Here is the list of items each Alone contestant is given, the master list from which they can choose their 10 individual items and the list of prohibited gear items. [Last updated for Season 4]
Standard gear includes clothing, protective gear, safety equipment, camera gear, and some survival gear. Individual gear includes shelter, bedding, cooking, hygiene, hunting, food, and tools.
Clothing, Apparel, and Personal Effects
*These items do not count towards the 10 special items, but may not exceed the approved quota for each.
- 1x Pair of high leg Hunting boots
- 2x Pairs of Outdoor Pants (can unzip into shorts)
- 1x T-shirt
- 2x Fleece or wool shirts (hooded or unhooded)
- 3x Pairs of wool socks
- 1x Hat (brimmed, wool or baseball)
- 1x Bandana or shemagh
- 1x Pair gloves
- 1x Light outdoor jacket
- 2x Pairs of underwear
- 1x Rain jacket and rain trousers
- 1x Thermal underwear (long)
- 1x Pair of gaiters
- 1x Pair of Crocs, Teva sandals or Keen sandals
- 1x Toothbrush
- 1x Pair of prescription eyeglasses
- 1x Personal photograph
Winter Packs
*These items were provided to each participant and did not count towards the 10 special items.
- 1x Wool sweater (heavy)
- 1x Pair of gloves (wool/Dachstein)
- 1x Trapper’s hat or toboggan
Tracking and Safety
*We will provide the following items to each participant. These items do not count towards the 10 special items.
- Camera equipment
- 2x Safety tools (may consist of a canister of wild animal repellant, an air horn and/or 1 flare)
- 1x Rules and regulations guide
- 1x Backpack
- 1x Camera pack
- 1x Emergency flare
- 1x Satellite phone
- 1x Emergency personal flotation device
- 1x First aid kit (military type – tourniquet, wadding, ace bandage, alcohol, plastic bag, etc)
- 1x Small mirror
- 1x 20×20 canvas tarp
- 1x 10×10 tarp for protecting camera and equipment
- 1x GPS tracking device
- 1x Headlamp
- 1x Emergency rations pack to include water and food
Individual Items
*Each participant must choose TEN total items from the following list. Selections are final. Once chosen, no items may be swapped out or replaced. These will be each participant’s unique tools used to survive in the wilderness on camera.
Shelter
- 12×12 ground tarp (grommets approved)
- 8mm climbing rope (10m)
- 550 Paracord (20m)
- Hatchet
- Saw
- Axe
Bedding
- A multi-seasonal sleeping bag that fits within provided backpack
- Bivy bag (Gore-Tex sleeping bag cover)
- Sleeping pad
- Hammock
Cooking
- Pot including the lid (2 qt max)
- Steel frying pan
- Flint or ferro rod set
- Enamel bowl for eating
- Spoon
- Canteen or water bottle
- Bear canister
Hygiene
- 1x bar soap
- 8oz tube of toothpaste
- 1x face flannel
- 40 m roll of dental floss
- Small bottle bio shower soap
- Shaving razor (and 1 blade)
- Towel (30” x 60”)
- Comb
Hunting
- 300-yard roll of nylon single filament fishing line and 25 assorted hooks (No lures)
- Primitive bow with 6 Arrows (must be predominately made of wood)
- Small gauge gill net (8 m x 2 m OR 1.5 m deep x 3.6 m long and 2” [50 mm] mesh)
- Slingshot/Catapult
- Net foraging bag
- 3.5 lb roll of trapping wire
Food
- 5lbs of beef jerky (protein)
- 5lbs of dried pulses/legumes/lentils mix (starch and carbs)
- 5lbs of biltong (protein)
- 5lbs of hard tack military biscuits (carbs/sugars)
- 5lbs of chocolate (Simple/complex sugars)
- 5lbs of pemmican (traditional trail food made from fat and proteins)
- 5lbs of gorp (raisins, m&m’s and peanuts)
- 5lbs of flour (starch/carbs)
- 2lbs of rice or sugar and 1 lb of salt
Tools
- Pocket knife
- Hunting knife
- Multi-tool
- Sharpening stone
- Roll of duct (or electrical) tape
- Small shovel
- Small sewing kit
- Carabineer
- LED flashlight
- Pair of ice spikes
PROHIBITED ITEMS
*The following items are PROHIBITED. This list is not exhaustive but if an item is not listed above, it is also prohibited.
