What’s the most valuable survival tool that you can bring into the backcountry?

The answer you’ll get from a wilderness expert is likely to be “your intuition” or “your survival experience” or perhaps even “a good knife.”

But after watching 12 seasons of the outdoor reality show听Alone,听my answer has narrowed on a very specific item: the ferro rod. This small metal cylinder, made from the alloy ferrocerium, produces sparks when struck with steel.

For those unfamiliar with the rules of听Alone,听contestants are allowed to bring just ten items with them into the backcountry as they live off of the land for as long as possible. They choose their ten items from a master list made up of 60 or so gizmos, tools, and pieces of outdoor gear.

Every season, survivalists choose familiar items: a bow and collection of arrows, fishing line and hooks, saws, axes, plastic tarps, etc. The show publishes which items each survivalist .

The ferro fire striker is, by my count, the second most-popular item that survivalists opts for,听behind only the sleeping bag. And after watching the most recent episode of Alone Africa, I was again reminded why.

Another Survivalist Goes Home

(Spoilers Ahead!) During the seventh episode, which aired on July 31 and was titled “Echoes of Emptiness,” we finally saw Baha, the affable 50-year-old Kyrgyzstani-Canadian, tap out, departing the show after 18 days in the wild. His abandonment left just three contestants remaining: Nathan, Kelsey, and Katie.

One of Alone Africa’s biggest personalities, Baha lasted much longer than I predicted he would after I watched the first episode. In the season’s opener, Baha made a few curious decisions that placed him behind the eight ball. He decided to abandon his initial camping spot in favor of one two miles away. He decided to walk to the new spot during the heat of the afternoon, under the baking sun. And he chose to complete this trek despite not having any potable water.

When Baha reached his destination, he revealed another setback: he’d chosen not to bring a ferro rod into the Great Karoo desert, opting instead to rely on his skills with a bow-drill for creating fire.

It took Baha almost two days to successfully use this friction-based method to make an ember, which allowed him to finally boil drinking water.

Baha was just the sixth participant across听础濒辞苍别’蝉听11 traditional seasons (season 5 had survivalists work in two-person teams) to disregard the ferro rod. Nathan Donnelly (season 6), Matt Corradino and Colter Barnes (both season 8), Luke Olsen (season 10), and Jake Messinger (season 11) all left ferro rods at home.

What do all of these six have in common? All of them tapped out.

Overconfidence Leads to a Bad Decision

翱苍听Alone,听having access to reliable fire is simply too important to ignore. Sure, some survivalists are talented with a bow and drill. But this method requires too much physical energy to complete, and is far less reliable than a ferro rod. During Alone seasons set in cold and wet locales, kindling eventually gets soaked by rain, rendering even the best friction setup useless.

Even in听础濒辞苍别听Africa, the desert monsoons came in and drenched everything.

So, how do you maintain fire when everything is damp? Like the other six who tried Alone without a ferro rod, Baha had to find a way to keep his fire going ’round the clock. And at some point, this meant staying up all night to stoke the flames.

Time and again Alone, has shown that, in a survival situation, rest is almost as valuable as food. After working long days in the cold, survivalists need their recovery. And once Baha started staying up all night, his mood dropped, and his will to continue evaporated. No sleep = no mojo.

We’ve seen the ferro rod make and break participants in previous seasons. In season 1, Joe Robinet barely lasted 24 hours after he lost his ferro rod on the beach. In season 7, Shawn Helton also bailed after losing his.

During season 6, Nathan鈥攁rguably the heartiest survivalist that season鈥攍asted a full 72 days in the wilderness despite not bringing a ferro rod. He instead allowed his fire to burn all day and night, sacrificing his sleep and recovery to that end. But eventually, the flames dried out the tree bows of his shelter. During the night his makeshift house caught fire, and he barely escaped with his life.

So, will Baha’s abandonment make the ferro rod a must-have for future participants? I have my doubts. One听Alone alumnus told me that belief in one’s bow-drill skills is a common mindset with Alone cast members. Some of these people have a little too much faith in this skill.

And so long as overconfidence remains part of the human condition, some portion of Alone survivalists will continue to leave the ferro rod at home.

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I watch Alone differently than others.

My lavish snacks aren鈥檛 unique鈥攅veryone knows nothing builds an appetite like watching other people starve. For most viewers, the hunger is psychological. For me it鈥檚 a visceral memory.

I rarely watched television before being recruited for the show back in 2018, but now I never miss an episode of Alone. Each one brings me right back to the places my own two seasons as a cast member took place, the shores of Great Slave Lake and the rugged coast of Labrador.

My two Alone journeys were vastly different. In Season 6, set at Canada鈥檚 Great Slave Lake, I loved every day so much I was certain I would never tap, but did. On Alone Frozen, held in 2021 in Labrador, I thought about tapping every day, but didn鈥檛. Together, both experiences give me a unique Alone-watching superpower: I can generally spot a tap out before it happens, and often before the participant knows it themselves.

Why? Because, while it is extremely physically challenging, Alone is 90 percent mental.

When the Mind Wants to Quit, the Body Will Follow

I鈥檝e seen the same dynamic play out thus far on Season 12. This season of Alone is taking place in South Africa鈥檚 Great Karoo Desert, as opposed to a cold climate, and the warm and dry conditions bring unique challenges and sets this season apart.

The pattern holds true, however, that most people tap out mentally well before they reach their physical limit. From the point when they quit in their minds, no matter if it takes days or hours, they are just waiting for the justification to act on it. When I watch the show, I read the clues of the participants鈥� mental state in their posture, voice, decision-making, self-talk and more.

Days 1-10 are the first threshold. You鈥檇 think that with everyone full of excitement, energy, and calorie reserves, this period would be the easiest. Not so. Going from socialized, well-fed, and comfortable, to total isolation and little to no food can be brutal, and the transition can blindside people. Just the inevitable shift to ketosis鈥攁 physical state in which your body runs on fat instead of blood sugar鈥攃an cause headaches, fatigue, nausea, digestive issues, and other symptoms that can masquerade as more serious illnesses. Extreme discomfort is inevitable out there. Finding mental comfort within the physical discomfort, while also recognizing and avoiding the real physical dangers, is essential.

People adjust, and life in the wilderness gets a bit easier after a week or so, but in early episodes I can often see the participants鈥� fear that things won鈥檛 improve. It comes across in the slump of their shoulders and the sense of defeat in their voice.

The body and mind are incredibly connected. When the mind dwells on leaving, the body is often happy to deliver an excuse鈥攁n injury from a stumble, an accident with a knife or axe, you name it. The suffering mind can even cause heart palpitations, digestive problems, or other physical issues. Likewise, a strong mind can overcome dire physical circumstances.

If You Want to Stay, Your Body Will Find Ways to Survive

On Season 6, I was slowly starving to death, but I was so in love with the experience and the pristine wilderness of Great Slave Lake, that I felt not only strong, but joyous, even as my body began digesting my own muscles.

In contrast, my first week on Alone Frozen was gruelingly difficult. A storm hit before my permanent shelter was finished, and I spent days drenched and hypothermic. I longed constantly for my cozy fireplace and my sweet partner back home.

I carried on.

Without enough trees to build with, I dug my shelter into the thin soil and hauled rocks and sod for the bulk of my walls. Between that and prying mussels off rocks under the frigid sea water, I developed wrist tendonitis so extreme that I could hardly turn my headlamp on.

I could still haul rocks though.

I carried on.

Days later, I woke up in the night with shooting pain in my toe, dreaming that someone was trying to cut it off. In the morning, I found a huge, green, pus-filled blister on the nail bed. I could barely put weight on it and was almost comically crippled with my hooked hands and heavy limp.

鈥淥kay body,鈥� I said, 鈥淚 see what you鈥檙e doing. You鈥檙e providing excuses to give up and go home. I鈥檓 sorry I gave the impression I wanted that.鈥�

I hobbled on, but promised myself that if I remained this miserable for three more days, I would consider tapping.

In the middle of the following night, I scrambled out of bed to go outside to pee.

