Live Free or Die National Geographic Channel

Live Free or Die on the National Geographic Channel

Live Free or Die is an American reality series Hosted by The National Geographic Channel that follows the lives of five primitive individuals and one couple who live in the country’s most remote backwoods and swamps. Each individual or couple is trying to live or survive in an extreme rural environment freed from the constraints of technology and relying completely on nature to give them everything they need to survive. The series is produced by and aired on National Geographic Television.

The individuals who make up the program leave the technical world behind, while sustaining themselves through Hunting, Fishing and Bartering, taking to the woods while living off the land. Each character highlights the use of primitive tools for foraging, trapping, and building. The characters of the series live a gritty existence in shelters with only raw materials found, created or traded for.^[1]

Each individual brings to the show a knowledge of survival skills all while isolating themselves from the outside world. Each individual or couple live without running water or electricity all while hunting and foraging for food.

The value of the characters is that each offers clever, survival tips and advice as a cameraman follows them through everyday tasks. Whether it is checking animal traps, or making one's own mosquito repellent, each attempt to demonstrates how to survive with no script and no agenda.^[2]

"We rarely do retakes unless the cameraman has to change his lens,” said Colbert Sturgeon of Moultire, Georgia, who was approached by National Geographic to do the show. Designed for the increasing number of people interested in survivalism, "Live Free or Die," currently in its second season.^[3]

The primitive individuals in the series seen here, on the National Geographic Page, were selected based on a self-reliant criteria who could demonstrate a “do more with less” philosophy.^[4] The woods furnish the individuals rugged lifestyle, as they are faced with natural obstacles like brutal weather and depleted food sources. According to the creed of the show, nature "fuels their desire to remain on the modern-day frontier.” The cast includes-^[5]

• Colbert Sturgeon of Moultire, Georgia
• Thorn who lives deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
• Tony and Amelia Stevens who also live in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
• Derik Stevens a Mountain Man living off-the-grid, twenty miles from Boulder, CO.
• Tobias Corwin is a desert primitive survival skills expert living outside of Prescott, AZ.
• Matt Graham

The show, Live Free or Die, is rooted in the premise that capitalist society is, in effect, broken as the film crew follows a handful of people living in extreme anti-modern fashion.^[6] The show emphasizes experimental living, which were once the norm but feel radical in a modern living context.^[7] Though the show shows the gritty consumption of rats and berries in a "sustainable" platform, even one of the characters cannot afford the true primitive life as Colbert raises money from his Go Fund Me page.

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