Seven Days Stranded in an Abandoned City: MrBeast and Mark Rober's Survival Challenge
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A helicopter drops Jimmy (MrBeast) and his friends Kris, Chandler, and science YouTuber Mark Rober on the roof of an abandoned city, then flies off. It is their only way out. The challenge is to live in the ruins for seven days. Jimmy describes the place as a once-beautiful resort city that was bombed and abandoned during a war. As far as the group knows, the only other people there are their camera crew. When he asks why they are doing this, his answer is simple: "For content."
The video follows the week day by day. The group searches for workable shelter, rations its supplies, and loses half its water in an accident that forces two members to leave. A series of unexplained noises turns out to have a very Mark Rober explanation.
Day One: Getting Off the Roof and Setting Up Camp
The first job was to explore the building they had landed on and find a safe home base. Exploring the dark lower floors made Jimmy feel like he was "in a zombie apocalypse." Eventually they found a spot they liked. It had a view over the whole city and a roof to keep the rain off.
Next they opened the supply crate the helicopter had left on the roof, which held the survival gear for the week, and split into teams. Kris and Mark built a fire. Mark said he preferred the log-cabin method and reminded everyone that he is an Eagle Scout. Jimmy and Chandler went looking for something to sleep on.
Chandler found an old mattress in a corner on the second floor. Jimmy joked that it looked like something from a hundred years ago, and someone suggested wrapping it in a tarp so bugs wouldn't eat Chandler alive. Chandler wrapped it "like a burrito." Everyone else slept on wooden doors, and Jimmy said his back already hurt before the night began.
A Strange Noise and a Windy Night
Day one went mostly smoothly, but something odd happened that night. While the others slept, Mark and some of the camera crew woke to the sound of breaking glass near the camp. Someone thought they saw something. The group started to wonder whether they really were alone.
The first shelter also turned out to be far too windy. Asked how they slept, the group answered: "Bad." On day two they ate canned chili for breakfast, which Jimmy said he had never done before but was hungry enough not to mind. Then they set out to find a better shelter.
Day Two: Drone Scouting, Cats, and a New Base
They sent up a drone to scan buildings they hadn't explored yet, including several hotels. The footage showed how large the place was, and someone remarked that "it is an actual city here." The drone also found a cat. Jimmy landed it right next to the animal, which walked up and sniffed the camera. He promised viewers the crew was not paying the cat to act, and joked that it had "no survival instinct."
Since the night was expected to be freezing, they turned back to the search. On foot they found buildings with what one of them called a "zombie apocalypse aesthetic," beautiful even though it was ugly. They also passed an empty, decaying pool, which the video compares with an image of how it used to look, and a sports court where they found a soccer ball. Jimmy guessed the ball was older than all of them, "besides Mark, he's old."
With about an hour of daylight left, they had to choose between exploring a tunnel toward a neighborhood and preparing for the night so they wouldn't freeze. They picked the second option. They chose a more fortified room that would hold a fire pit and could be tarped against the wind. The catch was that all their gear was still at the first camp, a long way off. They spent the last hours of light hauling belongings over, but darkness came quickly and they couldn't move everything. That first night in the new base they had one water bag, cans of chili, and a couple of old mattresses. Even so, it was much warmer and had no wind.
Day Three: A Figure Under the Stairs
On day three they kept exploring. They climbed staircases where Jimmy counted only three normal steps, and they reached a beach. Then they saw something unexpected: what looked like a person, or something reflective, under a set of stairs. A cameraman had also spotted a mysterious figure on the drone feed. Jimmy connected it to the first night, joking about the "glass bottle attack," and wondered if that was where the bottles had come from.
They went to investigate. The search led them to a mansion next to a large motel. Jimmy's narration says this was once a first-class vacation resort that years of war had turned to ruins. Inside, the hallways were long and eerie. The group found a piece of candy, and someone jokingly asked whether it was a Feastables bar. They took turns pushing each other to go first. They searched for "the lurker" for the rest of the day without finding him, and by nightfall they were hoping he wouldn't come looking for them.
That night they used a piece of gear they'd been saving: a huge flashlight they called "Big Bertha," which Jimmy described as the world's most powerful flashlight. Pointed at a distant building that had been invisible in the dark, it lit it up. One of them joked that the fish in the ocean must be "tripping." Then it stopped working. Jimmy summed up the evening: they got to play with the brightest flashlight, but they had to walk back to camp in the dark. Someone said the walk felt like "the world is ending and we're just like surviving." Back at camp, nothing was left to eat but chili. They hoped the next day would bring a table, seven chairs, and more food.
