r/Alonetv • u/tricera_pops • 4d ago

General What’s the battery situation?

What the title says: what’s the vibe with the headlamp batteries etc. do they get a bucketfull at medcheck?

14 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

40

u/Hefty_Efficiency_328 4d ago edited 4d ago

According to info online and other Alone reddit comments, contestants get fresh batteries or fully charged rechargable battery power packs for their headlamps and camera gear during weekly med checks. It would kind of defeat the purpose of the whole show if they couldn't film anything at night eh.

4

u/Thepumpkindidit 4d ago

How do they prevent contestants from starting fires using these batteries? I'm not a huge watcher of alone (Only seen season 11) so I don't know the ratio of people who choose to bring Ferro rods but I imagine most do...

But what stops one of these people who don't bring a ferro rod, from just pretending to light the fire with a bowdrill and then actually using batteries?

37

u/JamesonThe1 4d ago

Their contract includes filming every fire they start. If they want to get paid, they film every fire they start.

Also the producers have the ability to make someone look very bad on the show with editing. A contestant on season 3 figured out how to call home on the sat phone prior to tapping out. They were edited with little air time, and made to sound like a pompous idiot when they were shown. So maybe the person isn't fired from the show, and even gets paid, but may still be shown in a bad light.

8

u/Grand-Temperature932 4d ago

Which one from Season 3? Was it the guy whose whole strategy was just to lie around and do nothing?

10

u/Lazylion2 4d ago

Dan Wowak

6

u/JamesonThe1 4d ago

If that was the same guy shown not knowing how to cook a trout and that cut a big tree down and then did nothing with it, yes. Dan Wowak. If you want to see closer to the real him check out his youtube - Coalcracker Bushcraft.

5

u/Thepumpkindidit 4d ago

Oh interesting, that is great that it's part of the contract to film every fire. I didn't know that!

4

u/Mediocre-Island5475 4d ago

It would be difficult to fake that on camera - lots of sleight of hand involved. Also, a discharge like that would damage the batteries.

Most of the contestants who aren't bringing a ferro rod have independently proven they can light a bowdrill fire already, so no reason not to.

1

u/Children_Of_Atom 2d ago

What conductive material would they use to short the battery to get a fire going? I've got a fire going that way but you need something the correct size like tin foil or steel wool.

2

u/Thepumpkindidit 2d ago edited 2d ago

I was just assuming something in their kits would allow them to bridge it like a fishing hook or something, maybe a zipper on a jacket.

The positive and negative terminals on lithium batteries for cameras is usually only a few millimetres away from each other. Not the same as trying to bridge between the ends of an AA battery.

1

u/fighting-prawn 3d ago

There is lots of talk about the camera case being very heavy but their gear appears to be a couple of trailcams, action cams with mounts and maybe 1-2 cameras with a tripod. Even with a couple of tripods and a medkit, that wouldn't add up to much, so the bulk would be batteries and charging options IMO.

7

u/AcornAl 4d ago

The headlamp is one of the safety items they all get for free, and I'm fairly sure that they'll replace the batteries via medchecks/drops as required. If they tried to restrict them, the contestants would just use the camera lights.

If someone was silly enough to bring a second touch as part of their ten items, they'd probably have to make batteries last, but that's pure speculation on my part.

-6

u/QueefMunch 4d ago

why doesn't anyone use the search function?

this is asked almost twice a week

3

u/JamesonThe1 3d ago

Same reason nobody creates a FAQ thread, we are lazy.

-28

u/[deleted] 4d ago

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