you have to eat but all there are is other people..what do you do?

Originally posted by thelibra
This is one of those questions you always wonder about if someone's keeping tabs on.


Stuck in a camp somewhere with no food? Find the latrine and eat the maggots in the dung.

Yep, I think it is safe to say you just went off their menus. Even the surviving is survival afterall crowd will turn their nose up at your ham bones now.

[edit on 7-6-2007 by Ahabstar]

Originally posted by _Phoenix_
No matter what happens, or how you feel, you are still killing someone against their will, therefore its simply wrong, simple as that. Would you REALLY want to live after killing and eating another human. I mean how could you live happily after that.

If the guy died naturally, I guess it would be ok to eat him/her thou. But the killing is the wrong thing.

again, thats your moral compass, not mine.
i am not a sociopath by maybe a tad crazy like the guy above though..

for me, in a live or die situation, it is not wrong. for you it is, not me.
moral compass is not universal.

someone breaks into my house(i should say again. i was 7 the first time) i will shoot them and i will kill them. i KNOW this.
if i am at my death bead and the only thing that can save me is your bicep...you just lost an arm dude..

what can i say.
we are talking survival.

even within our moral society, there is justifiable homicide and i am thinking this would qualify so whatever.
i wouldn't be too much cared about that at the time.

as far as living happily, well, i'm not all that friggin happy now.....i don't know what would happen after, i just know i would do whatever i could to make sure there is an after.

edit*
en.wikipedia.org...

just check out the cannibal by neccesity part.
i wonder why those people in the andes didn't just 'find another way'

oh thats right...they did. they tried to hike to a summit and look to see cause they were in a gully or whatever you call it.

you never know if you're going to be put in that situation..they sure didn't and they were a group of friends. a soccer team actually.


[edit on 7-6-2007 by Boondock78]

[edit on 7-6-2007 by Boondock78]

Well I don't think this was laid out well enough......would you be starving with being able to be rescued or would you have no chance of survival even after the fact of eating someone else.....I'm sure if most people knew without a doubt they weren't gonna be saved they wouldn't resort to cannabalism

And there I was thinking humans were social animals.....

Food is plentiful if you know where to look. Besides, cannibalism is bad for your health.

I just hope I don't get stuck in such a situation with Boondock. Talk about the height of self centred selfishness.

He hasn't even contemplated alternative avenues of survival.

It's just crash+mountains=eat your mates.

Honestly...

Besides, that Andes crash was a Rugby team from Argentina,. not a "soccer" (football) team from Brazil.

And do you know how they made it out?

Because 2 of them refused to stay there and eat other people waiting for rescue. Instead, they walked out and got help. They survived without eating each other, made the trek and got help. They even found plentiful food stuffs on the way.

The rest of the party refused to go because they had been convinced that the best way to survive was to sit there and wait for the Authorities to find them.

They didn't even know they were being looked for, but still elected to just sit there.

Now who in your mind were the one's more concerned with survival? Certainly not the one's who ate each other, they were idiots who were happy to await death, as without the other two, they would have died anyway.

yeah, i read the book. some resorted to it and some didn't.
whatever...

it's not crash+need to survive=eat my friends.
you are making the assumption...i said if there is no other means, then yup, i'd do it.


you think like first day i'd just start slicing and dicing? not exactly

i think a lot of you are just trying jump on stuff that don't fit your moral code.
i am wrong but you are not....in your eyes maybe.
i did address it in the title...there is NOTHING to eat but people..this is not a 'lets find ways to explore for food'...i assumed people read the title and deduced that there was NO OTHER food, as i indicated...no matter what you may think, there is not always an alternative.

btw, does it make you feel good to point out it was a rugby team and not soccer? i mean, does that make any damn bit of difference or are you just trying to tout the 'pick out all the mistakes one makes' type person?

small, minor detail that has no relavence, but you need to point out.


edit* you're twisting little stuff though that is relavent..

they didn't just elect to sit..the ones that stayed behind were hurt and/or not as healthy as the few that tried...they decided as a group, just as they decided as a group not to eat the ones dudes mom or sister or whatever it was.
they also tried to hike up once and were stranded up near the summit for a night before they had to hike down...worse off than when they went up.

it ended up how it ended but for all you know they could have died hiking for food or an out when there was in fact plenty of 'food' right in front of them.



