Have you ever been asked the classic icebreaker question — “If you were stranded on a deserted island, what three things would you bring?” — and dutifully answered with something sensible like a knife, a fire starter, and a water purification system, while privately thinking that the truly correct answer is significantly more entertaining than survivalist practicality allows? The deserted island hypothetical is one of humanity’s great thought experiments — and it deserves, at least occasionally, to be treated with the irreverence it was always secretly inviting. This blog presents 20 genuinely funny things to bring on a deserted island — each one examined with the seriousness that complete ridiculousness absolutely deserves.
Table of Contents
1. A Waterproof Instruction Manual for Building a Boat — Written Entirely in a Language You Do Not Speak
Nothing says committed to the experience quite like having the exact information you need, rendered completely inaccessible by a minor linguistic technicality. You will spend your evenings studying the diagrams with the focused intensity of someone who absolutely understands what they are looking at. The boat will not be built. The manual will eventually become shelter.
2. An Enormous Collection of Left-Footed Shoes
Sizes four through fourteen, all left feet, all different styles. You will never lack for footwear. You will also never lack for the specific existential frustration of someone who has abundant resources that are systematically unusable. On the positive side, the collection provides excellent drainage, multiple scooping implements, and — on reflection — a surprisingly comfortable pillow arrangement.
3. A Fully Stocked Home Bar, Assembled in the Wrong Order
Every ingredient for every classic cocktail — the vermouth, the bitters, the various spirits, the garnishes — but no glasses, no ice, no mixer, and crucially no shaker. You will have access to more varieties of high-quality alcohol than most bars, consumed exclusively from cupped hands and coconut shells, while the complete absence of tonic water for the gin makes the entire enterprise feel like a very specific kind of punishment.
4. A Solar-Powered Karaoke Machine With One Song
The solar panel works perfectly. The machine is indestructible. The speakers are genuinely impressive. The single available song is Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega — available in the original, two remixes, and an acoustic version that somehow makes it worse. By day forty-seven you will have developed seventeen distinct interpretations of the spoken word section. By day ninety you will have made your peace with it entirely.
5. A Complete Encyclopedia Set From 1987
Twenty-six volumes of comprehensive human knowledge, organised alphabetically and rendered maximally useful by being printed in an era before the internet, GPS, satellite rescue, or any of the technologies that might help you leave the island. Volume seventeen — Mam to Mer — contains four dense pages on maritime navigation using the stars, which you will read so many times the spine will separate. The entry on Deserted Islands is, predictably, not encouraging.
6. A Formal Three-Piece Suit, Immaculately Pressed
Not because it helps. Not because it is practical. But because the psychological value of maintaining standards in adversity is well-documented, and there is something genuinely magnificent about the mental image of a person standing at the edge of a deserted beach at sunrise, fully suited, watching the horizon with the composure of someone who is absolutely expecting a board meeting to start shortly.
7. A Box of 1,000 Novelty Pens That All Say “Souvenir of Somewhere Else”
Every pen works perfectly. Every pen says “Greetings from Orlando” or “A Gift from the Maldives” or “Remembering Paris.” You have nothing to write on except sand and the pages of the 1987 encyclopedia. The pens will outlast you. Future archaeologists will find them and draw completely incorrect conclusions about the twentieth century’s relationship with tourism.
8. A Yoga Mat and the World’s Most Advanced Yoga Instruction Book — With No Beginner Sections
Level: Advanced. Prerequisites: five years of consistent practice and the kind of hip flexibility that is frankly unrealistic for anyone who has spent the past decade sitting at a desk. You will attempt Kapotasana on day three. You will not attempt it again. The mat serves admirably as a sleeping surface, a rain collector, and a very visible distress signal when spread on the beach.
9. A Framed Portrait of Someone You Have Never Met
Large format. Oil painting style. The subject is a distinguished-looking Victorian gentleman whose name you will never know, gazing at you with an expression of mild but persistent disappointment. You will name him Gerald. Gerald will become your most reliable source of accountability on the island. Gerald has seen better days. Gerald is not impressed. Gerald is, inexplicably, exactly what you needed.
10. A Battery-Operated Doorbell
Fully functional. Exceptionally loud. Complete with eleven different melody settings, including a particularly aggressive rendition of La Cucaracha. There is no door. There has never been a door. You will install the doorbell anyway, connecting it to a driftwood frame positioned at the nominal entrance to your shelter, and the first time it rings – because you pressed it yourself, to test it – something in the experience will feel almost domestic.
11. An Enormous Jigsaw Puzzle — 10,000 Pieces, All the Same Shade of Blue
The box promises “Ocean Horizon at Sunset — A Meditative Challenge.” It is not meditative. It is an exercise in existential confrontation with the limits of human pattern recognition. Every piece looks identical. The completed image, should it ever be achieved, is a rectangle of uniform blue — which is also, coincidentally, exactly what you will be looking at if you simply raise your eyes from the puzzle and look at the actual ocean. The irony is not lost on you. You continue anyway.
