Among the presenters at this past weekend’s James Black’s Bowie Heritage Festival at Old Washington Historical Park was Miller, one of the few three-time survivors on Discovery Network’s Naked and Afraid. The last events of last Saturday afternoon featured her talk about her experiences as a participant on the show. She saw three challenges, in Ecuador, South Africa and the Florida Everglades through to the end.
Miller shared with an audience at the Farmer’s Market Pavilion how she trained for her appearances, what it took for her to succeed in survival challenges that many others have tapped out on as well and a couple hints at ways producers make decisions to make the show entertaining. She also displayed the knife that helped build shelter and harvest food for her and her partners as well as other items connected to her appearances.
Miller started her talk by describing her background. She is a native of Fenton, Michigan, which she said was a small town in the middle of the mitten. “I graduated college in 2016. I worked at a nature preservation for several years. I taught wilderness survival courses and designed curriculum. I also started posting bushcraft and wilderness survival [tips] to my social media. Then 2017 rolls around and one of my friends says, hey you should apply to that television show Naked and Afraid.”
She explained the premise of the show as based on the Biblical story of Adam and Eve in placing two people, a man and a woman, in a wild setting, allowing them each to bring a survival tool and challenging them to survive on whatever they can scrounge or hunt. Furthermore, as Miller puts it, “You don't really know where you're going to be. And you're put there with a complete stranger. You're both butt naked.” Miller said that for modesty’s sake she’d often place the canvas bag she was allowed to keep so that it covered places she did not want on camera.
The state of being without clothes is part of the point of the challenge, Miller said. “I always have to explain to people the nakedness, the nudeness from the beginning of the show is not meant to be sexy or anything like that. It's just meant to make it hard. And being naked is honestly the hardest part about the show. You really can't describe the misery of being cold, freezing and being so exposed and eaten alive by insects 24/7 for 21 days. I don't think there's any harder televised challenge.” Later in the talk she said that in the struggle for survival, you forget that you are naked and so is your partner. Your prime worries are about building your shelter and keeping your fire going.
After filling in forms, being contacted by phone and then sending in videos of herself building a shelter, creating a friction fire and foraging in the woods, Miller was flown out by Discovery Network to California where she underwent physical and psychological testing, “because they do want to make sure that contestants aren’t crazy. Can you imagine being put out there in the wilderness with a crazy naked partner?”
Miller was also interviewed in person, which she said was to make sure the producers liked you. Luckily for Miller, they did and she ended up being chosen as a contestant. Her first appearance on Naked and Afraid would take her to Ecuador, to the jungle in the Amazon River valley.
Knowing ahead of time that she would be in the Amazon, Miller did what she could up in the Michigan swamp woods to prepare. “I would go shelter building. I'd wear gym shorts, and I wore a sports bra and I built shelter so I could you know, know what the bugs feel like. And I would swipe them off. I'll never forget, I sat on this log. I just sat there for a long time, and I let all of the mosquitoes feed off of me and I didn’t swipe them away. And I just let them bite me for about an hour. I said, ‘This is what she feels like the first night at least, what you're going to have to endure for probably 12 hours.’” She anticipated that on the first night in the jungle it would be difficult to build a fire to ward the insects off.
Miller described the process that goes into the choice of the one tool she could bring with her on her televised adventure. “You actually bring four items,” she said. “And the producers ultimately choose which item goes on the show with you. So when I first went to the Amazon, I brought a bug net, a knife and I brought my hand fishing reel and something else, but they ultimately gave me my fishing reel.”
A viewing of her first episode revealed that the something else Miller brought was a magnesium fire starter. She also brought a cooking pan while her partner, Chance Davis, a former Army Ranger, brought a multi-purpose knife. Both participants must wear a necklace with a small bone container that holds a microphone whose wire runs to a battery pack in the canvas bag.
Miller added another reason for her keeping the bag with her at all times. “I was very strategic on the show, and my bag placement there was always right here on my butt. And I was like, ‘They're not gonna get my butt [on camera].’”
While she was not completely successful in that endeavor on Day One of her challenge, the partners were able to build raised beds. Unfortunately, that night was still difficult, the beds falling and, because they could not get the wet tinder they found to take to flame, insects descended on the partners with a vengeance. Miller said at her talk that at least, because of her preparation in the Michigan woods, she knew how the insect attacks would feel and this helped her mentally.
One aspect of where the two built their beds, Miller said, involved the television production team’s preference, not the two survivalists’. “Honestly, the production team tells you where you need to build your shelter. They make it look like we have a choice, but we don't really have a choice. [They tell you,] ‘You need to build it here … This is where you choose to stay and you can't venture out past a certain point.” This posed a great difficulty later when their shelter ended up being flooded out because it had been built on low ground.
Like her choice to experience the bites of Michigan insects, she would be glad, too, of her choice to bring a hand-fishing reel, which she showed the attendees at her talk, observing that it “had been used to death,” to catch piranhas and other fish to eat. She told of a fearful incident in which she was in danger of losing her last hook after it snagged on a log that was partially submerged in opaque water.
