Surviving Alone: What Would Your 10 Items Be & What Kind of People Would You Like to See?

[dyna]

an axe is a wasted pick, so is the saw, and why would you take a 2 qt pot when you can take a 5 qt skillet (Amazon) You dont want a slingshot or a bow. You want one of these

 

The duct tape and your gaiters make a pair of waterproof containers. Chunks of tarp and the tape will make more, so dont waste a pick on a water bottle!  Snares, either cordage or picture-wire, don't work worth a hoot without 1 way sliders, heavy wire supports, killpoles, etc. A  FAR better idea is boxtraps, made of netting and sapling frames.  These can catch mammals, birds,  and of course, modified, they catch fish and crabs.  The netting is the way to go, for many, many reasons. Don't waste a pick on the "snare wire". 

you dont want to see anybody, since it's a violation of the rules of the alone shw.. If it is shtf, you likewise don't want to see anyone, cause they'll either kill you or mooch off of you.

Edited July 24, 2017 by dyna
I felt like it.

[dyna]

Until you have assured yourself 10 lbs of fish/game being caught every day, all else is to be avoided, beyond a seep well, a very small, simple tarp shelter, fire. If you dont assure yourself of that much food,  you'll win only by being a fatty (and lucky). For at least 2 weeks, , getting that much food-income is going to require that you burn 5000+ calories per day. Once you pen up  100 lbs of fish, arrow a bear and catch a few dozen gulls and ducks, you'll be able to back off a bit on the effort and time spent, but every day, you'll have to juice 20 lbs of kelp with a mortar and pestle, in order to keep your brain working properly. Your brain needs carbs and fish and game offer ZERO carbs.

[mlp]

I'm impressed by your expertise, dyna.  Personally, I was wondering if I could bring some crossword puzzles.

[holly4755]

I thought they were given  one tarp in season 1 I have to go back and review, they always have one tarp for the cameras.  Never counted. 

[dyna]

that one tarp was always listed on the gear list page, tho, and now it's not there. No books, inkpens, etc, are allowed, (apparently) just one picture of your choice. Fowler cut reminder notches into sticks, so that he could later compile his journal about his 87 days. Some of them got 3 tarps in season one, cause the photo equipment was staged at their dropoff points, before the contestants were brought in.

i'd like to see a change in what defines the winner. Instead of choosing the biggest lardass who does the least, why not say that the winner is the one who loses the least weight (or gains the most)  Then, instead of watching people do nothing but lay around in their sleeping bags, you'd see skilled people actually providing enough food for themselves. It CAN be done, but you have to take the right gear, know what to do with that gear, and get it DONE, in the right order/time frame.

[simplyme]

7 hours ago, dyna said:

i'd like to see a change in what defines the winner. Instead of choosing the biggest lardass who does the least, why not say that the winner is the one who loses the least weight (or gains the most) 

The problem with that is that then the advantage goes to people with smaller caloric needs per day and/or slower metabolisms.

Also, either way, weight gain or loss just isn't the same between different people. Two people who eat the same amount and types of food and do the same amount of work may have very different results in terms of weight gain or loss. There are multiple genes and enzymes involved, and they're just starting to understand how they all work.

It's not like last season's winner, Fowler, sat around on his butt and played the waiting game. 

[cooksdelight]

Exactly, you cannot award someone the win based on how much work they do or how much weight one loses. Everyone's body chemistry is different. I've always been on the thin side, and can still eat as much as someone with weight issues.

[ProfCrash]

I have said it before and I will say it again. I would love to see bonus money paid out to people who complete certain tasks. So the first person to build a livable shelter gets $5,000. Second person $2,500, third $1,000. An example can be demonstrated at the training camp so each person knows what a livable shelter means. Perhaps it would require a certain level of insulation, a raised bed platform and a fire place. Develop a list of tasks that people can get a bonus reward. Catch a certain number of fish, build a boat that allows you to fish and doesn't sink for a week, build a dock for fishing, that type of thing.

The bonus money would probably encourage a different strategy and lead to improved camp sites and better game play. It would be more interesting for the viewer.

Each contestant would be allowed to call in and say that they completed their shelter on day X. The shelter is inspected at the next well being check. If the task fails, they don't get another shot at it. Since they don't know when the checks are, they should not be calling in and hoping that they had time to complete the task after the call in because they well check could happen the next day.

[cooksdelight]

If they are to be truly alone, a list of tasks and instructions isn't going to cut it. I like watching how different people approach shelter and food, some are better at it than others. I think I'd get as bored as I am with the team concept if I have to watch people check off items on a list.

