Unless you like dating, designing or dieting in front of millions of viewers, reality TV has always kind of been a participation-free zone. Until now.

Bear Grylls, the tireless host of 'Man vs. Wild' (Wednesdays, 9PM ET on Discovery), treated two lucky viewers to a Fan vs. Wild adventure this season, giving them a story to tell for the rest of their lives ... assuming they made it out OK.

I caught up with Grylls to hear about their journey, then got scoop on the show's new video game and the realities of getting injured on the job.

You were pretty badly injured this season, which is shown in the Aug. 25 episode -- what happened?

I know, that was bad ... the first time we've had to call in the emergency helicopter evacuation in all the shows we've done. It wasn't the wild that got me, it was the camera, which is kind of the irony of it. I was going down a mountain and one of the cameras just careened into me at like 50 mph and missed my head by a matter of inches. They reckon it wouldn't have just killed me, it would've taken my whole head off. So I was really lucky it caught my leg. My leg blew up to like twice its size like a big hematoma ... but these things happen. You've just got to be aware and never get complacent with things. It was a big wake-up for the camera guys. They're amazing and they work so hard for me -- this so rarely happens -- and we're all alive and good.

I don't know that I need to see that, but was the camera still rolling?

Yeah it was, but all the metal casing it was in was literally smashed to smithereens. How do you bend quarter-inch steel on a leg? [Laughs]

You also did a Fan Vs. Wild episode this season -- what can we expect from your adventure with the two fans?

Well this is one that people have been writing in about for a while,saying, "Will you take us regular people?" We put it out there and we had about 20,000 people write in, and we picked two. We took them up to the high mountains in northern Canada and gave them kind of the full Monty. I really wanted them to get the full 'Man vs. Wild' experience. Crossing glaciers and crevasses and snow bridges, swimming through icy rivers, sleeping on the ice, eating worms ... they were pretty shell-shocked to be honest [laughs]. But they're fit, strong guys, but they weren't wilderness experts in any way. I just wanted to make sure they were regular people.

Was it harder having two fans or one celebrity like Will Ferrell with you?

Oh, two fans. I know how I work and my limitations and how to manage stuff -- I can work very fast and a lot is going on subconsciously, instinctively, as we're doing things. But with two people, you always have to look out for them. They don't know the danger a lot of the time -- they're not aware that they're standing on top of a snow bridge and they haven't read the shallow depression of the snow, and the angle of the sun casting a shadow across it. There are small things that you kind of take for granted. But I really enjoyed seeing their journey of coming from so wide-eyed to great confidence by the end. I mean it -- they're real heroes.

Have you kept in touch with the guys?

I saw Jay, one of the guys, in New York. He's from the Bronx and had never been out of the Bronx really before. It was really lovely seeing him now -- we were having breakfast together, and he was saying, "What's so great is that I'd always kind of taken things like breakfast for granted. Now I have a croissant, something delicious, and I think 'Wow, it's amazing!'" I remember at the time he was so hungry and cold and like curling up and cuddling me with the shivers. It's a great journey to see him come through.

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And now fans can also play at home with the video game! Any more details on that yet?

I was really involved with doing this just because if we're gonna do it, we need to do it really right. I think what people like about the show is that it very much brings the viewers alongside through all these adventures. What I wanted to do with the game was let the people who like the show actually be me in the game and do all the things and make all the decisions in these situations, and see if it gets them into trouble. The whole idea is you get to learn all these cool skills while playing a really cool, fun game.

How much work have done on it? And when will it release?

It's almost done -- it's in the last few weeks in development now, and it comes out in November. But it's beginning to shape up ... I've seen it every few weeks. It's been a complex one to get right because there are so many layers to it -- all the different terrains, you know, the jungle island or the Patagonian ice fields or the desert. You pick your place, pick your tools and you go on this adventure and as you achieve things and gain strength and get food, my skills grow. You're getting attacked by snakes and trying to swim across alligator-infested rivers ... it's really fun. The <I>end</I> of it is not fun: seeing myself eated by sharks or whatever, but apart from that it's quite fun.

And you hosted 'Worst Case Scenario' too -- do you ever sleep?

'Worst Case' is really fun to do. You know, I was out in L.A. filming it, and I had my family there ... to be honest, it was a piece of cake. It's a lot of the same principles of 'Man vs. Wild, ' just in an urban setting. It's all about keeping calm and thinking through something logically and being inventive how you use things. We'll see whether we get another season, or we might do something else, but 'Man vs. Wild' is about to start filming season 6 in September. I'd love to do more of the Fan vs. Wild style one. I'm going up to the Arctic in a couple of weeks for a big expedition up there, so I'm quite looking forward to that. It's been a cool summer.