Survival reality-TV shows can provide insights into human nature. Here are my top ones

I became properly obsessed with isolation during the pandemic. Deep in the claustrophobia of lockdown, not having much luck with sourdough – I can’t keep both a starter and children alive – I turned to bingeing Alone, the TV series where contestants are dropped off in a remote wilderness with minimal gear and must survive the longest to win.

It was partly because I was stupidly jealous of these people getting a bit of “peace and quiet” while I was being used as a climbing frame by my under-fives in our tiny apartment. Starving and freezing in the woods seems appealing when the best break you’ve had in months is waiting in a queue to get a COVID-19 nasal swab.

Alone Australia, an SBS Original, is one of the service’s most popular productions.Credit: SBS

I was trapped in the city, restricted to a five-kilometre radius of home, and a long way from my old life as an exploration geologist, where the bush had always provided solace. My novel, Hollow Air, was coming into being in this heady marinade of desperation for aloneness, imposed societal isolation and bush-separation anxiety.

I’m being a bit glib, because the truth is I am fascinated by Alone. It’s astonishing the disparate ways people react to a lack of human contact. Some crack after a single night; I even saw one guy nope out of there before the end of the first day, the sight of a bear poo enough for him. Others would thrive – if you can call subsisting on slugs and using bull kelp as a urinal thriving – able to go on and on despite the hardship.

Some would be completely fine until suddenly they weren’t. Clutching family photos to chests and weeping. Epic swearing meltdowns, axes thrown, tree stumps kicked, at even the smallest annoyance. Night-vision cameras revealing wide-eyed ghost people startled at every sound. It was never clear whether the landscape had truly begun to turn on them or they simply felt that it had. Eventually the isolation would seep into even the strongest contestant’s marrow.

I’d seen how solitude could change from peaceful to oppressive the longer it wore on. How it could heighten emotions and warp the way your brain responded.

The main character in my book, Sarah, working alone at a remote mine site in Far North Queensland, is tough. But I’d seen over and over how solitude could change from peaceful to oppressive the longer it wore on. How it could heighten emotions and warp the way your brain responded. And that this could eventually unhinge a person from reality.

Survivor was my first foray into this TV genre; I started watching as a teenager and never stopped. Perhaps I just like to watch people in miserable conditions with not enough food. Maybe there is a sadistic part of me that loves to see five people trying to share the meat from one tiny crab claw. But it’s more than that. Each new season brings an assortment of personalities into artificially imposed isolation. What hidden facets of their character will be revealed? It always strips people back to their rawest form.

Working in remote exploration sites can be off-kilter in this way, too – a closed system with nowhere to go. You often have a bunch of strangers working together and “normal” society feels far away, which affects how people interact. Close friendships are forged quickly, then forgotten almost as soon as you go home. Romantic attachments occur when they shouldn’t. People who hate each other are forced into close proximity day and night.

This isn’t the usual 9-to-5 working environment. For the weeks you are out in the field, your co-workers and bosses are also your drinking buddies and confidants. It blurs the lines in ways that can be strangely intoxicating, as though the removal from day-to-day life allows us to bypass the boundaries that normally make getting to know someone hard. But when the nights are raucous and boozy, tensions can develop too, sometimes in explosive ways. You do not always feel safe.

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As I worked on Hollow Air, I thought about what would happen when other characters finally intrude on Sarah’s isolation. They bring a new set of difficulties, especially since Sarah, the only woman, is not quite sure she can trust them.

I wanted to explore the idea that you can feel isolated even when surrounded by people. The main premise of Survivor is that you can never fully trust your tribe mates – anyone could turn on you at any time. I have seen how the paranoia this generates can contaminate relationships. And what if you aren’t on a tropical island with camera crew filming your every move, but far from help in a landscape riddled with deep abandoned mines?

My fervent desire to be alone in the bush abated once the lockdowns ended, but I haven’t grown tired of watching survival shows on TV. Another season brings new people, each responding to the situation through the unique lens of their understanding of the world. As the weeks go by, and they forget the cameras, the real person will begin to bleed into the character they are presenting to the TV audience. And I will keep watching, sifting through the drama in the way that writers do, looking for the glint of something bright that tells a truth about human nature.

Hollow Air (Ultimo Press) by Verity Borthwick is out now.

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