Who Is Nero Buys on Alone Season 13? Background and Gear

Nero Buys is 40 years old and from New South Wales, Australia, one of an international cast competing on Alone season 13, billed as "Alone: World Championship" and filmed in the Richardson Mountains near Aklavik in Canada's Northwest Territories, inside the Arctic Circle. This is the show's first season to explicitly pull contestants from outside its usual national casts, and Buys is one of the entries representing Australia. As of this writing the season is airing, so this profile covers his background and gear rather than how his run turns out.

Our records describe him as an Army veteran and bushcraft survival enthusiast who founded an outdoor youth program and tested his own survival skills in Canada back in 2024, groundwork that likely factored into his selection for a season filmed in that same country. Some casting coverage adds that his military service reportedly included time with the Australian Army's Special Air Service Regiment, a detail worth treating as reported background rather than something this site has independently verified. After his military career, he's said to have spent around eight years as a stay-at-home father before founding NaturePost, a program built around getting children engaged with nature through hands-on experience.

What he's carrying

Buys's season 13 gear list is fully recorded, which is notable this early in a season; only 101 of the 187 contestants tracked across every season and spin-off on this site have a documented gear list at all. His ten-item kit is close to the standard modern loadout:

Item	Gear page
Sleeping bag	Sleeping bag
Ax	Axe
Multitool	Multitool
Paracord	Paracord
Fishing line and hooks	Fishing kit
Bow and arrows	Bow and arrows
Cooking pot	Cooking pot
Snare wire	Snare wire
Salt	Salt block
Ferro rod	Ferro rod

The one item worth flagging is salt, a slot a lot of contestants skip in favor of an extra fishing tool or a bear canister. Choosing to carry salt over another gear slot usually signals a plan built around preserving meat or fish over a long stretch rather than eating everything fresh as it's caught, which fits someone with an outdoor-education background built around sustainable, repeatable skills rather than one-off survival stunts.

The setting he's up against

Season 13's location is one of the more extreme the show has used: inside the Arctic Circle, roughly 150 km from the season 11 filming site near Inuvik, with a flat $500,000 prize plus the title of first-ever Alone World Champion going to whoever outlasts the rest of the international field, per our season 13 page. For a contestant whose stated background centers on bushcraft instruction and a youth-focused nature program built in more temperate conditions, an Arctic Circle season is a real test of how that skill set translates to genuinely harsh cold, separate from anything about his placement.

Where to follow his run

For the season's full cast, location details, and prize structure, our season 13 page has the breakdown, and his contestant page will update with placement and outcome once that information is confirmed. If you want background on how the show's rules and medical evacuation thresholds work heading into a brutal Arctic Circle setting, our rules page covers the basics, and details on how to watch the season are on our where-to-watch page.