NASHUA, NH – In his first anthropology course as an undergraduate at the University of Vermont, Dug North, of Nashua, watched a documentary film about the San people, also known as Bushmen—the film specifically focused on !Kung people—who are an indigenous community of hunters and gatherers in the South African region.
Little could North have known that more than three decades later, he would find himself, alone, in a similar terrain, trying to survive in a brutal climate with only 10 chosen items at his disposal [use the link to watch a short video featuring North talking about the items he brought and why].
North was recently a contestant in the current season of The HISTORY Channel’s series, “Alone,” which drops 10 skilled survivalists in hostile climates throughout the world with only those said 10 chosen items and their knowledge of wilderness survival skills.
Each of the 10 survivalists are required to film their own individual experiences and tribulations, upwards of eight hours a day as they compete to see who can survive the longest without “tapping out,” and being ushered by a medical and production crew back to civilization.
Season 12 is set in The Great Karoo Desert in South Africa, an arid climate with mercurial weather patterns, as well as extremely dangerous indigenous species.
The winner of each season receives $500,000.
Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t been following this season: North taps out in Episode 6, titled “Purpose,” after a fainting spell that had him concerned for his well-being. However, North said that he didn’t view this as a failure and learned much from the experience.
“I didn’t want to treat this solely as a contest, or man against nature,” said North, a 54-year-old website designer who has dallied in several careers, such as an archeologist and operating an antique clock restoration business. “Instead, I wanted to treat it as a very big experiment because you can’t fail an experiment. You can only learn from it.”
North’s interest in the outdoors was developed growing up in Norwich, VT., where he was raised hunting and fishing with his father, who was a hunter safety instructor. However, his interest in wilderness survival skills, in an academic sense, was sparked by a fourth grade teacher who read Jean Craighead George’s novel “My Side of the Mountain” aloud to the class.
From there, North said he devoured any literature on the topic.
However, putting the skills into practice wouldn’t begin in earnest until 2018 when North found himself flummoxed by his hobby at the time, which was making mechanical wooden sculptures.
“I had a creative block there, and instead of continuing to berate myself and getting nothing done, I asked myself, if I could do anything, what would I do? I then realized that I had never started a fire using a Bow Drill friction method,” said North, who also earned a master’s degree in the history of technology from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
That first fire—literally and metaphorically—ignited a passion in North to learn everything he could about wilderness survival skills. “The moment that I made a fire using three sticks, a piece of string and a rock was the closest thing to performing an act of true magic that I had ever experienced,” he said. “I become hooked from that moment forward.”
So North began practicing wilderness survival tasks on a small plot of woods that he owns with his wife, Julia, in Nashua and posting the videos on Instagram.
Then came a bolt of serendipity.
In the fall of 2019, North was convalescing in his basement from a minor surgery. Miserable and trying to take his mind off the discomfort, he started binge-watching the first six seasons of “Alone.”
Then, entirely coincidental, in the spring of 2020, he received a direct message on Instagram from a casting director from the show, asking if he would be interested in applying to appear on “Alone.” North jumped at it. “I never would have rated my skills and experience as worthy of applying, so I never would have applied otherwise,” he said.
North made it to the semifinal “bootcamp” round of 24 contestants for Season 8, but ultimately wasn’t chosen to appear on the show.
“The common wisdom is that if you make it to the bootcamp and don’t get selected, you don’t usually hear from them again. But the casting director kept me in mind, and I bucked that trend,” said North.
The casting director reached out to North, again, in November 2023, and he was told that this season the contestants would be dropped in a “more arid” environment. This time North made the final selection, and in April of 2024, he was told that he would be traveling to The Great Karoo Desert in South Africa for Season 12.
North and the nine other contestants—as well as two alternates—had 10 days of orientation, where they could acclimate to the environment and the time zone and were trained on venomous creatures and how to use the cameras and technology.
Then North was dropped off, utterly alone, in an African desert.
“There is a well-known phenomenon on the show called ‘Drop Shock.’ That is the feeling you may get the moment the helicopter pulls away, and you realize that you are truly alone,” said North. “I preformulated a plan where I wouldn’t have to think very much in those moments when the adrenalin and the panic might set in.”
North’s plan was to find a spot in between his two biggest safety concerns—the Cape Buffalo by the water, and the baboons on the ridges. Both animals are incredibly aggressive and dangerous. “Regardless of how skilled or how knowledgeable you are, it is a situation that you’re simply not fully in control of,” North said.
North’s goal was, obviously, to try and win in the conventional sense, but he and Julia, on the advice of another former “Alone” contestant, had talked and agreed on where his line would be in regards to safety concerns.
While North said that at the time he tapped out on Day 14 he felt confident in his ability to survive for another month or more, fainting due to dehydration—North was fortunate to faint into a bush and not knock his head on a rock—crossed that line.
“I had to look at the situation critically and determine that I had passed a safety line,” said North. “It was very difficult because I left like I was a true contender. You always wish you could’ve done more, but everybody, even the winner, feels that way.”
North, however, cautions viewers about making assumptions based solely on what they see on the television.
“I think viewers might be inclined to believe that they really understood my experience, or someone else’s experience,” North said. “The fact of the matter is that you’re only seeing the smallest slice of what someone experienced, so don’t be so quick to judge someone based solely on what you see on the television program. They can only show so much.”
North plans to continue posting YouTube videos for viewers and has planned an expedition in September in Haida Gwaii in British Columbia where he will spend five days training under an instructor and three days alone, which he will film and post for viewers.
“I believe that we evolved as a species to do the exact kinds of things that are involved when you practice ancestral skills,” North said. “Spending time in nature, hunting and fishing, foraging for edible and medical plants, and using your hands, these are the things that have kept us alive as a species, and I believe people feel more grounded and healthy when we use our bodies the way that they’re meant to be used.”
New episodes of ‘Alone’ air Thursdays at 9 p.m. EST/8 p.m. CST, only on The HISTORY Channel.