Day Four: The Water Disaster
By the morning of day four they were running low. The water bag at the new camp was empty, and more water was still in the crate on the original rooftop, far across the city. After a round of "nose goes," Mark and Chandler went to fetch it while Jimmy and Kris looked for furniture. Kris got sidetracked when he found a bike and rode it around, calling it "the coolest abandoned city ever." Jimmy reasoned that a house is where people keep tables and chairs, so they searched houses and found a chair.
On the roof, the water bag weighed over a hundred pounds. Mark, "being the science YouTuber that he is," in Jimmy's words, came up with a way to lower it more effectively. The rope broke. The bag fell and burst on the ground. Jimmy stresses that this was real and calls it a very serious problem: Mark had "deleted half of our water." One bag was left, and Mark and Chandler carried it down by hand.
Down to Two
With half the water gone, Jimmy says the only way to finish the seven days was to send two people home. Kris and Chandler volunteered. That left Jimmy and Mark with just enough supplies to last. On the way out, one of the departing pair said they would be scared to leave Jimmy with anyone but Mark.
They fired a flare to signal the boat. It lit up the whole city, which Jimmy thought looked cool. After that it was just him and Mark, and Jimmy said he felt lonely.
Day Five: Turning Ruins Into a Home
On their first day without the others, Jimmy and Mark decided to renovate the shelter. They planned to tarp and windproof the room, build a fireplace, find shelves and tables, and make the place look like a home. Mark joked that with their plans he might stay until day 14. Jimmy said he was lying.
Searching nearby buildings, they found a shelf, a small table, a large carpet, a working chair, a metal object the camera crew found, a fake TV frame, some vent pieces, and wallpaper. Mark said the vent pieces could be made into a fireplace. When Jimmy asked what the wallpaper was for, Mark said it was "to make the house a home." Jimmy compared the trip to grocery shopping where they came home with "a bunch of 30-year-old garbage." Mark said they were "no longer surviving" but "thriving." Along the way Jimmy admired a courtyard with arches and said every building in the city had its own personality.
They spent about four hours clearing rubble out of the room. They dusted the shelf and stocked it with food. Jimmy pointed out that more than half of what they had packed was chili, which nobody liked. They added a door and hung a large tarp to keep the fireplace's heat inside. Mark explained how the fireplace worked: oxygen comes in, the fire burns, heat goes into the room, and smoke goes out. Someone called it "redneck engineering at its finest." When the fire caught, they could finally feel heat after days of being cold.
The finished room had smaller beds, lighting, the improvised furnace, a real table and chairs, the shelf with what food remained, and a dirty towel they had been sharing. Mark had put his iPad inside the fake TV frame and asked Jimmy to "tell me this isn't genius."
The Breaking Glass, Explained
That night they heard breaking glass again. Jimmy wanted to go upstairs and see who was there, and called out that if anyone was up there they should come out because he wanted to be "best friends." He also asked Mark if this was a prank, and Mark swore it wasn't him.
Upstairs they found a device. Jimmy called it "the most Mark Rober thing I've ever seen." Mark admitted he had been pranking them all along. He had a remote control, and from his sleeping bag he could launch glass bottles through the roof to scare everyone. Jimmy said he thought he could trust him. He also said forgiving Mark was easy, since there was only one day left.
Day Six: Playing in the Empty City
The renovations worked. Jimmy says the shelter was at least ten degrees warmer, and both said they slept well. Going outside, they noticed how much colder it was than inside. Mark proposed spending their last full day having fun.
They found a kayak and paddled it in a pool. They played baseball and soccer. Mark taught Jimmy to skip rocks "scientifically." They also shouted to each other from opposite sides of the city and threw things off rooftops at the same time. Jimmy says these silly activities took their minds off how lonely the city was.
Day Seven: Getting Out
On the final day they cleaned up camp. Jimmy said they had one goal left: to leave and never come back. When their ride arrived they shouted "Freedom!" Jimmy closed by thanking Mark, saying Mark didn't have to take part and has his own busy channel.
We just got dropped off in the middle of an abandoned city. And we're going to spend the next seven days here. And there goes our only way out. We're now stranded for the next seven days.
