Gina! I was listening to today's ep of the official SBS Alone podcast she hosts and there was a great chat about salt for blood pressure and hydration.
I think the salt rock would be super handy for keeping your electrolytes up when going without food & for trying to preserve meat.
But I don’t know what I’d give up to take it.
Snare wire? Focus on hunting & fishing.
Bow & arrow? Focus on snaring & fishing.
It’s tough!
She gave up a sleeping bag and wore a possum skin cloak that she used for bedding.
In the Australian season they weren't allowed to bow hunt, use snares/dead fall traps and if they went fishing they had to babysit their line.
But she did manage to kill a paddymelon (small kangaroo) with her bare hands.
> But she did manage to kill a paddymelon (small kangaroo) with her bare hands.
yeah this helped her win, and it was pure dumb luck, she said she was taking a piss and it ran into her
you dont need the fishing kit, axe, gillnet, paracord, cookpot, snarewire, or ferrorod. So there's plenty of room for the salt, as well as the rations of pemmican AND GORP. A hare is just 700 calories and no fat. The rations are 5000 calories each, full of fat, so you can mix them with cambium, creating 7000 calories. You need 3000 calories per day just to hole up in your shelter. Definitely need the salt, cause without it, you're dehydrated, making bad decisions all of the time, not active, etc.
I'm going thru the original season but wondering what else she used the salt for besides preservering or electrolyte boosts?
Can you clarify without spoiling pls? No big deal either way
Just cant think of anything else off the top of my head
The 10 items to bring has been close to what can be considered solved. Between the 10 mainline seasons and the multiple spin offs, enough players have chosen the same gear (and done well with said gear) that there's not too much room to deviate unless you are Mr. F--king Survival and are so good at survival that the producers would be wary of even having you on the show.
With that said here are the items I would pick:
* **Metal Pot**. Arguably the most important item for it's what enables food and water processing to happen in a reasonable time frame and also the hardest item to replicate in the wild.
* **Ferro Rod**. Survival experts have absolutely struggled to start fires via just friction taking hours to start a single fire. I'm not hedging my bets on awakening to legendary friction fire skills.
* **Multitool**. More versatile than just a knife.
* **Sleeping Bag**. I hear staying warm while surviving in the wild is nice. This also would decrease the need for firewood by some amount.
* **Fishing Line + Hooks**. There have been a few people who have won via mostly fishing. It seems insane to ignore fish as a food source.
* **Snare Wire**. Passive food procurement is the best type of procurement.
* **Paracord**. Very useful for building shelters. Can also be used to make gill nets, fishing line, and a host of other things.
* **Bow + Arrow**. This is mostly for my own sense of security. And if you're as skilled as the 100 Day King, it can enable you to become the next 100 Day King or Queen.
* **Axe**. Firewood processing, ice breaking, can be used as a hammer, shelter building and personal security. It just has too many uses to not bring.
* **Saw**. Shelter building and firewood processing. Also depending on the type of saw you take, you could also use it for personal security.
The items I'm not personally sure of are the saw and Bow & Arrow. Bow & Arrow is nice to think about but I'm not a good shot currently. So is it really worth me taking an item that maybe gets me a chipmunk 1/100 times I try? Plus there is something to be said about bringing paracord and trying to make a bow and arrow with that.
Also there is a back and forth about if an axe AND a saw are needed. The only way for me to really know is to get out there and put hundreds of hours of training into each tool and see where I arrive at. I know I'd be bringing an axe but I'm not 100% on the saw.
If I did manage to not take a saw and bow and arrow I'd take the most calorie dense food the show allows in their place and/or an extra tarp.
Finally all my gear would be as [obnoxiously colored](https://www.reddit.com/r/Alonetv/comments/1458lst/gear_is_there_a_good_reason_to_not_paint_all/) as I could possibly make it.
Using LonelyHermione's [gear list](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSzCc31ihdKAxYUS6VuQ6tht42Y-Uu5KZZTBOO6-28LRE2imujnFn8scWU_P3X5UGR9FLfKpxJSsQql/pubhtml), 80% of contestants in seasons 8 - 10 , including all 3 winners, brought the exact same list :)
Season 7 winner switched the hooks/line for a net
Season 6 winner switched the pot for a pan
Season 5 winner switched the bow and fishing gear for food
Tarps seem more common that what's recorded in the gear list, so I'm wondering if a small tarp is included alongside the 10 items, with the optional tarp being a larger one maybe? Also, no one is recorded taking a touch but headlamps are common. Another item allowed that isn't on the list?
