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One woman who had taken part in a YouTube survival contest was reported missing during the night, and it took police 18 hours to find her amid the cold and wet Michigan forest.
Challenge videos on YouTube, especially in the wake of MrBeast, are only becoming more extreme as time goes on as creators compete for attention with increasingly wild scenarios.
Not everyone has the financial resources to create their own prisons or inhabit an abandoned island, so sometimes the best that you can do is a low-budget survival effort in a local forest.
Unfortunately it's a lot easier for things to go wrong than you might expect, and one 32-year-old woman found that out the hard way as she went missing for 18 hours in the middle of the night.
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As reported by UpNorthLive, the 36-year-old woman was originally from California, but was competing in a challenge video intended for YouTube in the Pigeon River Forest, Charlton Township.
She had reportedly departed from the designated base camp on her own at around 5 p.m. on September 5 in search of some water, and her fellow contestants noticed that she hadn't returned after a while.
Eventually the hosts of the challenge video attempted to lead their own search efforts, but after this proved difficult they decided to contact local law enforcement at around 5 a.m. the next morning.
The Michigan State Police then orchestrated a coordinated search effort and thankfully managed to locate the woman within a swampy area of the forest at roughly 10:30 a.m., and she was then led out of the forest to safety.
"A search effort was initiated, and MSP canine units entered the dense forest, which was still damaged from the ice storm," local law enforcement detailed in a post on X.
On September 6, troopers from the Michigan State Police (MSP) Gaylord Post responded to the Pigeon River State Forest to assist the Otsego County Sheriff's Office in locating a 36-year-old woman missing from California. The woman was a contestant in a YouTube survival challenge… pic.twitter.com/9eEdIteS5f
— MSP Seventh District (@mspnorthernmi) September 6, 2025
"The MSP Aviation unit was activated and Trooper 6 responded to the scene. At approximately 10:40 a.m. Trooper 6 located the missing woman directed the canine units to her. Law enforcement officers and firefighters were able to walk her out of the woods safely. Great work by all first responders on the scene!"
Despite spending 18 hours on her own in the poor conditions of the forest, emergency medical services evaluated that she had no serious injuries and was released immediately.
"Wild that a YouTube survival challenge led to a multi-agency search," writes one concerned user in the replies on X. "Hope she's okay. Makes you think about the real-world risks of these online stunts."