Why are we doing this? For content.
This once beautiful city was bombed and abandoned because of war, which means the only people here are us and our cameraman. At least that we know of. So I guess we start off by getting off the roof.
We knew that our first objective was to explore this city and find a safe place to call home for the next seven days, which starts with exploring this building.
All right, let's see what's down the bottom of this building. I assume under this wood is a floor. Only one way to find out. All right, this is crazy. I feel like I'm in a zombie apocalypse. This is wild. Oh, look at this.
After a little more exploring, we stumbled upon an area that might work for our shelter.
Oh, my gosh. I think this is where we should set up camp. You can see the entire city over here. Plus, we have a roof to protect us from rain.
And now that we had our home base decided, the next step was to open up the supplies crate left by the helicopter on the roof. Let's pop open this crate so we can build camp. We need some gear.
This crate contains all of the survival gear we'll need for the next seven days. Who wants fire duty? We'll get it. We're on bed duty.
Kris got started on making a fire with Mark. I'm personally a fan of the log cabin when it comes to fires. Eagle Scout. Did I mention that yet?
While Chandler and I looked for something for us to sleep on. This is what mattresses were like a hundred years ago? Wait, you found a mattress? Yeah. Where? On the second floor in a corner.
That's all you. Thanks. You should wrap that thing in a tarp so you don't get destroyed by bugs. I'm going to wrap that mattress like a burrito.
And while Chandler took his chances with a sketchy mattress, the rest of us decided to sleep on wooden doors. There's no shot that you're more comfortable than me right now. My back already hurts.
There are so many buildings we have yet to explore in the city. Tomorrow's going to be insane. We'll see you in the morning.
Even though our first day in the city went pretty smooth, something eerie did happen to occur later that night. While we were sleeping, Mark and some of the camera guys woke up to the sound of breaking glass not far from the camp, which made us start to wonder if we were really alone inside the city.
What was it? We just heard glass shattering there. I thought I saw something.
But on top of the freaky noises, this first shelter was way too windy to sleep. How'd you guys sleep? Bad. So in pursuit of better sleep, we got up, got breakfast and prepared to find our new shelter.
This is the first time I've had chili for breakfast. But I'm so hungry, I kind of don't care. Well, since the raft. When have I ever been this excited over canned chili? I think my brain tried to forget about that. Thanks.
So after a nutritious breakfast, we took off our drone to seek out a new shelter in the unexplored buildings. We haven't explored that building. We haven't explored those hotels. It is an actual city here.
However, upon scanning the buildings, we did stumble upon an unexpected guest. There's a cat. There's a cat down there. I'm going to land the drone right beside the cat.
Look at that shot. Kris, Kris, look, it's sniffing the camera. This cat has no survival instinct. I promise we are not paying this cat to be an actor.
As fun as playing with these cats is, we need to focus on shelter because it's going to be freezing tonight. And so we started our journey to find a sufficient shelter for the challenge.
Wait, what is this? This is pretty. It just has this type of aesthetic to it that is beautiful even though it's ugly. Zombie apocalypse aesthetic. Yeah. There you go.
Wait, is that a pool? What the heck? This is so eerie. Back in the day, this used to look something like this. And after decades of rotting from being abandoned, this is what we're left with.
Wait, there's a soccer field? The sports court. Is that a soccer ball? I bet this soccer ball is older than me. Older than all of us, for sure. Well, besides Mark, he's old.
We have two options now. We can keep exploring down this cool-looking tunnel and go check out the neighborhood. Or with the hour of light we have left, we can prep for nighttime and not freeze all night. Not freeze. That sounds like a good idea. I agree.
And after spending the entire day looking for a new shelter, I just can't get over how massive the city is. We finally found a place fortified enough to call home.
So we don't freeze tonight, we're thinking of setting up camp in this room right here. We'll have a fire pit right here. We can tarp the wall right there. It's going to be comfy. Yeah, Mark's going to do all that. I said we.
The only hard part is, come over here. Our current camp and all our gear is all the way over there. I hope this place really works out because it's going to be a lot of effort to set up.
With the sun getting low and the temperature rapidly dropping, we made our way back to the old camping spot and packed up to settle into the new base.
We're headed into the new campsite. The new camp, the new camp. The new camp. Okay, we've got a lot of cleanup to do to prep this for tonight. This looks like a terrible place, but whatever.
