Cosmic Queries – Science of Survival

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil 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.

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:45Neil 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.

• 1:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey Neil.

• 1:15Neil 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.

• 1:24Chuck Nice?

  That's right, former survivalist.

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You lying, you are.

• 1:32Chuck Nice?

  Let me just set the record straight here, okay? I am a black man of a certain age.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, different kind of survivalist, I get it.

• 1:40Chuck Nice?

  In America.

• 1:41Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm still standing.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Still standing.

• 1:43Chuck Nice?

  I'm a survivalist.

• 1:44Neil 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.

• 1:50Gary 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?

• 2:01Gary 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.

• 2:37Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 2:38Gary O'Reilly?

  That's a thing? Yeah, he's an ice warrior. That's a thing? It is, yeah.

• 2:41Chuck Nice?

  You know, that's gotta be a thing when you're from Canada.

• 2:47Gary 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?

• 3:09Speaker 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.

• 3:31Chuck 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?

• 3:49Speaker 03

  I wish we had skis. That'd make us move a lot faster. But snowshoes, big old goopy snowshoes.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  About like a hundred pounds on us, carrying 200 pounds on a sled.

• 4:01Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 4:03Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 4:04Neil 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?

• 4:27Speaker 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.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, he just said that the winters killed off everybody else. Didn't he just say that?

• 5:05Chuck 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.

• 5:43Neil 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.

• 5:50Chuck Nice?

  Well, I'm dead before you drop me because I killed myself on the way.

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Killed yourself on the way.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Got a panic attack.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 5:57Speaker 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.

• 6:17Chuck Nice?

  Is there an absence of oxygen up in Canada?

• 6:22Chuck Nice?

  What am I missing?

• 6:23Speaker 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.

• 6:43Neil 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.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 7:26Neil 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.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So the death sequence, that sounds so ominous, but we think about that.

• 7:42Chuck Nice?

  It sounds so Neil, that's what it sounds. It sounds so Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 7:50Speaker 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.

• 8:16Chuck 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.

• 8:36Neil 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,

• 9:17Neil 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.

• 9:34Speaker 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.

• 10:00Neil 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?

• 10:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Ah, solo, solo cam.

• 10:09Speaker 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.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that, that means it's getting really bad if you start naming your cameras.

• 10:26Chuck 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.

• 10:46Neil 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.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  We have the range.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got the range. But, but did you feel this emotionally though?

• 11:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 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.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  That may have been making friends with animals.

• 11:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 11:43Chuck 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?

• 12:10Speaker 03

  So I was alone for sixty-three days.

• 12:13Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 12:14Speaker 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?

• 12:56Speaker 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

• 13:09Chuck Nice?

  To the cameras?

• 13:11Speaker 03

  To whatever was out there.

• 13:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I got you. Go ahead, go for it.

• 13:15Speaker 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.

• 13:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:22Speaker 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.

• 13:34Chuck Nice?

  So it's a manifestation.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:36Chuck 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.

• 14:11Gary O'Reilly?

  So Timogen, how quickly do you get to suffer mentally? Right? In isolation.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, Gary.

• 14:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Compound that, because this can't be, this can't be good news, really.

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't there another way you could add that?

• 14:29Chuck Nice?

  You are hardcore, Gary.

• 14:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. This dude's suffering.

• 14:33Chuck Nice?

  Tell us when you started.

• 14:34Gary O'Reilly?

  He's not got a little wicker basket out there with sandwiches.

• 14:38Chuck Nice?

  Get to the good stuff. Tell us when you started breaking down. Come on.

• 14:41Gary 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.

• 14:56Speaker 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.

• 15:27Gary O'Reilly?

  And it's not even real cheese.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  It's not even real cheese.

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's his point.

• 15:32Speaker 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.

• 16:08Gary O'Reilly?

  You did everything.

• 16:10Speaker 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.

• 16:14Chuck Nice?

  You overfished the land. You overfished the land with only four fish.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  With only four fish.

• 16:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The producer put the four fish in at the beginning.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  Uh, downstream.

• 16:24Gary 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?

