The only television show I have watched regularly since it aired in 2015 ran its season finale last week. "Alone" focuses on outdoorsmen (I use the word "men" and "he" here loosely to encompass both men and women) who test their survival skills by living alone in remote places, starting with Northern Vancouver Island during the first season. Each of the ten participants are responsible for building their own shelter and finding their own food using the limited amount of gear from the Alone-approved gear list and their survival skills. They are dropped off satellite phone they can use to contact the show and officially "tap out." They are then picked up, and taken home. The last to tap out wins the season and $500,000.
I love this show because since it's just the participant and the camera, it skips the drama of reality television (no petty fighting), and focuses on man against nature. Each participant has camera gear that they are required to use to film themselves each day, so that they are truly alone (no cameramen). They talk about things they are trying and doing as they hunt, build their shelter, and count the days going by.
In addition, participants have to make tough choices about what they bring to their remote location. They only have ten slots available for items in the categories of shelter, bedding, cooking, hunting, and tools. (They can bring some clothing, including a warm jacket and thick boots, and some other clothing items that are not included in the ten slots.) Pretty much everybody brings a sleeping bag, tarp, knife, saw or axe, and a pot, which leaves only five spots. Participants that are good with a bow drill may choose to skip bringing a flint to use the slot for something else. Someone that is good at weaving rope might skip the gill net and make their own. Most participants opt to carve their own spoon and bowl, in lieu of something they can't make as easily themselves.
The key to survival
Who has done well on the show over the years, and why?
I've seen some participants go home for making decisions that were fairly foolhardy, like drinking unfiltered water (they poured it through moss and considered it "filtered"). I've seen some make unfortunate mistakes, like slicing into a tendon when a knife slipped.
I've also seen miracles, for instance, a woman successfully self-treating a venomous spider bite with plants, or a man successfully staving off hypothermia after falling into cold water. One person was lucky because their gill net happened to be set up right where there was a salmon run in a small neck of the river, so that person had great fish bounty for quite some time.
While luck always plays a small part in life (both good and bad luck), there are some key traits in the participants that lasted the longest. Those traits can be applied to how we live our lives. We see these same traits repeated all the way back to survivors in the Bible and to modern stories in today's news.
1. Use hope as an anchor - but don't pin your hope on the wrong thing
Everyone that has been on the show (and didn't tap out within days) lost significant body fat and suffered starvation, loneliness, homesickness, boredom, and in some cases, paranoia, injury, and fear (there were some scary predators circling around some of the participants once they caught food). This sounds miserable but these are participants that often work in the outdoor or survival industry, or live off the land, and are excited to test their skills. So where does hope come in?
In Season 1, the last man standing lasted for 56 days. While this was a lot less than one year, he lost 60 pounds even though he was so skilled at hunting and finding food. The participants that were dropped off knew that they might need to last as long as one year to win. The potential of having to last one full year was so daunting that many lost hope after the first grueling weeks. In fact, some participants tapped out within days of being dropped off by a helicopter.
In Season 2, participants came onto the show having seen Season 1, and used 56 days as their end goal. Many thought that if they could last for 60 days, that would likely be enough to win. Once participants started living there past 56 days, still without signs of winning, and in the face of so many significant obstacles, their confidence took a hit, and their hope waned. Their single data point had proven to be unreliable.
However, some participants stuck it out anyway. They pinned their hope on something more substantial than 56 days. Many of the participants were focused on how they would be able to provide for their families. (On the flip side, many participants said they were leaving because having the time with their families was more important than potentially winning. I personally understand this thinking so this article is not a debate about what is the better part, but on why the winners were successful in their goals to stay on the island the longest. In many cases, both sets of reasoning came down to family.)
As far back as the Bible, the people in historical times talked about hope. In Romans 5:3-5, the missionary Paul writes a letter to the people of Rome and tells them to have faith. He says, "... we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts ..."
2. Have a catalog of skills.
There is always an opportunity learn new skills and refine old ones. Each participant that did well typically had a wide range of skills, from the ability to build a durable shelter, to setting up land and water snares, knowing how to catch fish in gill nets, building a campfire, and more. We all have talents but if we put all of our hopes and dreams into a single talent, we limit our ability to succeed.
On "Alone," there wasn't one single skill that completely dominated the other skills. For instance, one man was unusually successful as a hunter but he had wolverines that were aggressively stealing his food. He used another skill, an ability to build a tower high in the air, and the knowledge to smooth the posts so that animals wouldn't climb them, to keep the wolverines from continuing to steal his supply.