After finding a more weatherproof base, we spent the next few hours dragging in as many of our belongings as we could before sundown. Now, because it got dark so fast, we couldn't bring all of our resources to the new base. So aside from one water bag, cans of chili and a couple of old mattresses, this is all we had.
What does everyone think of our new place? I like that there's no wind. And it's much warmer. Chandler? What?
It was now the third day of seven doing this challenge. And once we got up, we continued exploring. Be careful. These stairs are actually steep. On this whole staircase, three of the stairs are normal.
This beach is nice. It actually smells like a beach. It's because it is a beach.
But not too far in, something strange happened. I think I see someone. What? Don't you see that reflecting thing over there under the stairs? Oh, I do. Jimmy, remember how we almost died the first night from glass bottle attack? I wonder if that's where the glass bottles came from.
It was at this moment when we realized we actually weren't alone in this abandoned city after all. And once our cameraman spotted this mysterious person on our drone, we did what anyone would do. Let's go check it out. Investigation.
That building is sick. Why is this mansion beside this giant motel? Decades ago, this hotel stood as a first-class vacation resort. But years of war turned this once picturesque property into a city of ruins.
Let's head on in. What did we just get ourselves into? We totally don't wait for the cameraman to walk in the room before we go in.
It's getting dark. Everyone, stop. Stop. Candy. We should go in there. I'll go first. Go ahead. Thank you. You think it's a Feastables bar? What the heck?
This is starting to get very eerie, and I think Mark should go first. What? Look at how deep this hallway is.
We spent the rest of the day searching for the lurker, but once it started getting dark, we could only hope that later he wouldn't be looking for us.
And now that it's dark out, here's what we've actually been waiting for. Give me Big Bertha. Thank you. Big Bertha. Notice how you can't see that building over there. This is the world's most powerful flashlight. Now you can. Bro, I bet the fish in the ocean are tripping.
It stopped working. How the mighty have fallen. The pluses of our actions is we got to play with the world's strongest flashlight at night. The negatives of our actions is that we got to walk back in the dark.
That was bad timing. It's way scarier going through this place at night. Yeah, a thousand percent. It really feels like the world is ending and we're just surviving.
We're back at camp. Yeah. I'll get a fire going. I'm hungry. There's literally only chili left. And so with the last of our supply here, we're feasting. Tomorrow, if we got some tables and seven chairs. And more food. That'd be awesome.
But when we woke up on the morning of day four out of seven, we realized that we were already running low on supplies. Our bag of water is out of water. Do we have more? Point the camera at that roof, all the way over there. I wish I had more than a hundred calories in my body to go get it.
Nose goes. What does nose goes mean? It sounds like you're going. He's going to need help. He can't carry it on his own.
So Mark and Chandler set out to go all the way back to our original camping spot and get more supplies from the crate. Chandler and I, we're on a side quest for water. This is a main quest.
While they get the water, we don't want to be useless. We? I'm fine. I don't want us to be useless. So we're going to go try to find a table and some chairs.
But we didn't get very far before Kris got distracted. Did we not know this was here? Jimmy? Yeah? I found a bike. That looks like a nice bike. Where'd you find that? In here. This is the coolest abandoned city ever. Having fun? I am. All right, I'm going to go look for a table. Okay, let's go.
How are we going to get the water out of this? It's heavy.
The thought process is that this is a house. And what do people have in their house? Tables and chairs. Exactly. Wait, hold up. Look at this. Don't move. Yes. Jimmy, Jimmy. It's a chair.
Mark's strong. A little help here, Chan. This bag of water is over a hundred pounds. And so my buddy Mark, being the science YouTuber that he is, had an idea to get it down from the roof more effectively. But...
Our rope broke. We need stronger rope. What you're watching is real. Mark literally deleted half of our water.
We got some bad news. Hurry up, hurry up. The rope broke and all the water splattered on the ground. This was actually a very serious problem. Oh, no. Are you kidding me? Mark! Sorry! Don't worry, dude, we got one bag of water left. Carry this one down, please.
And now that half of our water is actually gone, the only possible way to complete this seven-day challenge would, unfortunately, be to send two of us home. So Kris and Chandler volunteered to leave the city, leaving Mark and I with just enough resources to make it the full seven days.
