INTERVIEW: ‘Naked and Afraid’ alumni test their skills on ‘Dual Survival’

Dual Survival stands out among reality programs for its showcase of different terrains and many survival skills on display. However, note to viewers: It’s probably best to keep this type of surviving to the professionals.

The new season of Dual Survival kicks off Wednesday, Aug. 24 at 9 p.m. on Discovery Channel. This set of episodes will see alumni of the Naked and Afraid franchise, EJ Snyder and Jeff Zausch, teaming up to brave the wilds of a desert in Brazil, swamps in Louisiana and the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia, among other locations. Both survivors were seen on Naked and Afraid, which finds two people surviving in the wild for three weeks, and Naked and Afraid XL, which documents a larger group of survivalists in the wild for 40 days.

Snyder is a survival instructor with 25 years of experience in the United States Army. Zausch is an expert hunter, fisherman and peak climber. Together they bring complementary skills that improve their chances of surviving these harsh environments.

“Naked and Afraid is a marathon,” Zausch said recently in a phone interview. “That’s something that you can pace yourself and really pace your survival strategy over 21 or over 40 days as we did in Naked and Afraid XL, but for Dual Survival, Dual Survival is a sprint. So really EJ and I are going balls to the wall, 100 miles an hour, as quickly and aggressively as we can to survive the environment.”

Snyder said he and Zausch have a brotherly relationship. At times, they approach a survival situation with different thought processes, but they almost always work together on their common goal. “So the fans aren’t going to lose that little bit of debate over what survival strategy to use, but what they will see is a whole lot of super teamwork and having each other’s back the whole way,” Snyder said. “When you make a decision to do something, you do it as a team, and you stick together no matter what.”

Snyder complimented Zausch on his outdoors skills, calling him the best hunter and fisherman he’s ever met. Those skills come in handy, especially when finding and capturing food in the wild.

When watching these survival shows, it becomes obvious to viewers that there are some basic obstacles the teams need to overcome. They are the basics of life: food, water, shelter, fire. Zausch was the food person on the new season of Dual Survival, using the skills he honed in his home state of Idaho.

Snyder said Zausch has Macgyver-like skills and constantly thinks outside the box. “He’s got wisdom beyond his years,” Snyder said. “He’s an old soul in his body because I think some of his father is there in spirit with him because I’ve met a lot of young guys in their late 20s, and I can only speak to two guys that I know that almost act or have the wisdom of a 40-year-old. And Jeff is clearly that guy.”

Zausch was also quick to point out the skills of Snyder. “I mean there is nobody on the planet that I would rather be stuck in a survival situation with other than this man,” Zausch said. “I mean the bond that we developed on Naked and Afraid, it’s a strong one. I really do view EJ as my brother. I view him as family, and, you know, we don’t always agree on every survival strategy that we may face. But EJ, he’s been in the U.S. military for over 25 years. There’s very little on this earth that that man has not experienced and seen. Even if we disagree, I can still trust him. I can trust his knowledge. I can trust his judgment, and I believe he feels the same about me, especially with hunting.”

On the upcoming season of Dual Survival, the two TV stars face almost every type of terrain in the world. The only one missing from the new season is an Arctic or winter environment.

Zausch was particularly impressed with the desert environment in Brazil, which will be featured on the season premiere. The two faced the heat of the sun, dry sand, few food resources and almost no water. This was an interesting difference from their Naked and Afraid days. Typically, Snyder and Zausch excelled in areas where the animals, like lions or hyenas, posed a threat to them. In this desert, the environment itself was the harshest obstacle.

“In my opinion, the most difficult environments to survive in are those that do not provide any resources such as a desert,” Zausch said. “But we’ve also been to Louisiana, which is just the opposite. You know, the resource is everywhere. There’s food literally crawling up your pant leg, often being in the form of some venomous snake or spider, so the food is no problem in a location such as Louisiana.”

When their respective TV careers began, it took some getting used to the camera operators, the fame and the social-media exposure. “I had been surviving in a number of environments for years, and the TV thing was very new to me,” Zausch said. “It was very difficult to work hand in hand with television while also trying to survive in the wild, but during Naked and Afraid, that’s when I developed my love for television. It wasn’t until a few weeks after figuring out all the bugs that I really developed a love for it.”

That appreciation has led to many fan letters, especially from younger viewers who want to grow up and become survivalists. “It’s really those messages that I receive that keeps me pushing,” Zausch said. “There’s a lot of people out there that cannot … physically do the things that we do, but by watching us on TV, they get to live through us by going along on adventures with us on television. To me, that’s very special.”

Zausch grew up in the mountains of Idaho, and from a young age he took to the outdoors. He learned to hunt and then eventually moved into mountaineering and summiting several mountains in the northwestern United States. He coupled his love for hunting and mountaineering into an interest in survival. He would head into the forest for weeks at a time to hunt his own food and build his own shelters.

Zausch remembers one story when an historic blizzard was about to hit Idaho. It was predicted to be the worst storm in years, and a young Zausch asked his parents if he could weather the blizzard in the mountains behind the house. “Of course, my mother thought it was a horrible idea, and she said I couldn’t go,” he said. “But I talked my dad into it, and eventually my dad talked my mom into letting me go. And that night I snowshoed up into the mountains, and I threw up a simple shelter. And I spent the entire night out in this horrific blizzard. It was so cold, and it dumped several feet of snow that night. And it was so miserable, but it was so beautiful at the same time.”

Snyder’s life has been different but has followed its own path to survival skills. As a child, Snyder wanted to be an actor-stuntman, but at the age of 18, his mother dissuaded him of the idea. Instead he joined the U.S. Army and served his country for a quarter of a century. After 25 years of service, he still needed to figure out his post-military career.

“I was stationed in Hawaii, and I started dabbling in TV, trying to see if I could realize this dream of mine because I’m the kind of guy that doesn’t quit anything,” he said. “I’m very driven, so I started doing some acting and some stunt work in Hawaii. And I started doing producing and started trying to get into military technical advising for films. I thought that was a neat way to have a career after the Army, and when I retired, I left Hawaii, moved to North Carolina with my family and still tried to pursue it but quickly found myself thrown into the reality world of television.”

When he was working as a contract survival instructor for the government and teaching future Green Berets how to survive behind enemy lines, he auditioned for Dual Survival. That was four years ago, and unfortunately he didn’t get the part. His consolation prize was a stint on Naked and Afraid, and that began Snyder’s reality TV career. He eventually met Zausch on the Naked and Afraid XL challenge, and now the two are surviving together.

Snyder relies on several unique tactics when surviving — everything from watching his water intake during training to building a tolerance to local water supplies. These skills, along with the lessons he learned from Zausch, are on display on Dual Survival.

“I think the audience will see that Jeff and I come to certain points where we have to make some pretty crazy and critical decisions to advance our own survival because I’m the kind of guy that I do not like the situation to dictate my actions,” he said. “I like my actions to dictate the situation, and I only trust that myself and my partner will be able to get us out of that situation.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Dual Survival premieres Wednesday, Aug. 24 at 9 p.m. on Discovery Channel. Click here for more information.