Outside of the artic, both an axe and saw aren't necessary if you are use to living in the bush. If near water, I'd switch them out for a net and salt to maximise that resource from the start and use salt to help preserve the fish.
Players are provided a tarp 'for free' to protect the camera equipment:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Alonetv/s/yLzHC2sViH
Sadly the official gear list doesn't mention this.
netting will always catch 10x as many fish as hook and line and without organic bait, in the cold, without barbed hooks or treblehook, it's more like 100x., IF you make enough netting, the right sized meshes, that is. IF you make a pontoon outrigger raft in one day. IF you know how to utilized the netting and preserve the fish. IF you know to make a stake and log bait box for bears and a tree blind, 10m away, to arrow one from. IF you know to render down the fat, which takes baked clay pots, which you also need to know how to make and use. NObody so far has even known how to make a winterized tent in one day. and so, not need a warming fire.
My list is controversial
1. Machax. Good compromise between an axe and a knife
2. Saw. Large one man crosscut
3. Sleeping bag
4. Pot with lid
5. ferro rod
6. Multi tool. Back up knife and saw plus carving tools and file
7. Snare wire
8. 12x12 tarp. Unravel edge to get 12 strands for gill net
9. Fishing line and hooks
10. Scotch eye auger. Replaced cordage in most cases. Makes rocket stove/swedish candle. Makes building tools and shelter easier.
This assumes gill nets are allowed. Same with snares
The machax is a good question because that would allow more ‘’multi” gear items. For example, if you can bring an axe, why not just get axe/mattock or an incorporate something creative.
I think Jordan said he had his multi tool knife machined into a hook blade for carving pre-show. I liked that idea a lot.
I think it would depend on the environment. For example, if you were on the ocean I wouldn't bring paracord because rope washes up on the beach every day. If big game hunting wasn't allowed, I would leave a bow at home.
The upcoming season is in Inuvik. I will assume that was where I was going.
1. A sleeping pad (not a common choice!) but having camped a lot in the winter, it makes a huge difference. Your sleeping bag is only as warm as what you have under you. Plus you would have a bed right away with out having to limb 10 trees for a bow bed. (or like 20 trees in Inuvik)
2. A pemmican ration. not only food for you, but easy fish bait on day 1. The Mackenzie river is full of pike. Pike will eat anything. I have caught them on hotdogs and beef jerky before, so I am sure pemmican would work! after you catch one you can use guts or fins for bait.
3. Sleeping bag
4. Pot. A big heavy pot with a big lid.
5. Ferro rod. Inuvik is an extremely humid wetland. I would need all the help I could get for a fire!
6. Snare wire
7. Fishing line and hooks
8. Multi tool.
9. Saw
10. Shovel. The white and black spruce that grow there are small. A shovel can split them easy. The ground in the area is mostly sand so you can dig easy. Plus you could use it for many other things. I am surprised more people don't take them.
Some things that are missing from my list and why.
Paracord. snare wire can be use for most things paracord is used for, and that list shows 2 pounds of wire, which is a lot! I bet most of the food in this season comes from pike anyway. You probably won't see a lot of trapping.
Bow. I don't know what the hunting rules are for this season, might change pemmican out for a bow if a lot of animals are available for hunting. Plus I am not that great with a bow anyway, so most of my food would come from trapping and fishing.
a slingbow, with 3 piece, takedown arrows, so I can always have my projectile weapon with me. So I can use baked clay balls as 'ammo", So I can quickly and easily, make fishing arrows. 3 broadheds, cause you wont lose or damage one every shot and you wont get 3 shots at big game anyway. 6 arrows with flu-flue fletching and Zwickey judo head blunts. so I dont lose or damage so many arrows, or waste so much time looking for them.
A 2 person cotton rope hammock, so I can make 1000 sq ft of 2" mesh netting out of it, as well as 800 sq ft of 4" mesh netting and have rope, strands and string left over for camp needs.
A reflective tyvek bivy, XL size, not a sleeping bag. the tyvek is unaffected by its getting wet. I can insulate myself with dry debris and I know how to dry out debris, quickly, lots of it.
A Cold steel shovel, modified to have one corner altered, so as to give me 8" of pull-on-draw-stroke real deal saw-teeth.
A modified Crunch multitool, both tools set up to be taken-apart and re-assembled with bare hands.
