Just finished reading In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, a book about some very unfortunate sailors who spent three months drifting around the Pacific unitl they finally had to start eating each other to survive. Most notable is the ‘casting of lots’ where, when there wasnt a dead body around, they drew lots to see who would be killed and consumed. It’s a dark story that surfaces every few years when someone rediscovers it.

The book is pretty interesting, although the first couple chapters and the last couple chapters are more about the history of Nantucket and whaling, and while that is interesting I was more interested in the actual Essex story. The cover of the book mentions that a movie is in the offing and I cannot imagine how they would accurately portray some of the hideous scenes described in the book.

For reasons I am not entirely sure of, stories like this fascinate me. When I was a kid I used to read Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivorsover and over. (If youre not familiar with it, a plane full of rugby players crashes in the Andes and the survivors spend a couple months up there in the wreck eating the dead and waiting for rescue before finally walking out on their own.)

While the story of the Essex is macabre and fascinating, I’m more interested in the aftermath. According to the book, two of the survivors spent the rest of their lives hoarding food. Also, the psychological changes are extremely interesting….the first-person accounts in the book jibe with other accounts of people experiencing starvation: food becomes an all-consuming obsession and there is virtually nothing a person won’t do to get it.

The book also notes something I was only peripherally aware of – The Minnesota Starvation Experiment. I need to track down some more info on this because it looks very interesting. From what I can find on Wiki it appears that, as we’ve known all along, hungry people are dangerous people but fortunately they won’t be terribly effective people. (However, they’ll probably have numbers on their side.)  On the other hand, starvation is a slow process and long before someone starving to death becomes frail and feeble they become hard and hungry.The study is available on Amazon as two very expensive volumes…I might have to go old-school and see if the local library can get it.

The idea behind the experiment, by the way, appears to have been to find the best way to feed and restore people who had been almost starved to death…concentration camp prisoners, famine victimes, etc…..which reminds me of this story.

Other than a few months of economic misfortune and lack of direction when I was much younger, I have had no real experience with being hungry. Oh, I was hungry at the time, but if I really got in over my head I could have called family for help…but I was way too proud to do that, so I lived with eating every other day and snagging what i could where I could. However, I’ve taken great steps to make sure that I don’t find myself in a foodless situation. Oh, sure, I may wander into the kitchen and disgustedly say “There’s nothing to eat” but that’s not true…that really just means “Theres nothing here I want to eat”. When you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything…which is precisely why I have a stash of food – so I don’t have to eat anything.

Which, I suppose, is a timely reminder that the Augason Farms “One Month Pack” is still 50% off as of this writing. Storage food goes a long way towards keeping your neighbors off the menu.