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.

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.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

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.

We're gonna find out all about that, and then we're gonna pivot to Cosmic Queries on that subject because we know people think about that.

Former soccer pro, soccer announcer, and we got him.

We share him with the rest of the soccer universe.

Let me just set the record straight here, okay?

am a black man of a certain age in America.

Oh, a different kind of survivalist, I get it.

set us up here and tell us who our guest is.

Little while ago, we had a question in 1 of our Cosmic Queries about how would an understanding of science in a wilderness survival situation be good?

And we're not talking survivor, we're talking kind of alone, the 1 that airs on the History Channel.

It's who can tough it out for about 100 days in the middle of somewhere, nowhere with nothing but some serious survival skills.

We needed a proper expert, a real survival expert.

Timmy Jin Tan, founder and owner of Survival Doctors, practicing medical doctor in Owensound, Ontario, that'll be in Canada, served in the Canadian Armed Forces, specializing in Arctic

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

I mean, also, the skill set here involves survival medicine, disaster medicine and disaster response.

He was in series 9 of the Alone series, survival series that is on the History Channel.

Yeah, first of all, Tim Ajintan, MD, what's Arctic Warfare all about, please?

So, cold weather warfare or Arctic Warfare is the practice of any warfare in cold environments.

So that may be in the Arctic, sub-Arctic, 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.

So now, you know, the biathlon came out of Arctic warfare.

Are you on skis and shooting and all that kind of stuff?

Everything that you would do in regular combat, you're doing it also like for snow sports?

I wish we had skis that make us move a lot faster, but snowshoes, big old goopy snowshoes with about 100 pounds on us carrying 200 pounds on a sled.

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 survived 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?

I mean a lot of the physiology in our bodies are the same.

People go through severe hypothermia at around 3 hours of too hot or too cold, so too cold in the 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.

Chuck, he just said that Richard killed off everybody else.

When you're survival, there are certain things that we need to survive.

And the second, like you just mentioned is, you know, hypothermia in either way, right?

You know all these things are just almost impossible Just because everything is frozen and

if you drop most of us butt naked into the Arctic we're dead You know a

So so I'm dead before you drop me because

Yeah, so just to start off, You mentioned water, you mentioned cold.

1 thing that people often forget is oxygen.

So without oxygen, you're done in 3 minutes.

So oftentimes that's overlooked because we think about, we take that for granted.

But if we think about medical emergencies.

If there are absence of oxygen up in Canada, what am I missing?

We can be at altitude, we could be in a cave, but more realistically in

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.

You can rank in sequence what you will die from if you are, if it is withheld from you, right?

And so I got to be all in with you on this, Timogen, that if without oxygen, you're dead in however many minutes.

So they learned in Vietnam, most of the servicemen who died didn't die from getting shot.

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.

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.

So the death sequence, that sounds so ominous.

it starts with 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 hours without normal thermia, too hot or too cold, and it's 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food, And then after weeks, and people often forget this and neglect this, and it happens from moment 1 to moment multiple months, is 3 months without companionships, connections or relationships.

So psychologically, that could be a huge effect.

Now, do people go mad or do they actually die?

Because the other things you said result in death.

I mean, for me, 3 months without being around anybody because I have 3 kids, I call that a vacation.

And I remembered, 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 1 astronaut to Mars, right?

Or whatever, which never happened, of course.

Plus, NASA's always yapping at you on the channels.

But they all went crazy, and I thought, wow.

And then as I got older, I got to echo what Chuck said here.

Not only do I greatly relish time alone, 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 3 months without human contact is for some people is bad?

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.

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 for the rising mental illness, we see that disconnect from people can cause disturbances.

Except how alone could you be if there's a camera on your ass all the time?

The B-roll that's done at different sites but it's all self-film.

It's you and your 3 buddy cameras and you can name them if you want to but though That's your relationship.

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

yeah when your cameras played a role of Wilson, you know, you're not good 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.

way, what they don't say in solitary confinement is you're not only in solitary confinement You're in a tiny volume.

So right there's a size area thing, but you're out in the wilderness So you don't have the volume problem the area volume.

But what did you feel this emotionally though?

trick because I worked with my patients in a family medicine setting.

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 1 of the things that I really emphasize is finding ways to build relationships with what I got.

So that may have been naming my cameras, that may

Okay, so do me a favor because I am so, this is probably, this is so fascinating.

The fact that you spent, first of all, how long was it that you were alone?

And then second question, follow up, what were your top 3 coping mechanisms?

Because you said, you know, you did everything from family therapy to your psychiatrist or psychologist.

So what are the top 3 and how long were you alone?

And yeah, it was quite some time over there.

But 1 of the categories of coping mechanisms that I use 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, the 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 build a relationship on the land that I am on?

Especially if it's indigenous land, how do I build that relationship with no 1 there And 1 of the things that I practiced a lot was gratitude and asking for help, openly asking for help.

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, 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 3 times, and you do it almost every day and you receive and you receive and you receive.

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 there, I mean, throughout history, there's been so many things associated with that, but that is fascinating that you actually put that into practice.

Compound that, because this can't be good.

Isn't there another way you could add to that?

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

Probably not the best thing as we've just discussed, but you've compounded that with calorific deprivation.

really are putting yourself on a fast track to having some disturbance there.

And let me tell you, starvation is no joke.

1 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.

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 going to do with your shelter, with your food sources.

You go there and you get whatever resources that the land offers.

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Cosmic Queries – Science of Survival