BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — By all rights, Deborah Scaling Kiley should have died when she was cast adrift in a raft in shark-infested water. Three of the other four people on the boat didn't make it.
But she did.
"I feel almost evangelical about getting that message out to people, that everyone has that primal survival instinct smoldering in them," Kiley said. "And you realize that it's there when the event happens. It's almost like a spark and it turns into a flame. . . . I really think you can enhance your life by realizing that you have those skills to go with your gut, to listen to your instinct, to be aware, to adapt, and to realize that every choice you make you will be held accountable for. And if you make the wrong choice, you die."
That's what the 10-part series "I Shouldn't Be Alive" (10 p.m., Discovery) is about — people who overcome situations that almost certainly should have been fatal. It is, in a way, a follow-up to the 2003 docudrama "Touching the Void," which told a similarly amazing story of the survival of two mountain climbers.
"The interesting thing was that the key survivor in that story . . . said, 'The closer you are to death, the more you realize you're alive,' "' said executive producer John Smithson. "Talking to these people, who by all rights should have died and amazingly survived, it's interesting that that's exactly what they saw, as well. It's the key moment that we all face."
First up on "Shouldn't" is Kiley's story of survival at sea. Future episodes include a family trapped in their car by a blizzard, people lost in the Amazon, kayakers threatened by the ocean, people kidnapped by ruthless killers and an injured plane-crash survivor threatened by wild animals.
Kiley, whose story was already told in the 1997 TV movie "Two Came Back," is enthusiastic about the episode of "Alive."
"I think that one thing that (the producers do) is, they bring you into the family and they listen to what you say," Kiley said. "And, for me, my five days adrift in the Atlantic Ocean was a very dark, dark experience. It was a tumultuous experience. . . . And the producers listened to me."
"We spent days — days — interviewing them," Smithson said. "And, basically, their words became the script of the film. It became a living script. That way we had accuracy. That way we got the emotions through the real people."
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com