I Survived Alone on a Deserted Island for 3 Days

I'm stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Central America. I have no food, no water, and no shelter. I need to survive out here for the next three days until rescue comes. A tropical storm is rolling in off the coast now, and there's no time to waste. Yes! I've been failing at everything that I trained to do. Yeah, Lexi, what's that? No, no, no. What do you mean? I mean, we're like on the way, so I don't think it counts. I don't think it counts. A few months back, I attempted to survive alone for the very first time in the Amazon rainforest, and that challenge pushed my limits further than anything I've ever done before. Ah, it really hurt. I'm okay. But this time, everything is going to be different. Now I only have five days to learn everything I'm going to need to know to survive out here. Well, I'm turning back now from what's my doing with my life. There's nothing here. One day at a time, I'm going to focus on setting up camp now. I set up my hammock on a ridge overlooking the ocean in hopes that the wind would protect me from these sand fleas. Next, it was time to learn my first real skill on the island, building a shelter. Being immersed in nature like this unlocks a kind of creativity I haven't felt since I was a little kid. Wow, that's so fun. That's so satisfying. I suddenly notice every detail, finding the perfect piece of driftwood for the structure, the healthiest palm leaves for shelter, and using bark for rope. It is now the end of day one, and I gotta say, we have made so much progress with base camp. Look at this thing behind me. This is amazing. Learning how to build a strong structure with the resources around me feels like it's my only defense against the storms on the horizon. It's all about balance. First skill of the day today is making a fire, and this is a little bit outside of my comfort zone because it's actually a bow drill fire, which means we're not using any type of fire starter or flint. I honestly have no idea how I'm going to be able to learn this this quickly. Got it. Got something. Stop smoking. You almost had that. It's so hard. Arms are so tired. I've been trying to do this for like an hour. It's infuriating. My arms are just like shaking at this point. I don't have anything left. It's so much harder than it looks. Challenge is failed at the moment. I'll be back. Out in survival, how many of these should I be aiming to collect and drink a day? 8 to 10 is about a half a gallon, so minimum in this kind of heat with the amount of work you're doing, like absolute minimum 10, maybe 15 to 20 ideally. If you're out for 3-4 days, you're looking at collecting maybe 60 coconuts. It's a big job. It takes a lot. That probably takes a lot. And then you dehydrate collecting a lot of coconuts, so you have to get a couple more just to make up for that energy loss. So first crushed coconut, how many more to go? Probably going to end up doing at least 75 of these by the end of the trip if I can manage to climb coconut trees to acquire them. That looked really hard. Oh my God. I'm not going to lie, this definitely feels like the scariest thing to attempt out here, but there's only one way to find out if I'm going to be able to do it or not. That's exhausting. Wow. Feels like impossible. Palm tree one, flexi zero. Gonna have to work on that one. The big thing to remember with this is that this is literally a gun. This is going to put a hole in a human being just as much as a 22 rifle or anything like that. Like it's going to put a little hole in you, and this is going to flop up, and it's going to be okay. I just caught my first fish with a spear. That was so much fun. I was feeling a little bit discouraged after the fire, and I did not want to come home empty-handed, but looks like we got some fresh fish for dinner tonight. That's it. Coming apart pretty easy. Yeah, actually it's perfectly cooked. Wow. A little fishy, but it's food. I'm about halfway through my training now, and to be honest with you, I'm not feeling very prepared. I don't know how I'm going to be physically strong enough to build a shelter, make a fire, catch fish, all while having had collected enough coconuts to be able to sustain myself for water before extreme dehydration. It's just feeling like the point in the challenge where feeling a bit desperate, and I honestly have no idea how this is going to work out. Only have a little bit longer to learn all these skills before I'm out completely on my own. This is considered the most poisonous tree on the planet. The fruit is also known as the death apple, but this little apple would be enough to kill a few people. Apparently it tastes really good for about the first 30 seconds, and then it will just absolutely start burning your throat, and this would kill you. So definitely number one thing to know out here. We definitely have some blacktip sharks out here. We've got stingrays that if you step on them, they can definitely inject you with a poison that really, really hurts. There's the banded sea snake. It's one of the most deadly snakes in the entire world. There's crocodiles occasionally, and then there's another one we've run into called the Brazilian wandering spider, which if that bites you, you're going to be in a lot of pain for probably a solid three days and probably need to get evac'd. And then there's what's known as a stonefish. One touch from the stonefish, and it feels like you've injected the