About Sketchy Survival 101
We make animated stick figure survival stories, told one day at a time, and we check every survival rule in them before it goes on screen.
On the channel, you're the one who's trapped. In Zombie Outbreak you're the night engineer of a 180 bed hospital when the dead take the city. In Alien Invasion you're a window washer 60 floors up when every light in the city goes dark. The characters are simple stick figures and the monsters are made up. The diesel math, the water, the medicine and the physics are real.
How we check the science
Every episode description ends with a section called What is real in this story. Each line is a survival fact from the script with a link to where it comes from, and the same sources are listed on our series pages so you can open them and check the numbers yourself. When a line in a script can't be traced to a solid source, it stays out of that list.
Our sourcing standard, in order of preference:
- Peer reviewed research and conference papers
- Government agencies: the CDC, FDA, EPA, Ready.gov, the National Weather Service, the U.S. Department of Energy and national labs
- Codes and standards bodies such as the NFPA and the International Residential Code
- University programs and extension services, such as the Florida Solar Energy Center
- Original patents, manuals and primary historical records
Every figure we publish (a temperature, a gallon count, a time limit, a price) should link back to a source you can read for yourself. When we can only find a number in marketing copy or a trade blog, we say so, and we use the more conservative, better documented figure instead.
The archive
Before the story series, the channel made physics first breakdowns of cheap ways to cool, heat and power a home. Those videos, our science articles and our free printable PDF cheat sheets all still live on this site. Nothing is behind an email signup.
A note on products and links
When a page mentions a specific product, we sometimes use affiliate links. They never change the price you pay, and they never change what we recommend. We link to the part the science actually supports. See our affiliate disclosure for the details.