Gear chioices for Alone TV show

bally

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I really can't believe that these people know much of anything, actually. I mean, look how manty take 130 ft of paracord, when they could unravel a paracord hammock and have 1000 ft of the cord. They can see that the brush is really thick, so why do they take an axe instead of a kukri? They have to film themselves doing everything, so a hunt is not possible, so why take a bow or slingshot? If, having the duct tape, kukri, saw, and cordage, they can't make a 50 lb "father and son" bow and a few (blunt) arrows in half a day, they dont belong on this show! The prime food is fish, and the prime way to get it is netting/wrapped, sapling framed fish traps. The gillnet will make half a dozen such traps in one day. The hammock, sheathing removed from the cordage, will make 20 more, of varying sizes. Being on a lake is a huge advantage over being on the sea shore. To AITCH with that, during cold weather. Those mudflats and tides suck during the winter. Nobody has even taken the duct tape! Nobody has cut up a tarp! They no longer (apparently) get the 20x20 tarp given to them, so the 12.12 is no longer optional, it's mandatory. Nobody has made a pontoon raft out of tarp chunks, tape, and soft debris, like grass or leaves. They are scared of bears, yet nobody has made a ladder, hung a hammock up in a tree the first night, and then made a tree platform the next day. Where do they get these people? The 2 gallon metal bear canister was never taken by anyone, but it's no longer on the gear list.
 
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bally

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not to reply to my own topic, but I dont trust servers with long posts. :) Take a Kukri, the Cyclone saw, the hooks and line, the big roll of duct tape, the paracord hammock, the gillnet, the ration of sugar and salt, the pot and lid, the 12x12 tarp, and the 12 lb, wool and oilcloth sleeping bag, so I can dry it out with hot rocks. Without the salt (until cold weather hits) you're likely to get sick from fish that's not properly smoked/dried, which is hard to arrange when it's raining cats and dogs and you dont (as of yet) have a stone and clay oven to direst the smoke where you want it.
 
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bally

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You are not going to homestead for 10 years. You're tying to not starve for 100 days, that's all, and clearn 1/4 million $. If you dont average catching 10 lbs of fish/gane (live weight) every day for the 2 months of fall (average, of course) you're going to starve out long before you need a lot of firewood or heavy duty shelter ! :) Fish and gane offer no carbs and your brain needs carbs, so you also have to be harvesting a couple of lbs per day of cambium and/or lichen. If you're lucky, you'll get some acorns, rhizomes, nuts. The netting fish traps, once winter pretty much shuts down the fishing, can be repurposed to catch birds and critters. Cambium will bait in rabbits, and some types of birds. Fisheads and guts will bait in other critters. Netting boxrtraps are much more likely to succeed than cordage snares. I have considered giving up the hooks and line to get the snare wire, not sure yet.
 
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bally

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If they would learn to make a raised bed and put big, flat, heated rocks under said bed, they'd need a lot less wood to stay just as warm. Fowler devoted a month's work to making a shelter, and lost 70 lbs in 87 days! If that same work had been done making and using fish traps, pontoon boat, boxtraps, snares, he'd probably have lost almost no weight at all. Fish and game offer only 800 calories per lb and only half of their live weight is edible flesh. So, to not lose 3000 calories per day, he'd have had to catch 8 lbs of live weight fish per day. That's not tough to achieve, when you have 2 dozen fish traps , baited with fish heads and guts, and a raft with which to service them
 
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bally

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they are given a 10x10 for themselves and another 10x10 tarp that is to be reserved for protecting the camera. Well, they seldom go anywhere, so why not just toss it over some 7 ft tall poles in front of your sleep shelter, for use as an awning vs sun, rain, wind? tie it off in a couple of places (quick release knots) and use the other 10x10 to make a 3.5 ft tall A frame sleeping shelter, staked out over a 3" ridgepole (big end over your feet, not above your head.) :) If you can't find 2 trees spaced as you need, then make a tripod for the foot end of your shelter. Lay the tarp on it in the plow format, and slit the ends, to let them fall around the ridgepole and (mostly) cover the ends of your shelter. Dirt and debris can finish the job of sealing out wind/rain. The first night, you can hang it on a ridgeline, so all you have to make is the tripod and the stakes. Until you scout around, you dont want to just set up (permanent) camp, anyway. You want to be close to the most resources.
 