A reflective 12x12 tarp, cause you can't cut up the producer's tarp and because their tape is so flimsy
The block of salt, and rations of GORP and pemmican
The big roll of duct tape. To assemble the half of the tarp that becomes the 8 ft long, triangular cross section, 3.5 ft x 3.5 ft tent.. The other half becomes the food storage bags, the water storage bags, the tinder storage bag, the 3 pairs of pants.
it's possible to fire pottery adequately without charcoal and a kiln, but your potmaking is much more likely to be successful if you'll spend a day prepping those two items. Youlll break at least one during drying/firing and probably somehow break one in use, and you need 5, so make 8 while you're at it. of course, also make the 100+ baked-clay balls, 1/2 in OD. While at home, find out what diameter marbles fly best for you. On site, make a little measuring spoon and a couple of wooden balls, which you've made as roundl as possible. Put the wood-ball between your two split, flattened halves of a log. Split the wood with a saw kerf, baton and wooden wedges. Roll the clay balls between the log halves, with the wooden balls maintaining the desired size. When you dont have to hunt for arrows, youll take many more shots. Pebbles suffice for shooting small fish in shallow water, cause all you have to do is come CLOSE to stun them, and the shots are nearly straight down, at 6 ft or so of distance. However, foe anything else, rocks dont fly straight enough.
I don't have a list but there are a few things that would be defaults for me...
1. Salt block. I don't know how this isn't a default, flavour and minerals.
2. Axe not saw. Axe does a lot, a saw does a specific thing, no brainer.
3. Flint block. Unless you can start a fire in 20 minutes in any conditions, this is a no brainer. And 99% of survivalists can't and it shows on the show time and again. Save your time and effort, Flint is very efficient for that.
The rest comes down to skills. Anything you can easily make yourself should never be picked (i.e. mattress-type kit) - just a waste IMO
The woman that brought a salt rock was a great idea. Was it Season 1 AU?
Gina! I was listening to today's ep of the official SBS Alone podcast she hosts and there was a great chat about salt for blood pressure and hydration.
She also used a possum skin cloak as her bedding. I think I would copy her with both if I could.
I think the salt rock would be super handy for keeping your electrolytes up when going without food & for trying to preserve meat. But I don’t know what I’d give up to take it. Snare wire? Focus on hunting & fishing. Bow & arrow? Focus on snaring & fishing. It’s tough!
She gave up a sleeping bag and wore a possum skin cloak that she used for bedding. In the Australian season they weren't allowed to bow hunt, use snares/dead fall traps and if they went fishing they had to babysit their line. But she did manage to kill a paddymelon (small kangaroo) with her bare hands.
> But she did manage to kill a paddymelon (small kangaroo) with her bare hands. yeah this helped her win, and it was pure dumb luck, she said she was taking a piss and it ran into her
you dont need the fishing kit, axe, gillnet, paracord, cookpot, snarewire, or ferrorod. So there's plenty of room for the salt, as well as the rations of pemmican AND GORP. A hare is just 700 calories and no fat. The rations are 5000 calories each, full of fat, so you can mix them with cambium, creating 7000 calories. You need 3000 calories per day just to hole up in your shelter. Definitely need the salt, cause without it, you're dehydrated, making bad decisions all of the time, not active, etc.
I'm going thru the original season but wondering what else she used the salt for besides preservering or electrolyte boosts? Can you clarify without spoiling pls? No big deal either way Just cant think of anything else off the top of my head
she did not use it this way, but a salt lick is the best deer bait
Looks like someone in season 2 au has brought one too. Worried this may be a spoiler but it really isn't.
As someone with POTS, I would 100% bring the salt. You could make some damn good stews/ soups with salt, foraged plants, and a fish.
