"Rival Survival," a new Discovery Channel reality special, pits two senators from opposite sides of the aisle against each other as they're forced to find bipartisanship while stranded on a remote island for a week.
Senators Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, and Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico, were shipped off to the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, dumped, and left without any
natural sources of fresh water, according to Politico. Their challenge? Work together to survive.
The one-hour special will air on the Discovery Channel on Oct. 29.
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"In 'Rival Survival' our senatorial adversaries turned survival teammates are given a modest choice of items from which they can select only three," the Discovery Channel said in a news release.
"Using only these limited resources and their wits, the pair must work together as they attempt to spear fish, build shelter, and find enough water to survive for one week. There is no natural source for fresh water on Eru, and what lives in the ocean will be their major food source," the announcement continued.
Flake and Heinrich issued a joint statement about the show.
"Both of us know just how frustrated people are with Washington right now," the senators said. "We can both attest that no one is more frustrated than those of us trying to get things done in this environment.
"We recognize how difficult it can be to cut through the partisanship. So we decided to do something completely out of the ordinary and frankly a little extreme to show the world and our colleagues that even if you have serious differences, if you want to survive you have to work together."
While the show seems to be trying to play up the senators' political differences, the men are actually friends and even once traveled together on a fact-finding mission to discuss forest and
wildlife restoration in April, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
Flake is reportedly a veteran survivalist who often travels to remote areas with his sons and lives off the land for days at a time. Five years ago, he spent a week alone on an island in the Pacific, surviving on coconuts and fish, the Journal noted.
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