Experts agree there are some very basic — and universal — rules for surviving in the wild. Find shelter, find water, find food, find help. Beyond that, there's not much they agree on. Meet military trained Dave Canterbury and naturalist Cody Lundin — trained survival experts who have very different methods of meeting survival challenges. 

Together, with their drastically different backgrounds, the pair are dropped into scenarios that could happen to anyone: marooned sailors, lost hikers, trapped divers and stranded mountain climbers. Equipped with minimal gear that would have been carried in the real-life situations, Cody and Dave must draw upon their arsenal of skills to devise extraordinary ways to use what they can find in their surroundings to demonstrate what it takes to stay alive.