not gonna happen
not in the foggiest is that ever gonna
happen
i'm duane fields a polar explorer i've
spent so many years traveling
in and doing work and carrying out
expeditions in the arctic regions and
the first
black man from britain to have walked to
the magnetic north pole today
we're going to be focusing on polar
exploration movies we're going to be
judging
how realistic they are
[Music]
he's saying take a deep breath what you
want to do is slow your breathing down
control your breathing
it stops you from panicking what you do
is you get your arms out
you kick your legs and you wiggle your
body up onto the ice
unless he's got injury where he can't
kick he might take the rope
go to doc he seems relatively calm
despite
the the shock that he would be feeling
i've done exercises where i've thrown
myself into a hole in ice just to get
you
accustomed to the feeling and the shock
you get in there
you dip yourself down
[Applause]
now you can talk to me because now i've
brought everything down to a slower pace
she's coming to you you're putting
another body
whether it's a dog's body a human body
another body in danger
if the dog falls through the ice it's
gonna panic it might cause the ice to
crack more
he's also eight maybe nine meters away
he could easily throw the rope that
distance and save
risking the dog's life
[Music]
some of the best trained dogs in the
world still only follow one command
go left go right go straight go down
come back
sit uh jump in terms of put this over
doc's head and shoulder
that's not realistic let's be honest
if i'd walked across some ice and
someone behind me
fell through the ice i'd assume that
there's a weakness there
my first thing is lay down spread myself
as flat as i can
get a board get a piece of a
a branch anything to spread my weight
and to assist a rescue
throw the rope to the person i wouldn't
go towards them
i'd give it a six because like most
people who doesn't want a well-trained
dog
what they're hoping for is that sample
of ice has trapped
bubbles of air which gives them an idea
of what the atmosphere was like at the
time
you don't know what the extent of it's
going to be it does crack
it's a sound
if the crack starts to form you get away
from the crack you raise the alarm and
you get away from the crack
uh what i found was we'd go to sleep in
the tent on you know a bit of frozen
ocean
and we'd wake up to small sounds and
only when it's silent there isn't much
wind can you hear these slight cracking
and it goes it almost sounds echoey as
it
as it echoes and resonates through the
ice itself
grabs the samples that he's collected it
looks like four or five of them
now these things aren't light you cannot
jump a 12
foot 10 foot gap uh carrying
you know 20 25 kilos you can't do it
not gonna happen not in the foggiest
can't imagine he would have been sat in
the office
the office tent uh uh and thought oh
i'll just keep my ice axe on me
i've kept it in in my bag to the side or
at the back of my bag
um generally i don't keep it around my
waist unless i'm using it at that point
if i'm climbing a nice wall for
use it's recreational usage or when i go
for a walk in
you know high altitude or snowy um
terrain
i'll carry one in case you slip you can
use it to stop yourself
i genuinely don't walk around with an
ice axe um on me
but the ice itself is where you where
what's holding you um
as long as it's cold enough the ice is
hard enough it will hold your weight
they were made of wood with maybe a
steel tip
nowadays they're made of aluminium
mostly so they're super lightweight
super strong you could you could
comfortably support yourself and i'd
give it a four
um entertainment value it's it's a it's
an entertainment film
she's holding something which is metal
with a
exposed skin you don't want to do that
in the cold
what happens is your skin is always
going to be slightly warmer
than the thing that you're touching that
that thin layer of moisture in your skin
or warmth on your skin will melt the ice
on the metal object
just slightly so you almost get stuck to
it normally
what you do is you'd allow it to warm up
you'd warm it up
slowly um using and
arguably people say not use hot water
other people say use
warm water oh my god
that looks like advanced um frostbite
if it wasn't frostbite and it was frost
nip you might see some discoloration
you might feel uh some numbness some
stinging maybe
i had my goggles on which was perfect i
had a bit of material just covering the
goggle
and it was just rubbing on my nose and
where that material got so cold the end
of my nose
turned darker and peeled off the outer
layers of skin
were were dead with frostbite the the
cold causes all the cells
to burst so cell wall is burst that
cell's dead it's useless the skin cells
there all the way through to the
nerve nerve endings
nothing
i'm gonna have to amputate these things
no no way
get them taken off as quickly as
possible prevent further further damage
it really does get like that they
start to change color it goes from maybe
a a pale color to a
dark blue then it starts to get darker
and darker until it turns black
now the way you can avoid it is we
layer up as many layers as you can give
that scene a solid