Hunting stood out as one of the most valuable skills but when a man accidentally burned down his house, it didn't matter how much food he had left - he had to go home because it was too far into winter to try to start over and build a new shelter in the cold. He had to wait until morning to be picked up though, and used his shelter-building skills to create a temporary lean-to instead. The participants that were skilled with identifying edibles tended to have a more complete diet, or at least, another source of food until they could hunt meat.
The Bible focuses on many of the missionaries that tried to spread the gospel of Christ, but many had other skills. Joseph is known as the carpenter. Paul was a tent maker. Peter was a fisherman.
In Matthew 25:14-29, Jesus gives the parable of the talents. A man gave one man 5 talents, another 2 talents, and another 1 talent. The first one multiplied his 5 into 10. The second multiplied his 2 into 4. The third man hid his talent, and therefore did not find an opportunity to increase his talents. The first man may have started out with more talents but maybe it was the sixth talent that came in handy for one, and the third talent that came in handy for the next - and had they chosen to hide that talent under a rock, all of their talents, not just the sixth and third one, would have gone to waste.
3. Grow your mental fortitude.
One of my three favorite participants in the first season combated loneliness and boredom with an active imagination and humorous personality. He talked to the camera because it was basically his imaginary friend. He joked around and had rocks act like puppets. He told amusing stories. He sang. He did not seem like an odd man, just a man that was looking for a way to combat the extreme loneliness that surprised so many of the participants. Those who folded quickly expected to miss their families but they did not realize how devastatingly lonely they could feel on top of the homesickness. This man talked later about how extreme and psychological it was to be completely alone, with all the noise of life completely stripped away. He had to find himself again, and find how to survive as a man alone.
This reminded me of the Tom Hanks and his volleyball friend on Castaway. It wasn't crazy to make up a friend, it was survival.
Another man on "Alone" used up his precious calories to go on a difficult hike in honor of fallen soldiers, I believe (it's been a while since that one aired). While it seemed like a waste of precious calories to me, it was clear afterward that this man needed to have missions to feel satisfaction and to battle his own version of loneliness. He made decisions that worked with what he knew his mind needed to stay strong.
What gives you mental fortitude?
John 14:27 says, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let it be afraid."
4. Adapt. (Try something different this time).One of the most outstanding skills I saw in successful participants was the ability to adapt. I saw this over and over again. In Season 1, the gill net was an extremely successful way for most participants to catch fish. However, when the fish stopped running into the nets as the season changed, or when other predators figured out that they could steal fish off the gill nets, participants had to learn to adapt. The ones that couldn't adapt simply starved, grew discouraged, and tapped out. In one season, one man changed his methods and went to classic fishing with a hook. When others were staring hopelessly at their empty gill nets, he was feasting.
Each time someone adapted, they may have failed at first but it eventually led to success where others were failing by making the same mistake over and over again. This innovation was especially true of the winner of Season 1. He was extremely innovative - and that is not a spoiler. There were several extremely innovative men on Season 1. The winner tried things that didn't work, then he tried new things. He also quite literally turned over rocks on the beach shore, looking for little creatures that he could add to his dinner pot.
5. Think outside the box.
Over the seasons, I've seen participants build boats out of found material that washed ashore, and by using their woodworking skills. I saw one man basically build himself a working sink by rigging a found container to a line, and using his foot to hit a pedal every time he wanted to tip the "spigot" down to "run" the water. While some of these inventions were frivolous some ideas proved invaluable. My favorite invention was in Season 1, when Alan found a plastic bottle, cut it in half, inverted the neck into the bottle, and placed the bottle strategically on between rocks where the water rolled in every morning in order to catch tiny fish. He didn't just eat the tiny fish though - he saved some for a warming stew but he used some as bait to catch bigger fish.
I have been watching some of the Olympic trials for folks hoping to get a spot in the Olympics next year. They have featured many Olympic hopefuls who face great challenges because they don't have proper equipment or places to train in their countries. Some of this is really basic stuff - women that can't even find a store in their country that carries track clothes that will fit them to exercise. They have to get creative with their workouts, what they use, and how they train. While I mourn their disadvantages I am impressed by how they think outside the box to try to qualify.
6. Don't fool yourself.
There were a few rare participants that only lasted a few days. Those ones that left super early generally left because they were overcome by fear. I completely understand their fear, as some years, they were seeing bears almost immediately, or hearing wolves, etc. I spend a significant amount of time in the woods at night but I have a flashlight, bear mace, and my husband with me, and it makes a world of difference. I am not belittling these talented men (by the way, in this case, I am using the word men to refer to the male gender. There were fewer women on the show overall but none left because of fear of wildlife.)