• 16:46Speaker 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

• 17:30Speaker 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.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So animal protein, that's code for dead, for, for, for dead meat, right?

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Meat.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meat.

• 18:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Meat, baby. I need meat.

• 18:06Neil 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.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  It's called Madagascar.

• 18:21Neil 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.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is hungry. And all of a sudden, the zebra, who I think was played by Chris Rock, is that right?

• 18:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The zebra, who was his friend, started looking like a pork chop or some, or some kind of slab of meat.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  I'm lying. Why are you looking at me like that?

• 18:55Neil 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?

• 19:13Speaker 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.

• 19:40Chuck Nice?

  And, and, and, and you cooked them though, right?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:44Chuck 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.

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, if I'm gonna be eating somebody's eyeball, I'm gonna have to cook them first.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  Season it a little bit.

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Gary, we cut you off. What else? We got a couple of minutes before the segment.

• 20:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so if we stay on this mental thing, do we now get to hallucination?

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 20:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Do we now get to?

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially in the hunger state. Yes.

• 20:20Gary 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?

• 20:34Speaker 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.

• 21:11Neil 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.

• 21:37Chuck 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?

• 21:50Speaker 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.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How are you named after Genghis Khan?

• 22:03Chuck Nice?

  Hey, man, we're all related to Genghis Khan.

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My boy had some children coming out of him.

• 22:09Chuck Nice?

  Are you kidding me?

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How is Teimojin Tan named after Genghis Khan?

• 22:15Speaker 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.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did not know that.

• 22:29Speaker 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.

• 22:38Chuck Nice?

  Never stopped.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  Yep, never stopped.

• 22:41Neil 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.

• 22:49Neil 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.

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, we gotta take a quick break. When we come back.

• 23:06Speaker 03

  Fascinating.

• 23:07Neil 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.

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. This episode is on.

• 23:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Stayin' alive.

• 23:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry.

• 23:49Chuck Nice?

  I work so hard on my hair.

• 23:52Chuck Nice?

  I work so hard on my hair. Look at what you're doing.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  That's what you got there, Neil.

• 23:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh dear. This went down here fast, didn't it? The American culture we're talking about here.

• 24:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The songs by the Bee Gees, they're British. Oh, that's true, but it's an American film. American film.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. We got Tim McGintyre. Did I pronounce your full name correctly? Tim McGintyre.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Just tan like a suntan.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tan, tan. Tim McGintyre. Thank you for correcting me there.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  No problem.

• 24:23Neil 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?

• 24:50Speaker 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.

• 25:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take us through it.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so. It starts with denial. It starts with denial. And then it goes to anger.

• 25:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And acceptance, right?

• 25:11Speaker 03

  And then acceptance.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So you have glucose in your blood, right? So your body prepares that, you're breaking first that.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the many sugars, one of the simple sugars, yes.

• 25:21Speaker 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.

• 25:59Neil 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?

• 26:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Of ketosis.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, good.

• 26:07Speaker 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.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a stack of pancakes around the back of a tree.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Stack of pancakes. You find a supermarket.

• 26:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Did you call it cruising? You cruise this keto state.

• 26:59Speaker 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.

• 27:44Speaker 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.

• 28:05Chuck 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.

• 28:18Gary O'Reilly?

  As a source of energy.

• 28:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay. As a source of strip mining. Your body is strip mining itself.

• 28:25Gary 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?

• 28:36Speaker 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.

• 29:14Neil 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.

• 29:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Are you?

• 29:25Chuck Nice?

  I just forgot about the fact that we're in the cold when we're doing this, which exacerbates everything.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, you're never not burning nothing. Does that have too many negatives in there?

• 29:37Chuck Nice?

  No, that's, that's a triple negative. You, you went there, you came back, and then you came back again.

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I came back out safely out of that.

• 29:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you came back out safely. You're never not burning nothing. You're never not burning nothing.

• 29:48Gary 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?

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, in a pantry? Yeah, did you have a pantry in your store?

• 30:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Not a pantry.

• 30:05Speaker 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.

• 30:18Chuck Nice?

  What do you use reindeer moss?