hottest hot sauce underneath your skin, and you're going to get a lot of pain. So with all those things aside, all the poisonous animals and things you got to look after, really it's just having a good head on your shoulders. It's always the unexpected out here. We are just getting up to the wet season when we are having some really good lightning storms, and so we're taking every precaution to make sure that during the lightning storms, we're in a safe place. Every survival expert in the world is like an expert in their own backyard. They know it so well. Then they get lost on a deserted island. When you don't know the names of everything, how do you figure out what's good for what? Every resource on this island seems to have a purpose if you know what you're looking for. Palm leaves can be woven into protection from the sun. So much you can do with a palm tree. Never ceases to amaze me. Gourds can be carved into cups, which help for boiling water. And even dried bark can be transformed into a useful tool. Now we have rope. Everything that I'm learning on this island is possible because someone else learned it before me. How to build a shelter, how to hunt, how to make fire. These are the kind of skills that humans spent thousands of years developing, refining, and passing down. Now I want to say thank you to the sponsor of this video, Hungry Minds, for making all of this knowledge even more accessible than ever. They created the book, The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding Civilization, which is a luxury coffee table book packed with humanity's most important inventions, discoveries, and ideas. What I love about it is it makes you realize how much knowledge we really take for granted. Out here, even something as simple as weaving a hat feels like a groundbreaking discovery. The book has over 400 pages of beautifully illustrated topics covering everything from engineering and science to art and design. It's one of those books where you can open it to a random page and immediately fall down the rabbit hole of learning something new. There's even a hidden quest built into the book for readers to solve. So it feels like the perfect gift for yourself or any of the explorers in your life. And if you're ever stranded on a deserted island, this book could literally be the key to your survival. So if you're curious, check out the link in my description or scan the QR code, and you can use code LEXY10 for an additional 10% off. Thank you again to Hungry Minds for sponsoring this video. Now let's go see if we can put some of this knowledge to the test. The more time I spend out here, the more I realize that survival isn't about fighting the environment. It's about learning how to work with it. Last day of training. Tomorrow, the real show begins. This is fire starting attempt number two. I feel like I got enough rest over the past day to try it again, but this is not easy. I am seeing smoke coming out of your ears. I think I'm doing it. Oh my God. So hard. There's black smoke. Oh wait, I think I got it. Oh yeah, you've got it. Oh my God. Fire. One step closer to being able to survive alone on this island. Look at it. It just started pouring rain. All of the rain is dripping directly from my tarp into my hammock. So I'm getting absolutely soaked. Tomorrow morning is survival day. All right, we've had wind, rain, we have a forest fire, and now we've got lightning. This is definitely the most hectic conditions I've ever let survivalists go into isolation on. And so I've got my reservations about doing this right now, but hopefully they're all doing really well out there. Whether I felt ready or not, the time had finally come to answer a question that every human asks themselves at some point in their lives. If I were stranded alone on a deserted island, could I survive? I'm stranded on a deserted island completely alone with no food, no water, and no shelter. I need to survive out here for the next three days before rescue comes and there's no time to waste. I need to get a shelter built to get out of this rain. Immediately. I thought that right about now I'd be focusing on water, but because it's been raining so much, I've used one of the bottles that I found, the trash on the beach, to start collecting some of the rainwater. So I should be good for water, at least for tonight. And my number one priority now is fire. I was able to collect some of this dry coconut husk and some of this dry bamboo. And we're going to use my flint stick to see if we can get some fire going. Oh, wait. You guys see an ember? Oh my gosh, yes. Come on, little buddy. Keep coming. You're great. Success. There's a literal swarm of bugs right now. It's taken a couple hours to get camp situated. I think the bugs, thankfully, don't like the smoke. I'm very, very grateful for this fire right now, but now that I have camp a bit organized, let me show you what I've brought with me. This is all of the gear that I have. We can start over here. Camera case. We've got a spare battery, charging camera batteries, microphone, spare batteries for the phone, phone for filming. I've got a walkie-talkie that's used for emergencies. Tripods. Then for clothing, I've got a pair of pants, an extra pair of socks, a long sleeve, and a rain jacket. I've got a few just essential first aid items. I have a headlamp, some flip-flops. These, I have a machete, a smaller knife, and a saw. Here I have the fire starter. This is my luxury item for the trip. This