Survival Goes to Extremes

By JON CARAMANICA, NYT

A former Navy SEAL, Jake Zweig got his start on reality TV as a small-minded loudmouth on the third season of “Top Shot,” the underappreciated marksmanship competition show on the History Channel. He was a talented shooter, but also petty and sulky and disruptive; his elimination came as a relief.

So it was gratifying a couple of weeks ago to see him stranded atop a glacier in Iceland, with only a handful of tools at his disposal — and a large pink teddy bear.

This was the series premiere of Discovery’s “Dude, You’re Screwed,” a program that transforms survival into sport. Mr. Zweig was the first guinea pig on this show, in which a participant is dropped into a remote, unforgiving locale and has 100 hours to find civilization.

This show, which airs on Sundays, is the energy-burst counterpart to another Discovery show, the slow-burning “Naked and Afraid,” which places a pair of survival experts, one male and one female, in nature’s cruelest locales for 21 days with no clothes on their backs in a test of ingenuity and will.

(More here.)