When my wife and I began planning our trip to Alaska, we started watching various Alaska TV shows.  I did not take long to figure out that the Alaskan Bush People was by far the "King of Fake" shows.  I feel bad for the Alaskan people who might have to be associated with that.  More recently a show came a long called "The Last Alaskans."  It apparently follows the families who still have cabin permits in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.  It is organized a bit more like a documentary with no over the top personalities.   Then we started watching house hunting shows.  What I found most interesting was not the retired NFL Kicker looking for a large home in the inner passage, but the couple that came to Alaska without jobs.  They were going to buy a primitive cabin, then take whatever job they could get in whatever nearby small town?  Which begs the question, are hipster-types moving to Alaska to try to live cheaply and collect a PFD check?  Beyond that, do "lower 48 upper middle class folks" really believe they are going to be okay using an outhouse in minus whatever degree weather.  I think a may have a skewed vision when I arrive.  I d like to take suggestions on what residents believe provides the most realistic vision.

I can't help you.  I don't watch any of that crap.

I can tell you that Sue is batshit crazy, having stayed at Kavik with her when Taiga still owned the camp.

I would forget all the TV shows.  Coming with the expectations of a TV show will leave you disappointed.

Alaska is a big State.  I mean really big.  It is really hard to get any indication of what life is like living in this State when you are only getting to see one very small portion of it.  Southeast Alaska is moderate temperatures and lots of rain.  Northern Alaska is obviously much colder.  Interior Alaska has some tremendous extremes in temperature.  

More than likely, if you move here you will be living in Anchorage, Fairbanks, or Juneau (or one of the outlying areas surrounding those three cities).  About half of all Alaskan residents live there.  So, if this is where you are moving, you are basically living in a regular city with access to some really remote areas within a day's drive (well, not Juneau.  Maybe a boat ride or a ferry ride and a day's drive).  I've been in Juneau for about two years, and done quite a bit of travel for work, especially to Anchorage and Fairbanks.  I can't say that I really felt like I was on the frontier or anything until I did traveling out the Dalton Highway or flew out to Kotzebue.  Otherwise, it isn't that much different living here than other cities in the lower 48.

There are people here who have come to get away from everybody.  It is pretty easy to do that if that's what you want.  However, coming up here to "live" off of the pfd is foolhardy.  You don't even get your first pfd until October of the year AFTER your first FULL year (resident as of Jan 1st), so most people are looking at almost 2 years without it.  And even then, you are looking at maybe $2000 per person.  Possibly less depending on how the State decides to balance their budget.  The other problem is that being this remote also means everything is much more expensive.  If you are looking at moving out to a village somewhere, you could be looking at $6/gal for fuel, $4/lb for apples, etc.  It is not an easy place to live cheaply.

Some pictures from Kotzebue I took a couple years ago:

I remember being unable to belive gas prices in Nome when they were like 3.50 back in 2005. lol. now that is a bargain im sure. There are almost no jobs in those remote locations though that is the problem, the cash income of lots of people out in those places is next to aside from native shares income and PFD. the place is too small to have an actual store and the semi store is run by a family. you think they want you taking their cash income?

Turn off the TV.

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Gasoline is cheep  on the road system, $2.40   or so.


 In Barrow, it is $6.50 per gallon, and I am told milk is 11 dollars.

If they are they are moronic because the PFD barely even begins to offset the high cost of living.

Haven't read the whole thread.  I know several people who have been involved in reality tv shows up here.  From what I can tell the bulk of them are fully scripted or scenario staged.   A few aren't but not many.

House hunting shows are fake also.  They ran one near where I live and I ran into the couple and part of the crew in a lodge.  The couple was a local husband/wife who had no intention of buying anything.  They run a local B&B and were friends of the realtor

I ran into Benny (owner of Pagoda) on my flight down to Seattle on Tuesday afternoon.  I just had to ask about him being on TV lately.  He's doing another game show in August and got 3rd place on the one he just did, so those are real.