[edit on 7-6-2007 by Boondock78]

In answering the heading of this tread..........YES.

en.wikipedia.org...

Of the 45 people on the plane, twelve died in the crash or shortly thereafter; another five had died by the next morning, and one more succumbed to injuries on the eighth day. The remaining 27 faced hard survival issues high in the freezing mountains. Many had suffered injuries from the crash including broken legs from the aircraft's seats piling together. The survivors lacked equipment such as cold-weather clothing and footwear suitable for the area, mountaineering goggles to prevent snow blindness (although one of the eventual survivors, 24-year-old Adolfo "Fito" Strauch, devised a couple of sunglasses by using the sun visors in the pilot's cabin which did help protect their eyes from the sun). Most gravely, they lacked any kind of medical supplies, leaving the two freshman medical students on board who had survived the crash to improvise splints and braces with salvaged parts of what remained of the aircraft

^^^^can't hike with broken legs in the andes dude...thats not a choice


The survivors had a small amount of food: a few chocolate bars, other assorted snacks, and several bottles of wine. During the days following the crash they divided out this food in very small amounts so as not to exhaust their meager supply. Fito also devised a way to melt snow into water by using metal from the seats and placing snow on it. The snow then melted in the sun and dripped into empty wine bottles.

Even with this strict rationing, their food stock dwindled quickly. Furthermore, there was no natural vegetation or animals on the snow-covered mountain. The group thus survived by collectively making a decision to eat flesh from the bodies of their dead comrades. This decision was not taken lightly, as most were classmates or close friends. In his 2006 book, Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Nando Parrado comments on this decision:

“ At high altitude, the body's caloric needs are astronomical ... we were starving in earnest, with no hope of finding food, but our hunger soon grew so voracious that we searched anyway ... again and again we scoured the fuselage in search of crumbs and morsels. We tried to eat strips of leather torn from pieces of luggage, though we knew that the chemicals they'd been treated with would do us more harm than good. We ripped open seat cushions hoping to find straw, but found only inedible upholstery foam ... Again and again I came to the same conclusion: unless we wanted to eat the clothes we were wearing, there was nothing here but aluminium, plastic, ice, and rock. (94-95) ”

^^^^^^again, nothing to eat

All of the passengers were Roman Catholic, a point which was emphasized by Piers Paul Read in Alive. According to Read, some equated the act to the ritual of Holy Communion. Others initially had reservations, though after realizing that it was their only means of staying alive, changed their minds a few days later


if you read on they hiked a few times and failed and then they were rescued...had they NOT eaten ther friends, they would not have been able to hike or make it long enough to be rescued....they would have died.

so that it is all straight not...i mean, i know you need the facts to be dead on. can't mix up soccer for rugby

But Boondock, unless you are so extremely unlucky, there will always be SOMETHING else to eat other than Jim from Accounts....

The chances of you being in a situation where there wasn't a food source are so slim as to be negligible. It takes so long to starve that if you couldn't find food within a week, you must be on the moon

I'd be more concerned about drinking water.....

EDIT: Granted, a plane wreck in the middle of the Andes is as fudged up your going to get...

Still I wouldn't eat a person. I'd rather die trying to get myself out of the situation than just sitting there.

[edit on 7/6/07 by stumason]

The law does recognize justifiable cannibalism, especially maritime law. If you're stuck on a raft at sea, can't drink the water and have no other food source, eating a companion on the raft is perfectly legal and justifiable.

I'm not sure where the law stands on killing them though.

I suppose on land it would depend on the situation.

Cannibalism under extreme situations is recognized as a legitamate form of survival though.

I just pray to God I never find myself in that type of situation, I pray that you never do as well.

None of us know just what we will do until we find ourselves there.

Originally posted by stumason
But Boondock, unless you are so extremely unlucky, there will always be SOMETHING else to eat other than Jim from Accounts....

Jim from Accounts...

I agree, i would rather die trying to get out of the situation than chew on poor Jimbo. :shk
I dont think i could do it.

Originally posted by stumason
But Boondock, unless you are so extremely unlucky, there will always be SOMETHING else to eat other than Jim from Accounts....