- Compass
- Fuel or matches
- Bug spray/mosquito repellant.
- Sunscreen/chapstick
- Sunglasses
- Beauty products
- Map (detailed topographical)
- Compass
- Unapproved technology (anything with a battery or an engine, eg. cell phones, computers, watches, etc.)
- Professional snares
- Firearms of any kind
- Ammunition
- Explosives or gunpowder
- Animal poison
- Professional fishing rods
- Fishing lures, flies, bait kits
- Fishing traps
- Food or beverage (except the options from the selection list)
- Decoys
- Animal calls
- Tree stands
- Professional bows or crossbows
- Scopes of any kind
- Tents or shelters
- Stoves, pressure cookers or other cooking appliances
- Hydration packs
- Fire pits
- Electric or propane lanterns
- Inflatable boats
- Filtration, purification devices, iodine tablets
- Coolers or food storage boxes (except optional bear canister)
What would you choose?
Check out The Best 10 Item Kit here >
this is an old list. The current one is significantly different. Best google for the season 4 list. a list for season 5 has not yet been made available. The gillnet is just 5 x15 ft, and it’s 1.5″ mesh. the rations are 2 lbs, not 5 lbs. The bear canister is no longer an option. Season 5 got 9 arrows, not just 6. 40m of paracord is allowed, not just 20m.
I had looked far and wide when I recovered this list, they keep removing it from the official site. I really don’t know why they are so secretive with this information, but I wanted to post a record of it. I’ll have the find the newer list and post that information as well.
They sure changed things up a bit. I’m sure the changes were made to get some variety into the show’s dynamic and or intentionally shorten the length of stay, etc.
it is no longer necessary to cut up the 20×20 tarp. I suspect that the reason nobody has done so is that it’s not allowed. I KNOW it’s not allowed to cut up the 10×10 tarp. Amazon sells a 2 person, cotton rope hammock, $60, that has 1500 ft of rope, made of 3 strands. each strand is made of 44 threads. 8 threads, spun into cordage, makes a strand that you can barely break with your hands. It’s strong enough to make gillnetting or a seine. If you save 300 ft of the strands for making the chumlines and for camp needs, you can still make 2200 sq ft of 3″ mesh netting out of the hammock, in a week. After you’ve caught all of the big fish that the 3 100m long chumlines can bait to your heavily-baited net pens, you overlay and off-set two segments of the netting making 1100 sq ft of 1.5″ mesh netting. Sew thru every other mesh, and you can then catch all but the smallest of fish. Doing that will take another 4 days, but each day’s production of netting can be put into use.
you can almost certainly find SOME place where you can dig a 9×5 ft pit, a foot deep. Pile the dirt up around the edges of the pit, 1 ft high,, wet it down and let it freeze. Make a pole A frame, with a ridgepole set in a couple of forked stakes.Make some wooden frames, pack them full of dirt, wet them down and let them freeze into building blocks. Use the blocks to bring the walls up another ft high, make the peaked roof (4 ft high) out of sod, or moss laid on poles 2 ft thickness of dry grass, compressed in the folded-up 20×20 tarp, poles laid on the tarp to prevent it moving in the wind. Trench around it vs snow melt. If you can’t dig, make the entire sides out of the frozen mud blocks. Chink it with mud/grass. Stuff the interior with dry grass. A foot thick layer of compressed grass around you, in a SEALED shelter, and you’ll not need even the hot rocks. for -30F. It does not get down below 0F until their last month and only drops below -10F for 2 weeks, at most. You’re GONE by Dec 27.
