Alone Season 2 is off to a bang.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Randy dumped his ferro rod into the fire. He's going home. He was always going home. No reason to wait around, go on home and be comfortable and close to medical attention for the foot injuries you sustain while walking around barefoot in inappropriate places.

Yep, Mary Kate is out. And, it was the ax that did the job. The editors knew they needed to show her struggling with it. We all saw how she handled that ax. Chekhov's ax.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

We got a project guy! Jose has so many projects he wants to work on. But, he seems to know what he's doing in the woods, and his first project is not a boat.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Tracy cooked at her shelter. Do you want bears? Because that's how you get bears.

Yep. Now you got bears.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Leading causes of failure on Alone:

1. Cooking and eating at home.
2. Losing fire starter.
3. Projects.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Projects!

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Projects! Justin cannot stop doing projects. He built a gym.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Mike, I believed in you. Projects get them every time.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Jose has reached the boat stage of doing projects. It was always going to end this way.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

If there's one thing about men, they're gonna return to the sea.

Where are you going to go in your boat, Jose? What do you think spending days building a remarkably complicated boat is going to do for your survival odds?

Starving? Why not try a hobby? What about woodworking?

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Projects! Everybody is doing projects, but Justin is going for the title of most projects.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Randy's project is a sweat lodge. I am genuinely surprised he's still here. I thought the fire starter loss would be the end, but he powered through and figured out how to start a fire without it. And, now he's using fire to have a schvitz to find some clarity about whether to stay or go (he's gonna go).

[swelljoe@mas.to]

I knew it was over for Mike when he fell to projects.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Randy left before he even built a boat? What a disappointment.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

Justin's shelter flooded. I reckon he needs to build a boat to sleep in.

[bryan@dusty.ninja]

@swelljoe such a waste of calories. This is before everyone figured out a big advantage to this contest is starting obese.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

But, instead of solving his lack of dry shelter, he's going to climb a mountain. For veterans.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

@bryan I am stunned Justin has lasted this long. He's doing everything other than preparing for a long stay.

I didn't want to say anything about Tracy's weight, but I expected that to be an advantage for her come winter, if she'd lasted that long, and if she was still able to get the work done in terms of stockpiling firewood, building up shelter and kitchen, preserving some food, while carrying around some extra weight. I think there's probably a balance to be found...ideal is chubby but fit?

[bryan@dusty.ninja]

@swelljoe
Yeah it’s still a unicorn of physically fit but covered in layers of fat. It’s just so hard to find enough food while building a shelter and chopping firewood constantly.

Also the food must taste so terrible without seasoning… but when starving they don’t even notice.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

@bryan yeah, I think it's probably a miserable existence, but I were going out there, I'd be going out there to win it. If I'm going to suffer for weeks or months, I'd want a return.

And, so many of these folks are making terrible decisions, wasting effort, calories, and time, on absolutely ridiculous projects. It is remarkable how bad these decisions are. We're clearly several generations away from needing to actually live off the land. Ancestral memory clearly doesn't include preserving food.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

@bryan I see these guys building toys, and I'm like, "Winter is coming!"

Jose is like a week into making a boat, while doing seemingly nothing else to prepare.

Justin is climbing a mountain for literally no reason, while weak from hunger, through very rough, steep, terrain covered in brush and deadfall. I'm convinced he's trying to break his leg so he has an excuse to get out of there without feeling weak.