I heard the hiss before I sensed the burning. The safety on my pepper spray had been pulled out by wading through spruce thickets and my fumbling had pushed the trigger. I鈥檇 just doused my sleeping bag, my rain jacket, and my fur parka with pepper spray.

But as the pain subsided and my eyes and nose stopped flowing like a faucet, I rocked back on my heels and laughed.

At that moment, I knew I could win Alone Frozen, if I wanted to. The environment was brutally challenging. My body had given me every justification to tap, then pepper spray on top of that, but I didn鈥檛 want to go.

I had won the mental game, and now I just needed to carry on and not screw up until the timeline played out.

Signs That a Participant Is About to Tap Out

Having been to the very brink of the mental tap out then back again, here are some of the things I look for to indicate if participants are still in the game.

How do they handle adversity?

The locations of Alone and the survival circumstances are always incredibly challenging. You must expect little failures, but focus on the positive and celebrate every small victory. 鈥淗ey,鈥� I鈥檇 tell myself each day I went without food during Season 6, 鈥渓ook how much time I鈥檓 saving by not cooking!鈥� Fixating on the hardship instead of the beauty will take you out.

Are they curious about and engaged with the place, or are they looking at their photo and talking about home and family?听

Staying long-term demands connecting with the environment, learning its patterns, and adapting to them. You must really be there, body, mind, and spirit. Alone producers allow participants to bring one photo with them, and I think this is a booby trap. Dwelling on thoughts of home invites reasons for heading back there.

Are they becoming careless with essential gear?

When your life depends on the ten survival items you bring into the wilderness, you must take extreme care with them. Not doing so can provide a quick and easy excuse to go home.

Are they thinking critically and planning for weeks or months ahead?

Making poor choices like building a shelter inadequate for the harsher weather that is inevitably coming is, consciously or subconsciously, choosing a short-term stay.

Are they bettering their situation every day, or merely enduring their suffering until it overwhelms them?

Hopelessness and helplessness are not long-term strategies on Alone. You must believe it can be better, then make it true.

Ultimately, everyone chooses their own unique Alone journey. I don鈥檛 believe participants must push themselves to the very brink of survival to succeed. Deciding to leave Season 6 before being medically evacuated remains one of the most important and proudest moments of my life.

While billed as a competition, Alone is really a journey of personal discovery鈥攁n initiation of body and soul. It is as humbling or as empowering as we let it be.

Each participant finds what they need to out there, and in their own time. But I always wish a long stay for everyone. There is a huge gift in surrendering to the experience, letting it push us beyond our pre-conceived ideas of self, and finding the strength and resilience on the other side.

was the first woman to win Alone, and between her two seasons, holds the record for the most cumulative days on the show. An author, educator, and speaker, she chronicled her time on Alone Season 6 in her memoir, . She teaches ancestral, wilderness, and survival skills and offers consultation for Alone hopefuls, writers, and filmmakers. Learn more at www.woniyathibeault.com or join her on Patreon for exclusive content and early access to her writing and classes.

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Every episode of听Alone starts the same way.

Before we dive into the action, the TV screen flashes a quotation from famous historic person, like Winston Churchill or Aristotle. These one-liners are often about the cruel and dangerous potential of Mother Nature.

“If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf,” states one said by Nikita Khrushchev.

But oftentimes, Alone producers select quotes that capture the essence of what is about to transpire on screen. This thematic description isn’t as on-the-nose as the episode titles used by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia听(“The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis”). But it’s kinda sorta similar. And as an Alone completist, I know that these quotes often foreshadow听what’s about to go down.

So you can imagine my feelings of curiosity when the following quote opened episode 2: “Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.” 鈥� Phaedrus

A bunch of questions popped into my brain: What part of 础濒辞苍别听Africa isn’t as it seems? Which participant’s first appearance is deceiving? And who is Phaedrus?

Scanning the Episode for a Twist

(Spoilers aheads)听After Googling the origin of the quote (Phaedrus was a buddy of Greek philosopher Plato), I dove into episode 2 with a skeptic’s eye, wondering which survivalist was about to deceive me with his or her first impression.

In this episode, we spent time with the five contestants we did not meet in episode 1: Dug, a software designer from New Hampshire; Nathan, a tech CEO from Idaho; Douglas, a survival teacher from North Carolina; Colton, a carpenter from Montana; and Baha, a homesteader from Ontario, Canada.

Baha made my deception antenna shoot straight up. From the moment the camera lingered on Baha, he exuded the type of big personality we don’t always see on听Alone.听He cracked jokes within seconds of being delivered into the African backcountry, shouting “I changed my mind!” at the departing helicopter, before mugging into the camera and dropping an expletive.

But what made me truly question Baha came shortly afterward, when he made two seemingly serious blunders. First: Baha didn’t like his location, which sat behind a shadow-casting hillside, so he decided to hike two miles to a new campsite. But he did so during the heat of the day, and without stopping to first start a fire and boil some drinking water. The hike left him severely dehydrated.

Then, when Baha arrived at his new campsite, he delivered more bad news: he chose not to bring a ferro rod鈥攁 device that starts fire quickly鈥攁s one of his ten survival tools. Instead, Baha would start fire with a bow and drill. It didn’t go well, and Baha spent the first two days in Africa with no fire and no water.

Over the years we’ve seen a handful of contestants either leave a ferro rod at home or lose one in the field, and suffer catastrophic outcomes. In season six, Nathan Donnelly, a survival instructor from Washington state,听didn’t bring a ferro rod, and instead opted to keep his fire burning day and night. Eventually, sparks from the blaze ignited his shelter, and Donnelly was nearly burned to death.

After watching Baha struggle in the heat, my mind went back to the opening quote, and the twist it seemed to telegraph. I wondered: Is Baha actually the Lebron James of survival? Because his first impression was extremely poor.听

But no, Baha eventually made fire, boiled water, and got some rest.

There was nothing about Dug, Nathan, or Douglas that raised any doubts. But there are a number of compelling storylines with each of them that I cannot wait to see unfold throughout the season.

Nathan is the son of , who is kind of like the Henry Ford of American survival. Fifty years ago he taught backcountry survival and started wilderness therapy programs, and in 1973 published the book . I’m curious if Nathan’s famous linage impacts his ability to weather the hunger, heat, and dehydration.

Both Dug and Douglas appear to be school-taught survivalists鈥攇uys who have learned techniques but who don’t necessarily rely on them in a day-to-day manner. No, neither guy is a homesteader or hunting guide. I marveled at the revelation that Douglas is an expert in blowguns, and has even authored a book on them, titled听North American Blowguns.听I sincerely hope Doug gets the chance to build and then hunt with one.

Another Contestant Goes Home Early

So, what was the twist that Alone teased with the opening quote? We had to wait until the final five minutes to see. But what a twist it was: cameras caught Colton completely unravel on his fourth day in the wilderness. He picked up his satellite phone and tapped out. He joined Jit, who quit on day three, as an early departure from听Alone Africa.

I didn’t see it coming. Colton came across as a familiar archetype within the cadre of听Alone participants: the alpha male. He had all of the qualities to win: hunting experience, tons of personal confidence, and even some early success with procuring food.

But Colton couldn’t manage听Alone‘s often-overlooked challenge: isolation. Without access to distractions, Colton’s mind wandered to the deep down psychological strife he was secretly dealing with: he was still devastated from the death of his father more than a decade ago.

Four days in the bush peeled back the barriers he’d placed on his emotions, and they all rushed in at once. Colton tapped out, telling his rescuers he was suffering from depression.

“I spiraled into a bad place鈥攄epression鈥攊t just came in on me,” he said. “I thought 100 percent I’d come out here and kill it. I just feel like I need help. I feel like I need to talk to somebody.”

We’ve seen this before on听Alone.听The most recent example occurred in season 11, when Canadian librarian Pete Albano tapped out on day eight, despite having plenty of food and a decent shelter. But the isolation forced Albano to be alone with his thoughts. And after a few days, Albano admitted that he’d spent his adult life bottling up his emotions. Furthermore, he realized he was passing the trait along to his son. He quit because he wanted to become a more emotionally secure person, and he couldn’t waste one moment in the wilderness to get started.

