INTERVIEW: Dan Link tries to be the ‘Last One Standing’ on new ‘Naked and Afraid’
Photo: Dan Link competes on the new season of Naked and Afraid: Last One Standing. Photo courtesy of Discovery Channel / Provided by press rep with permission.
Scientist and researcher Dan Link is a common presence in the Naked and Afraid franchise on Discovery, and he’s back for more primitive survivalism on the new season of Naked and Afraid: Last One Standing, which premieres tonight, July 14, at 8 p.m. on the network. This is Link’s fifth time challenging himself on the show, and he has come close to winning the competitive series in the past (even placing second). He is in it to win it this time.
“Oh, to mentally commit it doesn’t take me long at all,” Link said in a recent phone interview. “I have a day job as a professional biologist, so I have to take that into consideration. Sometimes scheduling is hard, but I’m always up for another adventure. … Typically you have a few weeks to get ready, sometimes a little bit longer and prepare yourself. This last one, I had to reschedule some things with work. I had 10 days where I realized that I was going out on this previous Last One Standing, so that was a bit of a mental loop to jump through to prepare myself mentally and physically and skill-wise to jump into this insane competition with less than two weeks advance [notice]. But, I don’t know, it’s all part of the adventure.”
On this new form of the successful Naked and Afraid franchise, survivalists head into the wild for a 45-day challenge that sees them fighting for tools that will secure them food, water, fire and shelter, according to press notes. Joining Link for the competitive series are 13 other Naked and Afraid alumni, but this time around, there is no tool sharing amongst the contestants.
For Link, this TV survivalism journey began approximately six years ago.
“About in 2018,” he said, “I reached out to some people from Naked and Afraid. I just sent a basic email actually to start. It said, ‘Hey, I’d be interested in potentially doing this.’ I sent a little information about myself, and they responded, had a couple of interviews. And it was about a month after that, I did my first challenge in Mexico. I have a lot of biological skills, a lot of basic outdoor skills, but I definitely at the time didn’t call myself a primitive survivalist, so to speak. But I think I’ve certainly became one over the years. … I’m constantly experimenting and learning what works and what doesn’t, what’s worth expending my energy on. I’ve survived in many different environments now, I think five to be exact, and each time it’s completely different. Each time I’ve learned ways to adapt my skill set to the new environment and grow, and especially with this Last One Standing, every bit of knowledge and skill I’ve learned along the way gets put to the test. I’ve grown a lot over the years. It’s been a wild and interesting ride. Half the time I’m out there, I’m standing there in the bush, running from elephants or rhinos or something, [and] I see myself in the third person. What choices in my life led me to this moment, running around naked in the wilderness? But that’s all part of the fun of it, I guess.”
Being a biologist has helped Link with the many challenges on Naked and Afraid. He has a skilled understanding of plants and animals, and he utilizes this knowledge while in the wild. And for this season of the show, he needed that knowledge because the contestants were dropped in Africa’s Munzwa Valley for the competition.
“I think what’s been more beneficial is my analytical mind and being able to look at a situation even before the challenge,” Link said. “You’re going to see on this next Last One Standing, the challenges are insane. They pull from every bit of primitive knowledge and skill and physical ability that you have, and you have to put all that together in order to succeed in an efficient way. Not only to succeed, but you have to succeed faster and more efficiently than everyone else in order to advance. Being able to look at things analytically and problem solve like that has been a massive advantage.”
Link added: “I didn’t call myself a primitive survivalist when I started this whole journey, and with just a month to try and download all of that information to prepare myself for my first challenge, I tried to think of the most efficient way to learn and prepare. I quickly realized that didn’t necessarily mean reading a survival guide and memorizing every single trap design or every single edible plant in the environment. It involved learning shortcuts, learning how to be adaptable. For edible plants, for example, learning the edibility rules where you can test things that you haven’t interacted with before to see if they’re edible, to see if they’re safe. With trap design, learning different mechanisms, learning the basics of knots. … Anyone can read a survival guide and learn 16 different shelter designs, but often all of that goes out the window when you’re in a different environment. If you’re in a bamboo forest or if you’re in a pine forest or something like that, somewhere you’ve never been, sometimes all those shelter designs go out the window, and you just have to figure out what makes the most sense to advance you, keep you safe and keep you in the challenge.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Naked and Afraid: Last One Standing, featuring Dan Link, premieres tonight, July 14, at 8 p.m. on Discovery. Click here for more information.
