An Analysis of Medical Evacuations

Am I obsessed, in a way, with medical evacuations on Survivor? Maybe. I’m obsessed with a lot of things, honestly. I just hope that I can provide in this blog post a good analysis of medical evacuations in this game. There’s a lot to wonder about the situation. What’s there to talk about? Well, let’s go through various parts of it that I can think of, at least.

Why are men pulled more?

Men are supposedly the stronger gender, but they don’t seem to have luck when it comes to avoiding getting medically evacuated. It took until the 24^th season and the 10^th evacuation before a woman was pulled from the game. Is it because they are doing more dangerous stuff as players? Does it just relate to being unfortunate events just happening to affect men instead of women? What some people would have you believe is that there aren’t coincidences on Survivor. Clearly there are. The fact that it is mostly men with one or two women getting evacuated could speak to any number of things. But it could just be that more dangerous things on this show happen to men.

Has Survivor gotten more dangerous?

The first medical evacuation seemed like an anomaly compared to the rest of the early seasons. It wasn’t until the twelfth season that another evacuation happened again. From there, modern Survivor seems to have only gotten more dangerous. A recent season had three medical evacuations all happen at once. Doesn’t this seem bad? Has Survivor gotten worse in terms of healthy living conditions? I’m not sure if we’ll ever know for sure, but it doesn’t seem as good as it used to be.

Does being evacuated mean you should play again?

When we learned about Survivor: Philippines, we learned that three contestants who had previously been medically evacuated would be playing Survivor again. This makes you wonder, should all contestants who were medically evacuated automatically get to play again? Would it be fair that they would be picked over other players? Would it be fair if other players were picked over them? You’d have to wonder if some players would be good picks over others, just choosing among the medically evacuated. Should they be brought back? One would think that it would be fair or a good idea, but some of them are bad players. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be a Colton like player brought back again.

Is location the problem?

Some may wonder if some locations are more dangerous than other locations. The location of Marquesas was considered bad enough to never be considered to be returned to; the only location ban that I know of on the show. That location had no evacuations, but it did have its fair share of injuries without an evacuation. Cambodia proved quite dangerous with three evacuations in one season. Samoa had a collective four evacuations in the seasons set there. But how do you know if a single location is the problem? Should you really ban a location just for evacuations happening there? While I wouldn’t think so, I’d have to wonder if some locations should be avoided in favor of others.

What’s the reason for all the evacuations?

You do have to wonder if Survivor is doing something wrong if there are these many evacuations in the first place. You know that they wouldn’t want people to leave this way. But why does it keep happening over and over again? Well, Survivor is overall a tough game. It is very real with people in an environment that can be quite dangerous. The weather can cause problems and so can many of the island creatures at each location. Just look at poor Gary in Fiji. People have to survive. That’s why it is called Survivor and not something like 39 day island vacation. The conditions they deal with are very real. Of course, there are even more specific reasons that I will mention next.

Are challenges to blame?

There have been at least three challenges that could be considered to have caused an evacuation. The first was in Micronesia, which caused many injuries, the most notable being one to Jonathan Penner’s leg. That challenge will never be used again. The challenge that caused Mike Borassi’s evacuation has been banned as well, but only after it appeared once more and caused another injury. Plus, I really got annoyed, as did other fans, at the opening challenge of One World which lead to Kourtney being pulled from the game, earlier than anyone else. Both Russell Swan’s and Caleb Reynold’s evacuations were at challenges, although one might not blame to challenges themselves for those particular evacuations. But, challenges aren’t the exact reasoning behind others that I can think of easily off hand.

Are the older more at risk?

A factor that goes into playing Survivor is how an older person would probably be more likely to not survive tough environments that they used to be able to at a younger age. They are also more likely to suffer from problems that probably wouldn’t befall younger players. Both Bruce and Joe del Campo had digestive problems that got them pulled. Mike Borrassi got hurt in a challenge and was pulled as a result. Gary was another older person who was pulled, this time after an allergic reaction to bug bites. While that is all of the older ones that I can think of, it is interesting to wonder if they are more at risk of getting pulled than other people. The younger players seem less at risk.

When injuries and sickness don’t result in evacuation

There have been some notable times when they didn’t have to pull someone after things had happened to them. There was Aras’s injury at the end of Panama that was treated at camp. I remember a severe bug bite happening in Amazon to a contestant which lead her to being carried to a challenge. James’s injury in Heroes versus Villains didn’t get him medically evacuated this time around which would have really sucked to be pulled twice. This leads into my last point of the post.

The Missy situation

Hers was a unique situation that we haven’t seen before. If you are injured in a serious enough way that it threatens your life, production pulls you from the game. But Missy wasn’t experiencing a life threatening injury. But it did fall in a weird, grey area as she couldn’t compete in challenges anymore. Maybe she had made it too far into the game in order to justify an evacuation. It is hard to tell for sure, but I’m not sure if something like this will happen again.

Well, I hope that this is another worthwhile post. If not, then you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog anyways. I hope that this was a good analysis of medical evacuations. I don’t have much else to say, so I’ll be back later with my next blog post. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.