Can you bring chewing tobacco
To my knowledge, no.
It’s funny to watch no one now a days would make it as a mountain man like Jeremiah Johnson he got done the revolutionary war and went to the mountains and stayed for years alone before having kid given to him and meeting a flat head Native American wich were killed by the crow Indians after he stayed in the mountains for years I and he had a GUN too!!!!
intentionally shorten the stay. Season 3 lasting almost 3 months cut into their profits by a few million $.
Yep – Seems like they want a short 12 episode package. I’d be shocked if someone didn’t leave at the end of an episode. Unfortunately, I’m not their target audience, so much of the stuff that would keep me watching isn’t what hooks mainstream viewers so if goes to the cutting room’s floor.
not one of them have known what to take or do. The axe, saw, ferrorod, sleeping bag, paracord, cookpot, rations, canteen, belt knife, have all been either unnecessary picks or inferior picks. you are NOT out there to homestead. You are out there to last 3 months without losing a lb. Not only do you then clear 1/4 milllion dollars, you’ll make as much more in the next 2-3 years, by people who know the real deal when they see it.
That’s your perspective, the first 2 seasons were mostly a mystery to the participants. Now there’s plenty of knowledge that can be gleaned from watching and chatting with past participants. If you’re not sure what’s needed now you’re just not being smart.
How can you say a sleeping bag is unnecessary? It’s probubly the most necessary item on the entire list in my opinion. I’d like to see that debris shelter can outperform a -40 sleeping bag. It’s not like they have a wealth of animal furs to keep warm. And maintaining a fire 24/7 would use so many calories you’d have to tap out weeks earlier. Let’s not forget “survival is a lazy man’s game”.
you dont take anything that can be done-without or fabricated on site. They are not moving around, so bulk and weight dont matter. Hot stone-dried debris, up on a raised wooden bed, with more of it bundled and tied into matts, thrown over you have sufficed for centuries.
not in the Arctic, it aint. The Innuit had to hustle their butts off. When you have only 2.5 sq miles of land (and the same amount of lake) and you have to score 200,000 calories in a month or so, before the lake freezes up, best get MOVING. You’ll be taking it easy later, IF you catch that 600 lbs of fish. You might be able to catch another 4-5 lbs per day of the 50 days after the lake freezes, IF you know how to use netting thru the ice. You can get set up to move a seine thru 60,000 cubic feet of heavily baited water, 3x every 24 hours. It’s ludicrous to think that you wont catch at least 5 lbs per ‘sweep’, in a lake that’s well known to be full of BIG fish
The most importent if fire flint stone .with a good fire lots of ambers you can sleep in the right shelter without sleeping bag .
I’m sure it’s possible to survive without a sleeping bag, but you’re going to burn a lot more wood. Seems to me, that besides tracking down food, gathering firewood is the biggest calorie expenditure. Not having a good sleeping bag is going to send you out longer and farther nearly every day for wood.
they have all just starved. All have averaged losing half a lb per day, or more! That’s a piss poor showing, in my book. You have nothing to lose by trying it my way and everything to gain. Make 2000+ sq ft of 1.5″ mesh netting out of the 12×12 tarp, half of the 20×20 tarp and the hammock. Use it as baited net weirs and a seine, with which you move fish towards your weirs.
Take the Cold steel shovel, modified to have 8″ of saw edge. Take a modified Crunch multi tool. Take the fishing kit, as 8 treblehooks, Take the snarewire, one of Chief Aj’s slingbows, (most of the arrows featuring 4-tined fishing heads) Take the 12×12 tarp and a hammock, take a 5 qt skillet and lid, and a big roll of duct tape. If you will be, able to stone boil seawater to extract salt, take the 2 lbs of sugar and 1 lb of salt, to help you choke down all the fish and cambium and kelp juice. If you wont be on the sea, you’ll have to take the 3 lb block of salt.