Both sagas are a reminder of the biggest power that Alone champions bring to the show: emotional openness and inward strength. And both are a testament to one of my favorite opening quotes from听Alone.听

鈥淏eing alone is scary, but not as scary as feeling alone.鈥� 鈥� Amelia Earhart

Interested in more 鈥�础濒辞苍别鈥� recaps? Follow our coverage here.听

The Moment that Changed 鈥槾”舸遣员疴�� Forever

The Lessons I Learned in 鈥槾”舸遣员疴�� Survival School Could Keep You Alive

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According to Shakespeare, there are lessons and stories everywhere in nature鈥攐r, as he puts it, books in the running brooks, tongues in trees, and sermons in stones. I鈥檓 down with that idea. But in case the running brooks aren鈥檛 meeting your educational needs this summer, here are some suggestions for actual books to tuck into your backpack. (You can also look for more top picks on my holiday book list and last summer’s book list.)

Water Borne, by Dan Rubinstein

The tale of an epic wilderness voyage to鈥� New York City?! Rubinstein is a longtime outdoors journalist and avid stand-up paddleboarder, and in 2023 he set out to paddleboard from his home in Ottawa on a 1,200-mile loop via Montreal, New York City, and Toronto. His trip ends up being a fascinating tour through the varied waterways and communities of the Great Lakes region, a deep dive (sorry) into the health-promoting powers of being in and around water鈥攁nd also just an enjoyable and often funny read about a quirky and impressive trip.

Pushing the River, by Frank Bures

My own preferred mode of paddling is in a canoe, and Bures鈥檚 book adds to the surprisingly sparse ranks of canoeing literature. (Don鈥檛 @ me, I know there are some great canoeing books out there鈥攆rom Thoreau to Roy MacGregor to Adam Shoalts鈥攂ut not as many as the world deserves.) The central part of this story collection is a historical account of the 450-mile Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby, but for me the most engaging stories are Bures鈥檚 own adventures and the reflections they inspire: a voyage down the Mississippi from Minneapolis to his hometown, Winona; an unexpected dunk in hypothermic waters. Disclosure: I wrote the intro to this one.

How to Fall in Love with Questions, by Elizabeth Weingarten

In times of upheaval, we get a lot of books about how to handle uncertainty鈥攁nd, in many cases, how to embrace uncertainty. Weingarten, a journalist and behavioral scientist, thinks this advice is too pat. After all, being mired in uncertainty about important questions can be miserable. More worryingly, being too eager to resolve uncertainty鈥攚ith instant answers from AI or overly confident advice from wellness gurus, say鈥攃an lead us astray. This is a nuanced look at a complex topic.

Ballistic, by Henry Abbott

I first encountered Marcus Elliott in Charles Bethea鈥檚 epic 国产吃瓜黑料 story about 鈥渕isogis鈥� back in 2014. He sounded like an interesting dude, but I didn鈥檛 realize at the time what a major figure Elliott is in the world of injury prevention for pro athletes. That鈥檚 the topic of Abbott鈥檚 new book, which is part biography and part injury prevention manifesto. Elliott is a big believer in the importance of ballistic movements like jumping and landing, and also in the power of 3D motion analysis to pick up subtle signs of impending injury. My general take is that injury prediction is somewhere between really hard and impossible, but by the end of the book, I couldn鈥檛 help thinking, 鈥淢an, I鈥檇 like this guy to take a look at my running stride.鈥�

Adaptable, by Herman Pontzer

Pontzer is an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, and his new book is basically an account of how our bodies work as viewed through the lens of evolution. You might be familiar with his previous book, Burn, which covered the modern science of metabolism and calorie-burning. What makes both books worth reading is that Pontzer is exceptionally good at explaining science in a clear, rigorous, and entertaining way.

How Economics Explains the World, by Andrew Leigh

If Pontzer鈥檚 credo in Adaptable is 鈥渆verything makes sense when viewed through the lens of evolution,鈥� Leigh鈥檚 is 鈥渆verything makes sense when viewed through the lens of economics.鈥� Leigh is an Australian politician and government minister, as well as an accomplished ultrarunner and former economics professor. The subtitle of his new book is 鈥淎 Short History of Humanity,鈥� which captures its spirit nicely: it鈥檚 basically a fun and fast-paced history of civilization as seen from the perspective of economists.

Win the Inside Game, by Steve Magness

Longtime science-of-running fans will remember Magness as the author of the encyclopedic tome a decade ago. Before that, he鈥檇 been a 4:01 high-school miler and later a coach of college and professional runners. In recent years, though, Magness鈥檚 focus has broadened to performance in its broadest sense. He wrote a couple of performance-focused books with former 国产吃瓜黑料 columnist Brad Stulberg, and then the 2022 bestseller Do Hard Things. Magness has always been an exceptional synthesizer, drawing connections across an impressively wide range of domains. His new book is more personal than his previous ones, drawing on his experiences as a whistleblower at the Nike Oregon Project, and seeks to guide the reader not just to performance but to fulfillment.

Out and Back, by Hillary Allen

In 2017, Allen fell 150 feet off a ridge during a mountain race in Norway. Her injuries were horrific. This book is her account of what happened after the accident. Spoiler: contrary to all predictions, she managed to return to the top levels of elite ultrarunning, and in fact her career continues to this day. The story itself, as a straightforward narrative, is fascinating. But what takes it up a notch is her attempts to understand what being an endurance athlete means to her鈥攂ecause you don鈥檛 fight back from an accident like that without a clear understanding of your whys.

North, by Scott Jurek

Jurek鈥檚 second book, after his 2012 bestseller Eat and Run, grapples with some of the same questions Hillary Allen鈥檚 book does. But instead of a mountain accident, he鈥檚 facing a more inexorable foe: aging. He was 41 when he set out to attempt to break the Appalachian Trail record, his career as a legendary ultramarathon champ fading out. Like Allen鈥檚 book, Jurek鈥檚 top-level narrative鈥攊n this case, the record attempt鈥攊s a great story on its own, full of improbable twists and impressive feats. But it鈥檚 the existential angst that kept me turning the pages.

Burke & Wills, by Peter FitzSimons

I spent the last five years writing a book about the science of exploring, which meant I read a lot of exploring stories. Among the most epic was the tale of the Burke and Wills expedition, the first to cross the interior of Australia. It鈥檚 by far the most famous Australian exploration tale, but relatively unknown outside the country. That should change: it鈥檚 a wild saga, a mix of adventure, fortitude, comedy (the first time I heard about the expedition was in a Bill Bryson book), and tragedy. For a long time the definitive account was Sarah Murgatroyd鈥檚 2002 book The Dig Tree, but FitzSimons鈥� 2018 book now holds that mantle.

The Explorer鈥檚 Gene, by Alex Hutchinson

You can also find out about Burke and Wills by reading鈥� my new book! They feature in a chapter that compares the exploration of Australia to the strategies mice use to explore water mazes: thigmotaxis, scanning, incursions, and so on. Burke and Wills used a strategy that鈥檚 very effective for crossing large expanses of unknown territory, but not so good for getting back home again. More generally, the book is about why we鈥檙e drawn to explore, how we do it, and what we get out of it鈥攖he perfect accompaniment for whatever adventures you have planned for the summer. Happy reading!

For more Sweat Science, join me on and , sign up for the , and check out my new book .

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It may be inspired by fiction, but HBO鈥檚 The Last of Us has a funny way of making me ask serious questions about real life. And Season 2, with its Seattle setting, has me wondering: Would this city really be the best place to live out the apocalypse? Given all the zombie drama, The Last of Us doesn鈥檛 exactly showcase the Seattle we know, but it does seem like a decent place to spend the end times in real life. The weather is cool and rainy. There鈥檚 plenty of water. And even with climate change, the city might still be pretty comfortable given that the current average high temperature is 72 degrees in the hottest months of the year.

