“ in a plastic bag, not only to keep it dry, but in some situations, you can actually boil water in a plastic bag.” What’s in Laura Zerra’s ‘Oh Shit Bag’ Ziplock Bag With BIC Lighter or Matches A sample of items in Laura Zerra’s ‘Oh shit bag” (photo/Shauna Farnell) Regardless of where she is or what she’s doing, Zerra never leaves her cave without her “Oh shit bag.” Weighing in at less than a pound, the bag can fit in a pocket and contains the bare essentials for survival. Zerra’s mantra for outdoor survival situations is “focus on what you have and not on what you wish you had.” She has spent years teaching children at outdoor camps and relishes sharing detailed survival tips on CarbonTV’s “Decivilized,” whether it’s how to avoid avalanches in the backcountry or what to carry in your car on long drives. “And they were wearing full bee-keeping outfits.” But perhaps her biggest challenges on “Naked and Afraid” were dealing with other people’s human drama. “There were crew members that left,” she recalled. Some of Zerra’s most arduous experiences on “Naked and Afraid” include being bitten by a bullet ant “on the most specifically sensitive part of the human body.” She said, “It was literally blinding pain.”Īlso, during her 21 days in the Amazon jungle for “Naked and Afraid,” the mosquitos were so thick, she and her partner were choking on them, wearing their canvas bags over their faces during every off-camera moment. They don’t have boundaries when you don’t have clothes on.” Surviving ‘Naked and Afraid’ (Photo/Shauna Farnell) “Even if you go out with a light shirt, it’s some protection against the cold. It added a whole element of vulnerability,” she realized. I’d been living survival for 10 years at the time, but I’d never done it naked. When the show’s creators explained that the absence of clothes made the challenge of survival challenge exponentially more difficult, Zerra reluctantly agreed. Also, there’s a slight chance we might take your clothing,’” she recalled. “They didn’t say right off the bat that there was nudity involved,” Zerra said, adding that it was only in the final conversations that the “naked” component was made clear.Ī post shared by Laura Zerra one of the interviews on the phone when they were trying to decide if I was someone who could be on camera or just a weirdo who lived in a cave - which I am - they were basically like, ‘We’re going to drop you off with nothing, with a partner, in a new location you’ve never been to. The network asked if she’d be interested in participating in a new reality show in which she and an unknown partner would be dropped into a mysterious location in the wilderness to try and survive for 21 days. Getting on ‘Naked and Afraid’Īlthough she was living without a phone or permanent address in 2013, The Discovery Channel somehow tracked Zerra down at a friend’s house. She picked up specialized skills and random work as a tree planter, mushroom forager, wild game processor, farrier, taxidermist, and knife maker. Her travels included hitchhiking through the U.S., living in a homeless shelter in Chicago, spending weeks in the jungles of Mexico, and jumping freight trains to get from one location to the next. working odd jobs to pay off my horrendous student loans,” she said. She dropped out of college and hit the road. Volunteering for an outdoor program in Montana between semesters, Zerra met someone who convinced her to pursue what she loved. Her friends would visit and marvel at the small structure she built out of plywood. While studying ethnobiology at Connecticut College, rather than live in her assigned dorm room, she built a shelter in the campus arboretum. At one point (at around age 14), she even convinced her older sister to help her pick up a dead beaver she’d spotted off the road. Not wanting to be “tethered” to modern-day luxuries like stores, she figured out how to forage off the land and subsist on minimal material comforts. Zerra spent her teenage years learning everything she could about outdoor survival, or as she describes it, “putting myself in dumb situations.” The only place I thought I could be myself and not judged was outside.” “I was so shy I didn’t even speak to my grandparents. She spent her free time exploring the woods near her home, stalking wildlife, and examining plants. A post shared by Laura Zerra up in suburban Massachusetts, Zerra never felt she fit in with other kids.
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