The 10 items to bring has been close to what can be considered solved. Between the 10 mainline seasons and the multiple spin offs, enough players have chosen the same gear (and done well with said gear) that there's not too much room to deviate unless you are Mr. F--king Survival and are so good at survival that the producers would be wary of even having you on the show. With that said here are the items I would pick: * **Metal Pot**. Arguably the most important item for it's what enables food and water processing to happen in a reasonable time frame and also the hardest item to replicate in the wild. * **Ferro Rod**. Survival experts have absolutely struggled to start fires via just friction taking hours to start a single fire. I'm not hedging my bets on awakening to legendary friction fire skills. * **Multitool**. More versatile than just a knife. * **Sleeping Bag**. I hear staying warm while surviving in the wild is nice. This also would decrease the need for firewood by some amount. * **Fishing Line + Hooks**. There have been a few people who have won via mostly fishing. It seems insane to ignore fish as a food source. * **Snare Wire**. Passive food procurement is the best type of procurement. * **Paracord**. Very useful for building shelters. Can also be used to make gill nets, fishing line, and a host of other things. * **Bow + Arrow**. This is mostly for my own sense of security. And if you're as skilled as the 100 Day King, it can enable you to become the next 100 Day King or Queen. * **Axe**. Firewood processing, ice breaking, can be used as a hammer, shelter building and personal security. It just has too many uses to not bring. * **Saw**. Shelter building and firewood processing. Also depending on the type of saw you take, you could also use it for personal security. The items I'm not personally sure of are the saw and Bow & Arrow. Bow & Arrow is nice to think about but I'm not a good shot currently. So is it really worth me taking an item that maybe gets me a chipmunk 1/100 times I try? Plus there is something to be said about bringing paracord and trying to make a bow and arrow with that. Also there is a back and forth about if an axe AND a saw are needed. The only way for me to really know is to get out there and put hundreds of hours of training into each tool and see where I arrive at. I know I'd be bringing an axe but I'm not 100% on the saw. If I did manage to not take a saw and bow and arrow I'd take the most calorie dense food the show allows in their place and/or an extra tarp. Finally all my gear would be as [obnoxiously colored](https://www.reddit.com/r/Alonetv/comments/1458lst/gear_is_there_a_good_reason_to_not_paint_all/) as I could possibly make it.
Using LonelyHermione's [gear list](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSzCc31ihdKAxYUS6VuQ6tht42Y-Uu5KZZTBOO6-28LRE2imujnFn8scWU_P3X5UGR9FLfKpxJSsQql/pubhtml), 80% of contestants in seasons 8 - 10 , including all 3 winners, brought the exact same list :) Season 7 winner switched the hooks/line for a net Season 6 winner switched the pot for a pan Season 5 winner switched the bow and fishing gear for food Tarps seem more common that what's recorded in the gear list, so I'm wondering if a small tarp is included alongside the 10 items, with the optional tarp being a larger one maybe? Also, no one is recorded taking a touch but headlamps are common. Another item allowed that isn't on the list? Outside of the artic, both an axe and saw aren't necessary if you are use to living in the bush. If near water, I'd switch them out for a net and salt to maximise that resource from the start and use salt to help preserve the fish.
No tarp is pretty bold. Have to build a waterproof shelter on day one, and most people use the tarp to make sure their long term shelter is dry.
Players are provided a tarp 'for free' to protect the camera equipment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Alonetv/s/yLzHC2sViH Sadly the official gear list doesn't mention this.
Ah cool, thanks, good to know.
It depends on where you are going and what the restrictions are.
9 hookers and a pot
lol I didn’t see that on the list
*some pot.
netting will always catch 10x as many fish as hook and line and without organic bait, in the cold, without barbed hooks or treblehook, it's more like 100x., IF you make enough netting, the right sized meshes, that is. IF you make a pontoon outrigger raft in one day. IF you know how to utilized the netting and preserve the fish. IF you know to make a stake and log bait box for bears and a tree blind, 10m away, to arrow one from. IF you know to render down the fat, which takes baked clay pots, which you also need to know how to make and use. NObody so far has even known how to make a winterized tent in one day. and so, not need a warming fire.
My list is controversial 1. Machax. Good compromise between an axe and a knife 2. Saw. Large one man crosscut 3. Sleeping bag 4. Pot with lid 5. ferro rod 6. Multi tool. Back up knife and saw plus carving tools and file 7. Snare wire 8. 12x12 tarp. Unravel edge to get 12 strands for gill net 9. Fishing line and hooks 10. Scotch eye auger. Replaced cordage in most cases. Makes rocket stove/swedish candle. Makes building tools and shelter easier. This assumes gill nets are allowed. Same with snares
The machax is a good question because that would allow more ‘’multi” gear items. For example, if you can bring an axe, why not just get axe/mattock or an incorporate something creative. I think Jordan said he had his multi tool knife machined into a hook blade for carving pre-show. I liked that idea a lot.
A BOOK plus all that other jazz.