[ClareWalks]

17 hours ago, dyna said:

i'd like to see a change in what defines the winner. Instead of choosing the biggest lardass who does the least, why not say that the winner is the one who loses the least weight (or gains the most)

So wait, the winner should NOT be the one who stays there the longest? I mean, I could lose "the least weight" if I tap out on day 2.

[ProfCrash]

5 hours ago, cooksdelight said:

If they are to be truly alone, a list of tasks and instructions isn't going to cut it. I like watching how different people approach shelter and food, some are better at it than others. I think I'd get as bored as I am with the team concept if I have to watch people check off items on a list.

They don't have to tell them if the tasks are still available or not or tell them to complete the tasks in a given order. They can give them some specific guide lines, shelter = fire place, bed off the ground, not in path of water. That allows each contestant to choose how they want to build said structure but gives enough specifics that there is a way to objectively grade the shelter. Brook built two structures in three weeks that would meet the criteria. It would be interesting to see what people prioritize and the different paths that they all take, it would prevent the annual "I am going to conserve my strength and do nothing" idiocy.

[cooksdelight]

But if they have to be told what to do....what are they doing there? This year's bunch is pretty slack in doing anything, unlike others in seasons past. They are supposed to be "trained survival experts." If you have to start giving them directions, the show is pointless. JMO

[ProfCrash]

It is not giving them directions, just an additional incentive to get off their ass and do something.

Ideally, they wouldn't need that but, well, something needs to be done. I don't recall Alan or Sam's shelter actually being all that great in season one. Heck, I think last year was the only time that I was impressed with what most of the contestants had built

[cooksdelight]

Maybe we're expecting too much? When last year's contestants started building actual structures, we see this year's bunch doing nothing and it's a big letdown. 

I just don't think they need incentives. They need to WANT to provide for themselves. This year, everybody taps out for the stupidest reasons. Not a professional survival expert in sight.

[holly4755]

remember last year they had bamboo, which needed a lot less work to make it livable.  i.e. easier to cut and easier to bend. 

[ProfCrash]

Yeah that Bamboo makes a huge difference. I think I am looking for more well placed, well built shelters like Brooke's first structure. The Father/Son team had a good shelter but it was poorly located. The Butt Brothers are simply shameful. They show the contestants making much better shelters in the training camp, so why the hell aren't they doing so when they are out there?

[beatu]

I pick a heavy duty, 12x12 tarp, with triple-sewn tieoffs, not just grommets. Take the Cold Steel shovel, modified to have a saw edge.  The Signal Multitool, for its sharpener, ferrorod and added file blade (so that I can sharpen the saw)  Take the duct tape, the snare wire, a 2 person hammock, preferably made out of paracord,  and certainly with paracord clews and rigging, a gillnet, preferably a braided nylon one, one of Chief Aj's slingbows. They get 9 arrows this year, so I'd take 5 of them with 4-tined fishing heads. a ration of salt,  (preserve food and as bait) a ration of mixed pemmican and gorp (for use as bait) I'd put myself into ketosis before I went, so I'd not have to go thru the depression and bad judgement (of that process) while I was in need of top-performance. They are not on an ocean, so the salt is an issue. There's a lake or river in the background, so fish are going to be the main food source (again).

Each tine of the fishing arrowheads can become 2 fishhooks in a very few minutes. The paracord can be peeled for fishline. The 20x20 tarp and a "solid" hammock can be cut/torn into 1/8" wide strips for making netting. Used as seines or baited  net-weirs, the fact that fish can see it doesn't matter.  You can stone boil in a chunk of tarp, or cook, directly on the coals, and make containers out of bark, wood, or even make pottery. They are apparently being dropped off much earlier in the year, so the cold wont be a factor for months yet.  You can dig a seep well and make a water filter out of the tape and a chunk of tarp, so you dont need to boil drinking water.  All this means that the cookpot is a wasted pick. 

 

you really need about  20 picks, with some steel traps, an autorifle, cable snares, cookpot, metal canteen added, along with a LOT of food. :-) Dont take what you can make on-site (or do-wtihout)

springloaded "speedhooks" about triple your chance of scoring with a floatset. But they are not allowed for the alone show. So make your own, using springy forked sticks as "engines" to set the hook. Hooks can catch and drown birds, too, so think about how you'd do that.