The risk and severity of extreme weather events that create real-life apocalyptic scenarios鈥攆loods, droughts, heat domes, hurricanes鈥� as the planet warms, as robust has demonstrated. Plus, the a warming planet. That means that many of us could one day be searching for a more climatically stable city to flee to鈥攊n other words, something some have called a climate haven.

The myth of climate havens

To try to answer my own questions about the climate future, I spent some time reading about these so-called 鈥渃limate havens.鈥� For the uninitiated, climate havens are places that, because of their location, seem less likely to experience the most extreme effects of climate change, like dizzyingly high temperatures, rising sea levels, severe wildfires, and floods. Examples that frequently include places like Buffalo, New York, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, for their relatively low average temperatures, distance from the threats of sea-level rise, and lack of history with extreme weather events, broadly speaking.

However, the entire concept of climate havens might be more of a clever marketing tool than a trustworthy descriptor of specific cities. Experts seem to increasingly doubt the entire idea of a climate haven or refuge because, as a put it, 鈥淭o the extent that a climate refuge even exists, it鈥檚 not a particularly physical or geophysical phenomenon. It鈥檚 social and economic.鈥� In other words, there鈥檚 no zip code that in and of itself will be totally immune to the threats posed by climate change and extreme weather events. But the kind of preparation and mobility that financial capital can provide does offer a potential buffer鈥攆or some鈥攖o its worst outcomes.

And to make matters worse, the whole idea of climate havens might have just been taken out of context and used as a tool to attract transplants to invest in real estate in areas of the U.S. that have seen population and industry decline, such as, as its slogan puts it, 鈥渃limate-proof Duluth,鈥� Minnesota. The aforementioned Vox story spends time unearthing the history of climate havens lingo as city council marketing tools.

Moreover, being described as a climate haven doesn鈥檛 mean a place is immune to extreme, devastating weather events. A heart-wrenching recent example is Asheville, North Carolina, which, before the devastating flooding in 2024, had often been described as an ideal 鈥渃limate haven鈥� city.

When the worst happens, where do you want to be?

Still, despite my research, I held onto hope. I thought an expert might be able to hand me the key to my apocalyptic bunker. I talked to Daniel Swain, PhD, an acclaimed climate scientist based in Los Angeles. Given his credentials, I thought he might know a thing or two about a thing or two.

After agreeing to chat with me, Swain quickly set the tone for our conversation: 鈥淢y forewarning is that I generally don鈥檛 think the notion of 鈥榗limate havens鈥� makes much sense in general (or, at least, does not mean anything close to what people tend to think they represent!).鈥� Gulp.

Still, my conversation with Swain was illuminating because it gave me the tools to think about specific locations through the lens of our climate future in a different way. In fact, according to Swain, the right map of the best locations to weather the future might actually be 鈥渢he inverse鈥� of the locations we鈥檙e used to seeing on roundups of so-called climate havens.

How does that make sense?

For Swain, the thought experiment (along with the robust data he interprets) is really quite simple. 鈥淲ould you rather experience a particular major disaster in a city that very rarely sees those kinds of events or in a city that sees them frequently?鈥� In other words, would you rather live in a city that does have a high and regular risk of certain types of disaster that it is increasingly prepared to manage and mitigate, or do you want to live somewhere with a lower risk but no infrastructural response for when the worst does happen? Swain would pick the former scenario. And after talking to him, so would I.

Looking at environmental apocalypses this way means that suddenly Los Angeles might seem like a better option than, say, St. Louis, if your goal is to live somewhere prepared to manage the specific disasters it may face.

Is Seattle right for the end times?

But what about Seattle? As much as I enjoyed learning about how Swain thinks about environmental risk and the ways in which the climate haven data has likely been misinterpreted, I did want to know his opinion on the specific spot that motivated the whole inquiry.

And, well, if you didn鈥檛 know, Seattle is at risk of a pretty major seismic event, which an objectively terrifying 2015 story in the New Yorker calls 鈥�.鈥� Seattle, along with the rest of the Pacific Northwest, Vancouver, Canada, and parts of Northern California, lies along the Cascadia subduction zone, which, based on the geological data, is poised to produce a massive earthquake and potential tsunami that could be among the worst natural disasters the U.S. has ever faced. And sea level rise fueled by climate change could than previously predicted, according to published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Swain told me that he鈥檚 glad Seattle seems to be taking the risks of a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake more seriously than it has in the past, but he would still take Los Angeles over Seattle when it comes to preparedness. When I asked why, Swain told me that Californians鈥� visceral collective memory of recent catastrophes, like the 2025 fires or 1994 Northridge quake, has created stronger infrastructure and preparation for managing and mitigating such disasters.

Cities like Seattle still have a fair amount of work to do to catch up. However, Seattle has started within the last decade to . And emergency alerts in cities across the U.S.鈥攊ncluding those for earthquakes and other seismic events鈥攈ave improved over the past decade, too, Swain told me. They鈥檙e super fast and efficient compared to how they worked in the past, especially since most people have a direct line right in their pockets in the form of a smartphone. That means being in earthquake territory (i.e. Washington) isn鈥檛 necessarily worse than being in wildfire territory (i.e. Colorado) or Tornado Alley (i.e. Kansas). So, though we may not be able to predict exactly when earthquakes might hit, modern alert technology means we can react to them pretty fast. If the idea that a city鈥檚 specific disaster preparedness makes it more of a 鈥渃limate haven鈥� than its temperate climate, then maybe Seattle really is an increasingly smart choice.

So, what’s the best option?听

No place is the silver bullet to surviving our climate future. Individual preparedness, evacuation plans, information sharing, and infrastructural investment on the part of local governments are still the best options available to us.

Given that my family is about to relocate from Virginia to Seattle, I鈥檓 deeply grateful for the conversation with Swain that writing this story allowed me to have. Nowhere is perfect, but now, I have the chance to prepare.

Ryleigh Nucilli is the former Director of Digital Editorial at National Geographic, and she takes extreme environmental events very seriously. She is soon to be based in Seattle.

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Earlier this year, a PR rep from Fox News asked if I’d want to review the conservative network’s upcoming docuseries on the history of Yosemite National Park. Called Yellowstone to Yosemite with Kevin Costner, the three-part series is the brainchild of the Academy Award-winning actor, and the follow up to his 2022 series . As I stared at the email, I wondered: What can Fox News teach me about the importance of the national parks? As it turns out, a lot. But their approach delivered a few surprises.

Yellowstone to Yosemite, which airs Saturday, February 8 on Fox’s streaming service, Fox Nation, tells the often-repeated story of a 1903 camping trip that then-U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt took with naturalist John Muir through Yosemite. Over four days and three nights, the听two men yukked it up around the campfire, admired the soaring monoliths and waterfalls, and became friends. Similarly, Costner, now 70, embarks on his own camping trip within Yosemite as he narrates the story.

In the first episode, Costner quickly establishes the significance of Roosevelt and Muir’s campout. It’s May, 1903, more than 30 years since Yellowstone was established as the first national park. Five other parcels of land have become national parks, but the designation has done little to actually protect their ecosystems. Loggers are plundering giant sequoias in Yosemite and poachers are decimating bison herds in Yellowstone. The federal government, meanwhile, lacks the teeth to stop them. “Congress saw the national parks as a zero-cost initiative. Each park has an unpaid superintendent responsible for enforcing regulations,” Costner says. “It’s not working at all.”

Muir, the famed naturalist, believes the only way to save America’s parklands is by harnessing the power of the president. He invites Roosevelt to Yosemite to show him the wonders of the park up-close, before pitching him on the bold idea of actually protecting the six natural wonders.

And we’re off鈥攐ver three 45-minute episodes Costner tells the story of the camping trip while weaving in other historic anecdotes and ecological tidbits about Yosemite National Park. Yep, there’s a heroic mini-biography of Teddy Roosevelt. There are Nature Channel-worthy segments about the lifecycle of a Sequoia and the geologic forces that carved the valley. Costner name drops Lynn Hill as the first rock climber to free climb the Nose of El Capitan. There’s even a reenactment of the massacre of Miwok tribespeople that preempted their forced removal from Yosemite in 1851.

