Survivor’s Jeff Probst Breaks Down Historic Immunity Challenge

And to those social media users who questioned if it was really that difficult, we’d like to see you try.

Probst gave a truly terrifying account of what these contestants experienced: “It can quickly become a panic situation because you are struggling to get a breath that doesn’t include a mouthful of saltwater. You’re trying to keep your head above water, but the swells consume you. Your fight or flight reflex kicks in and it can feel overwhelming. In other words, for the players struggling, there was nothing fun about it. That was real effort, real exhaustion, real fear.”

To the contestants’ credit, Probst says that no one asked for help during the 22 minutes (!!!) it took for them to get the ladders. 

But the producers knew that it shouldn’t have taken so long because they did their own practice days earlier—when the waters were no where near as brutal. Probst likened the new conditions to a tornado, saying, “I’m not exaggerating when I say that every five minutes it was gaining in intensity.”