I Survived...

Last updated

I Survived...
Genre Documentary, reality
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons6
No. of episodes68
Production
Running time60 minutes (including commercials)
1 hour, 30 minutes (9/11 episode)
Original release
Network The Biography Channel
(Seasons 1-5)
Lifetime Movie Network
(current)
ReleaseMarch 24, 2008 (2008-03-24) –
January 26, 2015 (2015-01-26)

I Survived... is a documentary television series produced by NHNZ that aired on Lifetime Movie Network and, as of 2022, can be seen on Court TV.

Contents

The show allows survivors to explain in their own words how they overcame life-threatening circumstances without dramatic reenactments. Most episodes feature two or three separate stories involving scenarios such as kidnapping, assaults, or getting injured or stranded in a remote location. The format shows the survivor speaking into the camera to describe their experiences, with occasional use of title cards to summarize events or photographs of locations or people mentioned by the narrators.

The official website states:

What would you do if you were confronted with death? What gives someone the strength to survive? Is it luck, chance, instinct? In a stripped-down, simple-yet-cinematic interview style, I Survived... allows survivors to explain, in their own words, how they overcame unbelievable circumstances – offering insight into what got them through the experience that changed their lives forever. I Survived... is storytelling at its most dramatic, most basic, and most honest. [1]

The series premiered on March 24, 2008 and aired its last episode on January 26, 2015. Its sister series "I Survived... Beyond and Back" (in which people share their near death experiences) debuted in 2011.

Episodes

SeasonEpisodesOriginally airedSeason premiereSeason finale
1 112008March 24, 2008June 16, 2008
2 182008–2009December 1, 2008August 30, 2009
3 262009–2011December 6, 2009January 30, 2011
4 302011–2012May 5, 2011September 30, 2012
5 262012–2013October 7, 2012July 21, 2013
6 62014–2015December 12, 2014January 26, 2015

