The Most Dangerous Fear Factor Challenges

Beekeeper here! Co-owner of an apiary (bee farm) on the wet west coast of Canada. Your enthusiasm about honey is delightful, and the concerns you raise about the FF bee challenge are valid. I’ll try to respond to your concerns and any follow up questions here - STINGLESS BEES? Nope. There are 30,000 different kinds of bees in the world, but these look like your common honeybee, stingers and all, the same girls we have in our hives. EATING BEES… …is not recommended. There may be some discomfort. Bees sting when they’re trying to defend their hives or themselves. Being bitten or swallowed would definitely cause them to sting. It would be really foolish for a production company to make someone do that, because even if someone weren’t allergic to bee venom, such a swelling inside the esophagus would threaten the ability to breathe and you know how that would go. Even if the person killed the bee by biting it, dead bees can still sting. The stinger and venom are still there, and if you squish a dead bee the wrong way you’ll get zapped. A dead bee is like a loaded gun that no one is holding - if you pick it up wrong, you get hurt. I’ve been stung by more dead bees than live ones over the years :P BUT HE ATE IT!?!? The closeup shows a drone (male bee). Drones don’t have stingers. Female bees have stingers; drones have…boy parts. The anatomy is very similar, but even if you were to somehow entice a drone to “sting” you, it wouldn’t do anything because there’s no venom. I’ve handled lots of drones; they’re quite dim-witted and docile, rather like tiny fat puppies. (That said, I wouldn’t eat a puppy, or a live bee, for entertainment. That’s cruel and pointless.) COVERED IN BEES CAVEAT: Do NOT try this unless you are experienced in working with bees and familiar with their behaviour and how they express anger/upset/calmness. Being able to “read”/“hear” the bees’ language is of utmost importance. Someone else in the comments suggested this was a swarm. Their description of a swarm is accurate, butttt you can’t entice a swarm to land on a person like that. What they’ve done here is similar to “bee beards” that used to be common in county fairs and such. The bees in a colony are bonded to their queen by smell (pheromones). The queen has been put in a tiny cage and strapped to the person - all that queen’s comrades gather around her. The producers may have also sprayed the person with sugar water or queen pheromones to get the bees to spread around on the person instead of forming a clump. I do not advocate for this kind of practice. It’s manipulating the bees for no purpose other than entertainment, and the bees can be injured or killed by this practice. Many times I’ve stuck my bare hand into a clump of ~30,000 bees for fun, but the bees were already in a clump, I didn’t “put them there”, and no one - not me nor bees - was injured or killed. I know how to tell when bees are calm or angry; the average non-beekeeper doesn’t. Don’t do this. And please don’t manipulate the bees into “being clothing” for photos or entertainment; it’s pointless and bees can get stressed, hurt, or killed. TAKING OFF THE “SUIT OF BEES” Honeybees die when they sting (it disembowels them), so they only sting when they’re defending their hive or queen or when they’re overtly “attacked” (e.g. you pinch one by putting your hand on it or it gets stuck in your clothes). So as long as the person stays calm and still, doesn’t hold their breath or move jerkily, and doesn’t pinch any bees in their armpit or something, there’s relatively little chance of getting stung. The impact of the person hitting the ground knocked 90% of the bees off. (Watch that moment closely - instead of the bees just flying off her, you’ll see the bees fall to the ground, then fly up - it’s super cool and funny to see bees “fall down” in person when you knock them off a piece of beekeeping equipment ;) ) The queen in her cage was likely removed just before this, or immediately after. The remaining bees could be removed with a shop-vac, water hose, or leaf blower, and as long as the queen is still nearby, all those bees flying around will find her by smell and will all gather around her within 20 minutes. And one more thing that’s just a technicality that “bugs” me - 100,000 BEES That number’s likely made-up to sound cool on television. An average domestic honeybee colony has 35,000-65,000 bees, so 100,000 bees would be a really massive colony - and no decent beekeeper is going to subject their biggest colony to this kind of shenanigans. (And no, they wouldn’t have used two colonies on one person - that could result in a big angry brawl between bees from different colonies, with a nearly-naked person in the midst of them.) TL/DR: Eat honey, yes - eat bees, no. Wear sunscreen, yes - wear bees, no.

