For producers and contestants alike, making Alone is all about anticipating risks and being prepared to meet them. But as viewers of the latest season of the Australian iteration will know, this year the survival competition broke the sort of new ground nobody wanted: a contestant went missing.

“It was a world first, which is why the panic levels were so high,” says executive producer Riima Daher. “There was no precedent, nothing to fall back on in this scenario.”

When Afghanistan-born wrecking-yard worker and taekwondo champion Arash went AWOL after 26 days, Daher says, “honestly, the first thought was ‘Is he dead?’ I was absolutely terrified. You worry that something really bad has happened, the sorts of things you don’t want to think about, but the sorts of things that can happen in the woods sometimes. And you start to check the water to make sure he hasn’t fallen in there.”

The Sapmi region of northern Finland, where this season was filmed, is home to bears, wolves and reindeer, all of which posed potential threats to the 10 contestants from the other end of the Earth. But Arash’s disappearance – leaving behind the GPS tracker and emergency phone he was supposed to carry at all times, as well as his camera equipment – was not down to any of those things. It was, rather, the result of some sort of brain snap.

Though he declined to answer questions from this masthead, Arash does offer some insight into what happened in the episode that aired on Wednesday night.

In a voiceover as he is being extracted by boat, Arash attempts to explain what was going through his mind when he ditched everything and wandered away from his camp.

“I grew up in a war zone. I crossed seven countries with no documents. I’ve been lost in the sea, slept in the jungle, and I think this experience activated a survival mode that I know the best,” he said.

“And when I get in that mode, the rules do not matter. I only rely on myself. All I was thinking was just to survive.”

He labelled his behaviour a “blunder” that had cost him a “very beautiful great opportunity” to change his life by winning the $250,000 prize for whichever contestant stays the longest. “I made a mistake, and I take full responsibility for it,” he said. “That will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

It will stay with Daher and her team, too.

At the height of the panic, there were “about 15 or 20 people” on the ground searching for Arash. “We called on people who weren’t even part of our rescue team to help,” Daher says.

The six or seven hours it took to find him was, she says, “the most scared I’ve ever been personally or professionally. You question your career choices. I’m like, ‘Why am I not just working on Love Island? Everyone’s in the villa. What am I thinking?’ And you do start to fear the worst. You start to spiral, you start to see headlines.”

Did you see yourself in the dock in a courtroom?

“One hundred per cent I did, I can’t lie. And then you retrace your steps. You go, ‘Did I do everything I’m supposed to do? Where are the holes in my responsibility?’”

And when you finally did locate him? “We could have killed him.”

Despite the anxiety he had caused, the producers didn’t immediately want to pull Arash from the contest. “You always want to give the participants as much rope as possible,” Daher says.

The problem was, he couldn’t articulate why he had done what he had, and that cast serious questions over his mental state.

“It was a serious breach,” Daher says. “I mean, it placed him in real danger, it placed all of us in danger to have to go and look for him. Had he been able to explain it in a way that made sense, perhaps we could have left him in there, but he couldn’t.

“From a duty-of-care point of view – as well as a rule-break point of view – we just couldn’t put him back in.”

Alone Australia is on SBS, Wednesdays from 7.30pm

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