If there's a navigable body of  water, you need to make a pontoon outrigger raft,  so that you can easily search for useful flotsam and service your crawdad traps, fish trap, nets, etc. This will take a maximum of 2 days, using the gear that they give  you. Waterproof spray one set of clothing. The pants of the rainsuit can be stuffed with debris, and taped, to make a pontoon. Ditto the backpack and the camera-case, a chunk of tarp, the life preserver, the bear spray, the airhorn.

The sleeves of the rainsuit jacket can be tied and taped to carry and hold 2 gallons of water, folks. So you do not have to camp all that close to the water source. Bugs are often horrendous in such areas in warm weather.  The firewood might well all be a long distance from water, so you want to carry the gallon of water that you need per day, not the 100 or more lbs of firewood that you might need per day.

Keep your shelter portable, so that you can move it to where the squaw wood is, not cut and haul big wood to where your "permanent" shelter is. Make the raised bed portable, too. Dont build it on stakes you've driven into the ground. Given some cordage loops and stick-toggles set ups, stakes left the same, you can take down or put up the 10x10 in 5 minutes.  Should be done each morn and evening, anyway, in case of storms. So you can convert it from being your work-awning during the day into being your very low sleeping shelter each night. 

To erect the 7 ft tall poles, cut 3 ft long stakes. Drive them a foot into the ground and then lash your poles to the stakes.

When you've got plenty of tarp, and some netting, you can easily make a wooden debris bed under a small tarp shelter. Pile debris on the bed, and stuff a net bag with debris to pull over you.  Put hot rocks under the bed.  Pile debris and branches all over the sleeping shelter if it gets really cold. You'll be fine. You can also creat the "cannon" Siberian fire lay, which will project heat into your shelter for many hours.

If you flatten the saw side of the shovel a bit, you can cut a kerf  2" deep. Cut such all the way around an 8" tree or log and you can break it with your bodyweight. There is no need to be cutting big wood for this show. They are all going to starve-out long before winter hits, from the look of the green grass. If they'd started them in late fall in Mongolia, they'd all be frozen solid within a month.

Carleigh STILL hadnt figured out that you dont need a big saw to reach high limbs. All you have to do is lash a small saw to a long pole. But if you need to do fine work with one hand, how can you do that with a big saw, hmm?

The 10x10 tarp is supposedly reserved for protecting the camera, so you can't cut it up or make it a 'permanent" part of any watercraft, shelter, etc.  But you can rig loops and sticks to make it feasible to swiftly set up or take down that tarp. So you use it as your sleeping shelter at night, and put it up over  7 ft tall poles during the day, to serve as your work awning, with the Dakota firepits in it.  Lean big flat rocks over the exit holes of the firepits, so that they are getting hot and radiating heat towards you. Dig long, low-angled entrance holes to the pits, so that you dont have to cut wood to length. Just feed the ends into the flames now and then. This means that you'll only need about  1/4 as much heating-wood and effort.

Edited June 20, 2018 by beatu

[beatu]

The sleeves and pantlegs of the rainsuit are waterproof CONTAINERS, not just clothing.  You can cut up a chunk of tarp and make a poncho and chaps in an hour or so, given a needle made out of a fishhook, (ie, multitool utility) and the duct tape. A leak here and there in such covering means nothing. You'll get wet inside of the rainsuit (sweating) anyway. But making a waterproof, long term container, in the field, is a beech to achieve. So when such containers are just given to you, make use of them. :-)

You dont want to tie up an entire tarp by making a boat out of it, and you dont want to risk having it sink when you tear the tarp on some unseen snag, either. Likewise, you want a pontoon raft, not a boat, cause a rogue wave, can't swamp your raft, nor can it spring a leak if it's all logs. If you are using just a few logs and some dry debris-filled pontoons, you will not  sink just because one pontoon takes on water. You set it up so as to prevent that. You provide PLENTY of extra flotation. With this set-up, it doesn't matter if your logs float really well or not, and you dont need lots of logs, nor do they need to be large diameter timber.

A slingbow does the same job as a bow, but is a lot handier to keep always at hand, and to use from inside your tiny sleeping shelter, too. It can use baked clay balls (rocks don't fly straight, so dont waste your time) Once you remove the tines from the 4 fishing arrows, you'll have 4 blunt arrows. Made of wood, they'll float, so you can shoot them at swimming ducks, loons, swans, or at gulls on the shore. You dont want feathers on the arrows, cause they are worthless when wet. So get slip on rubber vanes as fletching, so you can swap the vanes onto a field made shaft if you break one of your originals.

