Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Cosmic Queries – Science of Survival About this episode Can science help you survive in the Arctic? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly learn about what happens to the body during starvation and harsh conditions with survival doctor and contestant on S9 of Alone, Dr. Teimojin Tan.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Among what we will learn is what are the stages of starvation? Right on up to the point where your body starts eating itself. We also want to know what toll does this take on your mental state? Being away from other human beings for that long. And we'll also learn the best way to defend yourself against a polar bear. All that and more on this episode of StarTalk.
0:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And today we have a hybrid episode. We've got a special guest who's an expert in survival. Oh my gosh, we're going to find out all about that. And then we're going to pivot to cosmic queries on that subject. Because we know people think about that. My co-host, Gary Riley, Gary, always good to have you, man.
1:14 Gary O'Reilly? Hey Neil.
1:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, former soccer pro, soccer announcer. And we got him, we share him with the rest of the soccer universe. And Chuck Nice, Chuck, good to have you, man.
1:24 Chuck Nice? That's right, former survivalist.
1:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You lying, you are.
1:32 Chuck Nice? Let me just set the record straight here, okay? I am a black man of a certain age.
1:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, different kind of survivalist, I get it.
1:40 Chuck Nice? In America.
1:41 Gary O'Reilly? I'm still standing.
1:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Still standing.
1:43 Chuck Nice? I'm a survivalist.
1:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, that's a different kind of survivalist. But let's find out, so Gary, set us up here and tell us who our guest is.
1:50 Gary O'Reilly? Okay. All right, a little while ago, we had a question in one of our cosmic queries about how would an understanding of science in a wilderness survival situation?
2:01 Gary O'Reilly? Be good. And no, we're not talking Survivor. We're talking kind of Alone, the one that airs on the History Channel. It's it's who can tough it out for about a hundred days in the middle of somewhere nowhere with nothing but some serious survival skills. From from memory, our answer wasn't the best. We needed a proper expert, a real survival expert. And so our guest today is Dr. Teimojin Tan, founder and owner of Survival Doctors, practicing medical doctor in Owen Sound, Ontario. That'll be in Canada. Served in the Canadian Armed Forces, specializing in Arctic warfare.
2:37 Chuck Nice? What?
2:38 Gary O'Reilly? That's a thing? Yeah, he's an ice warrior. That's a thing? It is, yeah.
2:41 Chuck Nice? You know, that's gotta be a thing when you're from Canada.
2:47 Gary O'Reilly? All right. I mean, also, the skill set here involves survival medicine, disaster medicine, and disaster response. He was in series nine of the Alone series, survival series that airs on the History Channel. Oh. Yeah. First of all, Teimojin Tan, M.D. What's Arctic Warfare all about, please?
3:09 Speaker 03 Thank you, guys. So Cold Weather Warfare or Arctic Warfare is the practice of any warfare in cold environments. So that may be in the Arctic, Subarctic, or just in your backyard if there's an invasion and there's a cold weather. So you have to battle the elements, logistically, move your troops between, and know how to do assaults, win wars in cold environments.
3:31 Chuck Nice? So now, you know, the biathlon came out of Arctic Warfare. And do you guys train that way, too? Are you on skis and shooting and all that kind of stuff? Everything that you would do in regular combat, you're you're doing it also like for snow sports?
3:49 Speaker 03 I wish we had skis. That'd make us move a lot faster. But snowshoes, big old goopy snowshoes.
3:55 Chuck Nice? Yeah, yeah.
3:56 Speaker 03 About like a hundred pounds on us, carrying 200 pounds on a sled.
4:01 Chuck Nice? Wow.
4:03 Chuck Nice? Wow.
4:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, I think about this, the history of our species before agriculture was primarily during the Ice Age. And so, when I think of survival, they survive because we're here today. So, did you learn anything from whatever the books tell us about caveman survival versus what you might pick up in a modern 21st century understanding of survival?
4:27 Speaker 03 I mean, a lot of the physiology in our bodies are the same. People go through severe hypothermia at around three hours of too hot or too cold, so too cold in this situation. And the layering systems and waterproofing and shelters, those concepts don't really change. Maybe the climate, the landscape, the predators do change, and the tools that we had. So, I would say that the average person who survives multiple winters way back when was a much stronger and more formidable person than someone today with all these technologies.
5:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, he just said that the winters killed off everybody else. Didn't he just say that?
5:05 Chuck Nice? Exactly. That's basically, yeah. Yeah, and exactly. So, here's the deal, though. When you're, when you're, survival, there are certain things that we need to survive, okay? Number one being water. And the second, like you just mentioned, is, you know, hypothermia in either way, right? You know, so hypo or hypothermia. So, how do you get fire? How do you, if everything's frozen, how do you get your water? You know, all these things are just almost impossible just because everything is frozen.
5:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And if you drop most of us butt naked into the Arctic, we're dead, you know, a few hours later. So, so.
5:50 Chuck Nice? Well, I'm dead before you drop me because I killed myself on the way.
5:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Killed yourself on the way.
5:54 Speaker 03 Got a panic attack.
5:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh huh.
5:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, so um, just to start off, you mentioned water, you mentioned cold. One thing that people often forget is oxygen. So without oxygen, you're done in three minutes. So oftentimes that's overlooked because we think about, we take that for granted. But if we think about medical emergencies.
6:17 Chuck Nice? Is there an absence of oxygen up in Canada?
6:22 Chuck Nice? What am I missing?
6:23 Speaker 03 So if we think about it, oxygen, environmental, right? We can be at altitude, we could be in a cave. But more realistically, in our day to day, if it's a medical issue, if you have a heart attack, if you're bleeding out, these are things that are a priority over your survival priorities because that medical condition will kill you in minutes instead of hours.
6:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I want to add some emphasis to what Dr. Tan just told us. You can rank in sequence what you will die from if you are, if it is withheld from you. Right? And so I gotta be all in with you on this, Timogen, that if, without oxygen, you're dead in however many minutes. Without blood, you're dead. So they learned in Vietnam, most of the servicemen who died didn't die from getting shot. They got, they died from the loss of blood in the wound for having been shot. And so the first thing you do is stop the bleeding. That's the first thing.
7:25 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
7:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Forget everything else, stop the bleeding because you will die from that faster than anything else. So I'd like to hear more about this sequence, this death sequence that you want to protect yourself against.
7:38 Speaker 03 Absolutely. So the death sequence, that sounds so ominous, but we think about that.
7:42 Chuck Nice? It sounds so Neil, that's what it sounds. It sounds so Neil deGrasse Tyson.
7:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, so the death sequence, it starts with three minutes without oxygen, three hours without normal thermia, too hot or too cold. Then it's three days without water, three weeks without food. Um, and then after weeks, and people often forget this and neglect this, and it's happens from moment one to moment, multiple months, is three months without companionships, connections or relationships. So psychologically, that could be a huge effect.
8:16 Chuck Nice? Now, now, do people, do people go mad or do they actually die? Because we're, the other things you said result in death. I mean, for me, three months without being around anybody because I have three kids. I call that a vacation. I call that, that's a beautiful thing. That's wonderful.
8:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and, and Season 11 of Alone. I used to think that too. And I remembered, I, I, I grew up with heavy doses of The Twilight Zone, which predated our time in space, but it knew it was imminent. And many of the episodes studied loneliness in space. It assumed somehow we would send one astronaut to Mars, right? Or whatever, which never happened, of course. Plus NASA is always yapping at you on the, on the, on the, on the channels. But the, the, they, they all went crazy. And I thought, wow. And then once I got older, I gotta echo what Chuck said here. Not only do I greatly relish time alone,
9:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I know people who don't ever want to talk to anybody ever. You give them books or their music and they're fine. So who, is it really true that three months without human contact is, for some people, is bad? I, I can't, I don't see that.
9:34 Speaker 03 It really depends on the person. Like you said, some people need to be alone, want to be alone. And for those people, maybe that could be an option for them. Um, I would say for the majority of people, especially if we just look at the pandemic as an example, and then look at the incidents across the US, uh, for mental, the rising mental illness. We see that disconnect from people can cause disturbances.
10:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It did happen to you because you were on that Alone show. Except how long could you be if there's a camera on your ass all the time?
10:08 Gary O'Reilly? Ah, solo, solo cam.
10:09 Speaker 03 Solo cam, so that's, that's the big thing. All of Alone is self filmed. The B roll, that's done at different sites, but it's all self filmed. It's you and your three buddy cameras and you can name them if you want to, but that's your relationship.
10:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, that, that means it's getting really bad if you start naming your cameras.
10:26 Chuck Nice? Yeah, yeah, when your cameras play the role of Wilson, you know you've been out there too long, too long. Well, you know, it does make sense because there is a great deal of research now, some of which I found very intriguing about solitary confinement being considered torture.
10:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. And by the way, what they don't say in solitary confinement is you're not only in solitary confinement, you're in a tiny volume. So there's a size area thing, but you're out in the wilderness, so you don't have the volume problem, the area volume.
10:59 Speaker 03 We have the range.
10:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You got the range. But, but did you feel this emotionally though?
11:03 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
11:04 Speaker 03 I'll, I'll, I'll give you what I, what I did as a trick because I worked with my patients in a family medicine setting. I also been to therapy myself and a lot of the people that I work with in the medical field are psychiatrists, therapists, cognitive behavioral therapists. So I threw the kitchen sink at this whole experience and did all the coping mechanisms I've ever been taught, just tried to be as good as I can with that aspect. And one of the things that I really emphasized is finding ways to build relationships with what I got. So that may have been naming my cameras.
11:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
11:40 Speaker 03 That may have been making friends with animals.
11:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
11:43 Chuck Nice? Okay, so do me a favor, because I'm, I am so, this is probably, this is so fascinating, the fact that you spent, first of all, how, how long was it that you were alone? And then second question, follow up, what were your top three coping mechanisms? Because you said, you know, you, you did everything from family therapy to your psychiatrist or psychologist. So what are the top three and how long were you alone?
12:10 Speaker 03 So I was alone for sixty-three days.
12:13 Chuck Nice? Wow.
12:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, it was quite some time over there. Saw the seasons change. But one of the categories of coping mechanisms that I used is should be differentiated between drop shock and initial stuff or acute kind of reactions and what I did on the long term. For a lot of the initial things, I did breathing exercises, same thing I did in the military for shooting, actually, to elevate that parasympathetic nerve response. So bearing down, box breathing, get really chill so I can have a clear head. And then I did a lot of meditation on the acute setting, on the long-term setting. It was for me, how do I make a connection? How do I build a relationship on the land that I am on?
12:56 Speaker 03 Especially if it's indigenous land, how do I build that relationship with no one there? And one of the things that I practiced a lot was gratitude and asking for help, openly asking for help. And one of the
13:09 Chuck Nice? To the cameras?
13:11 Speaker 03 To whatever was out there.
13:13 Chuck Nice? Okay, I got you. Go ahead, go for it.
13:15 Speaker 03 And I think a powerful feeling is that when you ask for something, whether that's your ancestors, the spirits of the woods, or God.
13:22 Chuck Nice? Right.
13:22 Speaker 03 And you receive that, that's an incredibly empowering feeling that you know that someone has your back. And when you do it once, you do it twice, you do it three times, and you do it almost every day, and you receive, and you receive, and you receive.
13:34 Chuck Nice? So it's a manifestation.
13:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:36 Chuck Nice? And some people would call that prayer, and they're thinking that's a higher power that's actually granting it. Some people call it manifesting, which is why it's just speaking things into existence. You're not literally speaking them into existence, but the fact that you verbalize it, that you hear it, allows you to then manifest it. You're actually doing it, but you wouldn't be able to do it unless you spoke it. Some people, as you said, your ancestors, so they're, I mean, throughout history, there's been so many things associated with that, but I'm, that is fascinating that you actually put that into practice.
14:11 Gary O'Reilly? So Timogen, how quickly do you get to suffer mentally? Right? In isolation.
14:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Damn, Gary.
14:22 Gary O'Reilly? Compound that, because this can't be, this can't be good news, really.
14:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Isn't there another way you could add that?
14:29 Chuck Nice? You are hardcore, Gary.
14:30 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah. This dude's suffering.
14:33 Chuck Nice? Tell us when you started.
14:34 Gary O'Reilly? He's not got a little wicker basket out there with sandwiches.
14:38 Chuck Nice? Get to the good stuff. Tell us when you started breaking down. Come on.
14:41 Gary O'Reilly? So, okay, you know, you're in isolation, probably not the best thing, as we've just discussed, but you've compounded that with terrorific deprivation. Now surely you really are putting yourself on a fast track to having some disturbance there.
14:56 Speaker 03 Absolutely. And let me tell you, starvation is no joke, you know? One of the worst pains that you can kind of feel, especially when you transition between starvation and actually craving, because your stomach shrinks, you're not as hungry, a little bit of food satisfies you. But when you start craving things and you can't get it, I was craving things that I would never eat. The yellow orange cheese at the corner shop that you dip your nachos in. Never eaten that before, but I was craving that.
