The Great Lakes Emergency Preparedness Expo is excited to announce that the new international reality television show, Utopia, will be casting for the upcoming survival reality show on Fox at this April’s expo!

A hit worldwide, Utopia is a social experiment series developed by John de Mol, the creator of “Big Brother.” The show will send 15 ordinary people to an isolated, undeveloped location in the U.S., where they will be tasked with creating a civilization from the ground up. The show is slated to follow the contestants for an entire year as they form their society, but the length of the series will depend on how things pan out.

As de Mol says, Utopia is a positive and constructive program that gives people the opportunity, if you can start all over again, start from scratch and create laws and make decisions, will you be able to build a society that is better than the one we have; will it be chaos or happiness.”

Utopia participants will leave their everyday lives, challenging them to create their own ideal community. Each cast member will need to utilize his or her niche in the developing society, from farming and building to fulfilling basic human health and social needs; contestants who are not seen as filling indispensable roles in the community will be exiled, sent back to their regular lives and replaced by newcomers.

An online 24-hour video stream will also be available, much like the one for Big Brother. Viewers can watch their society unfold, both weekly on Fox and also online.

The show premiered earlier this year in Holland, where it was SBS 6’s top-rated unscripted series premiere in six years. Utopia continued as the No. 1 series in its Monday through Friday time period for 10 consecutive nights.

Fox expects to begin shooting Utopia in the summer of 2014, and will be exhibiting at GLEPE as part of a nationwide casting call. The search has begun for pioneers with the ideas, skills and determination to create and run an ideal society from scratch.

Will this exciting, unscripted project create a unique society from scratch filled with ultimate happiness or complete chaos? A similar concept to potential disasters or emergencies in our own lives, we can’t help but ask, “What would I do?”

Visit the Utopia website or stop by booth #217 on April 19 for more information about the show. If you think you have what it takes to rebuild society from the ground up and want to put your skills up for consideration, Utopia may be your saving grace!