Edited June 20, 2018 by beatu

[beatu]

check this out. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chief+aj's+slingbow

[beatu]

when in training and they aint fat, either!  They aint scared, sleeping in a tarp shelter, , subject to cold, wind, rain, etc.  So all those who "think" that you only need  2000 calories per day on the Alone show, you're very wrong. You'd lose a lb of bodyweight a day if that's all you managed to eat. Sam lost  80 lbs in 55 days, cause he foraged almost nothing.  Fowler lost  73 lbs in 87 days. A lb of fat is  3500 calories, but you lose a bit of muscle, too. So that's over  3/4 lb  of bodyweight per day, in spite of catching 60 fish and he claims that they were almost 1 lb each. Food is a HUGE issue on this show and so far, nobody has done anything like enough to adequately feed themselves. Need a lot of netting.

Edited June 20, 2018 by beatu

[beatu]

building structures is a mistake. It's a huge waste of time and calories, or at least, it is in the late fall. Mongolia appears to be set in the late spring, cause all the grass is very green.  In the late fall, you have to grab all the food possible, very swiftly, or you'll starve out before you need any sort of heavy duty structure. You can easily just pile debris upon a small tarp shelter, and give it a lot of insulative value. You can take enough of the right kind of clothing to never be cold on Vancouver  Island shoreline., cause it rarely even freezes there. So why bother with a structure, hmm? The only one with a structure who's WON was Fowler and he won by having  50 lbs more fat that Carleigh had. Almost everything he did was a complete waste of time and calories. He should have made a pontoon raft and used it to find a beach that didn't have steep hills. Shouldn't have made the shelter,  where he did, cause he had to lug big wood over  100m to it. I'd have just put up a tarp shelter where the wood was. Why do all that work?

Edited June 21, 2018 by beatu

[beatu]

put even 10% of that structure effort into making a pontoon outrigger raft, and you'll be way ahead. Put another 20% of it into weaving netting and you'll be the first contestant to lose no weight on the Alone show. In Mongolia, you're probably talkng small rivers and creeks. So a couple of seines will get you a lot of fish.  Put one seine across the body of water at some natural stricture/sandbar. go upstreame  100m or so, and using poles stuck down in the mud, move the second seine down to the first one. youll catch almost every fish in that stretch of water. Repeat as needed. in different parts of the stream, in different streams.  You'll need to average catching  20 lbs of fish per day. Only half of a fish or animal's live weight is edible flesh, and fish only offer 800 calories per lb (ready to eat). So you'll need to be eating 3-5 lbs per day, depending upon your weight, level of activity and how cold it is. The other 5-7 lbs per day,  you need to be preserving.

Edited June 21, 2018 by beatu

[beatu]

since they now allow 80m of paracord, instead of just 20m, and since it's springtime/Mongolia, I'd swap out the 12x12 tarp in favor of the paracord, if I could not get in with the paracord hammock and/or the braided nylon gillnet.   Not that much rain that time of the year, easier to make netting out of hte paracord than cutting up tarps to get the cordage. If and when I made it to winter, I'd dig a smalle hole in the ground, cover the peaked roofing logs with woven  grass mats,, thatch, or sod,  the 10x10 tarp, and more grass mats, sod, etc. Rig a pole/debris grass mat door and call it good. By then, should  have some brain-tanned large game hides, too.

[beatu]

they now make an 11-strand paracord, x250 ft of it, equal a fair amount of 4" mesh netting. :-) Naturally, the clews of your hammock will be made of such paracord, and the strap for wrapping around the trees will be a flat band, braided out of such paracord. Fish, snakes turtles, birds, crawdads, small mammals are easily and efficiently caught in sapling framed boxtraps made of netting, guys. Such traps are highly portable, and they protect your catch from predators (at least somewhat). So netting is not just for fishing. Netting can catch rabbits,  marmots, even hogs as they flee their dens from smoking debris that you've stuffed down some of those dens. stretch netting across beaver lodge entrances, and then cut into the top of the lodge and spear any beavers so caught. 

[beatu]

with the weather being warm, you can just wade in the water to use a seine-net.  Wait until early afternoon, baiting an inlet with fish guts and heads, Then stretch a seine across the mouth of the inlet, trapping every fish therein. Use poles, driven vertically into the mud, to help you advance the net to the shoreline, and haul in your catch. Survival fish netting works  a LOT better in warm climate than in cold areas.