But as the docuseries unfolds, Costner also performs some rhetorical jiujitsu that muddies the current political divide around a few topics. He frames the conservation movement as inherently patriotic, and funding the national parks as part of our American heritage. He presents the corporate interests of industry as evil, and the seizing of land from Tribes as cruel. He even tells the viewer that the reintroduction of grey wolves鈥�a wedge issue in many Western states鈥攊s something that Roosevelt, a Republican icon, would have supported.

Costner presents these perspectives with a sincere tone that lacks any hint of cynicism or moral superiority. After praising John Muir for advocating on behalf of Yosemite’s trees and rivers, Costner lays down in his sleeping bag as the temperature plummets. “God I love this country,” he says. “Everything about it. Even the cold.”

Costner’s melding of these concepts鈥攑atriotism, conservation, American heritage, and honoring Indigenous tribes鈥攈elps him sell a contemporary vision to his audience: national parks are worthy of our protection and our tax dollars.

Sure, Costner’s sincerity and mythical retelling of a camping trip may inspire some eye rolls. Still,听I couldn’t help but admire his approach. Perhaps somewhere in Yellowstone to Yosemite is a playbook for bridging the political divide when we debate protecting National Monuments from drilling, or the reintroduction of apex predators, or why we should save endangered species. I don’t watch Fox News, but my parents do, and I firmly believe that they would love Yellowstone to Yosemite, even though it’s essentially a three-hour pitch for the environmental movement.

Costner’s story concludes on a high note. Roosevelt is inspired by Muir, and after he’s reelected he signs the Antiquities Act of 1906, which grants him the power to protect federal lands. He sends the U.S. military to defend the national parks, and he establishes a series of national monuments to honor the legacies of indigenous tribes.

I recently asked Costner about the balancing act in Yellowstone to Yosemite, and whether it was challenging to blend so many disparate socio-political themes in an hour-and-a-half program听 He brushed the question aside with a laugh. You can read my interview below.

Why Kevin Costner Wanted to Tell the Story of Yosemite National Park

OUTSIDE: Why did you want to tell this story in 2025?
Costner: I was not waiting for the right year to tell this story. I recently did the film Horizon and I thought of it back in 1988. With Yellowstone: One Fifty, I realized that we just don’t know our history and the intricacies of the routes we drive and the mountains we look at. With Yosemite, we all think we know the park. But I knew there was a story to tell about Roosevelt and Muir. In this 30-year span after the creation of Yellowstone, there was nobody who could actually protect the parks. Nobody took into account that it would would take manpower and a governmental body to actually protect them. I like these parts of history that seem obvious, but aren’t. And this story had plenty of these elements, so I had a sense that I wanted to share it. I wanted to start with the Native Americans鈥攅ven if we’re going to highlight Roosevelt and Muir, it was important for me to go that distance and to talk about original inhabitants. I wanted to tell viewers just how tragic things were for them. They’re always in our history and we somehow forget them. They are a part of Yosemite as much as any story we tell.

But I also wanted to show how these two men, of like minds, each had a level of poetry in them that helped them understand that saving the parks was the right thing. I wanted to tell this story without beating people on the the head. I wanted to educate them.

Your story navigates more than a few political topics that are still debated today, such as funding the NPS, reintroducing apex predators, and the constant tug-of-war between protecting federal lands and opening them to drilling or logging. How did you navigate these without seeming partisan?
Ha. I don’t care where the chips fall, and I’m honestly not that careful. I’m not looking to present a side here, I’m just looking to tell the story of who was doing what, who was saying what, and what actually happened. This project isn’t catered to any crowd. It had to get above my bar in terms of its intellectual literature. And I felt like we told the version of the story that I set out to tell. I don’t talk down to my audience or around them. I honestly don’t see the world as being dangerous when I’m telling historical truth. You have to tell the story with all of its warts. Other people might be worried about what I’m going to say. But I didn’t ever worry about it. I never had a single thought about this.

This is your second project around the U.S. National Parks. What about the Parks has attracted your interest in storytelling?
I’m really pleased that national parks are an American idea. Today there are like 1400 national parks around the world, but we set the tone. We came up with the idea that the land could have a higher economic use than just exploiting it鈥攖hat some day, people would come and visit. But when I think of environmentalism, it isn’t just about the fish in the streams, and the trees. It’s also about the connection to the past. That I can walk where other people walked 100 years ago. And also, to know that a place like Yosemite will be the same forever. And to know that these places aren’t just enjoyed by the wealthy, that everyone can enjoy them. Setting aside land for a national park is such a simple idea, but in reality it takes a fierce attitude to move an idea to being practical, especially when money is at stake.

You’ve spent several decades telling stories about the American West, from听Dances With Wolves to听Yellowstone.听What is it about the West that continually sparks your imagination?
I stumble on these stories, and I know that I’m only going to be able to tell so many of the in my lifetime. Right now I’m flirting with a very historical project that I’ll probably do, and it’s right in the vein of what you’re talking about, but I can’t discuss it here. As Americans, we think we know our history, but you never really know that much about it until you dig down. We read about the Native Americans somewhere in the fourth grade, like one chapter in one book, and that’s it. All of Yosemite was on the backs of people who were exterminated. This great park came on the heels of shipping them off to a river where they would die in anonymity. And they’re not even on a sign anywhere.

We rarely get down to what is human about them. I think that Yosemite gets down to what is human about John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt. People can be touched by the truth. They can be affected by lies, but they can be truly touched by the truth.

This interview was edited for space and clarity.听

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I have run and bicycled a certain one-mile section of the paved riverfront multi-use path in my hometown probably at least 200 or 300 times. A handful of times, I have thought to myself, 鈥淚 should really stop and read some of these historical plaques along the trail.鈥� I believed there to be two or three of them, and in four years, I never made the minuscule effort to pull off the trail even once for the 60 to 90 seconds required to read them.

A few weeks ago, though, I finished reading what I think is now one of my favorite adventure books, and I got inspired. Because books can do that.

Dean Karnazes鈥檚 Ultramarathon Man inspired hundreds or thousands of people to try ultrarunning, Colin Fletcher鈥檚 books inspired probably thousands of people to take up backpacking, and Cheryl Strayed鈥檚 Wild inspired a generation of thru-hikers. My friend Alastair Humphreys鈥� new-ish book was the catalyst for one of the least epic, but most satisfying adventures of my recent life.

The book is called Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness, and the concept is this: A guy who lives in the suburbs of London looks for adventure on the 400-square-kilometer map with his house in the center. This particular guy has bicycled 46,000 miles around the world for four years, rowed a boat across the Atlantic Ocean, and walked across the Empty Quarter Desert towing a giant homemade cart. It鈥檚 no Into Thin Air, or story of survival in Antarctica, or tale of the first human forays into some unexplored corner of Earth. But Al got this map, decided to spend a year essentially 鈥渟taying home,鈥� exploring one randomly-selected square kilometer per week, whether or not it looked interesting on the map.

Here is one of my favorite paragraphs in the book, on page nine:

鈥淲hat if where I live, this bog-standard corner of England, which had held no surprises for me, was actually full of them, if I only bothered to go out and find them? Not known, because not looked for. This was an opportunity to get to know my place for the first time and to search closer to home than ever before for things I鈥檝e chased around the globe: adventure, nature, wildness, surprises, silence and perspective.鈥�

I imagine having to write a book about the experience pushed Al to try to dig up interesting things about each grid square he explored鈥攚hich, in my reading, often resulted in me looking up from the book and saying to Hilary, 鈥淒id you know 鈥︹�� And it reminded me of some of the best tour guides I鈥檝e met on trips, who remain enthusiastic after repeating the same facts and figures hundreds of times鈥攐r my sister-in-law鈥檚 father, John, who has lived in the same town in Wisconsin for almost his entire life and seems to have a million pieces of local trivia ready at all times. And how last year I traveled to a spot very close to my hometown鈥檚 , but still hadn鈥檛 read the goddamn signs on the riverfront path I鈥檓 on five times a week.