15:27 Gary O'Reilly? And it's not even real cheese.
15:28 Speaker 03 It's not even real cheese.
15:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's his point.
15:32 Speaker 03 So you get into that craving zone, it's like an obsession and a pain that you can't really touch. And I would say that's another form of torture. But when you think about when my suffering first started was after I didn't have a plan. You know, you go in, you have 10 items, you think you know what you're gonna do with your shelter, with your food sources, you go there and you get whatever resources that the land offers. I caught a few fish the first two days, and so I'm amazing. Every cast I threw, there were bites. Day four, nothing. Day five, nothing. Two weeks passed.
16:08 Gary O'Reilly? You did everything.
16:10 Speaker 03 I don't think so. There was only four fish that I caught in the first few days, but it was nothing for a.
16:14 Chuck Nice? You overfished the land. You overfished the land with only four fish.
16:19 Speaker 03 With only four fish.
16:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The producer put the four fish in at the beginning.
16:22 Speaker 03 Uh, downstream.
16:24 Gary O'Reilly? Does, when you're in this isolation, this mental aspect of survival and isolation is fascinating. I think we'd all agree with that. Does your brain now engage with kind of upgrading your senses? Now, are you, you know, that much more aware? Does the survival instinct really, really kick in?
16:46 Speaker 03 A hundred percent. So there is an instinct that is innate to, I think, all humans that are open to that type of experience. If you don't break down and you are in it to live another day, whether that's another day or to win half a million dollars. If you are invested in it, your attention does shift. And it is quite a beautiful thing because it's almost like a constant grounding, meditative experience where you're sensing with your nose, your feelings, your, your, your, your sounds, your tastes, like every little sense. And every little sound in the woods, whether that's a squirrel sound or a bird that you've never heard before, you get to know every little thing. And it became like almost a research project for me because I was
17:30 Speaker 03 associating different sounds to different behaviors of different animals at different times of the day. And as I got more data, I was able to hunt more effectively. So after two weeks of not getting any animal protein, after some observations and taking some mental notes, I only took shots that I knew I could get at a hundred percent or a close to it. And I was hunting for the first time because prior to this experience, I had never hunted. I've shot a recurve bow for seven years, but I never hunted before.
17:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So animal protein, that's code for dead, for, for, for dead meat, right?
18:02 Speaker 03 Meat.
18:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Meat.
18:03 Gary O'Reilly? Meat, baby. I need meat.
18:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You start craving it. Meat. So, so this craving concept, there was a scene, forgive my cinematic reference here, but in, what's that movie where the Central Park animals go to Madagascar? Madagascar, okay.
18:20 Speaker 03 It's called Madagascar.
18:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There you go. In Madagascar, all these animals are coexisting in the Central Park Zoo and all being fed daily, so they're just friends. Then they end up in Madagascar and the lion.
18:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is hungry. And all of a sudden, the zebra, who I think was played by Chris Rock, is that right?
18:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
18:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The zebra, who was his friend, started looking like a pork chop or some, or some kind of slab of meat.
18:50 Speaker 03 Right.
18:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's.
18:51 Speaker 03 I'm lying. Why are you looking at me like that?
18:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it wouldn't be pork chop, it'd be a zebra chop. But, but that, that was a hint at the psychological shift of what previously you would never consider eating, now looks delectable. So did insects start looking good to you and other things that you just would never consider eating?
19:13 Speaker 03 Oh, insects, I wish I had insects because I would have eaten it, but it was so cold by week two that there were not insects up to like three feet deep because I was digging for, for things. But there are parts of animals that I'd never thought I would eat that I ended up enjoying and craving. Brains, spinal cords, eyeballs, you name it. I was trying to eat like up to 90% of most animals that I would take out there because you were that hungry.
19:40 Chuck Nice? And, and, and, and you cooked them though, right?
19:43 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
19:44 Chuck Nice? Okay. I don't know anything about, listen, man, this is the, you are speaking an alien language to me right now. Because if it does not come from whole foods, I feel like I am hunting.
19:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Plus, if I'm gonna be eating somebody's eyeball, I'm gonna have to cook them first.
20:02 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
20:03 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
20:04 Speaker 03 Season it a little bit.
20:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Gary, we cut you off. What else? We got a couple of minutes before the segment.
20:08 Gary O'Reilly? Okay, so if we stay on this mental thing, do we now get to hallucination?
20:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh.
20:16 Gary O'Reilly? Do we now get to?
20:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Especially in the hunger state. Yes.
20:20 Gary O'Reilly? Right. You get now, you talked about indigenous land. Do you then kind of absorb some of this spirituality and then reconnect with ancestral? Does it come on like that or am I beginning to trip?
20:34 Speaker 03 I think it's a little different for everyone. I can only speak to my experience out there. And since I was actively trying to connect with those spirits of lands, those ancestors of lands, and asking for help, because I'm no hunter. I was asking, hey, where do I find food? How do I get food? What would be the best shelter? And there was subtle signs of presence there. So there have been, the way trees are bent there to make cooking benches and stuff like that. So to see that and to feel that, and then to gain from the land, it did feel like I was surrounded by that type of presence. And that was incredibly comforting to me.
21:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's a very powerful mental force operating on you. Because, you know, we, in modern science, of course, we poo poo all of that. But if you're out alone and you need to survive, the fact that you had those thoughts at all, and the fact that those thoughts are especially prevalent in, among native peoples of land prehistoric times, then you must, you are tapping into something that must go very deep within our species.
21:37 Chuck Nice? That makes sense. And Teimojin, are you in any way, as far as your ancestry, connected to indigenous people for this part of the world?
21:50 Speaker 03 Not this part of the world, but I would say that I'm named after Genghis Khan. So I'm probably in some way related to a bunch of different people genetically.
22:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How are you named after Genghis Khan?
22:03 Chuck Nice? Hey, man, we're all related to Genghis Khan.
22:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My boy had some children coming out of him.
22:09 Chuck Nice? Are you kidding me?
22:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How is Teimojin Tan named after Genghis Khan?
22:15 Speaker 03 Genghis Khan is a title, king of kings. He was given that name. His name was Teimojin, which meant of iron. So typically given to family members who were destined to be blacksmith.
22:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I did not know that.
22:29 Speaker 03 He was enslaved, yeah. So he became a child slave who rose up against his oppressors and just took over a big portion of the world.