The other way that participants fooled themselves was apparent during the health checks. The show medics would perform random checks once in a while and show up to listen to their heart, have them stand on a scale, etc., and make sure the participants weren't putting themselves into danger. It is not unusual for at least one participant to be sent home each season because they have lost over 25% body fat, and the medics feel the individual is in danger of going into organ failure due to having lost too much weight too fast. In cases when this has happened, participants have been surprised and some tried to fight the mandate, even though the medic was patiently explaining to them that they were risking death. These individuals were so strong and determined that they survived months of starvation, but they didn't know when to say "stop." However, one of the seasons of "Alone" was an all-star episode where they brought back people that had done very well in previous episodes. In one of the return episodes, a man (one of my favorite contestants to this day, and someone that definitely had the skill to win the show) that had been stockpiling food but didn't eat enough to keep up his body fat showed he had learned, and was carefully monitoring himself so that he could make the choice to tap out if he recognized that he was underweight. He learned from his mistake not to fool himself.
7. Take precautions.
Some of the winners on the show took calculated risks but they also took precautions. They tried to make sure their fire never went out as it was such a source of life for them. It cooked their meat, it kept their shelters warm, it gave them light. Or, in the case of the winner of season 1, he let his fire go out deliberately because he was more worried about conserving his wet wood.
One participant lost his flint and had to leave the show when his fire went out, and he didn't have the skills or tools to start a new one. So many people left the show because they were careless with their knife, which happens especially when their groggy, hungry minds lost some of their clear thinking. Several people almost or did burn down their shelter. Some folks battled animals stealing their food or bears getting too close to their shelter. So many people ran out of food.
The successful ones tried to think ahead - constantly fortifying their shelters against the upcoming winter, smoking fish to plan ahead with their food bank, wearing gloves when using their knife, and always keeping the fire burning.
There's a scene in the book "The Martian," by Andy Weir, where a part of his space station on Mars blows up because of a tiny crack that he could did not see, that he could have seen if he had inspected more closely. This error lead to catastrophic problems. Well, the survivors on this show sometimes regretted not taking certain precautions - especially one man who had to deal with animals stealing his food.
8. Be grateful.
Many of the most successful outdoorsmen on this show had a healthy mixture of hope and gratitude. They were grateful when they caught animals to eat. One man that was a skilled hunter talked about the dichotomy of appreciating and not wanting to hurt wildlife but needing food to survive. He rejoice and cried over his successful hunting. Each person talked about people they loved and missed, and how their gratitude for their family increased as they missed them more. The winner of the first season thought about how he would use the money to give back to his dad who had done so much for him. Many of those who gave up didn't really care about the money, which I thought was perfectly fine and healthy, but several of the participants that desperately wanted to win were focused on how they could use the money toward those they loved. It says something about their determination that their motivation came from meaningful intentions.
Luke 17:11-19 tells the story of Jesus healing ten lepers. While the lepers had faith that Jesus could heal them, once they were healed, only one stopped to give thanks. Gratitude gives us joy and happiness. I think this leper knew his life had changed forever and because of his gratitude, he probably woke up every day from that point on refreshed and rejoicing, even if he had to face new trials.
I hope never to forget to have hope, be grateful, and seek learning so that I can always improve myself, to live a meaningful and joyful life.
About me:
I am by no means as talented an outdoorsman as even some of the people that left the show within their first week of outdoor isolation. I do however, have an avid interest and love of the outdoors. To give a little bit of background on my fascination with this show, I grew up camping, am CPR-certified and was once the assigned lifeguard for a group of backpackers on a three-day hike. I took wilderness survival classes in college (including a solo overnight campout with no matches allowed - I started the fire by creating sparks off my pocket knife into a little fire nest that I had learned to make), participated in the Boy Scout program as a leader, was a Girl's Camp director one year, and have read many books about survivors and adventurers (Endurance; Deep Survival: Who Lives,Who Dies, and Why; Four Against the Arctic, Boys in the Boat, The Long Walk, Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, The Perfect Storm, Fire, Weird Hikes, and the fictional books Islands of the Blue Dolphins, Hunger Games, The Martian, The Hero and the Crown, and Dune ... are some books that I have enjoyed that come to mind). I've competed in and placed in trail races, traveled thousands of miles over the last 20 years on my mountain bike, and sometimes do gear reviews for a couple of different companies. (And yes, I get to keep the gear.) In other words, my skills are limited but I do brush up on being in the wild as often as I can, whether by personally spending time on trails or reading about it.
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