by On Friday, November 17th, a new episode of the series “7 vs. Wild” went on air and generated a lot of discussion among viewers. Because something unforeseen happened: the favorites to win the relay were eliminated.
Spoiler warning: The third season of “7 vs. Wild” is currently running on the Amazon Freevee service. However, many people want to wait until the show is on YouTube before watching the season and discussing it. We discuss what happens in episode 6 of the article.
This is the situation:
- Participants Fritz Meinecke and Survival Mattin were considered favorites to win the 7 x Wild team relay. Both are experienced survival experts.
- But now this team is the first to be eliminated. Without a source of fresh water, on day 3 they saw no option to continue the relay and asked for it to be stopped immediately.
- Fans now enthusiastically discuss what happened there and, above all, the reasons. Participant Fritz Meinecke commented on the speculation.
One of the participants of 7 vs. Wild:
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Sea water salinizes the river, the only source of fresh water
Why did they both leave? The seasoned survival experts’ journey was not smooth from the start: YouTuber “Survival Mattin” has a chronic back problem that broke out after just a few days and began to affect him: He said he didn’t want to admit it, but now he’s going to get older and he can’t do this anymore, he has to admit that to himself.
As a result, he seemed increasingly depressed and worried about himself.
Meinecke was worried about his comrade, who only walked with a cane. Climbing and running are counterproductive to his health and he also appears absent. Not even resting on the bed he made himself did him much good.
“Difficult,” Meinecke said repeatedly.
But the pair’s downfall came when their only source of drinking water, a nearby river, was flooded with seawater during an overnight storm. They decided the water was too salty to continue drinking. Even when they walked about a kilometer along the river, they found no drinking water.
Survival Martin keeps saying that he is very sensitive to salt and can taste it exactly, there is nothing there. If you drank this water, it would cause damage to your kidneys and you would die of thirst even if you drank it.
At that point, they had not drunk anything for around 16 hours, had not supplied themselves with water and were “in the second phase of dehydration”.
“Nature is powerful”
Have you tried everything? After the two realized there was no fresh water in the river, they tried to head in another direction, but only found brackish moor water, which caused “belly growls” after just a few sips.
They both thought that drinking 2 liters of moor water every day for 11 days was utter nonsense.
Ultimately, after hours of deliberation, the two experts decided they simply had no options left. It is unrealistic for the situation to improve the next day.
“In a real situation” we would simply walk in one direction for hours and then find water or “die”. In the 7 vs. Wild, you don’t want to run in one direction for so long, otherwise you’d run into other teams and put the rescue chain at risk.
Finally they both gave up. A big problem, especially for Meinecke. He said it was like validating his own suicide. Because in this scenario, ultimately, your own failure corresponds to death in nature.
Survival Martin said his departure shows why survival is not fun and that in real situations, “people get killed.”
Spectators critically discuss the elimination of favorites
How is this discussed? There are 3 reading styles in the community:
- Some say the organization is to blame. The team was faced with an impossible situation when the only source of water regularly became undrinkable due to the weather.
- Others blame the pair squarely: they made “very little effort” to explore the site properly and were very careless. So I couldn’t understand why the two didn’t create any “water supplies” (via reddit).
- Third parties don’t really believe that lack of water is the problem. Instead, it should have been Survival Martin’s health condition: This probably resonates with the idea that they faked a reason to leave so that Survival Mattin could save face and not give up because of the physical suffering and “loss of moral”.
Meinecke: “Distorted situation”
This is what Meinecke says: Fritz Meinecke is in a difficult situation as he does not want to react to the situation yet because he wants to wait until the episode appears on YouTube in a few weeks.
He says he has received many messages and feels the “real situation” is being portrayed in a distorted way. He will comment in detail on this in a few weeks.
This is what’s behind it: It seems cynical when people at home, sitting in comfortable armchairs, explain to men in the desert how they would have “survived” in their situation. But that’s the appeal of the format, that you ask yourself how you would have behaved if you were in the participants’ shoes.
In any case, it’s a big surprise that Meinecke and Survival Martin are eliminated so early, while outsiders like Papaplatte and Reeze enjoy their first Maggi broth and are in seventh heaven.
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