[beatu]

you can make  2 fishhooks out of each tine,  4 tines per arrow. After you remove the tines, the arrow is a blunt, still effective vs small game and birds.  THIS guy says that his customize gear was ok'd for the show. Custom knives and clothing have been allowed, as well as a needle bent to look like a fishhook, and a modified multtool was allowed (both by Fowler, of season 3)  Fowler says that he's cleared it with the producers to take a slingbow. You can make baked clay balls to use in the slingbow, it's handier than a bow, and you can use it from inside your shelter, unlike a regular bow.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chief+aj's+slingbow+grizzly+

 

 

 

 

[beatu]

resulting in starvation. EVERYONE has averaged losing at LEAST  1/2 lb per day. So what makes YOU special, eh? What have you got to lose by trying radically different gear and tactics? Nothing, that's what, and if they DO succeed, letting you win by NOT losing any weight,  you'll clear at least twice as much money as anyone else, cause everyone, all over the world, will want to learn from you.

[ClareWalks]

Please stop. These thoughts do not require new threads.

[beatu]

there's plenty of bandwidth here, and very little activity. So why does it matter?

[beatu]

stone adzes, people. Then people did it for hundreds of years  with just plain old butcher knives. To hear many folks today, if you aint got 1000's of dollars tied up in knives, you can't cut a piece of string. and having those knives makes you special in every way!  :-)

Edited August 3, 2018 by beatu

[beatu]

while in training. Do you think that they only eat ice cream? Few foods offer more than 1000 calories per lb, ready to eat. Those guys are NOT fat. Lean meat offers only  800 calories per lb and fish offer only  650 calories per lb, ready to eat.  You need at least  3000 calories per day out there and can easily need over  4000 per day when it's cold, wet, windy. Why bother to preserve food when you can just eat  10 lbs per day, and have another 10 lbs of it simmering in the 5 qt skillet/w lid? The only really safe storage for food in the wild is as your own bodyfat. Dont waste time and calories preserving food if you can just eat it. They'd have to be catching  20 lbs of fish/game per day in order to need to preserve any of it and in summer, you'll still need to dip it in a salt brine, prior to smoking/drying it, or you'll still have spoilage and maybe get sick from it, like dumbass Ted did on season 4. He was worthless for the rest of the show, cause he was so weakened by that illness.

[beatu]

not just on alone, but with all of the "bushcraft" and survival stuff.  Instead of wasting half a day building a primitive shelter (which is often not feasible cause you're sick, injuried, or lacking in needed resources)  carry 1.5 lb of tarp, stakes, cordage. Instead of all the flintknapping, carry half a lb of modified Leatherman Crunch, with some saw blades to be held in the visegrip of that tool. Instead of endless bs about primitive fire-making, carry a couple of ozs of lighters, ferrorod, and wallet fresnel lenses. That's going to give you thousands of fires and you can just bed your coals if you're staying in one place. You're going to die of tooth problems long before you have to worry about not having the easy means to light a fire. You're going to have LOTS more problems, notably with staying dry and warm, and uninjured and adequately fed,  1000x sooner than you're going to not be able to start a fire with the above listed tools.. If you carry  3/4 lb of modified SOL Escape bivvy and 1/2 lb of UCO candle lantern and BEESWAX candles, and are dressed adequately for moving around out there, you'll be able to handle sleeping out there, given a fire, that is.  That's a total of 3.5 lbs of gear to replace all the flintknapping, shelter building, debris-bed building, friction fire bs. That stuff is never going to save you if you've been dumb enough to go into the woods without proper gear. Sometimes you only have a few minutes in which to deal with a problem, before the cold, etc, renders you unable to help yourself.  I consider a lb of trekking poles to be worth more than all the medical kit you can carry, since the biggest threat, really, is a badly sprained ankle or knee, or a broken leg. If you can't get to some wood to splint that bone, and get to water and out of the elements, you're in real trouble, especially if it's cold.  The trekking poles can get you to wood, one  can be cut and make a splint, while the other one is your "crutch".  and it can also hold up the tarp, keeping rain off of you. 

Edited August 4, 2018 by beatu

[beatu]

I  have also escaped Federal custody, , and walked  120 miles of RR track in 8 days, mid February, in Illinois, without lighting a fire, on a mix of Tang, instant oatmeal and PB.  I had no tarp, hammock  or tent, and only a kid's summer sleeping bag and 4 layers of cotton clothing, plus an army field jacket, beanie, gloves,  2 pairs of socks, a pair of cheap cotton gloves. First 2 nights of rain, i had some garbage bags that (mostly) kept me dry)  Then they were in tatters and I never replaced them. Didn't want to enter a town during daylight hours, you see. It  rained on me  3 nights, and snowed on me (not much)  3 nights, too. That sleeping bag was so thin that I could read a magazine held outside of the bag, with me inside of the bag, but it was the only one that K mart had at the time. 

