Stock up on popcorn and find yourself a bug in couch.
Below are some of the movies we have watched recently. They aren’t all cinematic epochs, but there are lessons to be learned from them.
#24 Wrecked
A man trapped in a car wreck at the bottom of a ravine must overcome incredible odds to survive.
[responsive_youtube https://www.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3cFoVXtpU]
#23 As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me
At the end of WW2, a German POW doing hard labor in the Soviet Gulag escapes from his Siberian camp to return to Germany but he’s pursued by a Soviet NKVD officer.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG2Xi18ArxA]
#22 The Divide
Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.
[responsive_youtube https://www.https://www.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlMT5Js8Fa0]
#21 10 Cloverfield Lane
After getting in a car accident, a woman is held in a shelter with two men, who claim the outside world is affected by a widespread chemical attack.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saHzng8fxLs]
#20 The Hunger Games
Katniss Everdeen voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place in The Hunger Games, a televised competition in which two teenagers from each of the twelve Districts of Panem are chosen at random to fight to the death.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfmrPu43DF8]
#19 The Day
A group of five people working to stay alive in a post-apocalyptic future discover what they think is a safe, abandoned farmhouse, but they soon find themselves fighting to stay alive as a gang of bloodthirsty predators’ attack.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDXzVgMihvs]
#18 Into the Wild
After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters that shape his life.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7ArZ7VD-QQ]
#17 127 Hours
An adventurous mountain climber becomes trapped under a boulder while canyoneering alone near Moab, Utah and resorts to desperate measures in order to survive.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlhLOWTnVoQ]
#16 Alive
Uruguayan rugby team stranded in the snow swept Andes are forced to use desperate measures to survive after a plane crash.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si12yPyTnSs]
#15 Lord of the Flies
Stranded on an island, a group of schoolboys degenerate into savagery.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRo7dVRf6Wo]
#14 The Edge
An intellectual billionaire and two lesser men struggle to band together and survive after getting stranded in the Alaskan wilderness with a blood-thirsty Kodiak Bear hunting them down.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDTtUSI_CGg]
#13 Flight of the Phoenix
Survivors of a plane crash in the Mongolian desert work together to build a new plane.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bANHr1Qc-7k ]
#12 Unbroken
After a near-fatal plane crash in WWII, Olympian Louis Zamperini spends a harrowing 47 days in a raft with two fellow crewmen before he’s caught by the Japanese navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrjJbl7kRrI ]
#11 The Wave
Although anticipated, no one is really ready when the mountain pass above the scenic, narrow Norwegian fjord Geiranger, collapses and creates an 85-meter high violent tsunami. A geologist is one of those caught in the middle of it.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu75D5tvxBA ]
#10 The Finest Hours
The Coast Guard makes a daring rescue attempt off the coast of Cape Cod after a pair of oil tankers are destroyed during a blizzard in 1952.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQmllwTKtqU]
#9 The Way Back
Siberian gulag escapees travel 4,000 miles by foot to freedom in India.
[responsive_youtube https://www.https://www.https://www.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuCnjLdfXWw]
#8 Rabbit-Proof Fence
In 1931, three aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff and set off on a trek across the Outback.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbnk8wSVMaM]
#7 Rescue Dawn
A U.S. fighter pilot’s epic struggle of survival after being shot down on a mission over Laos during the Vietnam War.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNm9Tzo5rvI]
#6 The Grey
After their plane crashes in Alaska, six oil workers are led by a skilled huntsman to survival, but a pack of merciless wolves haunts their every step.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujrBaHS8UTg]
#5 Eight Below
Brutal cold forces two Antarctic explorers to leave their team of sled dogs behind as they fend for their survival.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz7TGf1awDo]
#4 Scenic Route
Tensions rise between lifelong friends Mitchell and Carter after their truck breaks down on an isolated desert road as they start to attack each other’s life decisions with unwavering brutality.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyUI8lisUcQ]
#3 Into the White
Norway, WWII: A group of British and German soldiers find themselves stranded in the wilderness after an aircraft battle. Finding shelter in the same cabin, they realize the only way to survive the winter is to place the rules of war aside.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpcFKka5MEI]
#2 The Martian
An astronaut becomes stranded on Mars after his team assume him dead, and must rely on his ingenuity to find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej3ioOneTy8]
#1 Cast Away
A FedEx executive must transform himself physically and emotionally to survive a crash landing on a deserted island.
[responsive_youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tVklCz2jcI]
Would you add another movie to this list?
You may also like:
Would You be Able to Leave Someone Behind?
The U.S. Army’s Forgotten Food Miracle (Video)
10 Reasons Why You Do Not Want to Bug Out
15 Things You’ll Regret Not Having Enough of When SHTF
You Pass by This Plant Everyday Without Knowing How to Use It When SHTF
I would include “The Road”, with Viggo Mortgenson.