• 30:20Speaker 03

  Reindeer moss.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is, what is that?

• 30:22Speaker 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.

• 30:38Chuck Nice?

  So you, you basically took tree slime and, and, and put it in a basket.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's using his own words, Chuck.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  And called it good, yeah.

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  And, and said, oh, I got a pantry.

• 30:52Gary 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?

• 31:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because one bad encounter with the wrong bacteria and goodbye, it's over.

• 31:34Speaker 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.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't eat beavers, is what you're saying.

• 32:01Speaker 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.

• 32:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is crazy.

• 32:11Chuck 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.

• 32:20Neil 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.

• 32:36Chuck Nice?

  Well, if you're hungry enough.

• 32:37Speaker 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.

• 33:04Chuck 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.

• 33:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're gonna smell your ass.

• 33:26Chuck Nice?

  Food is right up there.

• 33:29Neil 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.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  I would say so, unless you have a tribe.

• 33:40Neil 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?

• 33:51Speaker 03

  Uh, Dave Canterbury is one of them.

• 33:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I'm talking about, no.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Bear Grylls is another one.

• 33:54Chuck Nice?

  Bear Grylls.

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, maybe. I was thinking of, um, who's the guy who did everything with duct tape and, and? MacGyver.

• 34:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh, MacGyver.

• 34:03Neil 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.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  You would have to be pretty darn resourceful to make a bomb or something like that, a huge trap for a polar bear.

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 34:24Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, yeah. Hitting him with a snowball is not gonna work, huh? No, not, not, not gonna happen, huh?

• 34:32Neil 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.

• 34:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So who's got the first one?

• 34:38Gary 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?

• 35:16Speaker 03

  Hmm, really good question. Really good question.

• 35:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, Aaron showing off.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, he totally is.

• 35:24Speaker 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.

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  That point, wow.

• 35:55Speaker 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.

• 36:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 36:42Speaker 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.

• 36:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay, yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 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.

• 37:19Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  That's what pushed, that's what pushed me.

• 37:21Chuck Nice?

  That's a pep talk. That is a pep talk.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:24Chuck 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?

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those three words just come out of your mouth in a row?

• 37:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they did. Why?

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, fine, fine. I'm just...

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  Is that bad?

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I guess not. Sorry. This is my vocabulary not ready for that. Okay, go on.

• 37:55Chuck 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.

• 38:11Neil 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.

• 38:39Chuck Nice?

  Pioneers.

• 38:39Neil 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.

• 39:21Neil 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.

• 39:37Chuck Nice?

  Mannequins.

• 39:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The mannequins all have names. See, how you doing to them? They dress them differently each time.

• 39:43Chuck Nice?

  What's up, Woody?

• 39:43Neil 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!

• 40:08Gary O'Reilly?

  You know Barry Good.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk, Cosmic Queries. We're talking about how to survive in the wilderness. Man, man, it's-

• 40:33Chuck Nice?

  This is so much deeper than I thought it would ever-

• 40:36Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go.

• 40:36Neil 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.

• 41:12Chuck Nice?

  Before we do, can I just give $5 right now so I can ask a question?

• 41:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No!

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  $5 a month.

• 41:19Chuck Nice?

  I'll take $5. I got $10. Can I give $5?

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all it is.

• 41:22Chuck Nice?

  Can I give $5? Because here's what I want to know-

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One StarTalk coffee. We're gonna put this in the, in the bin. All right, go Chuck.

• 41:28Chuck 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?

• 41:42Speaker 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-

• 41:59Chuck Nice?

  In other words, you signed a release. That's the answer. Okay. There you go.

• 42:03Speaker 03

  The showbiz.

• 42:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's get another question. Gary, you got one?

• 42:05Gary 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?

• 42:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. Yeah, more broadly, science in general.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  That sounds really cool.

• 42:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because, you know, the cavemen didn't have science, but they they managed to birth all of us. Right? Eventually.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how much does science matter?

• 42:38Speaker 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.

• 43:24Speaker 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.

• 43:53Chuck Nice?

  So warm and dry is what's.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, basically, that's what's.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  Warm and dry.