I agree that some ingenuity can go along way in survival. Never tried to make a gil net out of canvas or nylon tarp material before, I’m not sure it would hold up…
As for making a weirs, some have tried with little success. Seems like the waters near them are always too volatile. Rarely are they placed near a peaceful brook or pond.
I think the cold steel shovel is a find choice if that’s what you’re comfortable with, but there’s no good replacement for a proper saw for bucking wood.
Seems to me all the people taking bow and arrows have proven it to be a worthless pick. They have restrictions on what game can be harvested and have failed to make a kill on any worth wild game so far. It’s a big gamble. I’d put all my efforts into passive traps, foregoing any weaponized hunting.
they can’t play diddly on a piano, either. That doesn’t mean that others can’t play concerts. For $7 at Harbor Freight, you can get a small tarp, start the tear at the edges, find the weave pattern and tear off full length strips quite easily. Twist them for strength, wrap them around a 3″ OD stick until ready to load the cordage onto your netting needle. Test it. it’s plenty strong enough for use as a seine. To make it 1.5″ mesh, weave in splits of local reeds, roots, vines, shoots, strips of bark. Such stuff is adequate for a weir, cause all it has to do is bump the fish’s nose. It’s never tested for strength, as in lifting out of the water, when in use. Making 3″ mesh netting is very easy, cause you just use 4 finders as the sizer. NOBODY has had brains enough to use the NET as a weir. Weirs are NOT just made of sticks and stones. Indians survived with out saws, indeed, without metal. The Cold Steel shovel can be modified to have 8″ of saw edge, and that’s plenty. If you cut 2″ deep all alround an 8″ OD log, or tree, you can then break it at the kerf with just your body weight, or a proper kick. Take a slingbow, not a bow, and have mostly 4-tined fishing arrowheads, only 2 broadehads. Each tine can become 2 fishhooks in a minute each, using the multitool and then, using same tool, snare wire can convert the 48 single hooks into treblehooks, making them MUCH more effective, on game and birds, as well as fish, than single hooks could ever be. Bait bags force the fish, bird or mammal to bite right where the treblehook is hiding in a small piece of the bait, and springy forked sticks act as “engines’ to set the hooks, and then the animals are wired to a drag log. The broadheads are used to finish them off, after following the obvious trail.
Hmm, iv seen several bow kills on the show incuding a musk ox i was really impressed with tht guy. Im a traditional bow hunter so maybe im partial, but my bow would be my 2nd chioce right behind a good sleepn bag
In recent years I’ll agree there were a few bow kills, but historically fish were the best food resource. I don’t have enough time with a bow, but it would be a strong consideration for the locations in the more recent seasons.
you dont have to split wood, or cut big wood for your fire. You can just feed the logs into the flames of a Siberian fire lay, or into a modified Dakota fire pit. Of course, you also use the fire to heat rocks, so that you can make use of otherwise-wasted heat.
a canteen, or making a little wooden water bottle are silly wastes. cut up part of one of the four 10×10 ft tarps you make out of the 20×20 ,making a hood, poncho, and chaps. Then you can use the sleeves of the rain jacket as your water containers. Just fold the wrists and tie them, and then tie them at the armpits.. No need to cut up the jacket. Of course, you’ll run boiling water thru the sleeves first (and repeat every couple of days) to keep them sterile
I’m not familiar with those techniques, but if you can do something successfully that others haven’t that would definitely give you an advantage.
