The Colony
Last night on the History channel, they showed the “Series Premier” of The Colony. I was sure I’d seen the show before, so I just had to stay up and watch it. Sure enough, this looks like season 2 of the same show. They put 7 people in an abandoned town somewhere in hurricane country, where they will pretend they’re survivors of a global virus-based disaster.
The first thing that struck me was the total lack of realism. I understand that this is just a show, but if you’re simulating a scenario like this, you should at least make an effort at realism and try to explain some of the inconsistencies.
The first glaring error I noticed was with the colonists’ water. They were shown making a filter with sand and charcoal and dipping water from a nearby river, then pouring it into a bucket full of sand and charcoal. Strangely, it came out crystal clear. Sorry, that doesn’t happen. They were obviously being given water by the producers and only being made to pretend to gather it in this way. Then they boiled the water to make it safe for drinking. Wouldn’t you boil it first, instead of pouring bacteria into your water filter? Personally, I’d be boiling it at both ends, just to be safe.
The second thing I noticed was that they showed a hunting and fishing supply store on the map, but there are no firearms whatsoever. At least have the colonists look for guns and decide that they were all looted or something. Guns exist in the real world, and would be very important in a survival situation (as we see later). Don’t just pretend they don’t exist.
Third, these clueless losers were visited by three outsiders, and gave them water and milk. In a survival situation, you don’t give away your rations. If they hadn’t been sure that the producers wouldn’t let them starve, I’m sure they would have acted differently. When the outsiders tried to get into their supply building, the colonists fought them off, but then made no effort to prepare for similar incidents, and even let them keep the water and milk.
Finally, when the three outsiders came back with a dozen of their friends, they were armed with smoke grenades and pepper spray (no guns?) and took the colonists’ medical supplies. The colonists made a half-hearted effort to fight them off by spraying gas from some kind of tank that did exactly nothing. First, a roving gang of thugs anywhere in the United States will be able to get guns. I know you don’t want guns used on your show, but make up some kind of excuse. Maybe the government took them all or something. Even so, if you’re going to attack and rob a group of people, you’d be armed with knives or at least clubs, not smoke and pepper spray, and you’d take everything you could carry.
One other small point, the colonists have canned food, supposedly supplied by the government, but the cans are unlabelled. Does anyone really think the government has huge warehouses full of unlabelled canned food?
Sorry, but to my mind these colonists are dead. If I watch next week (and I probably will) I’m going to see them as another group that (maybe) was smart enough to figure out some basic defense. If they don’t have spears, they deserve to die, too.
In a real survival situation, they should have quickly explored the surrounding buildings, picked one to move into (one with a decent roof), and then had different groups gather firewood, gather water, and make weapons.
I do know it’s just a show, and they don’t want any of the actors hurt. The best way to accomplish that, however, isn’t to pretend that nobody has weapons. It’s to make the outsiders back down as soon as a real weapon is produced. I’d be even more impressed with the show if they had set it up with 10 colonists, and then told them that three had been killed in that first attack and removed them from the show. That would get the rest of them into the proper mind-set. They could even have used actors for the three that were “killed” at very little cost and a great deal of added realism.