22:38 Chuck Nice? Never stopped.
22:40 Speaker 03 Yep, never stopped.
22:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, everything I know about Genghis Khan is from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Just thought I'd put that out there.
22:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is not a deep well, Neil. That's a puddle. I'm being hon- see here, I'm being honest with you. I know you are. You are. That's cool. No, see, now I'm not gonna be honest with you anymore, cuz you don't. Nah, I'm gonna take your ball and go home.
23:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright, we gotta take a quick break. When we come back.
23:06 Speaker 03 Fascinating.
23:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh my gosh, we're gonna return to our conversation with Tim McGintyre, and we're gonna learn more about what he did. Was it a bit of instinct, or was it a bit of science that he brought to his survival? When StarTalk Sports Edition Cosmic Queries Hybrid continues.
23:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back, StarTalk. This episode is on.
23:42 Gary O'Reilly? Stayin' alive.
23:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sorry.
23:49 Chuck Nice? I work so hard on my hair.
23:52 Chuck Nice? I work so hard on my hair. Look at what you're doing.
23:56 Speaker 03 That's what you got there, Neil.
23:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh dear. This went down here fast, didn't it? The American culture we're talking about here.
24:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The songs by the Bee Gees, they're British. Oh, that's true, but it's an American film. American film.
24:10 Speaker 03 Wow.
24:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. We got Tim McGintyre. Did I pronounce your full name correctly? Tim McGintyre.
24:17 Speaker 03 Just tan like a suntan.
24:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tan, tan. Tim McGintyre. Thank you for correcting me there.
24:22 Speaker 03 Yep.
24:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So.
24:23 Speaker 03 No problem.
24:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You, you, you were alone for two months, surviving, and you have a knowledge of physiology, being a medical doctor. You also have knowledge of science related to that, science of an environment. So, could you, could you walk us through the steps of starvation? Which, did you experience, you experienced some of that, did you not?
24:50 Speaker 03 I think everyone on the history of alone has experienced starvation to one extent or the other. And it is a very precise and predictable sequence of events.
25:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Take us through it.
25:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, so. It starts with denial. It starts with denial. And then it goes to anger.
25:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And acceptance, right?
25:11 Speaker 03 And then acceptance.
25:14 Speaker 03 Absolutely. So you have glucose in your blood, right? So your body prepares that, you're breaking first that.
25:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One of the many sugars, one of the simple sugars, yes.
25:21 Speaker 03 Mm hmm. Exactly. So that becomes depleted within the first day or so. Then your body kicks in to a glycogen breakdown. So your liver and your muscles start breaking down the storage package so that you have more glucose. And within three or four days, depending on your body habitus and your baseline makeup, that's gone. So four days, you need another source of fuel. And your body starts to break down both proteins and fat. And then soon after that, preferentially focusing on fat. That's kind of what ketosis is mainly about. So the breakdown of fat and the breakdown products of fat are energy.
25:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just to be clear, when someone says they're on a keto diet, they're on a diet that puts their body into that state, is that correct?
26:05 Gary O'Reilly? Of ketosis.
26:06 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
26:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good, good.
26:07 Speaker 03 A few things happen to you. You feel like you're rundown, low energy. Your breath and your mouth may feel different. So I felt like my mouth was really dry and just tasted different. Some people say that their breath smells a little more sweet, but I didn't smell anything different. But after that stage, you can pretty much cruise. So you feel really, really crummy for a few days, a few weeks even. And then your body starts getting used to that energy source. And even though you may be getting some carbs from berries, from little things that you're foraging, it's not enough to pull you out of ketosis unless you find like a jackpot of like a bunch of things.
26:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Like a stack of pancakes around the back of a tree.
26:49 Speaker 03 Stack of pancakes. You find a supermarket.
26:54 Gary O'Reilly? Did you call it cruising? You cruise this keto state.
26:59 Speaker 03 Yeah. So I imagine that's when people who do ketosis for fun or for health. Queries, they typically feel bad at the beginning, but then learn to work with it. They learn how to exercise with it and then they're able to function. And that's true in a starvation state as well. So after I felt like I couldn't walk more than a few steps at a time before feeling a little winded or lightheaded, then I was hunting like multiple hours a day, no problem. But the scary thing is, once your fat reserves go down, because I packed about 30 pounds on my frame, and once that was all gone, it starts to take from your organ fat. And once that's all gone, your body senses the amount of fatty acids in your blood.
27:44 Speaker 03 And there's a critical level that it reaches until your engine that's saying what fuel you need to take, switches very drastically to protein. And you'll notice a very aggressive take of protein off your frame. And we're talking about noticing function loss, gradual and substantial function loss within a span of days.
28:05 Chuck Nice? That's when your body is eating itself. Eating itself. It's eating itself, literally. Your muscles are atrophying, not from lack of use, but from your body like stripping them of.
28:18 Gary O'Reilly? As a source of energy.
28:21 Chuck Nice? Okay. As a source of strip mining. Your body is strip mining itself.
28:25 Gary O'Reilly? You've bulked up, you know, you've put on the lumber 30 pounds before you go out. So, and how long does it take for you to hit that strip mining phase? Or is it individual?
28:36 Speaker 03 It gives you, it gives you a little bit of time. So depending on what you're doing, in alone, you're building your shelter, right? You're not, you're not sleeping in a tent or anything like that. So the first few weeks is pretty energy intense. I would expect you would lose about anywhere from a half a pound if you weren't doing a whole lot, to a pound and a half a day for the first few weeks. And then afterwards, it's, it kind of evens out when you get into your groove where you're just like sitting, fishing, checking traps, expect a pound to half a pound a day of loss, no matter what you do. So if you're just laying around in your sleeping bag, you might be losing half a pound a day.
29:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, your metabolic rate, you're trying to maintain your body temperature, especially against low temperatures. That takes more energy than it otherwise would. So you're not just, you're never not burning nothing.
29:24 Gary O'Reilly? Are you?
29:25 Chuck Nice? I just forgot about the fact that we're in the cold when we're doing this, which exacerbates everything.
29:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I said, you're never not burning nothing. Does that have too many negatives in there?
29:37 Chuck Nice? No, that's, that's a triple negative. You, you went there, you came back, and then you came back again.
29:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I came back out safely out of that.
29:43 Chuck Nice? Yeah, you came back out safely. You're never not burning nothing. You're never not burning nothing.
29:48 Gary O'Reilly? So Jimmy, Jimmy, are you in that position of luxury to store things? Like, could you store any food stuff? Could you store water? Or is it, you know what? I'll take it and I've got no way of?
30:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I mean, in a pantry? Yeah, did you have a pantry in your store?
30:04 Gary O'Reilly? Not a pantry.
30:05 Speaker 03 Actually, I did have a little pantry. Um, and I use reindeer moss. So it's a lichen. Um, and it's a lichen that has fiber. It's a lichen that has, uh, some simple amino acids and a low amount of carbs and sugars.
30:18 Chuck Nice? What do you use reindeer moss?
30:20 Speaker 03 Reindeer moss.
30:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What is, what is that?
30:22 Speaker 03 So it's a very, it's a, it kind of looks like a little fluffy thing. Not, not a moss, not a mushroom, uh, something in between. So a lichen and reindeer eat a bunch of it. So I had about 15 pounds of that in my shelter and I made a big old basket to keep it in and to dry it.
30:38 Chuck Nice? So you, you basically took tree slime and, and, and put it in a basket.
30:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's using his own words, Chuck.
30:48 Speaker 03 And called it good, yeah.
30:49 Chuck Nice? And, and said, oh, I got a pantry.
30:52 Gary O'Reilly? So when, when I, when I looked at some of the contestants that were involved in the alone series, and there's been a number of series, they're not all just being airlifted out because they're lonely. Some of them being airlifted out because... They've got something tainted, be it water, be it food stuff. So how are you going about, I mean, you're a plus plus here, you're a medical doctor. But how are you coping if you're not able to get potable water? If you're not able to do anything but drink stuff that's got the wrong kind of amoebas in it?
31:27 Chuck Nice? Yeah, because one bad encounter with the wrong bacteria and goodbye, it's over.
31:34 Speaker 03 Absolutely. And if you look at season nine of Alone, about forty percent of the contestants got some kind of gastric bug. Namely, Giardi, I think, was the biggest culprit because they were hunting beavers. And it only takes two cysts, so two cysts under a microscope to get infected. So hygiene, if you have a good idea of how to keep your camp clean and practice good hygiene, that goes a long way.
31:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't eat beavers, is what you're saying.
32:01 Speaker 03 Don't eat beavers. Well, you can eat beaver, just make sure that you're not using a beaver tail at your plate, which I think someone did and got really sick.
32:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is crazy.
32:11 Chuck Nice? Well, let me just say this, and I'm sorry to say this. They deserved that. Let me just put it that way. They got what they deserved.
32:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Tim, I get all this, it's man against nature, man against the elements. But how about man against polar bear? You're in the Arctic. It's not clear to me how you would ever win against a polar bear without a thirty ought six.
32:36 Chuck Nice? Well, if you're hungry enough.
32:37 Speaker 03 Thirty ought six would be great. But if you see a polar bear, it's not because you stumbled upon him by happenstance. He has been tracking you. That guy has a huge sniffer. So that amount of muscle and pure feral ferocity, you don't really stand a chance without kind of modern weapons. You can try to shoot an arrow at him, but that thing, if he charges you and hits you one time, you're pretty much done.
33:04 Chuck Nice? So I read this thing where, and I can't speak to the veracity, but male polar bears can smell female polar bears from miles and miles away. And maybe that's part of to help with the mating process, I'm not sure. But if they have that strong a sense of smell, I'm sure that food.
33:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're gonna smell your ass.
33:26 Chuck Nice? Food is right up there.
33:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You have food, sex, and shelter. Two, three things, you know, you gotta have. Okay, so you're saying you're admitting you need modern weapons. You're admitting that.
33:38 Speaker 03 I would say so, unless you have a tribe.
33:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But unless, okay, but most survivalist booklets and things are more sort of, um, who's that guy that did a whole TV show with him?
33:51 Speaker 03 Uh, Dave Canterbury is one of them.
33:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, I'm talking about, no.
33:53 Speaker 03 Bear Grylls is another one.
33:54 Chuck Nice? Bear Grylls.
33:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, maybe. I was thinking of, um, who's the guy who did everything with duct tape and, and? MacGyver.
34:02 Chuck Nice? Oh, MacGyver.
34:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. So MacGyver doesn't have fancy weapons. He's, he's resourceful with what's around him. But you're saying, in your situation, there are occasions where being resourceful would never, uh, improve your survival.
34:18 Speaker 03 You would have to be pretty darn resourceful to make a bomb or something like that, a huge trap for a polar bear.
34:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
34:24 Chuck Nice? Hmm, yeah. Hitting him with a snowball is not gonna work, huh? No, not, not, not gonna happen, huh?
34:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, so, so let's, let's get to our cosmic queries. Let's maybe slip one in before our second break.
34:37 Gary O'Reilly? Okay.
34:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So who's got the first one?
34:38 Gary O'Reilly? All right, I'll, I'll jump in. Uh, this one from our Patreon listeners, and thank you. There's some fantastic questions. Aaron Rosenberg. Viktor Frankl wrote in Man's Search for Meaning that when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. Dr. Tan, with this and your experiences in mind, what was a survival situation that surprised you the most in terms of digging deep and confronting yourself? And then this flips. And how might these lessons we've learned from survival in extreme conditions here on Earth be applied to long-term space travel or future extraterrestrial colonies?
35:16 Speaker 03 Hmm, really good question. Really good question.
35:20 Chuck Nice? Yeah, Aaron showing off.
35:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I know, he totally is.
35:24 Speaker 03 Is how or when, what circumstance would we change ourselves to overcome an incredible adversity? Perhaps that adversity is being alone, specifically in space. And I think the flip for me is after I got some more food, after my shelter was cozy, I was hanging out by the fire. Um, the next question was, why am I still there? You know, uh, what was my purpose? What was my mission? Um, at that point, and I remember at day forty.
35:54 Chuck Nice? That point, wow.
35:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of people get that, um, when they're alone and they don't really have a clear reason to be there or to push forward. And for me, um, I actively was searching for that reason. And on day forty, I remember just watching the river and having a memory pop up. And it was a memory of, uh, something that my mom had told me when I was a kid. And that got me thinking about how my mom has, um, been through the past year and how far away I've, I have been from her, from medical school, from traveling and so forth. She told me, she told me that, uh, whatever I did, as long as I love doing it and as long as I tried to be the best at it, that she'd be proud of me.
36:41 Chuck Nice? Oh.
36:42 Speaker 03 Yeah. And she was the type of woman that would fight for any of her kids, no matter what. And, um, she went through a bunch of health issues, relationship issues, financial issues through the days, um, and years, and just became a person who was not that person I knew when I was five years old.