• 43:57Chuck Nice?

  Insulated, insulated, warm and dry, basically. That's, that's the rule of.

• 44:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so then what of an igloo?

• 44:01Speaker 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.

• 44:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 44:13Speaker 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.

• 44:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Didn't know that. Okay.

• 44:21Speaker 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.

• 44:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn. Yeah, okay.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Very efficient.

• 44:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Barbecue weather.

• 44:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, you got a question?

• 44:40Chuck 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."

• 45:01Chuck Nice?

  That's funny.

• 45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, cuz you said three days, but I was remembering more like a week.

• 45:05Speaker 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...

• 45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What about eating your own, drinking your own pee, which we hear done, we hear told.

• 45:31Chuck Nice?

  They say people do that.

• 45:32Speaker 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.

• 45:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, interesting.

• 45:58Chuck 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...

• 46:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They recycle your sweat.

• 46:04Chuck Nice?

  All of your body...

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought it was just your sweat.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 46:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's kinda cool. All right, there you go.

• 46:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, keep going. Who's got the next one?

• 46:11Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, I'll jump in. This is...

• 46:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You guys never share the questions with me.

• 46:14Gary 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...

• 46:45Neil 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?

• 46:54Speaker 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,

• 47:38Speaker 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.

• 47:54Neil 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.

• 48:36Neil 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.

• 48:53Speaker 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.

• 49:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting. All right. Let's keep it going.

• 49:20Gary 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.

• 49:49Chuck Nice?

  One is an AR-15. That's one. That's another one.

• 49:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, now what's top of Chuck's list?

• 49:54Chuck 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.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Chuck, you're you're not wrong.

• 50:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, no, that's all he needed to hear.

• 50:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't encourage him.

• 50:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't encourage Chuck like that.

• 50:16Speaker 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?

• 50:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Whoever has that power, yeah.

• 50:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The law of the end of the world.

• 50:32Speaker 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.

• 50:45Neil 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.

• 50:58Chuck 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?

• 51:45Speaker 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.

• 52:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 52:08Speaker 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.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  So, I wouldn't say it's as effective as antibiotics, but it gives your body a fighting chance.

• 52:58Chuck 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.

• 53:10Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:10Chuck Nice?

  You know, it's just, just the fact that things were not clean made people die mostly of infection.

• 53:18Chuck 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.

• 53:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My grandparents said, never go to the hospital because that's where you go to die. And

• 53:30Speaker 03

  That's what my grandpa says too.

• 53:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. And

• 53:32Chuck Nice?

  It makes sense.

• 53:33Neil 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?

• 53:38Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 53:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude, that's fascinating.

• 53:42Gary 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.

• 53:51Gary 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,

• 54:06Speaker 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.

• 54:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You say that like everybody knows that. You, you say that like, yeah, of course.

• 54:44Chuck Nice?

  So cool.

• 54:45Neil 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.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  My hair was great out there. I, I, I, I made my own little shampoo.

• 54:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, that's crazy.

• 54:57Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 54:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So dude, I don't, I don't know if we have any time left. Uh, yeah.

• 55:02Gary O'Reilly?

  All right. Here's, here we go Neil. Got one more. Captain James Riley.

• 55:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Last one, but it's gotta be fast. It's gotta be fast. Go.

• 55:07Gary 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.

• 55:12Neil 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.

• 55:19Gary O'Reilly?

  So is that, you're a medically trained survivalist. Is that possible?

• 55:24Speaker 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.

• 55:57Chuck Nice?

  You have just given me my new worst nightmare.

• 56:02Speaker 03

  You're welcome.

• 56:02Neil 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.

• 56:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, we'll go and live with Timoje.

• 56:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's what we'll do. Yeah, you're on our list now, okay?

• 56:47Speaker 03

  I'll put you in a cryo state.

• 56:50Chuck Nice?

  There you go, there you go.

• 56:52Neil 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.

• 57:00Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, guys.

• 57:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, Gary, always good to have you guys. This is Pleasure. StarTalk.

• 57:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Stay in the night.

• 57:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Edition of Cosmic Queries. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, keep looking up.