I love how Mike blinks furiously when he is concentrating hard while reacting 💀💀💀

Joe Rogan had a funny story about the bee episode. Apparently, some other wild bees weren't happy and went to war with the bees they were using. The bee keeper was like "we got to let them figure this out"

Ex-Veterinary nurse here! You're 100% correct that wild rats (and likely some carelessly bred and poorly cared-for feeder rats) can carry many different diseases and are dangerous. However, fancy rats which are purposefully bred and raised as pets aren't much more "disease-ridden" than a cat or dog. In fact, we humans are more of a danger to them in captivity, as they can catch some strains of flu from us. I had four lovely female fancy rats and the worst thing about them was how prone they are to mammary tumors and cancer. They knew how to use the litter box, do tricks, and gave the best little rat kisses! Lovely, lovely animals that can make great pets for the right people.

My old elementary school teacher was on Fear Factor and wound up coming in like, 2nd or 3rd place, but she said they made the show look more dangerous/disgusting than they really were. Production asked everyone to exaggerate their reactions, etc. She didn't say much because of an NDA, but I'm genuinely curious if it's expired by now.

My dad is allergic to bees and he drank one out of his soda, on a hot summer day. He almost died it stung him in the esophagus, and they actually had to change policy at a hospital in our area because they had the receptionist relay the message to the nurse. If the nurse had know how severe the reaction really was they would have taken him. Now a licensed nurse has to be notified, and put on the phone. Edit* OMG! 2.5K LIKES! IVE NEVER GOTTEN SO MANY LIKES IN MY LIFE THANK YOU GUYS!!

I would rather step on the glass than do any of the eating challenges. In fact, I'd rather swallow the glass than any of the eating/ putting gross things in my mouth challenges. Also, I would love to see you react to 1,000 Ways to Die episodes and scenarios. I used to watch that and Fear Factor growing up. And it would be fun to see how likely the deaths in the show would be. They dramatize them and actually do reenactments that are exaggerated and over the top.

I’ve had many panic attacks and all of them have been bad, but if I were either of those people who were chained up of “suffocating” I would probably pass out. I wouldn’t be okay. This show is really wild and dangerous.

I remember feeling so uncomfortable watching this show as a kid. I still do.

As a former rat owner, a fun fact about domesticated ones like those in the challenge is that they are much cleaner than cats. Shocking, right? They clean themselves after eating, being touched, drinking, sleeping, playing, and pretty much after every activity they take part in. Licking and nibbling people or other rats is a sign of affection and trust as well. Also, the difference between rats and mice is that mice have rounder ears and flatter heads. They can squish their skulls to fit through tight places, it's pretty weird. Rats, though, can't do that. They're longer in general and have a rounder face with oval-shaped ears.

9:42 "he's like a human condom" bruh that killed me 💀

They've actually done some studies recently and it turns out that rats were probably much less responsible for the bubonic plague than we originally thought! Also, domesticated rats (If these are domesticated rats.) Can still carry pathogens, but they're not nearly as bad as the ones you'll find out in the wild in a random back alley.

Fear Factor was the weirdest show. Watching this now, as a conservation biologist, I fear to imagine how big of a negative impact the show has had on wildlife conservation efforts.

All of those were terrifying except for the rat one. Those were all fancy domestic rats, so the chances of them carrying any zoonotic disease are EXTREMELY low. Also, as someone who's kept rats as pets for nearly 3 decades, I'd totally sign up for that challenge!

I’m so glad I found your channel! I love these videos, it’s awesome hearing a medical professional weigh in on some of the crazy stuff we see.

“She’s just breathing, she’s not even participating.” Lmfao!

As someone who's suffered from panic attacks before, he got it right. The face tingles, your breath is rapid, logic fails completely and your heart wants to leap from your chest. They're truly terrifying, and can be brought on by the littlest of things. Something like a coworker asking why your hands were a little shaky might cause you to think about how you were already worrying about it, and before you know it, you're sobbing with all the aforementioned symptoms to boot.

"If aliens were ever to come down to earth and see this [being covered in scorpions], they would feel pity on us" ~ Mikhail Varshavski, 2022

As a person with huge claustrophobia, i genuinely panicked so hard looking at the dude wrapped in that stuff and my heart’s beating so fast now

6:42 - When it comes to electric damage, the frequency is pretty interesting. At high values (don't remember how many Hz), it still burns you with plasma,but doesn't "kick" you, so that form of electricity seems to affect the nerves is some special way. The obvious upside is that despite being physically shocked, you don't feel the punch and your muscles don't contract against your will,which could save your live.