Ray

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I really can't believe your complaining about a scripted reality TV show, where the point is to intentionally put poorly considered people in fake peril. The entire intent of the show is to make you watch it. That is its only purpose. Watching someone who knows what they are doing will not generate viewers for very long.
 

boom

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i couldnt get past the first season. it does look like an excellent weight lost regimen.
 
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bally

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depends, I suppose, upon why people watch it. Myself, I can't stand to look at more than fragments of it. But just looking at their gear choices is depressing. :) and since the show calls them 'survival experts', and many of them put themselves out as "instructors", I think that your evaluation is not supported by the evidence.
 

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I think the guy who won the first season had the right mindset and strategy to make it work: hunker down, conserve energy, entertain yourself. Every other method seems to waste too much energy. Realistically though, it is the people that don't do that who make for the most entertaining television. Who wants to watch someone spend 20 hours a day laying down?


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Jauwater

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Yea I had to give up on survival shows long ago. You can only take in some much BS before it makes you sick. Cauterizing wounds with gun powder. Drinking piss for the "psychological" edge. Pfffttt.

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bally

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the sea coast definitely made it a lot more dangerous to go out in a raft, a lot more work to get to and from your fishtraps and a lot more risk of losing your traps to waves, storms, etc. But what did you have to lose by trying? some effort put into weaving the netting and making he traps. If they dont produce, pull them out of the water and convert them to box traps for mammals and birds, like the winter will make you do anyway! But season 2 had no such excuse. They're just either ignorant or lazy. If you were willing to put in the work, and could get a paracord gillnet past the inspectors, that's 3000 ft of paracord, plenty to also have a cast net, altho take a couple more weeks to get all the netting woven and traps made. The cast net can easily produce as many lbs of fish per day as all 24 traps can do. Not very viable on a seacoast, in the fall, but fine on a lake, as long as the bottom isn't full of snags. A bit of probing and wading would give you the answer to that question, in half a day.
 
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bally

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i mean, come on! if you're testing an unproven craft, would you be wearing all of your clothes and your boots, or would you have your croc sandals and a set of clothes nearby, dry on shore, with a fire going, your tarp and sleeping bag there, hot rocks available, etc? So you have to THINK a bit and do an hour or so of prepping, so what? I think Jose (and nearly all the others, too) tapped out due to starvation, seeing that they had no ability to feed themselves, depression over that realization, leading to quitting.
 
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Yea I had to give up on survival shows long ago. You can only take in some much BS before it makes you sick. Cauterizing wounds with gun powder. Drinking piss for the "psychological" edge. Pfffttt.

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if I am ever in a situation where someone says to drink piss for the psychological edge I am just gonna kill them and eat them to survive.or I would be laughing at them and making fun of them so much it would lift my spirits. But seriously how does one even come to think that's a good idea?
 

Jauwater

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if I am ever in a situation where someone says to drink piss for the psychological edge I am just gonna kill them and eat them to survive.or I would be laughing at them and making fun of them so much it would lift my spirits. But seriously how does one even come to think that's a good idea?
Exactly. Did you ever see that episode of Dual Survival? Drinking piss out of a helmet for "psychological edge". It's amazing the information being put out there on TV by so called survivalists/instructors/whateveryouhaveit.

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mtnwrunner

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I really can't believe that these people know much of anything, actually. I mean, look how manty take 130 ft of paracord, when they could unravel a paracord hammock and have 1000 ft of the cord. They can see that the brush is really thick, so why do they take an axe instead of a kukri? They have to film themselves doing everything, so a hunt is not possible, so why take a bow or slingshot? If, having the duct tape, kukri, saw, and cordage, they can't make a 50 lb "father and son" bow and a few (blunt) arrows in half a day, they dont belong on this show! The prime food is fish, and the prime way to get it is netting/wrapped, sapling framed fish traps. The gillnet will make half a dozen such traps in one day. The hammock, sheathing removed from the cordage, will make 20 more, of varying sizes. Being on a lake is a huge advantage over being on the sea shore. To AITCH with that, during cold weather. Those mudflats and tides suck during the winter. Nobody has even taken the duct tape! Nobody has cut up a tarp! They no longer (apparently) get the 20x20 tarp given to them, so the 12.12 is no longer optional, it's mandatory. Nobody has made a pontoon raft out of tarp chunks, tape, and soft debris, like grass or leaves. They are scared of bears, yet nobody has made a ladder, hung a hammock up in a tree the first night, and then made a tree platform the next day. Where do they get these people? The 2 gallon metal bear canister was never taken by anyone, but it's no longer on the gear list.

i think that maybe you should give it a go.............


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pwsINC

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Hot rocks
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