In the upcoming 10th season of History Channel’s popular reality series Alone (Thursdays at 9pm ET/PT), a new group of brave survivalists will test their skills and limits in order to win a $500,000 cash prize for surviving alone in the wilderness. This season, which may be the toughest one yet, takes participants to Northern Saskatchewan, Canada, which is home to many vicious predators and extreme weather conditions. With only 10 survival items per person and some camera gear to record the experience, Alone is the ultimate test of how one might survive in an apocalypse. Or in the 10th century.
Speaking with executive producer Ryan Pender, we went behind the scenes to see what makes this show tick. “Alone is as true as we can get to a true survival experience. We truly put them out there, with cameras, and they are on their own,” Pender told us. “The only time we see the footage is when we’ve either collected them or we’ve picked up their media. We do blind drops, and that is basically where they leave their shot cards and their spent batteries by the waterside. They never even see us, and we replace them with an equal number of cards and batteries, and we leave them alone. We also provide them with a Kodiak; it’s basically a glorified car battery. They last for weeks. It has a few USB ports that allow them to charge their equipment within their shelter.
“Our operating crew is somewhere between 16 and 20; that includes medical, helicopter pilots and boat captains. Our camera crew is out there getting B-roll; the production crew are solving any issues with crew or movements. There’s lots to do even though we’re not truly at the locations with the participants.”
Asked about how the show gets put together, Pender said, “We ask everybody to shoot constantly. These folks are survivalists and bush crafters first and foremost; they’re not camera operators and producers. So, we go through roughly 4,000 to 5,000 hours of footage nowadays. It’s a small army that’s got to sort through all this and figure out what their experience was all about.”
And what about the selection process? “Every year we get about 10,000 new applications. But we have a pool of about 40,000 emails in our inbox that we go through again to see if we missed anyone,” Pender explained. “And, of course, it goes from the weekend warrior to the folks that are really, really dug deep into this world; those are the folks we really are interested in. Then we boil it down to 45 or so, and then we boil it down again to 25 or so, and then we just keep whittling it down for the folks that we know are going to be honest out there. We want you to tell your story, we want you to record everything, and the trade-off is we’re giving you a chance to live what is hopefully your dream and seeing how far you can push yourself.”
