Extracted Gear List | Supply Drop Contents

Jimmy Royce5 hours ago

0 495 10 minutes read

Extracted Gear List | Supply Drop Contents

Spoiler Alert – The results of Extracted are discussed as we dive into the gear options for the various supply drops.

Extracted is a new TV series from Fox (streaming on Hulu) that takes 12 amateur survivalists with two teammates each out to British Columbia to compete for $250,000. The survivalists are monitored by their teammates from a command center, where the team attempts to help them with supply drops and instructions. The team can also hit the big red button, extracting the survivalist, which is where the show’s name comes from.

Survivalism takes a backseat to drama in this series, since it pits teams against each other and relies on the struggles of the amateur survivalists for suspense. Still, despite the inexperience on display, the choices of gear the teams pick and how the contestants use them are interesting, like other survival competition TV shows.

Contents (Jump to a Section)

Starting Gear List

When the contestants are dropped off on the first day, they aren’t left by the helicopter empty-handed. They get the clothes, jacket, and boots they show up with, but also some video equipment and communication gear, and a canteen of water.

The stainless canteens were from Pathfinder, a well-known survival school. The canteen and the electronics were toted around in a brown canvas stash bag.

Survivalists get a waterproof mic on a necklace similar to Naked and Afraid. They also get a two-way radio and a GPS smartwatch that producers use to remotely monitor contestants’ location and health vitals.

They also showed up with some extra knowledge, too- each contestant received about a week of basic survival training before the competition began. Despite the narrator saying they have no formal training, they needed to ensure the contestants would at least be safe when it came to purifying water and being smart around bears.

Over the approximately three weeks, the HQ teams could support their survival contestants by sending them gear through supply drops. These drops were coordinated every other day or provided for survivalist competitions that only the contestants participated in.

First Supply Drop

After the first night with very little gear, the contestants get a reprieve with a supply drop crate that their teammates pack from a supply room. The teams have only a minute to pack their player’s supply crate, and politics comes into play as well, so the contestants all end up with various amounts.

The crate only measured 14.5″ x 11.5″ x 5.5″, so size was also a constraint.

The options from the room included:

Water – Additional filled canteens, Pathfinder Canteens, as I mentioned before.
Fire – Bags of wood shavings and überleben Hexå ferro rods were the main tool- other teams could settle for a bow drill.
Food – Canned beans
Warmth – Patterned wool blend blankets and sleeping bags were available, but were also bulky.
Tools – Only four Morakniv Companion Knives were up for grabs, but also camping lanterns, work gloves, toilet paper, rope, bear spray, fishing kits, and cooking pots went in some crates.

Supply Drop 2

At the start of day 3, teams are notified that their survivalist will need to make a raft to make it to one of three care packages across the lake.

Gold Package

Silver Package

Two Tarps
Rope
Sleeping Mat

Bronze Package

Teams get to choose the raft-building supplies they send from the supply room, which include:

Folding Saw – I recognize the saw as the same Bahco Laplander I have.
Collapsing Bow Saw – It looks like a 21″ Sven Saw, with the red handle and how it collapses down.
Climbing Rope
Paracord

Supply Drop 3

There are plenty of miserable contestants at this point- some drinking non-purified lake water, and without fires, still. The importance of this supply drop for the team members to get their contestants isn’t lost on the anxious teammates.

The options include:

Ham Sandwich
Canned Peaches – 3x 16-ounce cans
Hygiene Supplies – A toilet paper roll, a toothbrush, and toothpaste
Ferro Rod – The unique shape of the überleben Hexå ferro rod made it easy to spot.
Propane Stove – I recognized the MSR PocketRocket 2 immediately, with the matching isobutane canister.

Teammates had to negotiate with another team to split the items above, except for one that was able to pick 3. That team smartly picked the ferro rod,

Supply Drop 4

Everyone got a bear canister and was able to pick from a wide lineup of fixed blades to help field dress a deer carcass. If any of the contestants who used up space for bear spray in their starter crate were still in the contest, they would have been disappointed in the duplicate gear.

The deer meat was able to be stored in a bear-proof container so the survivalists would have some meat to cook up for a meal.