you know eight nine out of ten
[Music]
oh i like that he's taking shelter
in this in this natural formation a cave
of some sort
and it looks like he's piled up the snow
at the entrance to keep the the air
inside warm
which is a good idea but you should be
careful because you don't want the the
carbon dioxide
to build up
[Music]
polar bears are brilliant hunters
they've got one of the best senses smell
in the natural kingdom and
you can hear it outside you know taking
big breaths in
and that's a telltale sign it's just
walking around sniffing the air tracking
down where that smells coming from
remember these things are used to
hunting seal and finding
carcasses washed up on beaches from
miles away
normally they'd find a seal underneath
the ice they'll dig it out
take the young take the seal and and
that's their meal so it's doing exactly
what it would normally do there
exactly you're supposed to do loads of
noise be ready to defend yourself if you
have to
and use the use the use the flare people
do get attacked by polar bears
it happens they tend to happen nearest
settlements
or it tends to happen when the polar
bear is either ill
finds it difficult to hunt i'll give
this one a solid
9 out of 10.
no thank you
i like this you can see some frost
starting to form on his jacket and i
think i can see a little bit forming on
his on his moustache as well
so that's pretty accurate
you don't want to stop for a main meal
every you know two or three hours
so what you do is you have a bag with
food the calorific content is very high
and you put your hand in your pocket
chop down your mouth every so often now
inevitably you're going to get someone
who eats a lot more than you
and part of a team dynamic is you stop
and you share out whatever you've got
now if everyone does that it balances
out over the day or over the week
pizza
cheeseburgers see sometimes when i'm out
i look forward to having a jelly baby at
the next
allocated stop that that me or my team
have decided it could be any treat
just having something to look forward to
it helps you take that next step
so i think that's spot on when i first
went to the arctic um i think
two three days before the end we'd been
walking for about 20 20
22 days was the total journey time we'd
been walking
for about 19 hours and i remember
thinking oh gosh i'm hungry
and as soon as i said that my mind
started to think about a chicken biryani
and a lamb korma
that i'd had three weeks earlier so i
kept looking at my teammates saying oh
gosh
it's like i can almost smell it we can't
go in that direction
polar winds it feels agonizing when you
see these images of people
in polar extremes and they've got their
eyes
around their eyes are blistering up and
their lips are cracked it's the wind for
the most part that's doing that
having one huge jacket is good but the
best option is have
multiple layers to trap multiple layers
of air
there he doesn't have any goggles on
luckily the little
girl i think it is does have goggles on
and
it must be so scary to think that you
can't open your eyes to
try and navigate using whatever tools
are available
what looks like snow or mist or it looks
like mist
it's actually snow it's called spin
drift and that's the wind kicking up a
small amount of snow and making it swirl
and blow past
generally about 10 15 kilometers it will
start picking up
bits of snow so you can almost tell
roughly what the wind speed is by how
much snow is being
been moved along and how how high up
that is
the details such as the frost i'd say
i'd give it a solid eight
maybe eight and a half out of ten
observe my signals
one pull on the tube means half a
phantom slack
um it just instantly brought me back to
the books i've read about
shackleton and scott and you know ships
being stuck in antarctica over winter
because they've become trapped in the
ice and then burning bits of the ship
just to keep warm
there should be a surge in here they're
just below mr collins
cold water your body loses temperature
about 20 to 25 times quicker
he's using what looks like a spear um
to to chisel away at the ice at this
time in history
uh there weren't any tried and tested
methods for stuff like this
it was you did what you had to do using
the tools that you had to hand
i've read accounts of people chopping
away at the ice using a pickaxe you know
tying ropes to ships and pulling them
backwards
and then pulling them forwards again and
taking a different route and you know
using the dogs to pull and
going ahead and breaking up the ice
ahead of the ship with modern ships
they've got hardened hulls so the hulls
may be twice as thick it's made of steel
it's ready for impacting ice they've got
powerful engines
that can break the ice up they've got
radar to detect the thickness of the ice
i think the arctic has this mysticism
about it where we like familiarity we
think of the arctic is
it changes every single year the maps
that we have this year
they won't be perfect because come next
year
the ice has fallen some has melted
because so much of it isn't visible
there's a lot that we don't know and
that doesn't sit well within the human
mind does it to
our imagination start playing games with
us i love this i'd give this a solid 9
out of 10.
