Proving the Internet rumours correct, a tragedy befell the Kucha Tribe on the sixth episode of Survivor: The Australian Outback. Michael Skupin, a software maker and distributor, was overcome by smoke while standing near the tribe's camp fire, passed out and fell in severely burning his hands right before the scheduled immunity challenge. To alert viewers, CBS aired a parental warning before showing the graphic scene.

While the show's medical team rushed to the scene, Michael doused himself in the Herbert River as teammates Elisabeth Filarski and Alicia Calaway comforted him. When the medics arrived Filarski and elder tribe member Rodger Bingham helped Skupin to shore. Skupin was taken to the production crew's camp where the medics assessed his condition. With his tribe gathered around a helicopter, Skupin was airlifted to a local hospital to receive medical attention.

"It was so strange to sit there and we're all smiling at him and he's cracking jokes. It was so hard because the minute he was out of sight, it was like decompress and just like...'Oh, God. That just happened," said a sobbing Filarski in an interview following Skupin's evacuation.

Ogakor, the opposing tribe, was alerted to the accident through a "tree mail" delivered to them later. As a whole, Ogakor was shocked and felt sympathy for Kucha. In a controversial move considering that past challenges have been run with contestants sitting out to even the odds, Survivor's producers pulled the plug on the last immunity challenge before the tribal merger on next week's show. With Skupin gone from the game, both tribes will merge with the same number of members. The decision came as a relief to the Ogakor tribe. The tribe hasn't done well during the game's challenges and might've faced being voted off one by one by Kucha if they had lost the upcoming immunity challenge. That scenario would have made for a series of predictable Survivor episodes until Ogakor was totally eliminated and Kucha was left to fight for the million dollar prize amongst themselves.

Rodger Bingham, was hopeful that the crisis would bring his teammates closer together than ever before.

"We're going to either go win this thing or lose this thing as a team unless somebody jumps boat on us in middle stream, which is possible," he said during the show. "We're going to stick together as a team and possibly Mike's accident might have brought some up to the realization that, you know, maybe there are other things more important than even the million dollars."

Fellow Kucha tribe member, Jeff Varner, echoed Bingham's statements with a stern warning for Ogakor.

"This merge is going to be intense. Ogakor will be relieved. I mean, I think they are good people and I think that they're going to feel bad and sincerely have compassion for us and for Mike but they weren't part of that," he said. "They didn't experience it (the accident). They didn't hear it and so, that feeling of 'Oh, my goodness!' is going to have to be very quickly replaced with relief that we are merging together because we had them. We had them. They had to have been scared. They had to have been afraid. There was no way we were losing this challenge today. No way. We're going to kill them. We are going to eat them up and spit them out and that's the way Mike would want it to be. It was the last thing he said to us before he left and it's exactly what we are going to do".

News of Skupin's accident first surfaced weeks ago on the Internet through an editorial entitled 'My Bizarre Connection To Survivor" written by Skupin family member - Chris Gore - the editor and publisher of Film Threat, a magazine devoted to championing independent films and bashing mainstream Hollywood.

"As for Michael Skupin, I understand that he arrived home from Australia with a sea of television cameras surrounding his home. His hands were wrapped in bandages, badly burned during his experiences in the Outback. (He's offered no explanation for the burns, or how they might happen on the show.) Both Michael, and wife Peni have remained tightlipped not only to the press, but to family as well, so I really don't know a thing," Gore wrote in the February 5th column.

The remaining Survivors at the start of the broadcast were:

Kucha Tribe

1. Alicia Calaway: Personal trainer.
2. Elisabeth Filarski: Footwear designer.
3. Jeff Varner: Internet product manager.
4. Michael Skupin: Software company president.
5. Nick Brown: U.S. army officer.
6. Rodger Bingham: Teacher.

1. Amber Brkich: Administrative assistant.
2. Colby Donaldson: Custom auto designer.
3. Jerri Manthey: Actress.
4. Keith Famie: Chef and restaurant owner.
5. Tina Wesson: Nursing assistant.

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