Grylls is on a desert island, south of Papua New Guinea. He wades across a shark-infested tidal channel, climbs crumbling volcanic cliffs, leaps over a 100-foot death drop, and constructs a bamboo windsurfer to make his escape.

In Australia's Northern Territory, Grylls must rely on many of the skills honed by the Aboriginal people to survive in this sweltering landscape dominated by crocodiles.

While in the Canadian Rockies, Grylls is buried alive in an avalanche, swims long distance beneath an ice-covered lake, and is airvac-ed to the hospital when an icy glissade goes horribly wrong.

Grylls lands in the snow-capped Caucasus Mountains of the Georgian Republic by driving a snowmobile out the back of a hovering helicopter. He ziplines across a river, camps among wolves and trudges through swampy wetlands.

In the Mojave Desert Grylls puts himself in the path of a man-made sandstorm, takes on the full force of a man-made flash flood and HALO jump from 30,000 feet. His body is pushed to the limit as the temperature soars from minus 40 to 110 degrees.