Genuinely, I would be scared if we left Jimmy with anybody other than you. I think you got it. Oh, you guys.
And so we launched a flare to signal the boat, which was actually pretty cool. Bro, look how cool that looks. Wait, it's lighting up the entire city. But the not cool part is now that Kris and Chandler are gone, it's just Mark and I surviving in the city. I feel so lonely.
It's our first day without our friends. But we're going to make the best of the situation. Our objective for today is to renovate our shelter. We're going to put up tarps and windproof this room. We're going to build a fireplace in here and heat it up. We're going to find shelves and tables. We're going to make this place look like a home. With some of the ideas we have planned, I might stick around until day 14. He's lying.
And so we started exploring some nearby buildings to find furnishings for our shelter, which is when we found this awesome shelf, this little table, a massive carpet, and also this metal thing that was found by our camera guy.
Look at this chair. That works still, man. Bro, that's comf. I found a fake TV. We can make it look like we have a TV now. It's a good find.
Wow, that's just so cool, this courtyard with the arches. Each building in this city has its own personality.
What can we do with these? We could use a vent system like this. Combined with these, we can make a fireplace. Like actual wallpaper. We have wallpaper. What do we use it for? To make the house a home, Jimmy.
It's like we went grocery shopping, but instead we grabbed a bunch of 30-year-old garbage. Honey, we're home. We found all this stuff. Now we're going to start decorating. We're no longer surviving, Jimmy. We're thriving. I like that.
We literally spent the next four hours moving all the rubble out of our shelter. When everything's said and done, this room will be the greatest room in an abandoned city you've ever seen.
This is our new shelf. All right, let's see how she looks. See that? See all that dust? Oh, isn't that satisfying? And now that the shelf is clean, we can use it to store food. For some reason, over half the food we packed is chili. And no one here likes chili.
All right. That's going to block a lot of wind. With our new door in place, we also hung up this huge tarp, which will allow us to keep all the heat from the fireplace inside our shelter.
Oxygen comes in, fire burns, sends heat in the room, sends smoke out. This is redneck engineering at its finest. Finally, after being cold for so long. All right. Look at that. And we have a fire. I can feel the heat coming out. Wait, Jimmy rigged this up in ruins from an abandoned city.
This is the final room. We have plenty in the corner. We have our beds that are now smaller. Tell me this isn't genius. This is Mark's iPad in the TV frame. Obviously some nice lighting, a furnace that is heating up the room, a real table with chairs and a shelving unit with the scraps of food we have left and a dirty towel we've been sharing. This is survival.
But just as our night was going so well, for the fifth day in a row, we heard broken glass. Mark. I'm right here, dog. What was that? Man, we were having such a good day too.
I want to go see who's upstairs. Hey, if you're up here, just come out. I want to be best friends with you. Are you serious, you're not pranking me? Bro, I swear to you it was not me. Hello.
What is this? What? Oh, my God. This is the most Mark Rober thing I've ever seen. What the heck? You swore!
Yeah, so turns out Mark was pranking us, and he was the one dropping these bottles the whole time. I've got a remote control here. But no one suspects it. I can be in my sleeping bag and I can start launching glass bottles through the roof. Freak everyone out. Oh, my gosh. I thought I could trust you.
To be honest, it was pretty easy to forgive Mark because we only had one day left in this challenge.
Good morning. Good morning, abandoned city. Abandoned city, abandoned city. It's so much colder out here than it is in there. Let's go back.
It's now the morning of day six. All the modifications we did were phenomenal and it was at least ten degrees warmer. That was amazing. Slept incredible. Mark, on our last real day, I say we go have some fun.
Yeah! Yeah! Jimmy, is that a kayak? I know what we should do with it. Now someone can kayak in this pool.
Me and Mark really did have a lot of fun. Played baseball, played soccer. Mark even taught me how to skip rocks scientifically. There it is. And even screaming at each other from different sides of the city. Mark! What! Let's throw things off the roof at the same time! Great idea!
To be honest, doing all these kind of dumb things really did take our minds off of how lonely this city really was. Yeah!
And by the time the final day of this challenge arrived, after cleaning up camp, we only had one objective in mind. Leaving this place and never coming back.
I'm here! I'm here! Freedom! Huge shout out to Mark. He didn't have to do this. He has his own channel, is very busy. Here's the channel. I appreciate you. And let's get out of here. Let's go.
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