Survival television: learning to love the vast wasteland to come.

• Author: Beato, Greg
• Position: Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment - Television program review

ON MAY 31, 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 4.8 points to 10522.33. Life was no longer as great as it had been just a few months earlier, but it was still pretty great. Code Orange threat alerts, weaponized anthrax, and toxic mortgage-backed securities had yet to bedevil the public's imagination. Many Americans feared AI Gore more than Al Qaeda.

When Survivor made its television debut that evening, it was clearly the product of a secure, prosperous culture. In what other place, at what other time in history, could a month-long vacation on an island paradise qualify as the ultimate test of one's resourcefulness and mettle?

Then terrorists blew up the Twin Towers. Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. Economic swine flu swept through the banking industry. With every news cycle seeming to introduce increasingly exotic threats, the knowledge that a representative sampling of our fellow citizens can successfully endure Jeff Probst's solemn inquisitions during tribal council no longer offered much comfort. We needed grittier, more convincing depictions of the average American's indomitable spirit in the face of adversity. Graciously, Discovery Channel has answered the call, with Survivorman, Man vs. Wild, and most recently Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment.

In the Out of the Wild's second season, which aired last spring, nine adventurers embarked on a month-long, 60-mile trek across remote back-country terrain. Unlike on Survivor, there was no $1 million prize at stake or elimination votes to cast, just the opportunity to spend a few weeks with semi-frozen strangers, feast on the occasional bird heart, and battle-harden oneself for the coming apocalypse. According to the Discovery Channel, more than 100,000 people applied for a spot on the series.

No doubt their appetites were whetted by Survivorman and Man vs. Wild. In those programs, the survival-expert hosts strand themselves in remote locales with little more than the shirts on their backs. It's a curious conceit if you think about it, because anyone who finds himself in the middle of the desert or a Costa Rican jungle without an ultra-light tent, a water purifier, or at the very least an iPhone probably doesn't deserve the rifle of survival expert; it's not as if you need Magellan-like navigation skills to find your local REI these days. But what these shows lose in missed product placement opportunities they make up for in metaphorical power. They aim to show us that even...