The Necklace Worn by Naked and Afraid Contestants

The Discovery Channel program Naked and Afraid takes the principle of survival of the fittest to its extreme, asking a pair of complete strangers—one man and one woman—to endure a long stretch of wilderness survival in some of the world’s most extreme weather environments. The two have no water, no food, and not even clothes to wear. Each of them may carry only a single personal survival tool, and relying on their survival knowledge they must face a new environment and live out in the wild for a full 21 days on their own.

If you have also been watching Naked and Afraid, you may have noticed that the contestants, who wear no clothing at all, always seem to have a rather rustic-looking necklace around their necks (see the six people in the image below, all wearing one), in addition to a side satchel bag that can reveal something of the contestant’s personality (used as an apron to cover the important parts).

Out of curiosity, I originally guessed that the necklace might contain a built-in battery-powered Global Positioning System (GPS) unit, to prevent contestants from accidentally going missing and being unfindable in the dangerous wilderness survival environment.

However, according to a producer at the American NBC television network, those necklaces are actually concealed waterproof microphones.

Setting aside the normal recording environment of a studio, even for a reality show, contestants still need to wear wireless microphones (for example, clipped inside their clothing, or attached to the skin with skin-toned medical tape) in order to capture sound properly. But Naked and Afraid is a program in which the contestants are completely naked, so the production team had to specially create these stone-imitation concealed microphone necklaces.

You may also have noticed that, besides always wearing the necklace, the contestants also keep their side satchel bags on at all times, like a chef wearing an apron all day long. This is because the necklace microphone is connected by a wire to a radio frequency transmitter inside the bag, which sends the continuously captured audio signal to the crew’s recording equipment (or records it directly). In fact, in some shots you can see the contestant’s back, with a wire running from the necklace down into the side satchel bag.

Well, then again, if you need to capture sound continuously and transmit audio by radio frequency to the crew’s receiver, that means power consumption will be considerable, so just the act of swapping batteries must mean that the interaction between contestants and crew is actually quite frequent.

References

1. Naked and Afraid: “Anastasia’s Breaking Point,” the Most Baffling Episode.