is the mosquito net to try to combat all of the bugs since it's the rainy season here now. And as you can see, there is a swarm of bugs. My blanket for sleeping. This is fun. I've brought my dive kit and a spear gun for fishing. I've already found some useful stuff on the beach. This fishing line. I filled up this trash bottle with some rainwater that I've collected, so I'm good for water for tonight. And a trash bag that I can use for my knees. The fire over here is keeping this gigantic swarm of bugs at bay. I don't know how well you can see this on the camera, but that is a massive swarm of bugs. I'm very, very grateful for the mosquito net. I'm going to set that up now. These bugs are insane. They keep going down my shirt. It's horrible. Okay, I need another hole to put this up. The day honestly just flew by. I'm feeling a bit discouraged about how much I got done. I didn't have enough time to go fishing or to collect any coconuts. Thankfully, I did get this rainwater. Also ran out of time to make an elevated bed, so I'm basically just going to be sleeping in the sand. Thankfully, I did find that garbage bag that I'll be able to use as a little bit of a divider between this soaking wet sand and the sand fleas and my skin. When I was arriving here, I have never seen rain that hard before in my entire life. It was almost like anxiety inducing because there's so many things that I wanted to do as soon as I arrive into this situation. I need to make shelter. I need to clear ground. I need to do this. I need to do that. And just being absolutely paralyzed by a torrential downpour was not what I envisioned for my tropical beach survival challenge, but that's nature for you. You really never know what you're going to get. It's day two. I slept all right, all things considered, but around three o'clock in the morning, I felt this big thing crawling up my thigh. I almost lost it, but it was a giant Halloween moon crab, but it scared me so bad. And the sun is now peeking through the clouds and it is so hot. I can immediately feel the dehydration in my brain. So the first thing I need to do this morning is get some coconuts because dehydration is the biggest risk out here for me right now. I'm just so dehydrated. This one has a little bit of a sharper edge. Wow, that's exhausting. Also just getting eaten alive by sand fleas. Yes! No. Yes! Let's go. Oh, that was so hard. Oh, this guy is so full of water. First coconut of the day. Will not be my last because I need to stay hydrated, but I'm excited. I can see the nut just starting to peek out now. Getting close. Oh, yes. Look at that. Amazing. Found a nice shady spot to drink my first coconut. Of the day. Wow, that is so full of water. Absolutely incredible. I'm going to need a lot more of those. And technically, if I just got enough coconut water to drink and then also ate the meat, which is very calorie dense, I wouldn't starve out here. I wouldn't have enough to survive. But I also want to get my fire going today because I want to go foraging for some snails and limpets, and there's no point in doing that unless I have a fire to cook food with. I also want to go spearfishing, but my shelter also really needs a lot of improvements, especially if it could potentially rain again tonight. So there is a lot to do under the scorching sun. But for now, it's time to enjoy this coconut. Oh, yeah. Wow. This is what dreams are made of. Managed to carve out this coconut meat in one big piece. So cool. There's a lot of nutrition and calories in here. Breakfast of champions right here. I bet I'm going to get so sick of the taste of coconut meat by the end of this. But wow, life-giving. Just opened up my second coconut of the day because it is hot out here and I think I'm a little bit more dehydrated than I thought I was. I got really lucky with those first coconuts and I just need to go forage because I have a feeling there's a lot of them that fell during the storm. It is the middle of the day now and the heat has really turned up. I've gone to jump in the ocean a couple of times. I even tried changing into shorts but I was just immediately destroyed by all of the bugs. So back to the pants. Sweating, sweating away. I am already getting a headache from the heat and the lack of a really, really good amount of water. So I feel like I can't even like speak straight right now. I'm feeling pretty confident with the number of coconuts that I was able to collect today. They're so full of water. And I really need it because the heat of the day has fully set in now. And now that I'm good on coconuts for a bit, at least until tomorrow, I want to turn my attention to my shelter. It felt like because I arrived here in such a downpour, I didn't have much time to really think about my shelter. I just threw up the tarp to get out of the rain as fast as possible. So now I want to kind of clear everything over to the side, get an idea of what I'm really working with here and attempt to build a little bit more of a sustainable structure in this space. I wove this little hat out of palm leaves. It's definitely helping a lot for sun protection. You need all the help you can get. I feel like my shoulders are already starting to peel. So I'm pretty happy with how this initial structure is turning out, but I need some more support going this way. I think, I mean, I guess this way, but ideally this way to support the like the palm leaves so they have something to lay on rather than just hanging in. I need