12. A Hammock That Is Precisely Two Feet Shorter Than the Distance Between Any Two Trees on the Island
You will measure. You will measure again. You will measure a third time with a system of knotted ropes, hoping the previous measurements were somehow wrong. They were not wrong. The hammock is exactly, specifically, consistently two feet short — as if the manufacturer had precise knowledge of this island and made a deliberate decision. You will sleep on a diagonal for the duration of your stay.
13. A Complete Set of Business Cards With a Fake Job Title
Two thousand cards. Dr. [Your Name] — Chief Archipelago Officer, Pacific Division. Embossed. Thick stock. Rounded corners. On the fortieth day when a container ship passes close enough to see you waving from the beach, you will fling handfuls of them into the water in an optimistic distribution strategy that does not result in rescue but does result in a small fleet of business cards bobbing toward the horizon with considerable dignity.
14. A Working Grandfather Clock
It keeps perfect time. It chimes on the hour and the half hour. The sound carries remarkably well across the island — you will always know exactly what time it is, which on a deserted island is information of almost zero practical value but considerable psychological comfort. You will wind it religiously every eight days. The ticking becomes, after a while, the most companionable sound in your world.
15. An Enormous Collection of Loyalty Cards — All Partially Stamped
Every card is tantalizingly close. The coffee loyalty card needs two more stamps for a free drink. The sandwich card needs one more. The bookshop card is one purchase away from ten percent off. You are, technically, one of the most loyalty-rewarded individuals in the pre-island history of your postcode. None of this helps you. All of it haunts you. The free coffee in particular feels personal.
16. A Traffic Cone
Singular. Bright orange. Perfect condition. No explanation. You will spend a considerable amount of time on this island thinking about the traffic cone — why it is there, what it was meant to protect, what traffic it was warning against. Eventually you will position it at the most dangerous rock on the island’s path system and feel, against all reasonable expectation, that you have done something genuinely useful.
17. A Subscription Confirmation Email — Printed Out and Laminated
“Thank you for subscribing to Premium Island Rescue Monthly! Your first rescue will arrive in 4–6 weeks. Please note that delivery times may vary.” The fine print, which you will read many, many times, clarifies that “arrival” refers to the monthly newsletter, not to an actual rescue vessel. The newsletter, predictably, never arrives. The lamination, however, is excellent.
18. A Self-Help Book Titled “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” — With All the Practical Chapters Torn Out
The philosophical foundation remains. The abstract principles survive intact. The sections titled “Seven Concrete Steps” and “Putting It Into Practice” are gone — presumably removed by someone who found them unnecessary. What remains is a sequence of motivating quotations, several extended metaphors about rivers and bridges, and a robust index that references pages that no longer exist. You will read it cover to cover four times. It will not help. It will also not stop you reading it a fifth time.
19. An Alarm Clock Set for a Time Zone Fourteen Hours Different From Your Location
It goes off at 3 a.m. island time, every morning, with the confidence of something that believes completely in what it is doing. The alarm tone is Yakety Sax. You have tried to turn it off. The mechanism that governs the alarm is not the mechanism you think it is. The clock is winning.
20. A Mirror — Positioned at an Angle That Only Shows the Back of Your Head
Functional. Reflective. Positioned by some quirk of the only flat surface available so that every time you consult it for the normal human purpose of checking your appearance, you are presented instead with an excellent view of the back of your own head. After the first week you will stop trying to reposition it. After the second week you will become quietly expert on the back of your own head — its hair growth patterns, the specific curve of your skull, the way your posture has changed since you arrived. It is, in a strange way, the most honest mirror you have ever owned.
Key Takeaways
The twenty items on this list share a common quality — they are each, in their own specific way, a perfect metaphor for the human experience of having almost exactly what is needed but not quite in the right form. The instruction manual in the wrong language. The hammock that is two feet too short. The loyalty cards one stamp from redemption. The alarm clock set for a different world.
The deserted island hypothetical endures as a thought experiment precisely because it strips away the complexity of ordinary life and asks a simple question – what actually matters? And the funny answer, which is also sometimes the truest answer, is that what matters most is often the absurd specific detail, the ridiculous inadequacy, and the human capacity to find meaning and even comfort in objects that serve no rational purpose whatsoever.
Pack wisely. Pack badly. Pack a framed portrait of Gerald and a traffic cone and a karaoke machine with one song. And when the rescue ship eventually arrives — hand the captain a business card. You are, after all, the Chief Archipelago Officer, Pacific Division. Standards must be maintained.