Thanks, I forgot about it. Good movie!
You took the words right off my keyboard. Lol! Great movie…better book!
Jeremiah Johnson shows a lot of trying to survive moments and has always been one of my favorite movies.
Jeremia Johnson. Find a mentor and be ready for hard lessons.
Red Dawn. The new and old
The. Original red dawn.from like 1986 or so.
The movie Revenant
Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071411/
That was a great movie. But then I don’t think Kurosawa made any dud movies. I was a great fan of him and Toshiro Mifune, the Japanese actor who played the outcast ronin in so many movies. I thought his most poignant picture was Rickshaw Man but alas, it isn’t on video or DVD.
He also played in a U.S. film where he spoke all his lines in English, although he actually didn’t speak English. I thought it showed what a great actor he was where he could speak a foreign language and portray the emotions the lines contained although he didn’t actually speak the language of the dialog.
As a personal note, he also was a prodigious drinker of Scotch whiskey which I think led to his somewhat early death. He was famous (or infamous) for the large quantities of that beverage he could consume and still remain upright and mobile.
I believe I have seen every one of Mifune’s movies, either at the time of release in the U.S. or later on video or DVD.
Learned everything I need from Gilligan’s Island 😉
Yuh GOTTA love their ingenuity!
I felt “Misery” should at least be a runner up. Desperate times forces desperate measures.
The series ALONE, show some awsome skills.
Great selection of movies, each has a set of lessons. I am with OwitHurtz, “Alone” the series has some really unique skills used. Also, there are a bunch of TV shows that have survival as the theme, Northern Exposure, Survivor Man, Dual Survivor, etc. Gotta love Cody Lundine. How about Mountain Men, it has some techniques.
Man in the Wilderness, a 1971 film starring Richard Harris, has many great tips. The Revenant, I’m told, is a modern remake of that tale.
” My Side of the Mountain “, a thirteen year old boy is really into Henry David Thoreau, and decides to head off into the Catskills to see if he can ” live a deliberate life “. He lives in a tree, makes his own buck skin clothes, and teaches a peregrine falcon to hunt for him.
I would add “Amerigeddon”
Touching the Void. Two mountain climbers have to make life and death choices
I second Touching the Void. True Story of survival. Amazing actually. I don’t know if they made a movie of it but a great survival story was a book about the Karluck. A research vessel stranded in an Ice flow in the Arctic Ocean.
Book of Eli…..
My favorite!
Year Zero, starring Ray Milan
tomorrow when the war began
How about the movie “The Earthling” with Ricky Schroeder?
The snow walker
The movie “Detour”. A guy in a car is buried by a landslide. Almost the whole movie is about how he deals with the situation. Brea Grant is his girlfriend and provides some eye candy for those body lovers.
The movie “The Divide”. Brutally honest and harsh, dark, dark, dark vision of a group of people surprised by a nuclear war and are in the basement fallout shelter of a skyscraper. The maintenance guru of the building has been prepping for an event like this for years. Some surprises and disturbing images. Not for the weak minded.
Thanks for this list. Having seen quite a few of them, I loved each of them. I am sorry that some of the old Black A & White television series were not included, but space was limited. Three of my four grandparents came to Oregon pursuant to the Wagon Trains & settled in Sherman County in Eastern Oregon. The writings they left, as well as those of the woman I married, are a treasure.
I was always impressed with ‘Wagon Train’ & how quickly they resorted to prayer for protection & guidance. I have been led back to the County after an absence of over 50 years. At least three ‘Century Farms’ have been merged. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only one who has delivered his own children, though.
My father’s grandmother was the midwife that delivered my mother’s father.
The movie “The Impossible” is about a family vacationing at the beach in Thailand in 2004 experience a tsunami.
Back in the early 70’s there was an excellent movie entitled The Wilderness Family, which gave me so much good information and caught my interest in all things homesteading. I had a subscription to Mother Earth News when it was published on newspaper pulp paper.
Even though I am in my 70’s now, and have to live in the city, I still can, garden, bake, sew, and repurpose everything. Thank you Claude for all your great information.
I would add (tomorrow when the war begins)
Okay, I read the book “Into The Wild” about Christopher McCandless and, if you learn anything, it’s about what NOT to do. He was uneducated in survival and poorly equipped to do so. I remember reading an excerpt from his diary as he slowly starved and became ill.
You should also remember that Chris was reduced to eating potatoes that had gone bad. When they reach that level of denigration, they become toxic and can cause hallucinations because of that toxicity. He was clearly affected by that and it also caused him to make bad decisions or no decisions at all.
Swiss Family Robinson
Island of the Blue Dolphin…(if a bit simplified)
Jules Verne’s “Mysterious Island”
Follow the river: Laura Ingels Wilder!
Real account of survival cross country 2000 miles Indian captive/ survival to get there and to find her way back ( escape) !