So Tuesday morning, after riding my bike to drop off our little guy at daycare, I pedaled down the section of path I鈥檝e traversed so many times on foot and on skinny tires, and I stopped at every single plaque. There are 10 of them in the span of that one mile, detailing the human and geologic history of the valley here dating back 16,000 years: the lumber baron who built a mansion near the mouth of the creek (and whose widow, more notably, donated the land for the city鈥檚 first park), the bridges that washed away in floods, the glacial lake that flooded and carved out the valley several times in 鈥渙ne of the most significant geological events in the history of the world,鈥� and did you know we used to have a streetcar here? I mean, I guess not really 鈥渨e,鈥� but the people who lived here a century ago.

Several years ago, at an American adventure film festival, I saw a film of an expedition to climb a mountain in a country halfway around the world. In one scene, as the team of climbers slogged onward and upward through the jungle under ridiculously heavy backpacks, they passed through a village and a few local children and adults watched them. The characters in the film were of course far from home, very 鈥渙ut there鈥� in many ways, and struggling against great odds for a goal and a story about trying to reach that goal. But to the people who lived in the village, it was just Wednesday. Maybe a notable Wednesday, since these weird people with colorful clothing and backpacks were passing through, and that didn鈥檛 happen every Wednesday. But I found myself thinking more of the contrast: Eight people having a capital-A adventure within ten feet of other people sitting in their front yards. Which is something that never happens in my neighborhood, because people don鈥檛 fly halfway around the world to climb the mountains near my house.

But should you have to spend several days and thousands of dollars traveling to have an interesting experience? Seems a little elitist, doesn鈥檛 it?

My friend Forest and I have spent time together in many beautiful places, usually as photographer (him) and writer (me). I have picked up a handful of camera tricks from him over the years, but have no illusions about switching careers to photography. I asked him one time to tell me how I could improve my photography, based on what he鈥檇 seen, and he gently suggested that I should try to get closer. Of course he was right鈥擨 always default to the 鈥渢iny person in huge landscape鈥� shot, which is easy for me to see and feel (we鈥檙e so small out there!), but hard to replicate without a long lens. Being able to look closer, to zoom in, is something I still struggle with, literally in photography and metaphorically in life. Isn鈥檛 it harder to experience wonder the closer you are to where you live and work and get stuck in traffic and take out the trash, or is that just me? I aspire to be someone who can find wonder anywhere.

I鈥檓 not saying that reading a handful of plaques has now made me some sort of expert. But it did send me to the library, and to Google some things鈥攚hich I wouldn鈥檛 have Googled without having my interest piqued by what was on those plaques (the environmental disaster behind the old dam) and what was not on those plaques. (Okay, but what about the history of indigenous people in this area?) Which is something we are lucky to have the ability to do nowadays, to follow up on our interest(s) .

Another paragraph from the introduction of Local:

鈥淚鈥檇 imagined this would be a year of poking around rabbit holes in the countryside, but it became a year of falling down internet rabbit holes about hundreds of obscure topics, as well as reading dozens of books about history, nature, farming, and the climate emergency. Anything clever you read in the following pages, and almost every fact and figure, was new to me when I began this book. Do not make the mistake of thinking I鈥檓 a clever person who can stand in an empty field and see biology, geology, and every other 鈥檕logy, while you merely see a field. I, too, saw only the fields before I started, but paying close attention unveiled so much.鈥�

Of course I love to travel, and some of my favorite places in the world are special because the first time I visited, a friend who lived there showed me around. And tour guides are great, but nothing beats someone who is enthusiastic about where they live, because they鈥檝e paid attention to it and don鈥檛 mind sharing it with someone else. Now if you鈥檒l excuse me, I have to do some research on this streetcar we used to have here in the early 1900s, so I can tell visiting friends about it for the next decade.

If you鈥檇 like to read Local (which has been longlisted for the Wainwright Prize!), here鈥檚 where you can find it:

听Amazon听听

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Paige McClanahan, a journalist and travel writer, is much too diplomatic to phrase it this way, so allow me to be the grump: you鈥檙e the reason locals so often dislike tourists.

鈥淭ravel has become a consumerist exercise where the goal is to get our money鈥檚 worth out of a place,鈥� McClanahan says in a phone interview from her home in France. 鈥淲e need to wake up. Paris owes you nothing.鈥�

The tourist-local tension has been around since before Marco Polo, but in her debut book, The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel, McClanahan shows us just how bad things have gotten. Globally, travelers will log some 1.5 billion trips abroad by the end of 2024鈥攖he largest movement of people the planet has ever seen. In a handful of years, that number could reach 1.8 billion. Closer to home, Americans are on track to take almost two billion domestic leisure trips annually by 2025. Despite the buzz around mindful experiences and sustainable travel, locals from Athens to Zermatt have had enough of us. Some Hawaiians have requested that we stay home. Romans fine tourists up to $280 for clogging the Spanish Steps. In July, an annoyed mob roamed Barcelona鈥檚 boulevards dousing visitors with squirt guns.

McClanahan, who writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, has plugged her journalistic pen into this bursting dike with empathy, not by shaming or lecturing anyone. Nor does she ask people to stay put, which would be detrimental to conservation work, prosperity, and cultural bridge building. Instead, McClanahan uses the voices of locals adversely affected by tourism to inspire us to travel with more curiosity, humility, and appreciation for how our holiday can be hell on the climate and local residents. Above all, she wants us to know that we have the power to make travel a force for good.

This elevated mindset is the hallmark of the new tourist. Becoming one isn鈥檛 hard. It means visiting Iceland in the off-season or trading the line at the Louvre for a Paris Noir walking tour to soak up the city鈥檚 Black history. You can control your partying in Amsterdam and stay behind the fence at the Grand Canyon. You can insist on supporting local guides and locally owned hotels, restaurants, and food carts. (The Barcelona mob targeted people eating at a Taco Bell, among other spots.)

鈥淓ven if you鈥檙e a low-budget traveler, you can still be a high-value visitor,鈥� McClanahan says.

McClanahan, who left the United States at age 26 and has spent the past 17 years writing from Africa and Europe, admits that she has made plenty of old-tourist mistakes鈥攍ike posting a self-serving Instagram reel from Angkor Wat that barely showed Angkor Wat. 鈥淚 live in a glass house,鈥� she says.

McClanahan casts no aspersions on the types of trips you like but does bristle at people who consider themselves 鈥渢ravelers鈥� and not tourists. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 deny that people travel for a huge range of reasons, some higher-minded than others,鈥� she writes in The New Tourist. 鈥淪o, sure, call yourself a traveler but never forget you鈥檙e a tourist, too.鈥� What matters is that we make informed decisions on how to travel in ways that put places and the people who live there first.

鈥淥ne of the most constructive things we can do in our flickering moment of life is to embrace the chance to leave our comfort zones鈥攖hose dangerous lairs where we learn to languish,鈥� she writes. She adds to me: 鈥淣one of us can wave a magic wand and change the behavior of millions of other people, but each of us can be that change.鈥�

Buy 鈥楾he New Tourist鈥� on Amazon

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I started watching the hugely popular TV series Yellowstone in 2020, during the height of the COVID pandemic. By then, there were multiple seasons available, and my husband and I had nothing but time. We were hooked.

We鈥檙e not the only ones. The second half of Season 5, which came out on November 11, saw more than . Only NFL football had than Yellowstone last season. Character names like Rip and Dutton have seen exponential increases in their use for newborn babies. And, as the recently reported, Americans really want their own piece of the Yellowstone landscape, and the show may be partly to blame.

Which got me thinking: How much of the show is based in reality, and is it really affecting what’s happening in the West? The show is over-the-top melodrama, but writer and co-creator Taylor Sheridan obviously chose real-life conflicts in Montana and other western states to base the plot on. Here are four ways the show bears more resemblance to reality than a casual fan might realize.

