Are the survivalists on the TV show alone actually good survivalists

I’m not a survivalist but I enjoy watching this show.

It seems to me that almost all the contestants end up starving and losing lots of weight, and lots of them also get taken out for medical reasons. Sometimes those medical reasons are due to doing unsafe things in an unsafe way.

Which makes me wonder if the survivalsts on the show are actually any good at it. Are they considered good, or would really good survivalists have too easy a time and the show would just keep going on?

It seems to me what usually does people in on the show are starvation and isolation.

Since this question is more about survivalism than the show itself I’m putting it here.

I haven’t watched all that many survivalist shows, but on the ones I’ve seen I haven’t been all that impressed by the survival skills of the people they featured. I’ve spent a lot of time camped in the forest, sometimes in very remote areas, and while I haven’t had to live off the land I think I could do a better job of it than a lot of them.

I recall one show in particular of Naked and Afraid where they dumped these two people in Bocas del Toro, Panama, an area where I have spent a lot of time. One of their problems was that their survival skills had been developed in the US rather than in the tropics. But even so, they made a lot of mistakes and had a lot of trouble finding food in an area where its abundant.

This is a coastal area where fat oysters coat the mangrove roots, there’s tons of wild coconut trees, lots of clams in the mud, and lots of green and black iguanas scuttling around. The guy in particular made the mistake that’s typical of a lot of them in going after the big game by trying to spear big fish. The woman made a much better choice by weaving a seine so she could scoop up small fish. But they still lost weight in a place where in my experience there’s plenty to eat. That show drove me nuts.

Alone is really quite realistic in the outcomes. Way up north on Vancouver Island where the show is filmed, there are very limited / sparsely scattered resources for a solo survivalist without firearms, modern traps etc.

Basically the only people on the show who don’t end up semi-starved and mentally fucked up are the ones that get their fishing together. Luck is involved here too, since location down to the micro-level is a big factor in success.

I’ve spent my adult life in the Boreal forests, hunting, fishing, gathering, camping. Solo trips without provisions, too, but nothing even approaching the Alone time scale.

I’m not sure which survival show you’re referring to, but for most of the wilderness survival shows I’ve seen, I’ve been convinced that the cameramen were the real “survivalists”. It’s amusing when somebody is climbing down the side of a mountain talking about how dangerous it is, but he’s talking to a camera one metre away from his face, obviously being operated by someone also climbing down the mountain.

Beyond that, I think some of the wilderness expert presenters probably know their stuff, but they’re constrained by the medium. They need to be entertaining and exciting, so they leave out details that are mundane, or take a substantial amount of time. That creates a skewed view. People with wilderness experience may view a survival show and wonder “Why the heck would he do that?”. The answer is, “He wouldn’t”, but no one wants to see the boring thing the expert would actually do.

I think has a lot to do with it. Most people learn survival skills somewhat near their home. Even if your skills broadly apply to continental US environments once you get dropped in the Savannah knowing where to find the local food is different. I’m not inept in the Colorado mountains. I can find water, track an elk herd and know how to avoid bears and cats and I can normally pull out enough brookies to feed myself but I’d never think to look on Mangrove roots for clams so if I was dropped in the jungle I’d be screwed pretty quick.

There is also a lot in the selection for which survivalists will make good tv too and the over confident ones certainly make better TV.

Check the thread title. Are the survivalists on the TV show alone actually good survivalists

Here it is again, this time disambiguated: Are the survivalists on the TV show “Alone” actually good survivalists.

From context (and a clue from Toxylon), it’s pretty clear that the TV show in question is Alone.

Alone is a strange show because they drop them there in the fall when resources are on their way down - most likely intentionally since they’d rather not have someone actually survive out there for too long or else the show couldn’t air. There is also the fact that they have to actually follow British Colombian fish and wildlife laws (when it’s filmed there.) So there are things that they can’t do that would be useful in a survival situation. Trapping for large game is largely out and some types of small game traps. There are hunting and fishing seasons that have to be observed as well as size limits and certain species are of course off-limits.

Thanks for the clarification. Not being familiar with that show, it’s not obvious from the OP.

Boreal forest would actually be one of the toughest environments to find food in for most of the year, at least if you weren’t near a coast. So that would be a challenge. I’m sure you could live on the coast in Bocas del Toro for years without additional supplies if you knew what you were doing.

May I ask what that has to do with your failure to make your OP clear?

True, but it goes way beyond that. Even if the contestants had laxer game laws to work with, subsistence in that environ, alone and without technology, is a toughie. Big game trapping would most likely fail etc.

