25 years in, the production team behind Survivor is a well-oiled machine. While the crew is teeming with over 400 people, with the tenure of many of its members, it’s very rare that they’re ever caught flat-footed. That is, until a snake bit someone on the flat side of their foot.
Episode 3 of Survivor 49 featured an unprecedented medical emergency, as Jake Latimer got bit by a sea krait while sitting by the shore. What followed was a harrowing look behind the curtain as the entire crew tended to him, given the danger around the heavily venomous creature. And, while it is perhaps the biggest behind-the-scenes look we’ve gotten at the veteran CBS reality show, Jeff Probst has revealed there’s even more we didn’t see.
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The host and showrunner got into all the details in the official Survivor podcast “On Fire.” In this week’s episode, he spoke with cohosts Jay Wolff and Jeremy Collins about the timeline of how everything went down. As he explains, when Jake alerted everyone he had been bitten, producer Ryan Hopkins took a look at the wound. Concerned, he put in a call to base camp. Luckily for them, a boat was already at the Kele beach, trading out camera equipment, so it was an easy way to get Jake to the medical staff swiftly.
Until it wasn’t.
“There was a very stressful moment,” Probst recounts. “The medical team and the boat and camera team traveling with Jake on the boat all lost communication for a moment. I mean, this never happens. And so it’s right at the moment where they were giving them an update on Jake. And so during that time of no communication, it was unclear to everybody back at base camp if Jake was conscious and breathing properly. It was a terrifying moment.”
This explains why senior producer Jimmy Quigley, upon the boat arriving at base camp, yelled if Jake was still breathing. Luckily, he was, and it allowed him to be easily triaged by the medical team. What follows is a sequence that Probst compares to The Pitt, as doctors and nurses were all hands on deck to check Jake’s vitals and see if any venom had gotten into his system. But the matter at hand was more of a House-like medical mystery for production, considering how rare sea krait bites are.
Related: Everything to Know About Survivor 49
Jeff Probst Breaks Down ‘Survivor 49’ Medical Emergency