The chances of you being in a situation where there wasn't a food source are so slim as to be negligible.
[edit on 7/6/07 by stumason]

ok, so call it the most unlucky, most sparsely food populated place on the earth...whatever man....that is not the point of the thread.
call it the moon then. middle of the ocean...anything...it don't matter.
for the sake of the thread, just for fun, assume there is NO food. NOTHING.
how hard is that?
i get it is an extremely rare situation.
so as an asteroid hitting the earth but we talk about it.
come on man...

edit* did you read what i posted from the andes story...there was NO food man...they were trying to eat leather strips from the seats..


[edit on 7-6-2007 by Boondock78]

Originally posted by mrwupy
The law does recognize justifiable cannibalism, especially maritime law. If you're stuck on a raft at sea, can't drink the water and have no other food source, eating a companion on the raft is perfectly legal and justifiable.

.

from that show i watched, one of the segments was the maritime segment. dudes were on a dingy just like i said.

now, this might get gross but it is what happened.

they held out cause apparently, thirst is so bad that it is inevitable that someone drinks from the ocean, even with their buds trying to stop them. now that person is violently sick and dying. i think it was called the 'law of the sea' or something like that stated that it was allowed.
now of course they were thirsty, the guy that was then dying, they killed and drank his blood and ate him.
see, if the body sits around, blood congeals. that means nothing to drink.

i am not positive about the modern day version as far as killing and eating the person but i am pretty sure it would be justifiable.
again, it is survival..at the least if you ate a guy and were rescued 3 weeks later, they can't very well prove that you killed him...i don't see how anyway.
either way, i don't think one would be worried about facing charges IF found

Yeah, I read it. Did you read what I posted underneath? I said it was as fudged up as you can get, but I'd still die trying to get out than sit there and eat someone.

Sod anyone else who was too injured and not my family, leave them there to do what they will, but I wouldn't just sit still and eat people.

I cannot imagine a situation where I would eat a person to survive. Even in the Andes, there will be some Llama knocking about somewhere. You have a long time before you starve, so get walking.

Sorry if I'm not playing along with your game, but I do not believe I would ever be in a position where there was not ANYTHING to eat other than people.

Originally posted by stumason
Yeah, I read it. Did you read what I posted underneath? I said it was as fudged up as you can get, but I'd still die trying to get out than sit there and eat someone.

Sod anyone else who was too injured and not my family, leave them there to do what they will, but I wouldn't just sit still and eat people.

I cannot imagine a situation where I would eat a person to survive. Even in the Andes, there will be some Llama knocking about somewhere. You have a long time before you starve, so get walking.

Sorry if I'm not playing along with your game, but I do not believe I would ever be in a position where there was not ANYTHING to eat other than people.

it's not a game.. bro, you read it..there was nothing around...no llama.
i get your point but please stop trying with this there will be something around....not always..i thought what was clear

you have a long time if you starve to death yes but injuries, altitude, weather, supplies all play a factor. you might not be able to get walking. thought that was clear too. like th eperson with the broken leg. can't hike the andes looking for llama with a broke leag. pretty sure they would have eaten llama before leather from a chair...so no, it's not a game i am just trying to stay on topic.
i asked specific questions.

Originally posted by Boondock78
and for the record, i'm thinking it's not so easy to just follow the trees or whatever and hike out of the andes.

Of course it's not "easy", but I bet I could do it, and I'm not some Rambo type. You can hike for a good 2-3 days without food, so long as you have water, and that's generally going to be enough time to get down below the timberline, where at worst case, you can suck on some tree sap, pine nuts, etc. The timber line is typically around 6000 ft in the Andes, give or take 1500ft or so depending on what side of the Andes, and how far north or south you are, and I think the average height is around 13,000 ft. So you're probably looking at most, about 6,000 to 7,000 feet. That's barely over one mile.

I can't think of many places where you can't make one mile in one day, especially going downhill. Maybe like K2 or something.

The reason I argue this point is because one of the reasons mankind HAS survived, as a species, is because we don't eat each other as a rule, and as a result, have learned to work together to overcome just about any obstacle, including that of finding other sources of food. Additionally, our bodies are some of the most efficient shapes on the planet. The instinct not to devour your fellow man is sometimes referred to as the "inner chimp", a set of instincts back to our primate days, when we learned to live in gregarious tribes.

Now, granted, cannibalism has existed among both chimps and men, for one reason or another, but the core value of NOT eating one's fellow man, that you express such disdain for, is MORE likely to ensure the survival of the species than the willingness to eat one another in time of need.