you wont be moving around while carrying 40 lbs of gear and 30 lbs of camera stuff. So portability is not an issue. Dont handicap yourself with a 2 qt pot when you can have a 5 qt skillet with lid. Nicole used a 4 qt skillet on her first season. so dont tell me it wont fly. Take just 2 broadheads. The only big critters you’ll shoot at are going to be at 10m or less, either snared or treblehooked to a drag log. You need the 4 tined fishing heads, cause you can convert each one into 2 fishhooks. Once all the tines are removed, the arrows are still useful as blunts, vs fowl and small game. Those arrows should feature spiral flu flu fletching, or 4 really big fletchs of duct tape, so that they fall to earth at 20m. This reduces damage to and loss of arrows. Consider saving one fishing arrow for bowfishing. If you use feathers, be sure to waterproof them. Ditto your bow. and string, of course, if you go against my advise to take the slingbow. You can make baked clay balls as “ammo” for the slingshot. Rocks dont fly straight, Forget them.
Seems like the rules are a little fuzzy around the pot. Yes I’ve seem much larger pots used, I believe that size was only a limitation durring the first season.
no, you haven’t. If you use the pot, you’re stuck with the 2 qt size limit. However, there IS no size limit on the skillet.
you can’t be lazy while the fishing season is on. Cold weather sends the fish back to deep water. The shallow rivers are PERFECT for use of net weirs and seines, when you KNOW which direction the fish are going and that they MUST go. You can catch 600 lbs of fish in a month, no problem. That’s 350 lbs of actual edible flesh, at 650 calories per lb. say, 210,000 calories. While active, you need 3000 calories per day, so you can feed yourself properly for 70 days, say, 80 days, if you add in some small game, birds, and maybe 20 more days, if you add in some shredded, boiled, fried (in fish oil) cambium (so you can actually digest it). The weather will force you to just “hole up” in a debris-stuffed dugout, 4x4x8 ft, after about 2 months, and then your caloric needs will drop to 2000 calories per day. So you might well be able to not lose any weight at all for 4 months and then last a month on your bodyfat. These guys dont even come close to such performance. If you showed the producers such preps at the 2 month mark, they’d just declare you the winner, since you obviously can’t lose. and they desperately want to cut their expenses.
They went in the middle of the 2 month long Mongolian summer. It was NOT cold for at least the first month. The spring and fall are 1 month long (google will tell you that in 5 minutes or less). So the sleeping bag is completely unnecessary. it’s not ENOUGH, in the severe mongolian winter, in silly little “cabins”. The natives make SERIOUSLY strong, insulated structures and have all spring and summer and fall to gather firewood, using their animals to help them do so. You dont have those options. So you have to get underground, so that you dont need the fire. a foot thick layer of dry grass, COMPRESSED, all around you, with all the clothing that they let you take, will suffice just fine for the first month of early winter, which will suffice to starve/freeze out the inept others, since they’ll be wasting their calories on cutting wood.
when you take the same gear they’ve always taken and do the same things, you’ll get the same result. Starvation. Every last one of them, all 5 seasons, have lost at LEAST an average of 1/2 lb per day and some have lost twice that much. A projectile weapon is vital, but it has to be the right one, used the right way.
when not on the sea shore, you simply MUST take the 3 lb block of salt as one of your items, so that you can use it as bait, replace your electrolytes and preserve fish/meat. It will also help you choke down all the fish and cambium that you’ll have to eat.
You’re clearing $4000 a day out there, potentially. If they’d let some of the Cambodian/Vietnamese guys on the show, season one would STILL be running. They will never pick anyone who’s actually got what it takes to make it out there.
do you really believe that the saw edged shovel and the crunch are not 10x more effective than stone tools? yet stone tools have and do suffice.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=primitive+technology+getting+food
On the Alone show, are contestants allowed to bring a scuba drysuit ?
I don’t know, but I seriously doubt it. Seems like a huge advantage. Over the 6 seasons that aired I’ve not seen anything like that.
I have just started watching your show this year and I liked it. And I hate reality shows generally. So I decided to binge watch from season one. I think the only thing I would change is I think they should go out as teams a man and a woman together. Like husband and wife or something like that. I think it would make it more interesting.
Yeah, most reality shows are just shock and awe, but that rarely the case.