People have never coped with the woodland, or wild coast, alone and without tech. Simply having a spouse makes a huge difference, as labor can be divided, ie. classic hunting and gathering, plus procuring firewood, clothing, shelter etc. Being alone, you are either gathering fuel or fishing, or patching up your moccasins instead of checking the trapline, not doing both.

Masses of local in-depth know-how was always a prerequisite for living off the land (personally, here up north, I’ve learned it takes about two years of active field experience to learn the lay of new land and it’s creatures enough to do a good job with low-tech hunting & gathering).

Regarding the no-tech issue, even Native Vancouver Island individuals would’ve been fucked, if their extra clothing & footwear, big game bows and arrows, fish traps, trap triggers, containers etc. were taken away. Just not as fucked up as the Alone contestants end up being.

With Naked and Afraid, a shorter-term but more extreme “True Survival” show, viewers often underestimate the impact of most any natural environment on naked, tech-less humans.

From what I’ve seen, many contestants’ feet quickly get torn up which makes everything hard, though that is modern person problem.

Even in the Tropics / Semi-Tropics episodes, the nights are often cold. Try sleeping without clothes or insulation in 10 C temps, in the rain, with clouds of mosquitoes & mites. Fire would be a big help, but the more you need it, the harder it is to get.

Lack of sleep, lack of water, lack of food, hypothermia, sunburn, various small injuries, insect bites etc. all add up. The people in the show are somewhat badass, but still they fall apart. I’m not surprised.

Sometimes the N & A contestants do silly mistakes. One episode had a couple who tried to purify water by boiling it with hot rocks in bamboo containers. They used a small amount of small pebbles that clearly weren’t hot enough to do the job, realized the water didn’t even get hot, abandonded the idea and ended up with dehydration and water-born parasite infections.

Simply fine-tuning the time-tested Paleo tech they tried would’ve solved their hydration issues, and made a massive difference. Even better, had either of them actually boiled water using hot rocks before, they wouldn’t have failed the first time.

That is why I read how in one show where the guy is all alone and films himself, he actually spends a month or so in the area learning from local experts about the areas unique challenges. This is why one week he is in the arctic, next in a desert, next in a jungle, etc…

Is this supposed to have some relevance?

From your OP, I thought you were talking about the show Naked & Afraid.

I would expect that a huge difference is that TV isn’t real, including “reality” shows. Therefore
[ul][li]There is someone watching them on camera 24/7. If they start to get sick or die, they are going to be whisked off to civilization and modern medicine. They aren’t in very much danger - and they know it. They are therefore that much less likely to panic, and they are shielded from their worst mistakes.[/ul][/li][ul][li]As far as I am aware, the producers of the show are under no legal obligation either not to help, or not to make things worse, without mentioning it on the show. A particularly attractive or photogenic survivalist might get a bit of a boost under the table, and conversely, someone who comes across as arrogant or unlikable might be given a bit of subtle sabotage. Do I know this happens? No, I certainly don’t. Would I put it past them? Not for a minute.[/ul][/li]It’s a game show, it is heavily edited for drama, and the only point - the only point - is ratings.

I wouldn’t last a day on such a show, of course. But I am not so sure that “looking good on camera and making it look dramatic” isn’t as important a skill as being able to build a fire without matches.

Regards,
Shodan

Alone works slightly differently. They are actually ‘alone.’ They record themselves. They do have a medical team that checks them once a week and swaps out batteries and memory cards for the cameras. They also have a satellite phone to call the producers to be extricated when they choose to tap out. Of course, what we see is edited for drama’s sake, but the participants are actually out there living. Since they don’t really interact, there’s not a lot of interpersonal drama that makes contestants particularly unlikeable. At the most, you get some that are just boring. I think in one season, one of the guys basically just decided to lower his metabolism by sleeping and not moving as much as possible and rely on stored body fat and occasional low calorie meals to win. He actually went pretty far, but it wasn’t particularly entertaining television.

Add to that I have read where many times they have to wave off would be rescuers.

I mean, just imagine you were hiking thru the woods and came across a couple of naked people living in primitive conditions and looking cold and hungry. You would want to help them but then either they wave you off or a camera crew comes out of the woods.

I’m just having fun. I appreciate Colibri’s response to the thread and his responses to the thread I made about getting lost in Cozumel. I guess my sense of humor is too acerbic.

I did mention the show title in the title to my thread, but I didn’t capitalize it or put any apostrophes around the show title, so I can see why there is confusion.