36:59 Chuck Nice? Okay, yeah.
37:00 Speaker 03 And to, to potentially have a purpose out there to say, hey, maybe I can remind her that, to show her the type of person she raised, the values that she bestowed upon me. Maybe that would make something click so that she can go back to that person, or even think that she deserves to be that person.
37:19 Chuck Nice? Wow.
37:20 Speaker 03 That's what pushed, that's what pushed me.
37:21 Chuck Nice? That's a pep talk. That is a pep talk.
37:24 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:24 Chuck Nice? Yeah, a spiritual pep talk, right? From, from beyond, right? But you know what? It's like, it's a spiritual, um, um, you know, it's, it's spiritual in nature, but it is also so inexorably tethered to what is corporeal that it is, it's kind of a mind. Put those two words, inexorably tethered to the corporeal?
37:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Those three words just come out of your mouth in a row?
37:48 Chuck Nice? Yes, they did. Why?
37:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright, fine, fine. I'm just...
37:50 Chuck Nice? Is that bad?
37:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, I guess not. Sorry. This is my vocabulary not ready for that. Okay, go on.
37:55 Chuck Nice? Okay, I'm sorry. What I'm saying is, it's kind of a... You're kind of... It's a mind F in a way. You know what I'm saying? But it's... But that's how deep it is. Like, you don't... That's not something you would have thought of taking a bubble bath, is what I'm saying.
38:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And let me address the space side of that question. I mean, we're in a position, the space voyage, just trick it out with whatever you want. Get the Netflix account, you know, the music. So I don't see that as a problem traveling to a destination. But when you get there, then all of what you're saying would matter. If you're sort of a... If you're a pilgrim, you know, or not even pilgrim, what do you call the first ones? If you're the first ones coming in.
38:39 Chuck Nice? Pioneers.
38:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Saddlers, pioneers. Yeah, you'll need some of that. But on the voyage, just trick out the spaceship in whatever way you need it to be. One other thing, before we take a break, you commented earlier about that you started naming things and having conversations with things. That's a recurring theme in at least four films that portray the last person on Earth. So in The Omega Man and I Am Legend, and then there's another film, which is lesser known, The World, the Flesh and the Devil, which actually had Harry Belafonte in it. And there was an Aussie film, actually a New Zealand film, called Quiet Earth.
39:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All of those, there's a person who thinks they're the last one on Earth, but they're in cities, right? And so they go into like shopping stores, you know, department stores, and they make friends with the mannequins.
39:37 Chuck Nice? Mannequins.
39:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The mannequins all have names. See, how you doing to them? They dress them differently each time.
39:43 Chuck Nice? What's up, Woody?
39:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I know, exactly. So this is exactly what you're describing. And I'm thinking, man, this is getting deep inside what the human brain wants to do. Maybe civilization is squashing that in some fundamental way. We need to let more of that out. Maybe life would be more interesting and more fun. We gotta take a break. When we come back, more cosmic queries on Stayin' Alive!
40:08 Gary O'Reilly? You know Barry Good.
40:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back. StarTalk, Cosmic Queries. We're talking about how to survive in the wilderness. Man, man, it's-
40:33 Chuck Nice? This is so much deeper than I thought it would ever-
40:36 Gary O'Reilly? There you go.
40:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tamigen Tan, who's a survivalist, also a medical doctor, and he, he appeared in, and was a contestant in series nine of Alone on the History Channel, where you got, you carry your own cameras. You're not followed by a camera person. Then you wouldn't be alone, right? You plus a camera person. You're alone. You got your own cameras. So this is fast, every bit of this is fascinating, and it is something I will clearly never do in my life. So, so Gary, Chuck, you got some questions from our Patreon fanbase.
41:12 Chuck Nice? Before we do, can I just give $5 right now so I can ask a question?
41:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No!
41:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? $5 a month.
41:19 Chuck Nice? I'll take $5. I got $10. Can I give $5?
41:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's all it is.
41:22 Chuck Nice? Can I give $5? Because here's what I want to know-
41:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One StarTalk coffee. We're gonna put this in the, in the bin. All right, go Chuck.
41:28 Chuck Nice? We'll put it in, okay. Everything that we've talked about so far has been so intense mentally. How, how did they screen you? How do they know that, hey, I'm not gonna screw this guy up for the rest of his life by letting him go and try this?
41:42 Speaker 03 Sure. So the screening process is, I think, standard for a lot of TV things. You get a medical check from a doctor, and that's pretty much it. If you don't have an history of it, any kind of mental illness, then that's up to you to describe. But if you do, then you chose to do this, you sign a disclosure-
41:59 Chuck Nice? In other words, you signed a release. That's the answer. Okay. There you go.
42:03 Speaker 03 The showbiz.
42:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's get another question. Gary, you got one?
42:05 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, for sure. Ronnie Wayne Gorts from Brooklyn in New York, he says, Doctors Tyson and Tan and Mr. Nice, what are the best practices to optimize the design of shelters, clothing, and equipment for individuals facing a wide range of extreme conditions? And would having a knowledge in fluid dynamics or material science give you the edge in survival?
42:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hmm. Yeah, more broadly, science in general.
42:30 Speaker 03 That sounds really cool.
42:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because, you know, the cavemen didn't have science, but they they managed to birth all of us. Right? Eventually.
42:36 Speaker 03 Mm hmm.
42:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So how much does science matter?
42:38 Speaker 03 So silent science, when you look at, uh, you talk about fluid dynamics, I'll talk about fluid dynamics in the body. And also concepts of insulation. How do we retain heat? So we know that, uh, heat is lost by multiple different means. So if you kind of halt those multiple different means by insulating, having vapor barriers to prevent uh, evaporation and con- and um, convection, that's super helpful. And um, wicking away for your body. So the water's not retained close to your body. So you're not changing the water temperature and transferring that energy from your body heat to to elevate that temperature in that wa- uh, water. So that from a science standpoint is there. But very succinctly and simply. Insulate yourself, have a vapor barrier, if possible, have a layer that's uh, reflects heat as well.
43:24 Speaker 03 And uh, also have uh, a way to do that in all parts of your body. Make sure as uh, as much as possible cover up. So in Arctic temperatures, all you're seeing is like two little little holes for your nostrils and that's it. Everything else is covered up in at least three different layers. Um, and when you're looking at your shelter, you want an insulating and waterproof layer that's at least a foot thick. My shelter on alone was about two and a half feet thick of um, moss, dirt and ice.
43:53 Chuck Nice? So warm and dry is what's.
43:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, basically, that's what's.