we're not getting out of here alive
but neither is that thing why would you
say that you're perfectly capable at
least three of you
perfectly capable uh you've got all the
tools to escape
you've got all the means to make fire
and to get a good distance away
if something's happened and you're
isolated you leave
you head to the nearest populated area
or a place you could get help and you
radio back what's happened or what you
need or what support is necessary
i noticed that they are light in uh what
looks like
tnt is it tri-nitro teluene
um rods uh they lighten it right next to
their chest but they've also got other
rods right
next to their chest i don't think that's
something you do
[Music]
yes fire is a good option every single
predator i've ever come across is afraid
of fire
simple fact the only things that are
attracted by fire generally
are insects i don't think it's ever a
good idea to blow up a hole in the
middle of your camp
you've got what looks like a tracked
vehicle there which is it could be some
kind of small bulldozer or lifter you've
got the means to escape
and to survive short term the biggest
threat out there
is never going to be the wildlife if you
prepare for that
it's fine if you carry a shotgun for the
most extremes of circumstances the
biggest threats always going to be
um exposure making sure i'm prepared for
whatever the weather's going to throw at
me
no not likely to face an alien i
love a sci-fi movie more than most so
i'm going to give this one a five
but in terms of how realistic it is i'm
sorry it's not it's not doing much
don't do this luke come on give me a
sign here no there's gonna be um a
bright
star wars super fan that's going to come
and tell me exactly what animal that is
but it'll keep you warm until i get the
shelter up
you should have had that up at the first
hint that the weather was going to turn
had the shelter up
secondly in a survival situation you
take shelter where you can get it
i've heard of people sheltering in
animal carcasses in desert environments
where they've come across a dead animal
but i've never heard of anyone finding
an animal big enough in
an arctic environment to to to sleep
inside
the average polar bear is probably about
eight eight and a half feet tall
and that's it standing up to fit inside
of a polar bear torso
it's gonna be a lot of work
you're in the arctic and you need
shelter quickly your best bet is to try
and dig
a snow hole or um just pile up some snow
to
to to give you a break from the wind
gosh i i'm a star wars fan
i'd give this a 5 out of 10.
[Music]
[Applause]
in antarctica the terrain is treacherous
antarctica has the longest mountain
range in the world
it's got areas where it's ice rubble you
can see in the scene there were
piles of ice they were pushing this
little longbow that vision of seeing
completely flat arctic tundra or
completely flat terrain it's a myth it
very very rarely presents itself
i'm not doing it stupid
look at the hull you're supposed to be
capturing this cutter and you're turning
the pants
right nowadays i think people tell you
more about what you do what you're doing
and why you're doing it
i've been on expeditions where similar
things have happened we're walking
across the arctic you know
we're day 10 day 11 in my pulk which is
my sled
just started to feel heavier and i
realized that um
it was irrational when i went to my
teammate they you know walked ahead i
said look my pulse heavy you guys packed
it wrong
my teammate laughed at me said but
dwayne you packed your pulk yourself
fun to me i hadn't eaten properly that
morning and the evening before
and that's all it took for me to feel
weaker tired drained
and fatigued give it a six or seven i'd
give it seven out of 10.
so my journey into exploration was a bit
of a strange one i you know googled
north pole
a few names popped up and one of the
names was matthew henson
and i was drawn to matthew henson
because he was a black man
and i thought i've never seen a black
man in any arctic
book or anything i think when people
watch tvs and movies and shows and read
the biggest myth they get is that only
one type of person goes there
you always see it's a white male who's
about 50 years old
bearded who's well weathered got some
money behind them that does this and
that's not the truth
we want more women doing it we want more
people from all different backgrounds
if we follow what we're seeing on tv and
in magazines and historical accounts
you you'd think that no women had ever
been to
the poll thanks for watching if you like
this click on the video above