In season 4 of Alone they tried a partnered approach, it was a rocky start but ultimately didn’t grab people the same way. Perhaps they will try it again.
Survival has changed a lot since we’ve decimated the populations of large ruminants like deer and buffalo, there are so far fewer animals around today than in the past. People used to simply aim their gun in the air towards the flocks that were extended a mile wide from one end of the horizon to the other with billions and billions of birds. It seems folks on the show this season need fish to get the fat they need. Fishing is where it’s at. https://record.umich.edu/articles/passenger-pigeons-extinction-100-years-ago-was-call-action/
I agree with your statement. Yes, fishing would be my food of choice, but I realized that if you want to go the distance trapping and hunting are necessary. Partly due to the restrictions, participants are only allowed to roam their areas which are approximately 5 square miles. My strategy would be to jump on passive food procurement right away, build my shelter, then move on to hunting. But plans are just starting points.
you can do it all with just fishing, but if you want to last 100 days, you’ll have to catch 600 lbs of fish and you’ll still lose 30 lbs of bodyweight. You can probably catch 100+ lbs of fish thru the ice, if you go at it right, but that leaves you needing to catch 500 lbs of fish in the 3 weeks you’ll have left after you take the 2 weeks needed to make all of the netting and the raft you’ll need to deploy the netting. You’ll be catching more fish every day as you put out annother gillnet, of course, until you can assemble all of the nets into baited net-weirs and a seine. So perhaps all you need to catch is 400 lbs of fish in 3 weeks. 20 lbs of fish a day IS feasible with 2000 sq ft of netting that can be made out of the rope hammock and 3/4 of the 20×20 tarp that you dont need for anything else.
People dont understand how SMALL an area 5 sq miles is. It’s a 2.4 mile diameter circle, 1.2 miles of radius around your dropoff point. You can’t be more than 10 minutes jog from your camp.
Along with all the other allowed things, my selection from this would be;
5lbs gorp (raisins, m&m’s and peanuts
Hunting Knife
Pot with Lid 2qt
300yd roll fishing line 25 hooks
3.5 lbs roll of trapping wire
Primitive Bow and 6 arrows
Axe
Saw
Multi Tool
Flint and Ferro Rod Set
These are the only things I would need to survive, I would need to know what region we were being dropped into, and the rest would be history. The rest of those items – nothing but fluff and they want you to pick them because they are counting on your wanting creature comforts as oppose to survival only. Cheers!
What do you mean these items are prohibited? A compass?
According to the show (Alone) rules, nothing from the prohibited list maybe taken to the location.
“1x Trapper’s hat or toboggan” I wonder if they meant tuque., one is not like the other
Correct, they are not the same thing. A trapper’s hat has a fur liner and ear flaps, a toboggan would be a knitted beanie-type cap.
i JUST WANT TO KNOW WHY BEARS AND MOUNTAIN LIONS ARE NOT ON THE MENU. WHAT ELSE IS NOT ON THE MENU? MEAT IS MEAT.
Unfortunately, it’s always the local laws and regulations. It would be pretty tempting to turn off the cameras and take the game, but if they caught you, you’d probably forfeit all your earnings (yes everyone on the show gets a paycheck) and you might end up in that country’s jail.
All I have to say is….no way would I consider doing that without a firearm. Period.
Can’t the participants craft a crossbow if they wanted to?
Definitely. If they own the skills to do so, can find or create the resources needed, and feel like spending the time and energy. A simple crossbow would take a good bit of time to build so that it would be a consistent shooter. The bolts are another issue, I’d imagine many times you’d lose or break a bolt after each shot, so making new bolts would be an ongoing concern. Just my 2 cents.
Can you take a bottle of prescription medication
Not positive, but I believe so.
is aloud to bring all of the food items and just last off that?
]
Is tobacco and prescription meds aloud?
No tobacco. Not sure about the meds, but I would think so.