43:55 Speaker 03 Warm and dry.
43:57 Chuck Nice? Insulated, insulated, warm and dry, basically. That's, that's the rule of.
44:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so then what of an igloo?
44:01 Speaker 03 Igloos are awesome because again, uh, they're insulated. Um, and they're thick. So most igloos are at least uh, a foot and a half to two feet thick. And that you're just trapping a lot of your own body heat.
44:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah, okay.
44:13 Speaker 03 If you're not starving and you have a lot of um, a lot of calories that you're just burning off at heat, a lot of that heat is retained in that structure.
44:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Didn't know that. Okay.
44:21 Speaker 03 So that's, yeah, so you can heat up an igloo, uh, or like a ten foot by ten foot with like two candles. And have enough to not need a jacket.
44:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Damn. Yeah, okay.
44:33 Speaker 03 Very efficient.
44:34 Gary O'Reilly? Barbecue weather.
44:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, Chuck, you got a question?
44:40 Chuck Nice? Uh, this is Steelfinger7. Steelfinger7 says, "Hello Neil, Dr. Tan. Hello Gary. How long can a human survive without water? And how long can a human survive drinking only their own urine? I'm asking for a friend."
45:01 Chuck Nice? That's funny.
45:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, cuz you said three days, but I was remembering more like a week.
45:05 Speaker 03 Um, so, three days is typically your marker, but let's say if you're in a desert or if you are lost and you're already dehydrated, that timeline gets pushed a little shorter. Um, so, three days without water is typical, your guidelines to work around. If you're conserving a lot, um, and not doing much, you can extend it a little bit, but, um...
45:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What about eating your own, drinking your own pee, which we hear done, we hear told.
45:31 Chuck Nice? They say people do that.
45:32 Speaker 03 That is not advisable because that will, um, make you a little more dehydrated and help accumulate a lot of the toxins that is the waste product in your urine, in your body. So, not advisable. If you can distill it, just like how we do on space stations, that would be, uh, an excellent choice. And with some simple tools, a few buckets, um, things that you can carve, you can make an improvised distillation setup in the woods, too.
45:57 Chuck Nice? Right.
45:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, interesting.
45:58 Chuck Nice? I was gonna say, that's, that's the idea of drinking the pee. It's like, what are those suits in Doom that they wear that have the...
46:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They recycle your sweat.
46:04 Chuck Nice? All of your body...
46:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I thought it was just your sweat.
46:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly.
46:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
46:07 Chuck Nice? Yeah, it's kinda cool. All right, there you go.
46:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, keep going. Who's got the next one?
46:11 Gary O'Reilly? All right, I'll jump in. This is...
46:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You guys never share the questions with me.
46:14 Gary O'Reilly? All right, take it easy. Put your feet up. Uh, this is from Nick Smith, another one of our Patreon listeners. Uh, "During the tail end of a few climbs in the mountains, where my partner and I have been moving for over 24 hours, both of us have experienced hallucinations. I've always assumed they're from some combination of exhaustion and running on a calorie deficit. I'm curious, however, if there's a medical or psychological explanation for them." And he's also wondering if, Dr. Tan, you know, if anyone who's experienced similar...
46:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Events. Well, plus they're hiking in the mountains, there's also less oxygen. So you have oxygen deprivation and the rest of these combined. So what are the thresholds for hallucination?
46:54 Speaker 03 So I, I would imagine many people have different kind of thresholds because when we think about people who are in the mountains at high altitude for the majority of their life, they don't experience the same things you and I do who come basically from sea level. But you talked about dehydration, you talked about oxygen deprivation, you talked about calorie deficits. All those things can make you a little loopy. But the concerning thing is, especially if it's hiking at high altitude, is brain swelling, cerebral edema, so high altitude cerebral edema, which would be a severe effect of being at that altitude. So that can cause some mental changes as well. So hopefully that was not the case and if it was just a little dehydrated and calorie deficit,
47:38 Speaker 03 because when we think about how many calories we need, it's on the scale of over 6,000 kilocalories a day. So with altitude sickness, feeling nauseated, not having a good appetite, it's very hard to get over 6,000 kilocalories a day in food unless you're eating straight butter.
47:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right, right. And just to be clear, a food calorie, that would be 6,000 calories, but a physics calorie, it's 6,000 kilocalories, right? Because a capital C is a thousand little Cs. Yeah, yeah, just want to clarify that. So, so there's a section of the Bible where Jesus goes out into the wilderness and Forty days and forty nights. I don't remember how long, it might have been that long, but he's Yes, forty days. Is that right? And he begins to hallucinate while he's fasting. And so, so the fasting would be a trigger. Well, he doesn't call it hallucinating, he's like talking to God, right? But you would expect some neurological shift in him.
48:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He didn't say, let me go to the oasis, you know, and eat banquet food and then talk. It's like, let us stress the physiology of my body. Then I'm susceptible to these kinds of visions and and that's what happened there. Yeah.
48:53 Speaker 03 And you you hit it right on because um when you're stepping away from homeostasis in your body, whether that's dehydration, calories or temperature, so I'm not sure if Jesus was having some heat stroke out there, uh that can all change your mental status and we see that all the time in the elderly. So they come in, you don't really know what's going on and it's just these small shifts that make them have delirium and uh that wouldn't be surprising in those situations.
49:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Interesting. All right. Let's keep it going.
49:20 Gary O'Reilly? All right, Chuck, let me jump in on this one. Um, this is the apocalyptic scenario. So prepare yourselves. Emily Kenechko Reynolds, I hope I've pronounced that correctly. She's from Kyoto in Japan. How would you prepare for a scenario where all the electricity goes down for the foreseeable future or all our satellites completely power off? Um, what would be the top three relatively easy things to have in place for survival now? You're a survival doc.
49:49 Chuck Nice? One is an AR-15. That's one. That's another one.
49:53 Gary O'Reilly? Well, now what's top of Chuck's list?
49:54 Chuck Nice? We're here in Murph. Make sure you got enough ammunition. That's the first thing you want to do is go count your bullets.
50:05 Speaker 03 Chuck, you're you're not wrong.
50:07 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, no, that's all he needed to hear.
50:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't encourage him.
50:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't encourage Chuck like that.
50:16 Speaker 03 If you have all the fatty things, all the things you need and your buddy does just have an AR, then that that stuff is his or hers. You know, unfortunately, that that's the law of the end of the world, right?
50:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
50:29 Speaker 03 Whoever has that power, yeah.
50:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The law of the end of the world.
