cannibalism in a disaster situation

a reply to: thesaneone

i am not a real survivalist.
i have a plan. eat what i can when i can.
might be rabbit. might be a bird.
might be a person.

depends on how often i run across stuff, how hard it is to catch. and how long since i last ate

I haven't read through the entire thread yet but, has anyone brought up the prospect of eating insects over our fellow man? I mean, if humans have survived a "nuclear winter" certainly insects have. It might expend more energy than its worth to capture all those bugs but certainly it would expend less than hunting people.

I think that I would be able to find other means of feeding myself than eating people, there HAS to be other options, especially in the immediate aftermath. I would rather scavenge an irradiated tin of beans from a run down super market than eat people. There has to be other options. Cannibalism would be a choice, not a mandate.

Surely there would be other options.

a reply to: CagliostroTheGreat

I didn't see insects mentioned but they are nutritious. I'd roast them before eating them because some carry really bad parasites that you don't want in your body.

a reply to: Skid Mark

Absolutely, cook them first. Fire shouldn't be hard. Boil all water as well. I wouldn't eat anything raw in such a scenario, especially the disgusting disease riddled flesh of another survivor.

originally posted by: Mugly
a reply to: EnigmaAgent

definitely not raw if at all possible.

dollukka...i think everyones moral compass would change when faced with starvation.
as far as the diseases and disorders....the name of the game is always to survive a little longer.

Moral compass? If my kids were starving to death, my moral compass would be tuned for the situation....or thrown out the window.

Personally, I think there are a LOT of other choices before that would be a consideration.
Between birds, frogs, snakes, squirrels, rabbits, insects, and other small game just on my own property, I think we'd be fine.

Add in some fish from local water sources, and of course, we have chickens, so get eggs each day, and I don't think humans will be on the menu for us. (We'll also have veggies from the garden, fruit from trees, etc.)

Not to mention, who knows what drugs, etc. a person has consumed? A lot of risk there, at least right after SHTF. Later, would be a safer bet...but then again, supposedly, one of our best natural defenses is that we don't taste good, so there is that too.....

The only survivalist trick I know is, if you find a wild racoon, follow it, anything it eats you can eat as well...

That's about where my training starts and ends though....

Suffice it to say, nope.

I think I'd probably eat a bullet first. Just sayin'.

If i had dependants who would suffer badly without my help i could see myself eating and serving a human being. But if its just me in a solo situation and things have gotten so bad that the only way i could survive was to eat another human being i would most certainly kill myself.

I would have zero interest in living in a world like that.

a reply to: Mugly

If survival is the be all, end all of it. Sure.

But chowin' down on the neighbors doesn't sound much like living to me.

You'd be surprised what a person will do to survive. Not what they say from the comfort of home and a 7-11 down the street.

I've drank snakes and it's as horrible as it sounds (same as chickens).

Any meat that can be picked up with your hands has nutritional value (if it doesn't run through your fingers). Cook it well first of course.

Salt water fish can be consumed raw but fresh water fish should be cooked first (slime).

I'd like to say I'd let myself starve to death before I went the way of "long pork". However, it's a far harder concept to envision watching the people that depend on me starve to death as well.

Everything, and I DO mean everything, would have to go south before it came to it, but as a realist I can say - that if it came down to it I'd have to do what I'd have to do.

a reply to: Mugly

If you have a large amount of corpses available, rather than eating dead people, eat bacon.
Because ...

originally posted by: Halfswede
I'll go a step further. Is there the possibility that you could eat yourself to save your life? Could you garner more energy and live longer by amputating your leg and eating it?

You would have to do a good job on the amputation, but could it save your life or your family's life while still letting you live? I can't say for sure, but it seems better than eating someone else.

Just in a general sense, not in this particular deep-freeze situation.

Amputating a limb and eating it would be a terrible idea. You'd use a lot of energy just in the act of amputating the limb and if you're already malnourished you wouldn't really gain anything you didn't already have. All you'd accomplish there is disabling yourself and making survival harder in the long run.

I can't say for sure, but it seems better than eating someone else.

No, cutting off one of my own limbs, and eating it over eating another does NOT seem better.

Neighbor is SO going in the stew pot before THAT happens, just sayin'.......

(I mean, seasoned, with veggies, and a nice stew stock? Family would never even know post SHTF).

Still, as I mentioned earlier, a LOT of other choices for meat to be exhausted before cannibalism would be one.

originally posted by: Gazrok
Neighbor is SO going in the stew pot before THAT happens, just sayin'.......

Hahaha! I genuinely laughed out loud at that

Same for me, but as yourself, it would be in an extreme situation where I have exhausted every single other option of food to stay alive.
The principle of eating another human in a situation where there is no other option to survive is something I could get over easily.
Murdering another human to survive is something I like to believe I would never do, but eating a volunteer, or someone who I had killed in self defence while in a position of sustained starvation? Not so much of a problem.

I don't think cannibalism is so much a moral or hunger issue than a survival issue. I don't mean to survive eat humans. I mean to survive don't eat humans. Think about it once your family or group starts to eat people to survive as something that's acceptable, when will that end? Never, so once you can't seem to find strangers to eat. What's next? The group or family? Yes, once you actually start eating people as an acceptable thing for survival, it's not that far to imagine a family or group member killing you or others in the family or group to survive.

If you're a loner trying to survive then cannibalism would work, if absolutely necessary.

My point is in a end of the world type scenario and your trying to surviving with your family or group, you don't want to create a menu that could possibly have you on it.

I don't know.

If post SHTF, and a group was known for cannibalism, I'd certainly make every effort to steer clear of them, so there's a certain fear factor there. Just think of the Terminus folks in Walking Dead. It certainly enhanced the fear effect of these guys.

In one of the Zombie short story anthology books I have, there's this great story about a lone survivor, who basically lures survivors into his home, feeds them, and puts them up, etc. and then turns them into meat for the winter. Great story, not a great thing he's doing...but it is a fascinating read.

a reply to: Mugly

Insects and rodents will always out number us and you are going to have to struggle to keep their numbers down.

What better way than to eat them? Not appealing?

But people are?

We don't stand a chance. We are so done, that I pray I am not one of the survivors.You do not describe a world I would want to live in. A world were you feed of those that should be your hope.

And when it comes to the last one standing? Your children will never survive without you. Your dying for them is futile. Might as well get a little more life out of those you gave life to. It is the only humane thing to do, right?