1. The Series Suggests Big Developers Will Stop at Nothing to Broker Land 鈥淒eals鈥濃�擳hat May Be True.

In Yellowstone, the Duttons are constantly navigating nefarious plots to seize their ranch by out-of-state land development interests. Some, it seems, will stop at nothing to dispossess the family in order to capitalize on the value of their land, creating ridiculously violent scenes.

In real life, there is example after example of complicated land deals in Montana and the West in which developments for the wealthy take up premier land. The Yellowstone Club, which is just north of Yellowstone National Park in Big Sky, Montana, has been a bastion for the ultra-wealthy since it opened in the late nineties. Boasting 鈥減rivate powder鈥� and ruthlessly protected privacy for its members, among other features, the Club was created through a series of land swaps with the Forest Service, which turned a checkerboard of public and private land into consolidated acreage for the Club鈥檚 founder, Tim Blixseth.

While the Yellowstone Club is already controversial among Montanans (few of whom can afford the steep costs of membership, which involve a , annual club dues of $36,000, and annual property owners association dues of $10,000), it鈥檚 also trying to expand into a contentious area of the Crazy Mountains. As Ben Ryder Howe reported in New York magazine’s , a group of billionaires associated with the Club has been maneuvering to privatize contested swaths of land that yield access to the Crazies for some time. The Forest Service, ranchers, the Native Crow, the general public, and the Yellowstone Club all seem to have a stake in the outcome.

2. Places Like Bozeman, Montana, Really Are Becoming Overrun with Furs and Fancy Cars.

I know folks who live in Bozeman, and I鈥檝e read plenty of the reporting we鈥檝e done here at 国产吃瓜黑料 (and elsewhere) related to life in mountain towns like Bozeman, where affordable housing shortages, the aftermath of a global pandemic, remote work, and the glamorization of mountain lifestyles have created a rich broth of income inequality that is apparent as you navigate the city.

Writing in 2022 for 国产吃瓜黑料, Maggie Slepian, who has been based in Bozeman for more than a decade, noted the visual changes on the town and the landscape that were being wrought by the influx of new, wealthy, second-home residents. Watching Yellowstone, some of the fashions my beloved Beth Dutton opted for on her runs to town struck me as a bit much even for her unparalleled character. (Silky sheaths beneath a luxe full-length fur coat, anyone?)

Sartorial considerations aside, affordability remains a major issue, and Yellowstone focuses primarily on the more glamorous troubles a family that owns the largest ranch in the area would face, not on the person being priced out of their apartment or the family acknowledging that they鈥檒l never be able to swing it for a single family home.

3. The Duttons Struggle to Afford Their Ranch. So Do Many Real Families.

In the years since Yellowstone premiered, a number of outlets have interviewed real generational ranchers in Montana to get a sense of their view of the show. The dynamics among the family itself often get highlighted as one of the most believable elements. In an Variety from 2023, a third-generation rancher from Idaho, Jesse Jarvis, highlights the familial dysfunction as one of the most realistic elements of the show.

The Duttons鈥� interpersonal conflicts are largely driven by the struggle to afford their 700,000-acre ranch. In real life, the total number of farms and ranches in Montana is down 10.3 percent from 2017, from 2022. And with continued interest from developers to obtain large tracts of land in the area, it seems likely land and home prices will continue to rise. Recent data from the indicates a consistent increase of cropland value in Montana from 2012 on. And this is to say nothing of the capital needed to operate a large-scale ranch.

4. Indigenous Land Is Being Acquired and Compromised by Development.

Fans of Yellowstone see complex dynamics of power and history at play in the dealings of the Duttons and others with the fictional Broken Rock Indian Tribe. As the screw twists and turns, the Broken Rock, led on the show by the Chairman Thomas Rainwater, find themselves on both the dealing and receiving ends of bad land deals and villainous behavior from local and out-of-state actors. This contemporary dispossession of Indigenous people fits into the long and violent history in which legal and extralegal measures are taken by those in power to forcibly remove Indigenous inhabitants from their land.

To cite a recent real example, you can look again to the Crazy Mountains in Montana. The Crazies are filled with significant and sacred sites for the Native Crow. In the current proposal for there, private land prevents the Crow from visiting many of these sites without permission from the landowner. 翱耻迟蝉颈诲别鈥檚 reporting on the Yaak Valley offers another illustrative example of these dynamics.

There鈥檚 likely much more to say about the real power dynamics in the Mountain West and the fights for public lands that overlap with some of what you see on the small screen in Tyler Sheridan鈥檚 fantasy universe. As they say, truth can really be stranger than fiction.

Ryleigh Nucilli got a master’s degree and half of a PhD in literature and culture from the University of Oregon before leaving to pursue a career in digital media. She loves reading and writing about the intersection of popular media and culture.

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My new book, Ultra-Something, explores humans鈥� weird proclivity for endurance, and how we express it鈥攊ncluding, but not limited to distance running, factory work, benign masochism, improv comedy, and rooting for football teams that will never win a championship. I ran thousands of miles and explored dozens of rabbit holes of research, athletics, and storytelling, then built it into a narrative, with more than 90 illustrations I drew. The final product is a 285-page book and it鈥檚 out now.听 (Buy it at Bookshop , or at Amazon in paperback here, and on Kindle here.)

Here鈥檚 the book trailer:

The below is excerpted from the book’s prologue.

At the finish line of the 2015 Western States Endurance Run, arguably the most famous and most prestigious American ultramarathon, the crowd suddenly became energized. A runner was coming, entering the Placer High School track, where the 100-mile race ends after winding up and over California鈥檚 Sierra Nevada mountains from Olympic Valley Ski Resort.

Spectators cheered, clapped, and frantically rang cowbells, as the runner, Gunhild Swanson, rounded the track. A group of runners who had joined her peeled off at the start of the straightaway, clearing the way for her finish. The sides of the track were lined with people anxiously yelling 鈥淐ome on, come on!鈥� and other words of encouragement which sounded more like worried hope. More spectators ran across the infield, and a few paralleled her on the other side of the barrier fence set up on the track. Dozens of cameras and phones recorded her as she chugged toward the white finish arch, her strides shortened by 99-plus miles of mountain running and hiking over the previous day and a half. As she crossed the timing mat at the finish, the crowd erupted, hundreds of arms popping up into the air in a coordinated burst of emotion. Three feet past the finish line, the runner bent at the waist, hands on her knees, exhausted but grateful to be finished. Online videos of this minute of running would be watched hundreds of thousands of times.

Gunhild Swanson had finished dead last, 254th out of 254 runners. When she crossed the finish line on the track, the clock above her head read:

She had beaten the final 30-hour cutoff time by six seconds.

When that year鈥檚 winners, Rob Krar and Magdalena Boulet, crossed the same finish line hours earlier, in 14:48:59 and 19:05:21, respectively, the scene was almost serene in comparison: some applause, some cheering, but with the overall energy and volume turned down.

The climax of Sylvester Stallone鈥檚 1976 movie Rocky, when boxer Rocky Balboa finally squares off with the defending champion, Apollo Creed, only lasts about nine minutes, but might be the most famous boxing match in film history.

Apollo, who had been scheduled to defend his title against a boxer who was injured, needs to find a new opponent, and decides to put on a show: As the original fight was scheduled to take place during America鈥檚 bicentennial year in 1976 in Philadelphia, Apollo says he鈥檒l fight an up-and-coming boxer. Rocky Balboa, a Philly club fighter with more heart than skill, is chosen.

When the fight begins, everyone, including Rocky and Apollo, is surprised that Rocky actually lasts more than a few rounds, even landing some good punches, and as the fight drags on, ends up making it longer in the ring than any other boxer has against Apollo.

After Apollo knocks Rocky down during the 14th round and he battles to pull himself back up, the camera cuts to two people who we believe have much better judgment as far as Rocky鈥檚 well-being: First, the trainer, Mick, who growls from just outside the ropes to Rocky, 鈥淒own. Stay down.鈥� Then, Rocky鈥檚 girlfriend Adrian, who has just entered the arena to see Rocky at his worst, writhing in pain on the canvas. She looks away.