 

I would just crash on the bare, frozen ground, when my ankles gave out from walking on RR ties, with the gravel being  2" lower than the wood.  I caught pneumonia and was captured, cause my little brother ratted me out. He owed me $500 and I was gonna beat him half to death if he didn't come up with it the next day. He drank himself to death before I got out. Smart move. I had also jumped bond,  and lived on the run, with several fake IDs, back in the early 80's, for 20 months. Almost all of that time, I slept in vehicles, hatchbacks, station wagons, vans. . People who "think" that I only have internet experience at" living rough" are clueless. 

Edited August 4, 2018 by beatu

[BrendaNitt]

Is a friggin wack job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[writbest]

some just realize that sooner than others, are not as fat, etc. There ARE ways to feed themselves adequately for 3 months, and then you can get by another month on your body fat, if you're say, 6 ft and  190 lbs. They're just too damned lazy to do the research and find out what those ways ARE.

[writbest]

and it's 14 ft of shelter,  you only need 9 ft of that length/space  and the sides can be trimmed, too. Those trimmed off pieces can be made into chaps, a cover for your seep well, a water filter, a mousetrap-"bucket/basket".  A 5x12 chunk of the 20x20 can become a poncho. the "camera"  10x10 is your work awning, and once it's cold, it can become a double wall of your shelter, with debris stuffed in between the layers of tarp. That dead air space really contributes to the warm of your tiny sleeping shelter. Simply use loops and stick toggles to mount the camera tarp on 7 ft tall poles of your work awning, so you can swiftly lower it in case of storms, etc. Use a ball bat sized baton to drive  3 ft long stakes a ft or so into the ground, and then lash the 7 ft poles to the stakes.

 

you want the sleeping shelter to be just big enough for your gear, your raised wooden bed with the debris on it, your body and your sleeping bag.  Anything larger is a waste of calories and time and then wont keep you as warm as the smaller shelter. 

Edited November 26, 2018 by writbest

[writbest]

Every last one of them, all 5 seasons, have just starved. Many "think' that the one day shown of them catching half as much game or  fish as they need to eat each day, or cause Dave N had a couple of lbs of preserved fish mean that they were doing OK. NO, the producers were showing you their BEST day, which was not good enough, even on that day.  The fish or animal's live weight is twice what's actually edible. Fish, with the exception of salmon, offer only 650 calories per pound! Crabs offer only 400 calories per lb, and only 1/4 lb of the crab is edible flesh. The ONLY time I've seen somebody catch enough food for one day, was Nicole, and she let that salmon go. The salmon were spawning, which means that they die, or at least, the females do, so there was no point at all in letting the salmon go.  A small woman, just lying around, in rough conditions like that, needs at least  1500 calories per day, just to maintain her body weight, while a big man, doing the same thing, needs nearly 2500 calories per day.  Those needs easily double if you're working hard, long hours, out in the cold, wind and dampness. Just walking a mile, on level, solid ground, carrying nothing, burns 100 calories. Anyone, slow walking, can thus burn 250 calories per hour more than if just lying around. And this is at normal levels of temps and humidity. So if  you're busting your butt building a shelter, boat, etc, you can easily burn off an extra  3000 calories that day, beyond your resting needs.  Fat is 3500 calories per lb, but normally, when you lose weight, you also lose SOME muscle and when things get really bad, you'll also lose some of your vital-organ tissue. So it's possible to lose 1.5 lbs per day, guys.  Starvation swiftly leads to depression, apathy, loneliness, weakness, etc. So they tap out.

 

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writbest  1

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If you've got lots of fishheads, salt and guts as bait, you WILL be able to catch game, if you know how. Forget deadfalls, about the only thing slow enough to be caught in a deadfall is a porcupine, and you'll likely hurt yourself setting them. If you make them sensitive enough, a hard gust of wind can set them off. and you really need bladed, fire hardened stakes incorporated into them, to kill the animal quickly enough to recover it. Ditto cordage snares, unless you've got a couple (not just one) seasoned springpoles to lift the critter off of the ground and strangle it quickly. Even then, you sometimes catch them by the paw or they get a leg between the snare and their neck and not only do they suffer for a long time, they can sometimes still gnaw their way free. So use wire for snaring. The kind of wire that they give you is not capable of holding anything much tougher than a squirrel or rabbit, or you'll have to braid it.

