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Comment by WalterBright

15 hours ago

Why don't contestants on "Alone" do this?

This question is substantially why I stopped watching that show.

I think at least a few of them may have trouble locating pure clay where they are dropped but not all of them, every season, for years.

  • I seem to recall one or two doing this. But i suspect the reason they don't is cause they don't need to.

    They all have a pot already. The benefits of more pots seems low. Conversely the calorie cost seems high (if only just collecting clay and cutting wood to fire it.)

    On Alone thd priorities are shelter and food. Clay pots seems like a luxury in terms of utility use and energy cost.

    • This is the correct answer. Alone is not really a how to live in the woods show, it's a managed starvation show. The contestants are limited to about a 1 sq mile area which may or may not have a good source of clay. They purposely set them out just a few weeks before winter so they do not have a long time to prep. Conserving and replenishing calories is the name of the game.

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    • Most of them did a simply terrible job of building a fireplace, from poisoning themselves with the smoke to literally burning their shelter down. Some built a bed up off the ground, which is smart, but never seemed to consider heating up rocks in the fireplace during the day and slipping them under the bed at night.

      Anyhow, some mud and clay skills would help make a decent fireplace.

      Staying warm is a crucial skill, not a luxury. Some of them got frostbite.

      Also, most of them had food storage problems where their meat would get robbed. Some went to great effort to make their meat inaccessible, to no avail. I imagine that would make a storage pot useful.

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    • Am I wrong that the first few seasons the pot was an option they could choose among others? They upped the kit over time. Early on they had very little.

  • Digging in arctic climates is just difficult. Soils freeze and gel.

    Digging in semi-degraded postglacial till filled in with a few conifers (the Great Slave Lake site is largely talus/scree) is not especially productive in terms of clay.

    I would love to see them invite Primitive Technology's John Plant on the show. I do understand if North Queensland is more his climate though.

    • They did a season in Vancouver Island before they started making the show super weird.