Supply Drop 5

Seven canisters of hot chocolate and pairs of wool socks were available to only a handful of survivalists. It may sound like morale boosters, but dry socks and any amount of calories are already welcome, less than a week into the competition.

Supply Drop 6

A loaf of bread that contestants were expected to share. Not everyone grabbed a chunk, and there was plenty left over because the contestants didn’t know which order they were being presented the bread.

Between the storms and the editing, I did lose track of the day count around here. Extracted doesn’t show which day it is, unlike other survival competition shows.

Supply Drop 7

Propane Stove – another opportunity to get the PocketRocket
Pencil & Notebook – It looked like a standard pencil and notebook, not a waterproof notebook.
Toothbrush & Toothpaste –
Sleeping Bag – the bags they used on the show looked pretty lightweight, but more insulation is better than nothing!
Binoculars

Nobody selected the writing utensils, dental care, and binoculars to gift to another contestant. Sleeping bags are always great for warmth and getting better quality sleep in the wilderness, and the PocketRocket makes both fire starting and cooking much easier.

Supply Drop 8

Hunting weapons to pick from included:

3x Bow and Arrows – the bows look like Samick Sage Takedowns.
4x Spears – wooden staffs with fixed spearpoints.
8x Slingshots – The slingshots look like SimpleShot Scout XTs with tubular bands instead of flat.

Spears, bows and arrows, slingshots were meant to be for a hunting trial, which was delayed by storms. The bows were snatched up quickly, as you would expect. I was surprised to see a few teams pick spears for their contestants over slingshots. The staff from the spear might be useful for holding up a tarp shelter or other uses, but every contestant had a knife by this point.

Supply Drop 9

This ‘drop’ was the result of a particularly hard-to-watch ‘competition’.

The teams were finally able to communicate with the contestants with a short written letter. They used the opportunity to write competition strategies, survival shelter tips, and personal affirmations.

The hitch, of course, was that many letters were burned as part of the team competition at HQ. This was obviously distressing to family members and highlights the objective of the show- the exploration of morality is closer to Squid Game than Alone.

Supply Drop 10

One volunteer from HQ was able to divvy up these items as they saw fit between the contestants:

Potato – A potato, wrapped in tin foil.
Toilet Paper Roll – A single roll of toilet paper.
Kindling Bundle and Matches – A tied roll of kindling for fires, with some survival matches.
Mylar Emergency Blanket – Mylar blankets are cheap and effective. See more about their uses in our survival blanket review.
MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat) – A re-wrapped actual military MRE (not sure if it included the chemical heater) with 1,200 calories.

Supply Drop 11

The teams could pick two items from the supply room to load up a dry bag. The items picked included:

Sleeping bag
MRE – picked 3 times
Tarp
Canned food – beans picked 2 times
Stove fuel – picked 2 times
Collapsing bow saw

The contestants had to swim several hundred yards in cold water to win their supply drop (and take the other contestants).

Supply Drop 12

The teams could pick one item from the supply room. They picked:

MRE – 4
Sleeping bag – 2

Only a single MRE was delivered to a contestant.

Supply Drop 13

A mystery crate was dropped in the lake, with the reward for cracking it open being a long list of options, including a variety of food. Later on, the flare was used to order up an entire salmon.

Supply Drop 14

Gear from previous drops was pulled back by the teams at HQ. A few of the survivalists lost four items, including tarps, sleeping bags, fire starters, and more.

Supply Drop 15

Contestants had to navigate with a compass and a map to a crate that contained food and water. One crate could have contained a satellite phone since it was harder to reach, but that contestant was sabotaged by HQ teams. Only one of the four remaining contestants received the MRE and water from a crate.

Supply Drop 16

This odd challenge for the teams at HQ had them stand next to four crates in a white elephant-style challenge. The crate selection included:

Grubs
Steak on a frying pan
Apple with peanut butter
Roasted crickets

Supply Drop 17

The contestants had to create a torch using various materials and follow directions to light a bonfire.

The winner was awarded a 16-ounce steak.