“So I I remember I had to follow my line all the way to river, and it starts to get really deep. And then swim down and unhook and just hope to God that the piranha don't smell the blood from my open wounds and bite me. I got my hook and then I was able to retrieve it.” The maps the partners were given were, in the end, simply props. But she kept them and passed them around to her audience.
As the episode unfolds, Miller is shown as the more active and skillful partner, pulling a boa constrictor from a tree and killing it for a roasted meal later. Her partner even complains at times of his feelings of uselessness compared to Miller who even manages to surprise him with a red-bellied piranha she catches for much-needed protein.
Before the extraction, Miller reported she had to undergo a bit of minor surgery on infected insect bites, which produced a cyst so painful she wasn’t able to sit and had problems walking. From Ecuador, the journey to the extraction point involved floating seven miles down the Amazon on a raft (and an encounter with five other survivalists from an ongoing Naked and Afraid XL challenge) she and Davis built themselves, Miller tells the camera she has never been prouder of herself. She lost 17 pounds and gained a 7.7 Primitive Survival Rating. Davis opted to stay 20 more days with the XL camp.
Melissa’s next adventure was a 40-day challenge in South Africa during Naked and Afrida XL Season 4, which was filmed in late 2017. While on the show it appears the eleven partners do not know of one another until the taping begins, Miller said they get to know one another’s identities through social media group texting. “We didn't know what groups we're going to be in,” Miller said. “When we all got to South Africa, we were all like hanging out beforehand. And production did not like that.”
The fourth night in South Africa, specifically the basin of the Selati River, Miller said she and others heard an ominous sound outside that reminded them of the many waivers on one of the forms they had all had to sign which list manners of dying the production team could not be held responsible for, including attacks by wild creatures.
“We could hear lions chirping, doing kind of like a territorial chuffing outside of our shelter. And the next day we found out there was actually two lions in the area, two brother lions that had literally killed people,” Miller said. For this reason, professional hunters would keep an eye on the participants during the day and were at the ready to shoot any attacking creature.
The result of hearing about the two lion brothers was a decision by Miller and her two partners to build a larger shelter, keep their fires stoked at night and create fire bombs from the kindling to have on hand to scare off any other encroaching lions. But Miller said other elements of her time in South Africa were even more frightening, like sudden rainstorms dousing their fire or venomous creatures lurking a little too close.
“Lions are scary, but something that is scarier are things that you don't see, small things like insects or poisonous plants, or black mambas. When my partners and I went out for day hunting, we came back and found a shredded Black Mamba skin in our shelter. Now, that's unsettling,” she said. Then she passed around a plastic container which held something long, thin and scaly.
The physical effects of walking around in the Selati basin also told after a while. She passed around a phone showing a photo of her feet once her 40 days were over. “I had thousands and thousands of thorns embedded in my feet,” Miller said. “This took several months for all of these thorns to fall off.”
At times, Miller said, participants in the challenges do receive medical help to keep them from tapping out or needing to be removed. One survivalist was treated for malaria. Occasionally a participant suffering from weakness would be given electrolytes. She herself received treatment for a skin infection in Ecuador. (“It never made the edit,” Miller said.) The injuries that are shown are quite real, she said.
But other matters shown in the episodes Miller said were contrived by the production crew.: “In many regards, the things that are the most fake about the show is they dramatize the crap out of it. They make all these interpersonal fights and drama that don't exist. They're in editing. I will say never take what you see on face value. They will take people and villainize them a little bit more. And they will take people and like make them look a little bit more heroic.”
Miller said the hunting in her Ecuador episode was certainly real, but she could neither confirm or deny rumors that some kills on other sets were not performed by the survivalists. She did say that on days when production would arrive and she and her partners were exhausted, they would receive helpful gifts if they summoned the energy to go on a hunt or participate in a photo session. But when production was not on scene, between late afternoon and mid-morning the next day, it was a lonely feeling. “So from 5pm till 9am the next morning, you are alone. There is no buddy to help you or save you. And if a hidden lion or crazy lion decides that it wants to come eat you, you're probably screwed,” Miller said.
Speaking of eating, Miller found herself dining on some truly exotic cuisine, and as the challenges went on, her taste buds became more sensitive so that a saltine cracker could be compared to the most gourmet slice of pizza. Miller did list some of what she consumed during her three Naked and Afraid appearances.
“I've eaten monitor lizards,” she said. “I've eaten turtles, snapping turtles. I've eaten piranha. I've eaten Amazon peacock bass. I've tried Scorpion, tarantula grubs, worms. I tried eyeballs of just about every animal. I tried impala testicles. I tried to eat impala penis but those are actually inedible. I've tried to eat a warthog brain, warthog eyeballs, warthog eye sockets, which tasted like spaghetti when you're really hungry. All types of snakes, a rattlesnakes I caught. I caught a rattlesnake with my hand and that was never shown to the public because they said, ‘That's a bad example.’”