That and, frankly, you seem way too eager to eat some long pig. You're championing your survivability by expressing your desire to eat your fellow man almost as a first resort. Perhaps that's the wrong impression, but it's definitely the impression you're giving a growing number of people here.

Most people aren't going to ever admit to themselves what they would do to survive, and if it were to save their spouse or children, they might go against everything they ever believed in to the point of not being able to live with themselves afterward. However, you cannot, and should not, expect ordinary right-thinking people to smile and nod and cheerfully express anything but disgust at the thought of cannibalism. It is both an instinctual and learned reaction that has kept mankind seperate from the other animals and allowed us to progress as a civilization and overcome hard times.

Originally posted by Boondock78
you and 5 people on a dingy floating in the middle of th pacific. no grubs or any other food source anywhere.

There's been cases of people living for literally over 100 days at sea on a life raft, by themselves. Without anyone else to eat, and no food supplies. What do you suppose they did? (hint: google it)

I get the point you're making from the thread title, though. Zero food, no where, and no where to get to it, and there's only other people. It's never that simple though, not in the real world. The question of whether or not someone can go against thousands of years of conditioning to NOT eat their fellow man is going to be entirely dependant on the context of the situation.

Who are the other people, are they friends, family? How close? Are they eyeing you hungrily? Did any of them attack you? Are they dead first or do you have to kill them? Is it just you that you're trying to save, or your child? Is there any hope of escape or rescue whatsoever, and if so, why can't you simply take charge of your own rescue and start heading back to civilization? Can that obstacle be overcome? If so, why not?

People who truly survive situations do not take one blanket approach to get through it. They look at their situation as a collection of smaller problems to be solved, one at a time. Most of the time, after solving a few of the smaller problems, food and water become available. The set of circumstances that it would require for one to eat another human being to survive in today's world are either so incredibly extreme as to be unthinkable for most people, so of course, the majority of them are going to simply not consider the option.

I guess what I'm saying is, there's no bragging rights for someone who places their survival on their willingness to kill and eat other people, and at best, it places you several levels below one whom, in the same set of circumstances, would expend a bit more effort and get themselves out of the bad situation with no food, and into a better situation that has food.

it's not bragging rights. it's a thread...just discussing is all just like a million other topics.

about hiking, what about you know, broken legs? busted femur or something? busted up ribs, head injury...you gonna hike the andes like that?

all i am trying to do is make a point that while the chances are minute any of us would be in a situation like this, there is a chance.

there are a lot of sit-x threads...why not this one?
cause people are grossed out or they get the impression(like you) that i would go looking to eat a mofo first....i stated that i would not..
take whatever impression you will.
i am just here to talk is all

edit****

People who truly survive situations do not take one blanket approach to get through it. They look at their situation as a collection of smaller problems to be solved, one at a time. Most of the time, after solving a few of the smaller problems, food and water become available. The set of circumstances that it would require for one to eat another human being to survive in today's world are either so incredibly extreme as to be unthinkable for most people, so of course, the majority of them are going to simply not consider the option.

^^^^you posted that...did you read what i posted from the andes wreck? they did try to find other sources. they tried to eat leather. they decided as a group to eat flesh. a few held out but ended up caving.
after 70 days some were rescued. they did some hiking and founbd some stuff.
had they not resorted to eating the flesh though, they would not have been able to slimb the mountains...that was my whole point.

for that situation, they were friends and team mates.
they did what they HAD to do. even the ones that did not want to.

[edit on 8-6-2007 by Boondock78]

I have given this question a lot of thought. There is no real easy answer for this. As I see it if you kill to feed yourself you are no better then the animals. if you don't well then you are dead. both situations suck.

Its a very personal question so all I can do is give you a personal answer. Remember this is my opinion so please don't flame me. we all have a right to our opinions.

I feel to kill a human to feed yourself is lowering what you are. you are a human. you are not a common animal. Once that line is crossed we change and become what the earth has gone out of her way to rid itself of (E.G. the dinoursours like T-rex). If the person is already dead well that changes things, and makes it a whole different ball game. After all meat is meat. Its our brains that make us human and put us above the animals. As long as were still thinking were still human.

We must never forget what we are. Think about it this way. We as humans get very angry when a fellow human such as a politician put his or her own needs above the rest of humanity. That little sin is nothing compared to ending a life to put food in your gut.