 

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writbest  1

Replied: just now

treble hooks can catch waterfowl, magpies, possums, weasels, anything that gulps its food. If you suspend the bait at the correct  height to encourage gulping, you greatly increase the chances of a catch. If you put the food on a small raft, with a 2 lb rock attached to the line, about a foot from the hook, you can drown the duck, loon, gull, etc. Sometimes, you can rig a snare to slide one way down a wire anchored to the bottom of a body of water and drown a beaver or otter, too.

 

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writbest  1

Replied: just now

 you have to focus on not only feeding yourself adequately that first 2 months, but also storing 100 lbs of dried, smoked, salted food for the next month. If you mess around  making shelters, etc, instead of getting food, you'll just starve out that much sooner than if you'd only laid around.  If you starve out in 2 months or less, WHAT need did you ever have for a "winter shelter"? None, that's what,  This should be obvious, but i see comment after comment from people who are just locked in, mentally, to the idea that a shelter has to come first. No, it doesnt. You have to have FOOD for the energy to do all that shelter building. They drop you when they do for a reason. The producers want to force you to quit, due to the cold and not having preserved any food. They deliberately pick weak, inept people for this show.

 

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writbest  1

R

For this show, primitive fire, primitive shelter, primitive trapping is almost totally a waste of time.  They give you the choice of enough modern gear to not need to bother with that stuff, IF you know what to take and do with it.  Dave M said he gambled on finding flotsam rope on Vancouver Island.  That's stupid.   You have a 1 in 10 chance, if you're on the show, of clearing 1/4 million $.   So you TAKE the 2-person cotton rope hammock, so as to be able to make that 1000 sq ft of  2" mesh netting out of it.  You cut-tear up half of the 20x20 tarp and make 700 sq ft of such netting out of it, too.  Actually, this material only makes that much 4" mesh netting, but since you wont be moving the weirs, you can weave splits of shoots, roots, vines, reeds, strips of bark into the larger mesh, creating 2" mesh.   Gillnets only catch fish of the size that matches the mesh.  Seines and weirs catch ALL fish that are large enough to not fit thru the mesh.  For this challenge, you need to catch all possible fish.

If you're not on a seashore, you have to take the 3 lb block of salt as one of your 10 items.  If you ARE on the sea, salt aint as good a bait,  and you can dig a pit, line it with a chunk of tarp, line the tarp with sand or small gravel to protect the tarp and use heated rocks to boil off a lot of water at once, letting you get a lot of salt.  Then you boil the gravel/sand to free up the salt and evaporate as much of the water as possible, in the 5 qt skillet with lid, and pour off the water into a tarp container, letting the remaining water just evaporate.

On Vancouver Island, you're going to need the clear plastic 12x12 tarp a lot more than you need the block of salt.  When you have no other source of salt, those priorities get reversed.

On 8/6/2018 at 8:51 PM, BrendaNitt said:

Is a friggin wack job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sure, nobody who knowns 100x as much as you do can be anything but a whack job, right?  Wrong, you just dont know much of anything, that's all

On 7/24/2017 at 8:07 PM, mlp said:

I'm impressed by your expertise, dyna.  Personally, I was wondering if I could bring some crossword puzzles.

the list of acceptable gear is on the net. All you have to do is google for it.

[stane]

On 7/28/2017 at 12:34 AM, simplyme said:

The problem with that is that then the advantage goes to people with smaller caloric needs per day and/or slower metabolisms.

Also, either way, weight gain or loss just isn't the same between different people. Two people who eat the same amount and types of food and do the same amount of work may have very different results in terms of weight gain or loss. There are multiple genes and enzymes involved, and they're just starting to understand how they all work.

It's not like last season's winner, Fowler, sat around on his butt and played the waiting game. 

So? why should fat people win? Fowler almost got beaten by a woman whom he had at least a 70 lb advantage on. Had he not had that advantage, she'd have beaten him by a month or more, cause he was stupidly wasting time and calories.

