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Comment by dane-pgp | Hacker News Reader

The idea of being dumped in the middle of nowhere seems like it has scope for much more vicarious entertainment. Imagine a challenge where a point on the Earth's land surface is chosen at random, and competitors are dropped there (at random times of the year) and told to reach the nearest airport. They could then sell the vlogs to a production company.

Of course there would be rules about not starting in active warzones, or countries where you would be locked up as a spy, but I'm sure viewers would accept that. Also, it would be a bit unfair if a competitor had to start on a remote island, but I recently calculated that 99% of the Earth's land surface is accounted for by continents and islands no smaller than Sicily. The other edge case would be starting in Antarctica, but people do complete solo crossings of that.

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Not exactly the same, but maybe you'll find it interesting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlPCxI8eOnY&list=PLsplwj_Ee0...

Group of people get dropped in a field in Amsterdam and need to reach Monaco in 5 days to win a 5k prize, the catch is there have no money on them so they have to rely on the kindness of strangers.

I recall watching a TV series just like that 20 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_(game_show)#UK_version. Was very entertaining. I do think it has potential in the modern vlog world as well.

I've also been thinking about a time-travel themed spin off to this idea. Imagine you were sent back in time some thousands of years, to a random location on Earth, and you had to communicate (via some fictional device) to a referee in the present day, telling them where you are, and when you are, in order to be "rescued"/win.

Largely it would be the same challenge as the present day version, except you couldn't use vehicles (except riding horses/camels), and you'd have to navigate using only information that would have been visible at that time, like mountains, rivers, and long-lasting settlements.

To enforce this fiction, the players could receive information from a team mate that had access to a 3D model of their location as it would have looked in the relevant historic time period. That team mate would then be able to instruct them which direction to walk in, and which geographical features to follow.

Every night, players would try to observe the location of the moon and planets relative to constellations, in order to calculate which century, year, month and approximate day they are in. Of course, the players on the ground would know the answer, but would have to show how they worked it out, and their team mate would have to perform the same in a 3D model which uses a planetarium system for rendering the night sky of the intended period.

To accurately determine their location without cheating, the player on the ground would have to find their way to a location which existed at the time, and whose exact position is known in the present day, such as the Parthenon or Stone Henge.

This would be a fun short story from the perspective of a "native"

> To accurately determine their location without cheating, the player on the ground would have to find their way to a location which existed at the time, and whose exact position is known in the present day, such as the Parthenon or Stone Henge.

Survival in the wilderness sucks though, especially without a tribe, so for this competition to avoid turning into a snuff film, the contestants would have to be dropped somewhere survivable, which would almost guarantee that the terrain is easily identifiable without human landmarks. I.e. no Antarctica, no Saharan or Midwestern desert, etc.

Then I think everyone would just converge on the strategy of finding and following waterways because the probability of being within a reasonable distance of a human settlement with a surviving landmark is relatively low. Most medium to large lakes were formed either millions of years ago or right after the last ice age so between them, local topography, and visible distant mountains it'd be relatively easy to triangulate a location.

For the survivability aspect, I was imagining that these "time travellers" would have a device that could create unlimited free food and water (basically a support crew following them).

You're right about the strategy, though. If a player could find their way to the coast, and knew their rough latitude (by observing Polaris, for example), their team mate could probably work out which river they had been following, and then guide them back from the coast to some ancient monument.

There is even an episode on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-fTr31Hg7o

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