3 min readSurvivor contestant Jake Latimer was evacuated from the competition due to a medical emergency during the Oct. 8 episode.The show’s host and creator, Jeff Probst, revealed how producers decided to give Jake a medical evacuation.This marks the 20th medical evacuation in the show’s 25-year history.
Survivor just reached another milestone, though it’s definitely not a great one. On the most recent episode of the reality competition series, Kele tribe member Jake Latimer ended up getting booted off the show after being bitten by a venomous snake (aka, just one of the many dangers that challenge contestants in Fiji). This marks the 20th medical evacuation in Survivor’s 25-year history, and of course, longtime fans know there’s a lot of thought that goes into medevacs.
But, according to host and creator Jeff Probst, it had to be done. During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published right after the episode aired, Jeff revealed how he and the show’s producers ultimately decided to give Jake a medical evacuation.
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Jake Latimer on season 49 of Survivor.
“The level of involvement of our medical team is always dependent on the severity of an injury. If it’s a small cut, then their involvement is minimal if at all. But when something more severe, like a snake bite happens, our medical team is immediately involved,” he explained, confirming that the contestant has no say on the matter.
When Jake was initially bitten by the snake, he was in the process of moving to the base camp on a boat and lost communication with Jeff and the show’s producers. This raised some concern about whether he was breathing, but the host reassured fans he made it to the Survivor medical center safely.
“It was very clear this was as serious as we feared and that Jake was in the absolute best care he could ever hope, for someone bitten by a snake in the middle of the ocean. He had our full team of doctors, nurses and paramedics,” Jeff explained, in part.
As for Jake being the 20th person to receive a medevac in the show’s history, the showrunner added, “Well, one way to look at it is, this is our 20th evacuation. The other way to look at it is that of the 751 people who have played Survivor over 25 years, only 20 have been evacuated. That’s just over 2 percent.”
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Matt Williams, Jake Latimer, and Jawan Pitts.
And, if you had a hunch that Survivor was like any scripted “reality” show, think again. Jeff debunked any doubts that the game was staged, explaining, “What any evacuation says about this game is that it’s real. I still get asked all the time if Survivor is real. I don’t know if that’s because other unscripted shows don’t feel real and so people assume Survivor isn’t, or if it just seems so unlikely that this kind of adventure show could actually exist.”
He added, “But for anyone who still wonders, that was a real sea krait, that was a real bite, and that was a very terrifying situation.”
While we’re bummed to see Jake go so soon, we’re glad he made it out alive—and survived Survivor.