During the question and answer period, which went on for about half an hour, Miller was asked which of these foods she had named tasted the best. She chose Amazon peacock bass. “I had it on day seven in in Ecuador. I caught it. And it was so delicious … it tastes like a fatty, less fishy salmon. Really tasty. Also the lizard eggs were really delicious. Really milky, and tasty.”
Another audience member followed up on the first question, asking what it was like to eat an eyeball. Miller responded that eyeballs were important survival food, containing much-needed sodium as well as water that the body needs. How do they taste? “They don't taste bad. They just taste like slightly gelatinous little pieces of salt.”
I asked Miller how the participants passed their downtime. I knew they were not allowed devices or books in their wilderness locations. “One of the most fascinating parts about that show is you realize how distracted we are in modern day life, and how fast time goes by because time does go by painfully slow. Two days feels like two weeks. … And honestly one of the things that we we talked about so much, me and Jake, when we were out there [in Florida], we would go grocery shopping every night. We would lie in bed. We’d say ‘Okay, what's the aisle,’ and we would talk about what we're going to buy in that aisle and what we're going to make every night.”
But being deprived of her devices also helped remind her of the essential things about life in civilization. “And you're really it's it really makes you remember what is important in your life when you're taking away all your material possessions, all the distractions it really brings you back to what matters and you just think about your family and your pets. And just your bed,” Miller said.
After her talk, Miller also told me that she very much longed for a journal and a pen. After her shows, she did sit down to record everything she could remember about her experiences.
Another questioner asked what her family and friends thought of her decision to go on the show and take on the ultimate survival challenge. “Dad thought it was awesome. I've always been his tomboy. I've always been his jock. So my dad's like, ‘Oh, man, that's badass’ Like, I can't wait to tell mom. But she's said ‘I don't want to hear where you're going.’ My boyfriend at the time was really supportive of it. He was just 100% for it.”
While many of her friends, including friends of her boyfriend at the time, raised a point about her being in the wilderness for weeks with a strange, naked dude, Miller was clear that in those settings, sex is the farthest thing from anyone’s mind. “Day by day, you're just so hungry. And when you're in a survival situation, you're not thinking about that, because your body like evolutionary wise, you don't want to procreate when you just want to eat.”
Asked whether or not the starvation experienced by the participants sometimes caused hallucinations, Miller said for her it did not, but that after days of fasting she found an enhanced ability to focus: “It's a evolutionary thing, by like, day two or three, your mind actually gets clearer, because when our ancestors would get hungry, around day three, a survival tactic naturally clicked kicks in in your brain.”
She was also asked about her experience of trying to hunt the herds of animals that were often filmed going through her location. “It's really hard to run out there. One thing that sucks too is think of a camera crew in their smelly laundry detergent falling behind you, trying to film you. They're scaring away the animals,” Miller said. “The only time we had kills in South Africa was when the people got away from the camera crew. And they went out there with their diary camera, and they shot it themselves.” Afterward, the crew would ask the survivalists to reenact their nighttime deeds.
Miller additionally disclosed that the production crew was not allowed to eat or drink in front of the participants, but that at times she and others would follow the crew to their base camp a mile away and watch them. On one such occasion she found a hairbrush that she used, prompting one crew member later to compliment her on how lustrous her hair was.
Another audience member asked whether the participants were allowed to make clothing. Miller said she had gotten in trouble with production because she had torn apart her arrow quiver to make moccasins. This was an infraction, but clothing can be made from items found in the wild, Miller said. She showed an example of makeshift underwear she had made in South Africa to cover herself to some degree there.
“This is so tiny. But this made me feel so much more decent and humanized. ... It literally just made me feel like a human again. The front part of that is impala skin that I had tanned and this is a little bushbuck’s tail that hung over. This was just some fun little flirty things that I wanted because you still want to look cute when you're out” Miller said.
The most memorable sight she saw during her adventures, Miller said, was that of a group of giraffes in South Africa. “I was by myself. It was a moment that I had with myself. And I just was walking alone. I turned and I just saw this mother giraffe. Then I saw a little baby giraffe come out behind her. It was just this really kind of cool moment of clarity where I was seeing this giraffe family just go on about their business.”
Miller said that while she was paid for her time on the show, the amount if divided by the hours she spent would be below minimum wage. She had not expected to get paid at all, however. She also said her three Naked and Afraid adventures were enough. She does not see herself trying it or another show like it again, despite requests from producers of the new Naked and Afraid spinoff Last One Standing, because her job does not allow her to be absent for so long.
The last question asked about any lifestyle changes she made after her experiences. Miller said there were none of these, that her personality had not changed but it did change her relationship with civilization. “It just makes you a lot more grateful for things. Just the fact that I can go turn on a sink and have water like that is like insane to me. Out there it takes you two hours to get water. You go get the water, you have to build a fire, you have to boil the water, you have to wait while the water cools down. That's like an hour and a half process just to get water. So you realize all the luxuries we have,” she said.
Since her time on Discovery Network’s marquee reality show, Miller has continued to contribute to the world of survival education with her reviews of knives and other equipment on her website. Her youtube channel features even more recent videos not only of her knife and gear reviews but of instructional material for would-be survivalists, too.
