last longer, is just to keep it in my mouth,

and that will keep my mouth and my throat moist.

It's a simple survival trick, but one that will buy you a few extra hours,

which is crucial if you gonna stay alive out here.

You can last for up to 3 weeks without food, but without water in the desert,

you will be lucky to live beyond 24 hours.

It is vital to find a source of fresh water.

You have to get as high as you can, to spot any clues of where you might find something.

This stuff, it's just horrible to climb.

It's like trying to climb a mountain of treacle ... you know, you take one step forward,

and then you slow back two.

You see, that zone of the horizon, it looks like some treetops.

So that's where I'm gonna go.

You need to be quick, before the wind picks up, in the blink of an eye ...

This harsh heat can turn into a vicious blinding sand storm.

There are two ways down this ...

There is a slow ploding way that's gonna take forever, or there is a fast way ...

... when it's this windy up here I just wanna be down.

Lean back, and take big strides.

Wow, what took about 45 minutes to climb up, down about 5 seconds.

Good, on my way.

The Saharan winds sculpt the sand dunes into their distinctive shapes ..

And you can use them to work out which direction to head it.

And what happens is that the prevailing wind comes from northeast, from the Mediterranean,

and it blows the windward side of all of these dunes, into these long shallow slopes ...

And then on the leeward side, it's shorter, sharper, steeper, so I can tell north-east is over there,

which means north-west is that way.

That's the direction you travel towards the Atlas mountains.

But don't think you're gonna be able to walk that far.

You need to find ways of just staying alive, and hope that someone rescues you.

A bit quite precarious position up here.

Man vs. wild

I'm in the Sahara desert in North Africa.

Your chances of walking out of here are slim.

The battle is just to stay alive.

And if you reach one of these palm trees, it could be a lifesaver.

Food, water, and above all shelter.

One of your biggest enemies in the desert can be heat stroke, and it come on so fast ..

literally like just over an hour.

And I've seen soldiers get it before and they're just completely incapacitated.

But the first signs of it are just having a headache, and just being really fatigued, and if you don't find yourself a shade you spot soon,

that's gonna get worse. You're gonna stop sweating,

as your body tries to conserve fluids, and then you're gonna get dizzy, and if you don't get treatment,

You can die.

And already we've had one of our crew get heatstroke, he's had to be evacuated.

And really, this desert is proving in many ways one of my toughest assignments yet.

In this sort of heat, you can lose nearly a liter of water an hour, and you wouldn't even notice.

If you don't drink, you won't have a hope. You need water, whenever

and wherever you can get it.

Kind of thought from the distance that maybe there'd an oasis or something here

but there is not.

But the Moroccans do say about these date palms that they have their heads in fire

and their feet often in water.

I just don't know if it might be worth trying to dig down a bit here ...

You know the risk of doing this is you end up just sweating more, and losing more valuable fluids.

Look it's just all bone dry down here ...

But never give up. Bone dry.

Just a drop of water is better than nothing,

and an old army technique I used might do the trick ... a dew trap ...

Scrape a hole about one and half feet deep, and line it with a few palm leaves.

And then the next thing I do is put rocks in, on top of these ...

And it's these that they're going to actually collect the moisture, and the way it works is that these rocks cool down overnight.

And then the sun comes up, you got that contrast between heat outside and the cool rocks.

And that causes condensation.

To finish the trap, add more leaves on top,

what little water there is in the parched air won't evaporate, and overnight the stones should collect a few precious drops.

Okay, that should do.

Rocks are dangerous though, thry're great hiding places for deadly scorpions.

Here is one to show you.

Look, this is actually a fat-tail scorpion.

And these are one of the most poisonous scorpions in the world.

Look at this watch if I put that there, he's trying to strike it.

And actually this has enough venom to kill a man.

If I were stung by one of these scorpions, and I didn't get any help, I could be dead within 6 hours.

The venom attacks your nervous system.

which means convultion and ultimately heart failure.

At least 100 people die every year in Morocco from scorpions stings.

And you can actually eat these even though they are super, super deadly, you can eat them.

But the first thing I want to get rid of, is his stinger.

And look at him, strike, strike, strike.

Hold him down ...

Take his head off ...

And then you can eat this bit.

I spotted some dates at the top of this palm tree ...

Right at the top, and those would be really good energy.

If I can just get to them.

Hey let me grab that camera of you ...

If you're gone hours without fluids, you've got to get something to replace them fast.

There are dates at the top of this palm tree which should do the trick.

Hopefully, I'll get myself some supper ...

It's about 30 foot tall, but I reckon I could shin up it but watch out for loose bark, it can cut you to rivens.

You got to keep your feet pressed into it like that, and not put all your weight on one of them.

Hard work on the arms this.

Okay let's get these cut, cut these down.

I'm in a quite precarious position up here.

Just my arms are being rubbed raw by this bark ...

... But I found a good number of these dates.

And they don't look very ripe, but actually dates are the best desert food, mass of sugar, lots of energy,

vitamin C, but also lots of minerals to replace the salt that I'm losing, sweating here.

So let's try it.

They are really, really bitter, but I want to eat many of these I can.

I cut myself.

And for once the desert's on your side. The heat can help to heal any wounds.

If you're gonna make camp here.

First thing, you'll need to do is find yourself something to insulate yourself.

Heat's attacked you all day, but just when you could do with it at night, the desert has other plans.

A mattress of woven palm fronds should help you survive.

Sand is notoriously bad insulator it will take a lot of heat away, so that will just keep me off the sand.

Temperatures can plummet to freezing at night, so if you would to sleep out,

you need a fire.

There is no shortage of dry wood, and it's worth trying a friction fire light.

And all you need to do is break it like here.

And that's gonna be my base.

And then out of this, just make like a spindle.