Nat Geo’s Race to the Center of the Earth Sounds Like the Most Extreme Reality Show Ever

Race to the Center of the Earth is a brand new series featuring four teams of three, each starting in a different corner of the earth and all racing to one floating buoy in the Pacific holding a million dollars.

Unlike The Amazing Race, these teams are not traveling the same locations and competing in the same sorts of challenges. They each have their own individual challenges to complete, and they’re not eating weird things or convincing themselves to bungee jump. These competitors have to scale huge cliffs, trek through blizzards, cross extremely high bridges, and basically make their way through some of the most extreme bits of nature the producers could find, in an effort to show off “the beauty of our world.”

The teams start in four different locations: Canada, South America, Southeast Asia, and Russia.

The routes are obviously not all exactly the same, since they’re across completely different countries and terrains, but the producers feel sure they came up with journeys that will feel pretty equal by the end, especially considering the different types of difficult weather conditions experienced in the various parts of the world. Like, for instance, it’s pretty dang cold in Canada in late October.

Race to the Center of the Earth will premiere this spring on Nat Geo.