Besides we as a race will be dead long before other food sources run out.

Originally posted by angryamerican
I have given this question a lot of thought. There is no real easy answer for this. As I see it if you kill to feed yourself you are no better then the animals. if you don't well then you are dead. both situations suck.

Its a very personal question so all I can do is give you a personal answer. Remember this is my opinion so please don't flame me. we all have a right to our opinions.

absolutely correct..somehow though, people think my opinion on the matter is wrong.

i think for you, your opinion is right. i don't personally agree that makes us like/no better than the animals cause for one, we are a human animal and for two, that is your moral compass that makes you feel that way..not mine.

see what i mean?
this is all i wanted, to see what people would do in their opinion. i got some of that but i also got hit with character flaws for what i have stated and especially since i have the butcher as an avatar..

i respect your opinion 100%

But what if one of the group is a politician? Still, if you're at sea, would a politician be better as stink bait?

Sorry for the levity, but everyone is taking this question too serious. As I said earlier, by the time a normal person could entertain the idea, they would be so near crazy that morals would be gone anyway.

But later, then they would have problems.

Originally posted by Boondock78
about hiking, what about you know, broken legs? busted femur or something? busted up ribs, head injury...you gonna hike the andes like that?

You mean to say it's physically easier to kill another human than it is to hike down a mountain?

Humans are the top of the food-chain, as far as predators go, because of our ingenuity and ability to use tools. However, unless your human prey also has a broken leg, etc, They're most likely going to win. Further, with an injury like that, you're almost certainly going to die of blood loss, internal bleeding, gangrene or other infection before you would starve to death.

It would make a LOT more sense if you were injured to ask the person to help you down the mountain in a skiff or something.

Originally posted by Boondock78
there are a lot of sit-x threads...why not this one?

I'm a mod for this forum, and I have yet to issue a warn or closed the thread. You haven't broken any rules, and it's technically a valid thread, and a valid subject, and in the appropriate area
There's nothing wrong with the thread. I'm not discounting the thread, I'm saying you shouldn't be so surprised at the way people react to the question, or your replies. By all means, discuss it to your heart's content, but I'd be careful about expressing such disdain for people expressing a natural human reaction to the question. It's not like you asked if people prefer to shop at Academy vs. REI, you've asked them to confront a hypothetical situation of the rarest variety that delves into a subject that violates the very core of what has defined humanity since we split off from Neanderthals.

Originally posted by Boondock78
cause people are grossed out or they get the impression(like you) that i would go looking to eat a mofo first.

Hmmm... I'm not so much grossed out by the idea, but you really do kind of give the impression you'd like to eat some human flesh here pretty quick. There's a big difference between asking how far someone would go to survive, or to ensure the survival of their children, and championing the willingness to commit cannibalism while simultaneously showing disdain for people who express their resolve to try and figure out an alternate solution first.

Originally posted by Boondock78
did you read what i posted from the andes wreck?

I read every post in the thread. In the matter of sensitive subjects like this, I gotta be pretty vigilant to make sure people don't fly off the handle.

The people in the Andes wreck were not educated in survival techniques. They were a pampered soccer team who was used to staying in hotels and having their needs cared for. They were in good shape, but obviously most of them knew nothing about how to survive outside of civilization. Keep in mind, the whole reason they were rescued was because a couple of them were willing to hike till they found help, rather than stay in the lazy relative comfort of the plane wreck and eat each other.

For the record, they did actually take some flesh with them to eat on the hike. But two key differences from what you are asking: one, the people were already dead from a plane wreck, they were not clubbing each other over the head and eating one another. Two, the potential predators worked together to get out of the situation, rather than to turn each other into a meal. Ah, and three, they rightfully went in search of rescue and it worked.

Now if they managed to do that with no real good equipment and no knowledge of survival skills, I'm pretty sure people who frequent a forum all about survival will have an even better chance if they keep their head clear and don't get cocky, and most importantly, if they work together with the other survivors, rather than try to kill and eat them.

Originally posted by Boondock78
for that situation, they were friends and team mates.
they did what they HAD to do. even the ones that did not want to.

Well, for one, they waited too long to begin their trek. For another, there's a big difference between eating your friend who died in a wreck and eating your friend after clubbing them on the head. There's a huge chasm of difference there.


[edit on 6/8/2007 by thelibra]