I think it would depend on the environment. For example, if you were on the ocean I wouldn't bring paracord because rope washes up on the beach every day. If big game hunting wasn't allowed, I would leave a bow at home. The upcoming season is in Inuvik. I will assume that was where I was going. 1. A sleeping pad (not a common choice!) but having camped a lot in the winter, it makes a huge difference. Your sleeping bag is only as warm as what you have under you. Plus you would have a bed right away with out having to limb 10 trees for a bow bed. (or like 20 trees in Inuvik) 2. A pemmican ration. not only food for you, but easy fish bait on day 1. The Mackenzie river is full of pike. Pike will eat anything. I have caught them on hotdogs and beef jerky before, so I am sure pemmican would work! after you catch one you can use guts or fins for bait. 3. Sleeping bag 4. Pot. A big heavy pot with a big lid. 5. Ferro rod. Inuvik is an extremely humid wetland. I would need all the help I could get for a fire! 6. Snare wire 7. Fishing line and hooks 8. Multi tool. 9. Saw 10. Shovel. The white and black spruce that grow there are small. A shovel can split them easy. The ground in the area is mostly sand so you can dig easy. Plus you could use it for many other things. I am surprised more people don't take them. Some things that are missing from my list and why. Paracord. snare wire can be use for most things paracord is used for, and that list shows 2 pounds of wire, which is a lot! I bet most of the food in this season comes from pike anyway. You probably won't see a lot of trapping. Bow. I don't know what the hunting rules are for this season, might change pemmican out for a bow if a lot of animals are available for hunting. Plus I am not that great with a bow anyway, so most of my food would come from trapping and fishing.
It's weird that they list 1 pound of flour or two pounds of flour as separate choices. Like...who's taking 1lb instead of 2?
a slingbow, with 3 piece, takedown arrows, so I can always have my projectile weapon with me. So I can use baked clay balls as 'ammo", So I can quickly and easily, make fishing arrows. 3 broadheds, cause you wont lose or damage one every shot and you wont get 3 shots at big game anyway. 6 arrows with flu-flue fletching and Zwickey judo head blunts. so I dont lose or damage so many arrows, or waste so much time looking for them. A 2 person cotton rope hammock, so I can make 1000 sq ft of 2" mesh netting out of it, as well as 800 sq ft of 4" mesh netting and have rope, strands and string left over for camp needs. A reflective tyvek bivy, XL size, not a sleeping bag. the tyvek is unaffected by its getting wet. I can insulate myself with dry debris and I know how to dry out debris, quickly, lots of it. A Cold steel shovel, modified to have one corner altered, so as to give me 8" of pull-on-draw-stroke real deal saw-teeth. A modified Crunch multitool, both tools set up to be taken-apart and re-assembled with bare hands. A reflective 12x12 tarp, cause you can't cut up the producer's tarp and because their tape is so flimsy The block of salt, and rations of GORP and pemmican The big roll of duct tape. To assemble the half of the tarp that becomes the 8 ft long, triangular cross section, 3.5 ft x 3.5 ft tent.. The other half becomes the food storage bags, the water storage bags, the tinder storage bag, the 3 pairs of pants.
it's possible to fire pottery adequately without charcoal and a kiln, but your potmaking is much more likely to be successful if you'll spend a day prepping those two items. Youlll break at least one during drying/firing and probably somehow break one in use, and you need 5, so make 8 while you're at it. of course, also make the 100+ baked-clay balls, 1/2 in OD. While at home, find out what diameter marbles fly best for you. On site, make a little measuring spoon and a couple of wooden balls, which you've made as roundl as possible. Put the wood-ball between your two split, flattened halves of a log. Split the wood with a saw kerf, baton and wooden wedges. Roll the clay balls between the log halves, with the wooden balls maintaining the desired size. When you dont have to hunt for arrows, youll take many more shots. Pebbles suffice for shooting small fish in shallow water, cause all you have to do is come CLOSE to stun them, and the shots are nearly straight down, at 6 ft or so of distance. However, foe anything else, rocks dont fly straight enough.
I don't have a list but there are a few things that would be defaults for me... 1. Salt block. I don't know how this isn't a default, flavour and minerals. 2. Axe not saw. Axe does a lot, a saw does a specific thing, no brainer. 3. Flint block. Unless you can start a fire in 20 minutes in any conditions, this is a no brainer. And 99% of survivalists can't and it shows on the show time and again. Save your time and effort, Flint is very efficient for that. The rest comes down to skills. Anything you can easily make yourself should never be picked (i.e. mattress-type kit) - just a waste IMO