Rocky staggers in his corner like a drunken man trying to get back up on a barstool. Apollo stands in his corner with both arms raised.

Rocky gets up at the count of nine. Apollo drops his arms and his jaw in disbelief. Just before the bell, Rocky lands a shot to Apollo鈥檚 ribs.

When both fighters are in their corners, Apollo鈥檚 trainer says to him, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e bleeding inside, Champ. I鈥檓 gonna stop the fight.鈥�

Apollo replies, 鈥淵ou ain鈥檛 stopping nothing, man.鈥�

Rocky鈥檚 team cuts the swollen skin around his eye so he can see again, and Rocky stands up, saying to Mick, 鈥淵ou stop this fight, I鈥檒l kill you.鈥�

The two haggard fighters trade punches throughout the 15th and final round, mumbling promises to each other that there will be no re-match, and the bell rings, both men barely upright, but having survived. A bloodied Rocky calls out for Adrian, who finds her way to the ring, where she and Rocky profess their love for each other.

In the 1979 book, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, Syd Field laid out what would come to be known as 鈥淔ield鈥檚 Paradigm,鈥� or the Three-Act Structure. Every screenplay, or actually, the story that forms a screenplay, Field argued, has three acts: set-up, confrontation, and resolution. The three-act structure is often drawn as a diagram, in various levels of complexity. A simple version might look like this:

Rocky went on to be a surprise box office success, and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning three, including Best Picture. The film spawned eight sequels over the next four and a half decades.

One scene in the original film, in which Rocky goes on a training run and ends by sprinting up the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, became famous, inspiring tourists to run up the stairs, and prompting tributes and parodies of the scene in other films and TV shows. The 72 steps themselves became known colloquially as the 鈥淩ocky Steps,鈥� and before the premiere of Rocky III, Stallone commissioned an eight-and-a-half-foot statue of Rocky to be built and placed at the top of the steps. Philadelphia City Commerce Director Dick Doran welcomed the statue and said Stallone had done more for Philadelphia鈥檚 image 鈥渢han anyone since Ben Franklin.鈥�

Rocky Balboa did not win the fight in Rocky. As the closing theme music builds, the ring announcer calls the fight 鈥渢he greatest exhibition of guts and stamina in the history of the ring,鈥� and then announces the split decision in favor of Apollo Creed.

The plot of Rocky, as well as the plots of all eight sequels, per the three-act structure, might look like this:

At almost any marathon race in the United States, there is a solid chance you will hear, played on a sound system near the starting line, or on a spectator鈥檚 stereo along the race route, one of two songs, if not both: The song 鈥淕onna Fly Now,鈥� also known as 鈥淭heme from Rocky鈥� (a version of which appears in the first five Rocky movies), and the Survivor song 鈥淓ye of the Tiger,鈥� commissioned by Sylvester Stallone for Rocky III.

Every year around the world, about 1.1 million people run a marathon, an organized race that鈥檚 26.2 miles, or 42.195 kilometers. The story of why we do this dates back to 490 BC: During the first Persian invasion of Greece, a heavily outmanned Athenian army defeated the Persian forces in battle near the town of Marathon, Greece. A herald named Pheidippides was chosen to deliver the news of the victory to Athens. He ran the entire distance of 26.2 miles/42.195 kilometers, addressed the magistrates in session saying something like, 鈥淛oy to you, we鈥檝e won!鈥� and then died on the spot.

The Greeks also created the tradition of the Olympic Games, held every four years, or each Olympiad, from 776 BC to 393 AD. The ancient Olympic Games never had a marathon race鈥攖he 鈥渓ong-distance race,鈥� or dolichos, introduced in the 15th Olympiad, was somewhere between four and nine kilometers (approximately 2.5 to 5.5 miles). The last recorded ancient Olympic Games were held in 393 A.D., after which they took a 1500-year hiatus.

When the Olympic Games were revived in 1896 in Athens, the first marathon race was held, celebrating Pheidippides鈥檚 legendary (and fatal) run from Marathon to Athens. A few months later, the Knickerbocker Athletic Club organized a marathon race from Stamford, Connecticut to The Bronx, and in March 1897, the Boston Athletic Association held the first-ever Boston Marathon. From there, the marathon race spread all over the world.

If you signed up to participate in a running race, such as a marathon or a 10K, your personal journey could also be seen as three acts:

No one, from the fast runners hoping to win the race to the people just hoping to finish, has any idea how their race is going to go. As the race day draws near, tension builds, whether you feel it or not, and the only thing that releases all that tension is the actual running of the race. When it鈥檚 over, whether you鈥檙e happy with the result or not, it鈥檚 over.

The first time Ray Yoder ate at a Cracker Barrel, he wasn鈥檛 that impressed. He was in Nashville in 1978, helping to set up an RV show at the Opryland Resort and Convention Center, and there was a Cracker Barrel nearby. So he ate there, and it didn鈥檛 exactly blow his mind. But he had a job delivering RVs across the country from a manufacturer in his hometown of Goshen, Indiana, and he spent a lot of time on the road. So he found himself in a lot of places with Cracker Barrel restaurants. He kept eating at Cracker Barrels, and they started to grow on him.

He was almost always on the road by himself while his wife, Wilma, was at home raising their four children. When all the kids had finished school and moved out of their house, Wilma started to join Ray on the road. Around 1993, they realized they had eaten at lots of Cracker Barrel restaurants, and decided to try visiting all of them.

By August of 2017, the Yoders had both turned 81, and had visited almost all of the 600-plus Cracker Barrel restaurants in the United States, Ray mostly eating blueberry pancakes if it was breakfast time, meatloaf if he was there for lunch or dinner, and pot roast if it was Sunday. Cracker Barrel caught wind of Ray and Wilma鈥檚 quest and flew them out to Portland to visit the newly-opened restaurant in Tualatin, Oregon, Number 645. A line of applauding Cracker Barrel employees greeted them at the door, with a bouquet of sunflowers and roses for Wilma, and custom aprons for both of them.

Their journey had taken them to 44 states, and Ray estimated they had driven more than 5 million miles. 鈥淲ell, everybody does something, usually anyway,鈥� Ray said. 鈥淪o we thought we would do this and it would be fun.鈥�

At the 2017 Run Rabbit Run starting line at the base of Colorado鈥檚 Steamboat Ski Resort, 314 runners stood in the corral, every one of them hoping to finish the 102.5-mile race. Only about 58 percent of them would actually make it to the finish line.

The Run Rabbit Run is not typically mentioned as one of the hardest ultramarathon races in the United States, and 2017 wasn鈥檛 an abnormally hot or difficult year. Generally, about one-third of people who start the race each year don鈥檛 finish for one reason or another: injury, gastrointestinal distress, dehydration, exhaustion.

No one standing in that starting corral believed it was impossible for a human being to travel 102.5 miles of mountainous terrain in 36 hours. Everyone was aware that it was something humans did. They had heard of these types of races before, maybe knew someone who had completed one, or maybe they鈥檇 even run this one in a previous year and had fun doing it. They believed they could be one of the people who earned a Run Rabbit Run 100 finisher belt buckle, and that鈥檚 why they were standing just inside the red start/finish arch, pacing, chatting with other runners, shaking out their nervous legs.

I was there too, standing in the corral, anxious and jittery, with a race number pinned to my running shorts, as the morning sun started to warm the high-altitude air. Like everyone else, I knew that people, arguably 鈥渘ormal鈥� people who had day jobs and families and credit card bills, were perfectly capable of running a 100-mile mountain ultramarathon in 36 hours. It was something that had been done plenty of times before by human beings just like me.

Well, maybe not like me. I wasn鈥檛 sure if I鈥檇 be just like them, a finisher. And I鈥檇 been unsure for eight months, since I鈥檇 paid my entry fee.

I was still unsure when the gun went off and the crowd of runners started shuffling forward through the starting arch. I started jogging with them, and no one tried to stop me, so I just kept going.

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