[3][4][5] The show is hosted by Les Stroud, who narrates each episode, provides the teens with survival challenges, and assesses their performance.

Stroud also appears on camera at the beginning of each episode to meet with the participants, discuss their health and emotional status, and present them with the day's survival challenge.

[citation needed] Each challenge concludes with Stroud visiting the participants again, re-assessing their physical and emotional state, and asking whether anyone wishes to leave the show and go home.

In April 2008, 9 Story announced that the show (now called Survivorman Kids) would feature a single team of six 14- to 16-year-olds surviving in the wilderness for three weeks.

[21] In its final form, unlike other reality television shows, Survive This intentionally did not have a cash prize or other reward at the end of the season.

Instead, the producers decided that contestants would leave the series with the knowledge that they survived a number of physically and mentally daunting challenges.

[2][6][11][12][15][22] Stroud refused to allow participants to vote their peers off the show or to win "immunity", arguing that this would change the focus of the series toward "backstabbing social networking" and away from survival skills and the wilderness experience.

[16] Eight teenagers, all between the ages of 14 and 17,[2][11][15][24] were taken into a forest in Ontario, Canada, and initially asked to "survive" a school bus crash and spend two nights in the woods with limited food and other supplies.

[22] A camera crew remained behind to film the participants as they carried out their survival challenges, some of which lasted several days.

[22] The one-hour season 1 finale featured a search and rescue (SAR) operation to locate and extract the remaining participants.

[12] Some footage and a trailer for the show were shown at MIPCOM, a market and trade event in the entertainment industry held in Cannes, France.

[22] 9 Story Entertainment sold distribution rights to Cartoon Network's Boomerang Channel Latin America, YLE in Finland, and Teleview International in the Middle East in April 2009.

[33] Principal cinematography for the second season occurred in September 2009 (which meant some of the contestants missed the opening of school in order to finish the show).

[34] The show's format remains much the same, with a different challenge in each episode and Stroud asking the teens if they can survive at the end of each installment.

The season 2 cast included: At least one psychologist warned that Survive This risked being exploitative and might damage the mental health of the participants.

"You're putting kids into real emotional situations for other people's enjoyment," said Jennifer Kolari, a child and family therapist and author.

But doing it on national television, to be watched and judged, that's where I feel it's a little bit exploitive, and I think we need to consider the mental health of the kids that are on that show.

"[23] But other mental health experts declared the show safe, concluding that the participants merely displayed strong competitiveness and that social ostracization was largely avoided.

For example, the New Bedford Standard-Times was dismissive of the show's lack of originality, noting: "...a gruff, gritty, macho mountain man takes a group of high-school kids and dumps them in the deep woods where they must learn to put aside their 'drama' and adapt.

[17] The Los Angeles Times also concluded that the show was vapid, but that it had slightly more "depth" than other Cartoon Network live-action programs.

[39] In March 2010, Toronto resident Richard Code, a fan of Stroud's show Survivorman, was found dead from hypothermia near his campsite at the north end of Horn Lake (near McMurrich/Monteith, Ontario).

[41] At least one reviewer has criticized Survive This for not mentioning Code's death or warning kids not to imitate what they see on the show.

The Globe and Mail reviewer Catherine Dawson March wrote, "You'd think, just seven weeks after Code's headline-making death, that Survive This would make a passing nod to the tragedy.

"[34] Dawson praised the show as "captivating" with "lots of emotional drama", but concluded: "It's great stuff, but YTV should acknowledge Code's death with a warning of their own.