Leaving Supply Drops Behind

All contestants returned to just their starting gear, leaving everything they had accumulated behind one day before the final challenge. This was the result of a standoff at HQ where one contestant would have to leave their gear, or all of them if the HQ teams could not unanimously agree.

The Final Episode

A big component of the final episode was the lockboxes, made with ammo cans and combination locks (alphabetical rather than numerical), using 5 letters. There was only one piece of gear inside, but it’s important for survival communication and the competition:

The chosen words for the locks also shared some survival significance: pre-conceived code words are ideal, names are easy to remember under stress, and abstract words are nearly impossible to figure out on the fly.

They used inflatable rafts to reach the lockboxes, with blow tubes and air sacks for inflation.

Most Important Gear

After the game progressed, holes in the typical survival priorities became very apparent for contestants. Accumulating gear and supplies helped many contestants, but missing a key piece of gear could quickly turn into an early extraction.

Some of the key equipment that some contestants missed out on, causing them to be pulled, include:

Fire starter
Sleeping bag
Tarp

Once those basic shelter, warmth, and water purification tools were met, the next big changer ended up being food, and specifically the MRE.

Haley, the winner of Extracted, ended up accumulating a lot of gear over the challenge. Unlike Jake (second place), she was awarded plenty of supply drops with a wide range of gear. She found herself wanting a sleeping bag towards the middle of the competition, but had everything she needed for a solid shelter, fire, water purification, and an occasional meal.

Unfortunately, her first supply crate is edited out of the show, so we don’t know what she got, but we do know what she was missing.

Notably, she didn’t eat meat the entire time, being a vegetarian. At the penultimate episode, she looked like she might be extracted with an abnormal heart rate, and her team worried about her health.

Despite those challenges, she rallied when the producers notified her of the last challenge, where the tests catered to her strengths. Being a whitewater instructor helped her with the raft portion, and already having a code word set with her team let her breeze through the lockbox. Her low energy from a lack of calories ended up being a non-factor since she could breeze through the challenges so quickly.

I’ve seen plenty of survival competition TV shows, and my favorite continues to be Alone. I’ve done deep dives into the best survival series since it has a massive amount of useful data on how different gear lists help contestants win.

I enjoyed watching Extracted, but have seen many people complain about the inexperience of the contestants. To me, this show is much closer to Netflix’s Outlast, which saw some backlash as well. These shows are less about survival and more about examining human interaction, loyalty, and honesty. This creates drama, which is usually successful on TV.

If you watch with this in mind, you can get past the frustration of the poorly qualified contestants and appreciate the show for what it is: a ‘pulpier’ approach to survival.

Regardless, I would rate this show even lower than Outlast. The concept is interesting enough, and I think the show was well-executed, but even the drama couldn’t overshadow the predictability it suffered from. The better-qualified survivalists were easy to spot from the first episode, and the drama from supply drops affected them less because they were better at being self-reliant in the woods.

Also, the exploration of morality has the teams intentionally screwing each other over. This direction that survival shows have taken with Outlast (and now Extracted) prioritizes intentional moral dilemmas over the more triumphant survival explorations of Alone and Naked and Afraid.

Casting is open for the next season, so if you think you could outlast a handful of others with limited gear and a few survival challenges, you might be able to leave with $250,000 in your pocket.

Figure out who would be on your family team of three, and then head over to extractedcasting.com.

You’ll need a passport and to be from the US to be eligible, and you’ll need a solid team and pretty good survival skills to contend. It doesn’t say whether they’ll be filming at Powell Lake outside of Whistler again or at a different location.

The Final Word

Contestants, and especially the winners, seem to be getting more savvy about their gear selection on the show, as shown by Gina on Alone Australia with her giant coat replacing a sleeping bag. What ‘hack’ will we see next on Alone? The producers are relatively strict on the rules, although we did see Woniya unravel a sweater for cordage, so who knows? Maybe we’ll see even more clever loopholes.

Here are some other guides our subscribers have found helpful:

While looking at their gear was good fun, we can’t stress enough the importance of skills and practical experience. All of the winners had extensive outdoor survival skill knowledge through practice and performance. Most had hands-on jobs where they used tools each and every day.

Keep exploring, stay prepared, and be safe.