Season 1

No.TitleOriginal release date
1"Bridget/Daryl/Ryan and John"March 24, 2008 (2008-03-24)
Bridget, a schoolteacher from Killeen, Texas, is attacked by an intruder in her apartment, raped, shot three times, and left for dead in a desert field; Daryl is traveling to a camp in Mount Adams, Washington, when a freak snowstorm buries him alive in his Jeep, as he tries to survive on meager rations of food and water and freezing temperatures for two weeks; and two teenagers, Ryan and John, return from a concert in Oklahoma with their friend Ryan S. and his father Mark, when the plane they are traveling on crashes in a remote forest in Wichita, Kansas, killing Ryan S. and Mark. Ryan and John survive, but suffer serious injuries and must maintain phone contact with a 911 operator while rescue teams desperately try to find them.
2"Brandi/Joseph/Sam and Suzanne"March 31, 2008 (2008-03-31)
In New Philadelphia, Ohio, Brandi and her friend Liz are preparing for a sleepover when they meet a man at a local video store, and they both offer a ride. During the trip, the man turns on them, threatening the girls at gunpoint, fatally stabbing Liz, repeatedly sexually assaulting Brandi, and then throwing her into a river to leave her to die. Joseph, his friend Lorenzo, and an unlicensed guide, Jose, are stranded on a rocky, desolate island in the Sea of Cortez for 13 days, with the three fishermen surviving without fresh water, hot and cold temperatures, and shark-infested waters. Sam and Suzanne, a couple from Fort Smith, Arkansas, return from a funeral, and pick up a hitchhiker, who kidnaps them and forces them to drive hundreds of miles, at gunpoint. The gunman turns out to be a criminal wanted for murder in Oklahoma.
3"Christine and Heidi/Debbie/Jim"April 7, 2008 (2008-04-07)
Christine and Heidi's trip on the Greek ferry MS Express Samina turns into a nightmare when the ship begins to sink after hitting a rock in the Aegean Sea, and the crew abandons ship, leaving panicked passengers to fend for themselves. Debbie, a resident of Newark, Delaware, endures a five-day ordeal, kidnapped by an attacker who murdered her husband, Nino, and kept blindfolded and gagged, raped and forced to sleep beside him. Jim, an elderly resident of an apartment in Rockford, Illinois, invites his neighbor Tom to speak, and is seriously injured in a brutal attack, carried out by him due to his cocaine influence.
4"Lonnie/Rulon/Stanley"April 14, 2008 (2008-04-14)
Lonnie, a resident of Portland, Oregon, plays dead for four agonizing hours after her boyfriend, Michael, strangles her and shoots her four times in the head after she discovers that he has committed insurance fraud with her card. Rulon, a super-strong Olympic wrestler, becomes trapped in a half-frozen stream in Star Valley, Wyoming, when he sets out on a snowmobile and is faced with a big decision, abandoning the vehicle and walking across the frozen stream, without food, water, or cell phone, and suffering from hypothermia and frostbite. Stanley, a resourceful federal prosecutor from Manhattan, New York, is kidnapped by men with machine guns and uses his unique talents and personality to appear sympathetic to his captors in the hopes that they will release him.
5"Denise/Nick/Leonilda"April 21, 2008 (2008-04-21)
Denise, a dollar store manager, is savagely attacked by two robbers in Jacksonville, North Carolina, while trying to rob the safe, and she is repeatedly stabbed and slashed. Nick, a former Marine from San Francisco, must survive for several days in cold temperatures when he is stranded on a mountain in Lake Tahoe in the middle of a snowstorm without a cell phone, without food and without winter clothing, while he was skiing. In Reading, Pennsylvania, Leonilda is kidnapped by her violent ex-boyfriend, Luis, who thinks he has been cheating on her, and shot six times while trying to hide in a parked truck.
6"Wayne and Mary/Holly/Linda"April 28, 2008 (2008-04-28)
Wayne and Mary, a farming couple from Macdona, Texas, wake up to find their farmhouse surrounded by a cloud of deadly chlorine gas following a train derailment. The couple, along with their families and pets, begin a harrowing six-hour ordeal for emergency services to arrive, where they struggle to breathe, cough up blood, and watch their metal appliances literally melt before their eyes. While Holly and her boyfriend Chris take a quiet walk near the train tracks in Lexington, Kentucky, after leaving a college party, they are greeted by a man who demands money. Both are tied up, gagged and then brutally beaten. Chris dies at the scene, but Holly miraculously survives the rape and being stabbed in the neck, and tries to seek help. What Holly doesn't know is that the man is serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz. Linda is driving home from work to her lakeside cabin in Canyon County, Idaho, when she is run off the road in the middle of the night by four strangers. High on drugs, they brutally attack her, demand money from her, set fire to her car and abandon her in a deserted field, leaving her for dead. She is rescued by two passing teenagers who witness the blaze.
7"Cari/Kevin/Joe and Katherine"May 12, 2008 (2008-05-12)
Cari, a young mother living in Chico, California, is brutally stabbed, beaten, and sexually assaulted by an intruder in her home, but knows she must survive the attack to save her 3-year-old son. While working on an old cemetery in Clarksville, California, a four-inch steel tow hook accidentally lodges in Kevin's throat, and any movement could sever his jugular vein and end his life. When a gunman shoots and wounds several people in Tacoma Mall, Washington, during the Christmas season, Katherine, a music store manager, must obey his demands or risk having her co-worker Joe, also an Iraq War veteran, a customer and a boy taken hostage, be shot at point-blank range in the head with a machine gun.
8"Michelle/Troy and Josh"May 19, 2008 (2008-05-19)
Three armed, masked men break into Michelle's home in Needles, California, then strap dynamite to the bodies of the bank executive, her daughter, 7-year-old Breea, and her roommate, and order her to rob the bank vault where she works or they will blow up her young daughter. Teenagers Troy and Josh take a small sailboat to an inlet near Charleston, South Carolina, to go fishing when they get caught in a dangerous current and are swept out to sea for six days. They must fight to survive against rough seas, freezing temperatures at night, scorching temperatures during the day, and sharks that keep circling their boat.
9"Maria/Jerry/Melissa"June 2, 2008 (2008-06-02)
Maria, a nurse manager at a hospital in Norristown, Pennsylvania, fears for her safety when one of her coworkers, Denis Czajkowski, becomes increasingly erratic and volatile. She gets him fired, but two months later, Denis breaks into her office with a gun, shoots Maria and her colleague Carol, and holds them hostage for three days. While driving in a deserted area outside Fort Worth, Texas, Jerry, a defense lawyer, swerves his car to avoid a deer and crashes into an embankment where a tree branch lodges in his throat. Barely alive, he survives two days in the ravine until he finally manages to crawl to the side of the road, where he is spotted and saved. Melissa and her two-year-old daughter are sleeping at their home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when she is awakened by an armed intruder. The man stabs her with a knife and sexually assaults her before stuffing her into the trunk of his car. He then drives for hours, picks up his friends, and assaults her again. He eventually abandons the car, leaving a terrified and injured Melissa to drive home to her abandoned daughter.
10"Virginia Tech Massacre/Minneapolis School Bus Crash"June 9, 2008 (2008-06-09)
On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a student at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, opened fire inside a classroom building, killing 33 students and teachers, and wounding 23. Derek and Colin, two students, were shot and witnessed their classmates and teachers being brutally murdered. Ishwar, a professor, hid in his office, from the massacre occurring outside in the hallways. Derek and his classmates tried to block the classroom door to prevent the gunman from entering, and Colin played dead as the gunman shot him four times before taking his own life. On August 1, 2007, Kim, a school bus driver, is taking 53 children and 8 adults, including her daughter Arrianna, during a school trip in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As the bus was crossing the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge, it collapsed, sending vehicles into the river below, killing 13 people. The bus plummeted 45 feet, trapping Kim in her seat, with serious injuries. As she holds the brakes to prevent the bus from falling backwards, Jimmy, one of the counselors evacuated the children and adults from the bus, saving everyone on board.
11"Jennifer/Sampson/Norina"June 16, 2008 (2008-06-16)
Jennifer, a young lawyer living in an apartment in Houston, Texas, is assaulted by a security guard, who slashes her face and tries to sexually assault her. She must use all her instincts to fight him off, hiding in the bathroom, and refusing to open the door to a security guard, as she speaks to the 911 operator. Sampson is a corn farmer in Kershaw County, South Carolina, who faces the agonizing decision of amputating his arm or risking burning to death when his hand becomes trapped in a burning combine. Norina, an elementary school principal in Winterstown, Pennsylvania, must fight off a crazed machete-wielding man to save the lives of her students, being attacked and wounded several times.