to find something that's long enough like this would work, but also needs to get hooked on something. This one worked out super well. That is long enough. Now I actually went over and stripped some sea hibiscus, which works really great as rope. So I can maybe tie these in here to secure them a little bit more. Hopefully it doesn't come falling on my head in the middle of the night. It's not going anywhere. Looks like there could be another rain cloud coming in. It's pretty good. I just gotta keep layering them all in here until it gets nice and thick. It looks and feels so funny to be swimming completely clothed even with my shoes on, but let me tell you when it is this hot out, this is the only way to truly regulate my temperature. And also because it's so hot, it takes less than an hour to basically completely dry. My shoes are also really well made, so they clear all of the water out of them quite quickly. And this has definitely been worth it. I just finished my shelter, thankfully, because it just started pouring rain right now. The tide is also really high, but thankfully the shelter seems like it's holding up pretty good, at least for right now. Crazy timing. I just got hit by a massive wave of discouragement. It just feels like I haven't been able to do like anything. I was just trying to get my fire started again and it completely went out and now there's this wind that I wasn't expecting. I got too comfortable for some reason. I even built my shelter facing the wind because I thought that I would be cooler at night because it was so hot last night. I didn't pay attention to the tide because I was going to go out to collect limpets and snails to eat for dinner over my fire tonight. And now the ocean has totally come in, the beach has disappeared. It's too rocky and dark for me to go spearfishing right now. It just feels like I've been failing at everything that I trained to do. I always saw these like survival shows growing up and thought that it was like the coolest thing ever and I still think that. It's just so much harder than you think it is watching it on a screen and seeing someone like Bear Grylls kill it. Like it's so much harder and so much more uncomfortable than you would think. I'm also just really lonely. I hate being alone like this. It's so quiet and your thoughts are just so loud. I'm not a survivalist at all. I'm like feeling extremely not qualified to be here right now. These sand fleas are just eating me alive. I'm just feeling really negative right now. I'm not sure how to get out of it. Well, this evening took a very unexpected turn. This is a very new thought so I'm going to try to explain it but it feels like I just had such a special almost spiritual experience here. I was feeling really frustrated earlier. It felt like nothing was going the way that I wanted it to and I felt very out of control and I decided, okay, that's it. I need a break. I'm not going to film. I'm going to go walking along the water and I took some time to honestly just be with God and pray and try to just reflect on this experience as a whole rather than the granular frustrations that I was experiencing and honestly through like clearing my mind, I started noticing all the little details. Specifically, I saw this shell on the beach. The colors kind of looked like a sunset and it reminded me of home and that I do get to go home somewhat soon and I just felt flooded with this like really incredible sense of gratitude. After taking a solid moment to myself, I came back up. I finished setting up the mosquito net and then I decided, hey, I got nothing else going on. I might as well just play around with the flint stick and it felt like it really gave me this sense of ease like taking a moment for myself and I was just playing around with it. Oh, there's a couple more sparks. There's a couple sparks here. Wait a second. These sparks are actually kind of starting to catch and then the momentum just started building and I started feeling my excitement coming back and voila, it turned into this big beautiful fire which I was so grumpy and I was very much not expecting to have a fire tonight. I still don't have anything to cook on it. I don't have any fish, limpets, snails, nothing. Definitely feeling hungry. Hunger pains are starting to set in. I do have coconut though. I just drank this one which felt so good after getting this fire started and it honestly all just reminded me that I have everything that I need in this moment. I might not be as comfortable as I would like but I genuinely do have everything that I need over here. I have a roof over my head. I have something to drink. I have something to eat. I have a warm fire and I have a place to lay my head and that's all you really need in life. We technically don't need more than this which is right here. Everything else is a bonus basically is my takeaway and I'm feeling really grateful for that and I'm feeling really grateful for you actually who are watching this video right now. It's because of you that I get to come out here and do these kind of experiences and make these videos for you to watch so I just want to say that I'm very grateful and I also recently started a new tradition on the channel where for every YouTube video I do a custom giveaway with my newsletter of a bundle of mementos and tokens from each episode and I think this shell is the perfect base for this episode's giveaway so if you want to receive this shell, a handwritten letter, and