Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Dual Survival, getting silly now. Too fake for me.


 I've watched Dual Survival since the beginning. The series started in I think 2010 and stared Cody Lundin as the primitive survivalist and Dave Canterbury as the ex military survivalist.
 The concept is simple, two survivilsts from different styles of survival are dropped off somewhere and using their skills surviive for a few days and find their way to help. Part of it is the clash of styles between Cody who is used to living off the land and Dave who is thinking in military terms of dealing with the situation.
 This was all fine and good, then it all started to go wrong.
 First off after about two years Dave Canterbury went, being replaced by Joseph Teti, then not long after Cody Lundin was replaced by Matt Graham.  Ok now we are back with two new presenters, Matt being the primitive survivalist, and Joseph being the ex military guy.
 This sort of worked, the guys were similar enough to the original two and the series carried on for another two years.
Then it all changed again, then we got Bill McConnel as the primitive survivalist, and Grady Powell as the ex military survivalist.  Grady was ok. one of the better presenters, not as gung-ho as some, but special forces guys tend to be quieter, they are thinking things out first. Bill on the other hand was... well frankly as mad as a box of frogs.  He's talk to the trees before cutting them down explaining that they needed the branch for something, while Grady looked on wondering how the hell he got saddled with this guy. Bill wasn't popular either, he lasted a few episodes and was replaced by Josh James (the kiwi bushman) as the  primitive survivalist.
 Now we were getting somewhere, Josh was a right character, and a bit funny with it, Grady was pretty good, the two seemed to be getting on.... Then....  Josh went and Bo McGlone arrived.. 
 He lasted I think two episodes and both he and Grady were replaced by Jeff Zausch and E J Snyder.  Now they were ok-ish but nowhere near as good as the original Cody andand Dave, or the Grady and Josh tem.
 Then the plot thickened.  I noticed things were getting fake, in one episode they find a crashed dune buggy, then with just a small screwdriver and I think one spanner they dismantle a fair bit of it.  Now anybody who has worked on an old car will tell you, you'll get bugger all off with just those tools, you need sockets and some nuts can need a lot of work, even heating up to shift.  And amazingly the battery was still charged.
 Then in another episode in the jungle then find a "wild pig" despite making enough noise to scare off bigfoot the "sneak up" on the pig (which hasn't moved) finally jumping on it and missing, the pig tries to get away and we see it's rear leg is tied to stop it running away.  Fake guys!!
Then in the last episode I've watched they ere stranded in the desert with just a parachute, then they produce a metal water bottle from somewhere (just what they needed)  By now I'm looking harder, I notice that even though they are out in 105f heat neither seem to be sweating much (courious) then they have to climb down a cliff, so using the parachute rigging lines they plait a rope.  Ok para cord is strong (550lbs) so three strands will hold you quite saftely (I've hung off a single strand)  except when they abseil thats not three strands of short para cord woven, theres no joins and it's way too thick, that looks like a proper rope guys.


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