How are people that go on Survivor so bad at making fire?

I can’t watch shows like that.

They must deliberately choose incompetent people. My child knows the three components of fire (oxygen, fuel, heat) and how to find dry kindling.

Besides, yes, very thrilling, you’re going to “survive” for two months in a place where people already live. Woo hoo.

Well, it’s not really a show about survival.

Just like “Hell’s Kitchen” the producers deliberately select incompetent contestants (because Ramsay does not scream at good cooks), because watching bumbling fools is more entertaining and brings better ratings than watching people who know what they are doing.

Nice avatar @ragingloli.

What every one else said. We’d rather watch The Three Stooges than CBS Nightly News.

I actually like this show, so I will give an answer other than “because it sucks”. For one, I think people overestimate their abilities; numerous times Jeff Probst has expressed surprise that people haven’t practiced making fire more and some contests have expressed surprise that they couldn’t do it, just assuming they could. A couple of contestants have shared that they practiced it beforehand and that was key to their success at making it. But sometimes making fire is just hard—even people who have made it before sometimes struggle at the fire-making tiebreaker. That could be a combination of the pressure, the heat (they’re always sweating during that challenge) and the tropical wetness of most of the locations. If you are going to be on the show, you really should practice fire-making first.

@Dutchess_III
It is a picture of Rory Mercury, Apostle to Emroy, the God of War, Death and Madness.
I think it fits me perfectly.

I think most of them know that it won’t be long before one of the reward challenges will contain a flint (or even matches) and fire making
supplies.

The producers of the show do this because otherwise the members of the group without fire would be dropping right and left due to either dehydration (from not being able to boil water) or dysentery (from drinking unboiled water).

They do whatever they can to ensure that the teams stay roughly as evenly matched as possible or it quickly descends into a rout with one team hopelessly falling farther and farther behind. That’s not much fun to watch.

For so many of these “reality” shows there is so much behind the scenes meddling by producers that it skews the entire experience.

If you want to see a more pure version of Survivor, watch the very first season. Nobody really had much idea what they were doing except for (love him or hate him) Richard Hatch who started building a strategic alliance by picking the right key people. Having Rudy (the older ex-Navy Seal) at the core of that alliance was critical because he recognized a fundamental aspect of his character; unwavering loyalty and honoring his word and not reneging on it.

Go back and watch that first season and see the stark contrast with modern seasons. None of the elaborate food rewards, none of the “luxury” prizes for reward chdllenges. Its like an entirely different show.

Nowadays , everybody follows Hatch’es plan of building alliances (and dropping them and double crossing etc. etc.) so it has become almost a parody of itself.

But I still watch it each season anyway :)

The other thing about fire-making skills (as well as other skills) it is not to someones advantage to be perceived as being too good at survival skills.
It’s true that it will keep you from bring voted off in the early dsys of the game because you’re useful to the tribe, but later on you’re seen as a threat

The perfect example of that was Ozzie. He seemed to be born to excel at survivor. He was skilled at everything: fire making, fishing, climbing up tall coconut trees with the grace of a nimble monkey. There was nothing he couldn’t do.

In the early days that was great. But later on it got him voted off because everyone knew that they couldn’t compete with him in the final vote.

So, fire making only gets you so far in Survivor (the first few days) and the producers have pretty much insured that most people don’t take it that seriously because IMHO, they baby them too much with rewards.