more mementos from the episode, go down to my description to sign up for my newsletter and follow the instructions down there. Good morning. It is day three. I slept terribly last night because there's so many crabs circling around my tent and just hearing them walking around is so unsettling when you're out here in the dark. I also heard a boat engine get pretty close to my beach but they didn't have their lights on which when you don't know who they are or what their intentions are is pretty scary when you're out here by yourself. I'm feeling some really intense hunger pains this morning but even more so than that, just the dehydration. I woke up with this like shaky feeling in my hands which is making me like really nervous for trying to use the machete at all and trying to open more coconuts. I don't think I hit the mark at all with how much water I was supposed to be drinking yesterday and now I'm really feeling the repercussions of that. But today's agenda is to try to catch a fish, at least some limpets and snails because it would be really nice to eat something that's not just coconut. But just really feeling it a lot right now with the dehydration. So time to get after it. So I just wandered down to a different beach and basically just hit the jackpot. I found a hog's plum tree which gives off all of these yellow fruits and this feels so amazing because I think it's going to go so well with my fish tonight. But worst case scenario, even if I don't catch a fish, this is going to be some much needed variety from the coconuts. By the way, everything that I've learned about how to survive on this island was taught by Desert Island Survival. Their team hosts experiences like this around the world, giving even the least qualified people like myself the chance to push their limits and learn real world survival skills. If you've ever wanted to try something like this for yourself, check out their link in my description. It's absolutely blisteringly hot out here and I want to try to go fishing on this side of the island before the tide comes back up. I just can't get this knot out of my gun. It's like crazy making. Dehydration brain is definitely setting in. This is only the third time I've ever gone spearfishing and all of that has been on this trip. So we'll see how it goes. I'm very motivated because I'm very hungry. So we'll see. Exhausting. Found a treasure trove of snails. We are eating so well tonight. I've got my damselfish. I've got some snails or escargot, if you will. Then I have some of this hog plums and two coconuts to wash it down. After a nice little ocean dip, it's now time for my final challenge, which is going to be getting this fire started again. No matter how hard I've been trying, the fire just keeps going out completely every night and it was not very easy to get it going again last night, but I've got extra motivation now that I have something to cook with it. So I'll get this started. A nice dry bamboo base, splintery bamboo. I'm also going to be mainly using this palm tree bark because all of my coconut husks are too wet. Wow, this stuff lit so fast. I didn't even have time to record it. Wow. Okay. Yay. We're getting a fire going. Woo. Okay. Fire going crazy. Stay with me, fire. Wow. That was the fastest fire I've ever started. I literally didn't even have time to get the camera going. One attempt. My lucky fire. Woo. Dinner is served. So I'm not really a fish person, so I might have overcooked everything a bit, which is fine. I don't want to risk anything, but this is looking pretty good. Got a little filet. Got the escargot as well. Ooh la la. Look at that. Not gonna lie, I really don't like fish at all. This one actually isn't that bad. It's just like a classic white fish. And honestly, with how hungry I am, I would pretty much eat anything at this point. A little sandy, a little salty. It's day four and rescue is officially on the way. Thank goodness, because I am not feeling well. I'm fully feeling the dehydration at full force. My mind is moving slowly. My body's moving slowly. I'm feeling shaky, a little bit of shortness of breath. It's hard for me to even turn on this camera right now, but I want to capture this moment because this is probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life. It's so wild to me that without food, you can forage for it. Without a shelter, you can build one. But water, without it, you die. And it's so difficult to obtain enough water in a situation like this to actually survive. There's so many things that we take for granted every single day. If you were deserted on an island in the middle of the ocean like this, you would just be dreaming and praying for the things that you have in your own house right now. A roof above your head, food on your table, and water coming out of your tap. I feel such a deep level of griminess in literally every inch of my body. And I am ready to be clean and well-fed and hydrated. But until then, I've got to tear my shelter down. I'm going to sit right here on the beach and wait for that boat to come. Rescue is finally in sight. You look good, not too beat up. Wow, I need water immediately. I honestly can't believe that I'm leaving this place. It's been a total of nine days since we've been out on these islands. I'm exhausted and I'm really ready to go home. But first, I want something to drink. First cold beverage in nine days. Oh my gosh, you have no idea how good this tastes. I'm going to go sleep for a week.