Jessie Krebs

Jessie Krebs packed salt for Labrador and left the fishing kit behind. Both halves of that sentence are remarkable: salt appears on just eight of the 101 recorded lists in our data, while the fishing kit she declined was carried by 74, and Season 9 dropped its cast beside a river system where fish were most people's entire plan. This is the most doctrinally distinct kit in the Season 9 field.

The doctrine is SERE. Krebs spent years as a U.S. Air Force survival instructor, and her list runs on land based protein: bow and trapping wire for meat, salt to preserve it and to keep electrolytes viable, a machete and saw handling wood with no axe and no standalone knife, a multitool covering fine work. Salt is the pick that says she planned for surplus, preserving harvests, not just surviving between them.

Skipping water borne food entirely was the gamble, and it was a considered one from a professional who teaches this material to others, later through O.W.L.S., the wilderness school she founded for women. Whatever else, nobody accuses this list of following the crowd.