Season 2

  1. ↑ "I Survived - Biography.com". Archived from the original on September 23, 2011. Retrieved June 1, 2010.
  2. ↑ "31 - Mary, Brooke, Sharene: I Survived - TV Episodes - Biography.com". Biography.com . Retrieved February 20, 2012.
  3. ↑ "30 - Terry, Anne & Debi, Earleen: I Survived - TV Episodes - Biography.com". Biography.com . Retrieved February 20, 2012.
  4. ↑ "32 - Maggie, Gary, Barbara: I Survived - TV Episodes - Biography.com". Biography.com . Retrieved February 20, 2012.
  5. ↑ "33 - Ron & Jill/Randy/Julie: I Survived - TV Episodes - Biography.com". Biography.com . Retrieved February 20, 2012.
  6. ↑ "35 - Rudrani/Tracey/Teresa: I Survived - TV Episodes - Biography.com". Biography.com . Retrieved February 20, 2012.
  7. ↑ "34 - Verna/Theo/Debra: I Survived - TV Episodes - Biography.com". Biography.com . Retrieved February 20, 2012.
  8. ↑ "70 - Kim & Nina/Michael & Charles: I Survived - TV Episodes - Biography.com". Biography.com . Retrieved February 20, 2012.
  9. ↑ "Find Our Fathers" . Retrieved February 20, 2012.

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No.TitleOriginal release date