Just now, stane said:

So? why should fat people win? Fowler almost got beaten by a woman whom he had at least a 70 lb advantage on. Had he not had that advantage, she'd have beaten him by a month or more, cause he was stupidly wasting time and calories. People get fat just for this show. That's cheating, every bit as much as smuggling in a ferrorod, a knife, antibiotics, sedatives, etc would be

[stane]

They now specify what arrowheads you can take, so the making fishhooks out of fishing arrowheads has been torpedoed. However, you can still take big hooks and make 2 out of each one.  They specify barbless hooks, but you could heat them in a fire, flatten the ends with stones, and then file points and barbs on them with your Crunch multitool. If you know to make a raised wooden bed and pile debris upon it, and make a net and debris "quilt" to pull over you, you dont have to waste a pick on a sleeping bag.  2 things that are amazingly useful and which nobody takes are the 3 lb block of salt and the duct tape. If you're on a seashore, as 3 seasons have been, the salt makes no sense,  so that pick can be used on a sleeping bag,  or whatever else  you deem to be useful.

[stane]

I'd like to see some fat girl scouts, cause they'd do every bit as "well" as anyone so far

[batesj]

the axe, saw, whetstone, canteen, bow ferrrorod, sleeping bag, belt knife, gillnet, paracord, all pointless or  inferior picks. You left out Fowler's E-tool, which is VERY superior, IF it's set up to remove/replade the handle without tools, and IF one edge has been altered into 8" of real saw teeth. and IF you know how to swiftly construct, the very superior, small, insulated, double layered, tape-sealed reflective tarp shelter, so you dont need a warming fire. Dont waste 2-3 weeks processing and hauling firewood, or a week on a non-portable shelter.  With my tarp shelter, you can move camp to a big kill in 2 hours, You wont be risking the meat at all in such a short time, if you wrap the chunks in the skin, put them up in a tree, away from the gut pile. the animal  would rather have the guts anyway. But leaving the meat exposed for 1-2 days, at both ends of your hike, that's NUTS! You can easily come back to find half of it eaten by a wolf pack, with their saliva and piss all over the rest of it.

[dranelittle]

On 7/28/2017 at 8:56 AM, ProfCrash said:

I have said it before and I will say it again. I would love to see bonus money paid out to people who complete certain tasks. So the first person to build a livable shelter gets $5,000. Second person $2,500, third $1,000. An example can be demonstrated at the training camp so each person knows what a livable shelter means. Perhaps it would require a certain level of insulation, a raised bed platform and a fire place. Develop a list of tasks that people can get a bonus reward. Catch a certain number of fish, build a boat that allows you to fish and doesn't sink for a week, build a dock for fishing, that type of thing.

The bonus money would probably encourage a different strategy and lead to improved camp sites and better game play. It would be more interesting for the viewer.

Each contestant would be allowed to call in and say that they completed their shelter on day X. The shelter is inspected at the next well being check. If the task fails, they don't get another shot at it. Since they don't know when the checks are, they should not be calling in and hoping that they had time to complete the task after the call in because they well check could happen the next day.

Once the temps are consistently sub freezing, I can build a rock solid, air-tight 10x6x6 ft quonset hut in one day, with just debris, the 20x20 tarp and ice . The next day, I can cut the entrance hole, provide the light "windows, made of 1" thick ice, make the right-angled crawlway entrance, get the firewood out of the shelter, melt-loose the 20x20 tarp from the ceiling/walls, make the woven withe, debris and ice door, with a handle on each side,  finish stuffing the hut with debris, dig the 8 pits needed for hot rocks in the floor, and fill those pits with wood ashes. Until temps ARE sub freezing in the afternoon, all you need is a pile of debris inside of the tent made out of the 20x20 tarp. Dont waste more than the half day needed to make the pole tent and debris pile, in that first month. You need to be FISHING and peeling, dicing, boiling and frying cambium, not wasting weeks on building shelters and hauling/processing firewood. The ice/debris shelter needs no heat source, other than your body heat, down to -20F, as long as you have fat to metabolize and keep on your 6 layers of clothing, with dry, soft debris between each layer of clothing.

[wanted]

I'd take the Pemmican, a Cold steel shovel, modified to have 8" of saw teeth, a modified Crunch multitool, the block of salt, the cotton rope hammock, the XL size reflective tyvek bivy, the reflective 12x12 tarp, the snarewire, the big roll of duct tape, and a slingbow, with 3 piece take down arrows. 3 of the arrows to be broadheads, 6 of them to feature flu-flu fletching, with Zwickey judohead blunt tips.  Cut the crosswires of f of some of the judoheads and use them to make fishhooiks. Unravel the hammock to make netting, fishline, camp cordage.  Within 2 weeks, make a bunch of pottery,  ALL shoreline mud contains workable clay, you just have to know an easy way to refine out the loam, debris, sand and gravel.