50:32 Speaker 03 Power control. Power control is a huge one. But we can talk about sustainable energy. We can talk about uh food supply for the last years, but uh if there's an overpowering force, it's not yours anymore.
50:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The law of the end of the world. But why do you even have that as a phrase? Damn it, Jim. Damn. Now, now you're spooking me a little. The law of the end of the world. Like, yes, I've got it up on my wall.
50:58 Chuck Nice? Do you have enough ammo? Yeah, good, good counts of bullets, alright. Alright, keep going. Gotcha, boy. Here's an interesting one. This is Kenneth Von Smellsmore. Very funny, Kenneth, indeed, indeed so. Smellsmore. He says, greetings from Atlanta, Georgia. Modern medicine and technology are amazing and clearly have improved our overall health and longevity. We may not have access to this in the wild. What primitive methods are just as effective as modern medicine? Are there any that are arguably better? I'm reminded of things like using ants to suture a cut? Or maggots to clean a wound?
51:45 Speaker 03 I've heard of maggots. I haven't heard of suturing ants before. But I would say things very simply that you can use in a survival situation or starvation situation is natural fibers. So, one of the biggest complaint is severe constipation, so much so that we have bowel obstructions and that can turn to explosions of your intestines.
52:08 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
52:08 Speaker 03 Reasing fiber intake is a very simple way to do that. There are some plant mixtures that can be used as tinctures for antimicrobials, but again, there's no head-to-head studies, so we can't really say that that's super effective. But what is super effective is removing as much bacterial load as possible. So, having a way to pressure wash with semi-clean water, so it might be boiled and cooled with a 60 ml syringe, typically removes enough bacterial load if it's not soaked in feces to let your body heal itself. So, the majority of the cuts that I personally get in the field, the ones that I got on alone, I just washed it really well with a pressure wash and let my body heal.
52:51 Speaker 03 So, I wouldn't say it's as effective as antibiotics, but it gives your body a fighting chance.
52:58 Chuck Nice? Yeah. And believe it or not, that was a big problem in medicine before, you know, we started practicing it the way we do, called modern medicine. It's just things were not clean.
53:10 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
53:10 Chuck Nice? You know, it's just, just the fact that things were not clean made people die mostly of infection.
53:18 Chuck Nice? Not, not really what was, what was making them sick or what the injury was. It was the infection that killed them. So cleanliness is half the battle.
53:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My grandparents said, never go to the hospital because that's where you go to die. And
53:30 Speaker 03 That's what my grandpa says too.
53:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah. And
53:32 Chuck Nice? It makes sense.
53:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So only in modern times is let me go to the hospital so I can get better. Right. So that has to shift over time. Right?
53:38 Chuck Nice? Exactly. Yeah.
53:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Dude, that's fascinating.
53:42 Gary O'Reilly? All right, there's, on the, on the same theme here, this is Evan Fenwick, or that might be pronounced Fennick. We, uh, just depends. Right.
53:51 Gary O'Reilly? This is from Ontario, Canada. So in your neighborhood. Uh, my question is, what is the most effective method to stave off infections in the wild? And should you get an infection, what is the most effective way to treat or manage? I think the last bit we've kind of addressed, but, um,
54:06 Speaker 03 Personal hygiene, making sure that you're washing all of your, your things that you're processing. Um, so my setup for eating was a hundred meters away from where I was processing, uh, the meats. And I had, um, a few different bins that I would use to wash my hands. You can make a mild soap because we use a reaction between a base and, uh, some fats. So whether that's, uh, fat from animals or just the grease in your hair, you can make a very mild soap by just adding, uh, white ash, which is a base and then water and then that grease. Make mild soap with that.
54:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You say that like everybody knows that. You, you say that like, yeah, of course.
54:44 Chuck Nice? So cool.
54:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Let me get some grease out of my hair. I spent all, I spent all this time on my hair. Now look at what you do.
54:52 Speaker 03 My hair was great out there. I, I, I, I made my own little shampoo.
54:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Man, that's crazy.
54:57 Chuck Nice? That's great.
54:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So dude, I don't, I don't know if we have any time left. Uh, yeah.
55:02 Gary O'Reilly? All right. Here's, here we go Neil. Got one more. Captain James Riley.
55:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Last one, but it's gotta be fast. It's gotta be fast. Go.
55:07 Gary O'Reilly? Can you really cut off your own limb? Wouldn't you just pass out halfway through and wake up with half a cut off limb? There you go.
55:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cause we know, we, there are cases like that. The dude wrote a book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Where he had to cut off his arm.
55:19 Gary O'Reilly? So is that, you're a medically trained survivalist. Is that possible?
55:24 Speaker 03 So it is possible, but if you pass out, the main thing to do is to set up a tourniquet. If it is an extremity, to set up a tourniquet ahead of time. So if you pass out from the pain, you'll pass out, but then wake up and then see what you're doing. And then if you can muscle through it and cut it through, because after a certain amount of time, that stop in blood flow will affect your nerves and then that nerves may make that area feel numb. Another way you can do it is you dunk it in the cold. So you dunk that extremity in the cold, put a tourniquet on it and then kind of saw that off.
55:57 Chuck Nice? You have just given me my new worst nightmare.
56:02 Speaker 03 You're welcome.
56:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And he ends it, "I just saw it off." Yeah, now you're ready to just saw it off. All right, dude, well, thank you for sharing your expertise, not only on book learned, but street learned and wilderness learned, all combined. And this is like, like it or not, this is what a whole lot of people think the future needs. What'd you call it? End of, what'd you say? End Long the end of the world. End of world rules. Yeah, I, you know, I'll just, I, you know, I'll be gone well before then. So you're just, I just. But you might want to keep me alive because I can tell you where on earth you are. All right, I have that, that ability.
56:41 Gary O'Reilly? Well, we'll go and live with Timoje.
56:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that's what we'll do. Yeah, you're on our list now, okay?
56:47 Speaker 03 I'll put you in a cryo state.
56:50 Chuck Nice? There you go, there you go.
56:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, Dr. Tan, a delight to have you on StarTalk. Thanks for your enthusiasm, your candor and sharing your life experience with us. Thank you.
57:00 Speaker 03 Thanks for having me, guys.
57:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, Chuck, Gary, always good to have you guys. This is Pleasure. StarTalk.
57:06 Gary O'Reilly? Stay in the night.
57:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Edition of Cosmic Queries. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, keep looking up.
Previous Cosmic Queries – The Fabric of Spacetime Next Cosmic Queries – Black Hole Paradox with Matt O’Dowd Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
