Notes on Wilderness Survival from the Show ALONE
I recently watched the eighth season of Alone, a reality TV show where contestants are sent into the woods to live on their own for months at a time. While undoubtedly less interesting than FBoy Island, I really enjoyed it.
A couple of disclaimers: first, I only watched one season. Second, I know nothing—as in, nothing—about hunting, fishing, building a shelter, or anything else required to survive for months in the wilderness.
Nonetheless, one of the reasons I was so interested in Alone was because every one of the contestants seemed like they could go the distance—at least at first. They were all trained survival experts, many of them with two decades of experience being “outdoorsy.”
In the season I watched, at least one contestant was a park ranger, another lived in remote Alaska, another one built dug-out canoes for fun, and so on. They all thought they would win, or at least last a long time, but naturally that’s not what happened.
In the beginning, almost every contestant pointed to their mental toughness as being a key component of what would enable them to outlast the others.
It was one of the only times I rolled my eyes during the whole season, most of which I found inspiring. Did they not worry that the other people next to them would be just as tough?
They couldn’t all be right about being so tough. In fact, most of them would inevitably be proven wrong.
All this leads to a question: what is mental toughness, actually?
Some of my standard answers include:
- You don’t quit when other people do
- You can withstand more pain than the average person
- When one door closes, you look for a window (or whatever you need to do—the point is, you look for alternatives instead of accepting defeat)
- You don’t mind being alone (in fact, you learn to derive strength from it)
- You have a high level of self-awareness, including insight into your strengths and your weaknesses
You get the idea. Well, just about everything on that list applies to every contestant on Alone. But again, there can only be one winner!
That’s what so interesting: when everyone is strong, who is the strongest? Here are three observations, based on what I saw from the recent season:
“I’m doing this for my family” isn’t good enough.
Contestants often speak of their motivations for coming on the show, both in the beginning and then as the weeks pass with no outside contact. Many of them speak of their families, but there’s a difference between missing their loved ones and claiming that the very reason the contestant is enduring the experience is to be a better provider.
Something about the logic seems to weaken as the contestants themselves weaken over time. In fact, “I’m doing this for my family” leads to an obvious cop-out when the going gets tough.
More than one participant cited the longing to get back to family when deciding to tap out of the contest by using a satellite phone to call for rescue. “Nothing’s more important,” they said. “This isn’t worth it.”
Seeing this, I wondered, well, sure, but if your family was more important, why did you sign up for this?
The only thing that changed is that their mental toughness wore off. They got tired, cold, hungry—and I understand, I would too! I’d probably give up before most of them. But the point is, pointing to family as the reason for endurance is insufficient.
You need your own internal motivation to survive, or at least to keep going when warmth and real food are just a rescue boat away.
“One more day” is a powerful strategy.
The average day in the wilderness is pretty boring. You’re focused entirely on survival and endurance—two goals that are related but not quite the same. To survive, you need to avoid hypothermia and make sure you eat at least a minimum amount of calories. It’s a purely physical challenge.
To endure is more of a mental game. One time a contestant was about to give up, but instead he said, “You know what? I think I can make it one more day.”
What a great idea! All you have to do is what’s in front of you right now. If you can make it one more day, and then tomorrow you do it again, and then you keep going—well, that’s endurance.
That said, you can’t just will something into existence. If you’re starving, you’re not gonna make it. Which leads to my final observation…
Some things come down to circumstance.
You need to build a livable shelter, using only what you can scavenge from the land and a few tools you’re allowed to bring. You need to withstand incursions by bears, mountain lions, and other unfriendly visitors.
Above all, you need to “find food” which is a lot different than ordering it on an app like I do. This is in fact the most difficult and recurring challenge. Contestants spend much of their time strategizing plans for fishing and hunting, only to be rebuffed by nature again and again.
From what I could tell (and several contestants mentioned this from time to time), some of the outcome from their plans came down to luck and circumstance. It was still a worthwhile idea to lay down a gill net in deep water even if it didn’t produce any fish. If you’d known a bear would invade your berry supply, you might have placed it somewhere else—but the bear could have found another hiding spot just as well.
So for many of the strongest contestants, once they got past day forty or so, they simply had to surrender control. Sure, they continued to fight it out against the elements and do everything they could to stay in the game, but things happen.
Conclusion
In the end, it seems, whether you’re on a wilderness reality show or navigating a lesser challenge, you need to separate what you can control from what you can’t.
I was really impressed with one female contestant, who outlasted several of the guys and probably would have kept going had she not been medically evacuated. (And for good reason: she had severe hypothermia and was struggling to see. The producers made the right call, but so did she in trying to stay! That’s mental toughness.)
And yes, I did think about applying for the show. But since I don’t want to kill animals or build my own shelter—not to mention deal with unreliable WiFi—I won’t be making an appearance on Alone anytime soon.
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