The show drops seven strangers in a deserted area for 50 days where they are left to fend for themselves. They are not competing for any money, nor attempting to avoid being “voted off.” They are willing participants in an experiment meant to simulate a real post-calamity society.
Discovery has developed a website- Join the Colony– where real friends will update on how they cope up everyday in a pandemic situation. The site includes video footage from the show, and fake blog posts.
The colonists — made up of a model, mechanic, carpenter, retired contractor, foreman, professor and an artist — live as survivors of a simulated viral apocalypse. Each is subjected to 72 hours of isolation before being transported to a desolate 10-acre compound on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana that has been transformed into a wasteland of abandoned buildings after Hurricane Katrina.
Producers of the show worked closely with homeland security, engineering, psychology and medical experts to craft a story line in which the group members are survivors of a mutation of the avian flu known as the nuclear flu. The colonists live completely off the grid and must depend upon themselves for even the most basic of needs.
‘The Colony’ “can’t really reproduce the strain of surviving the end of the world,” one critic wrote. “Its subjects haven’t actually seen most of their loved ones die; they know they will return to a functioning society; we know (and a title card reminds us at the end) that experts are standing by to help them if they meet any actual danger. Still, the show is loaded with interviews with psychologists and homeland-security experts to remind us of the theoretical stakes.”
2 Responses
I hate to bust your bubble but the show is contrived and if anything gives us insight about the disaster we will be facing if this situation comes true. Imagine a real world example where a group of thugs want what you have. They kidnap one of your “women” and you think she isn’t going to be gang raped and probably killed. You think the thugs won’t kill you? I guarantee you that these people on the show eat steak dinners and drink beer between shoots and they are NOT living a survival existence. You better fear life if TSHTF ever happens. There are 300,000,000 people that want what you have and are willing to kill you to get it. Wake up! This is a yuppie show and I’m suprised they don’t have pink cell phones and someone doing their nails.
This is sad and pathetic! … I wonder if the show’s producers warn the participants that being in this location will absolutely damage their health, due to the environmental impact of BP’s “accident” and “clean-up efforts” (i.e. corexit dispersant, etc.). “… Working with Homeland Security”?? … Ouch! … I smell the strong stench of both abiotic “oil” and heavy propaganda. :-/