At Thanksgiving dinner the conversation turned to starvation and eventually the cannibalism of the Donner party and similar stranded groups. I raised the question (Pass the giblet gravy, please.) of an individual stranded alone. Would it be possible to eat portions of yourself in order to extend your survival? Maybe you could apply a tourniquet and fillet a bit of calf muscle.
The idea raised some questions and soon the table was awash in spirited conversation. How much of yourself could you eat before encountering problems? What would be a good strategy? What would you eat first? And finally, what would you call the procedure? Auto-ingestion was suggested, so was onanibalism but I think that was a bit much.
Remember, if you are traversing mountains in the winter, don’t forget to pack a sharp knife and a frying pan.
i may be mistaken, but i thought the body already had a mechanism for metabolising the fats and then muscle tissue stored in your body. adding a middle-man (digestion) would surely make the process less efficient. the added trauma to your body would decrease the length of survival… risk of complications, energy expended to repairing tissues, fighting infection.
if i had to feed someone else though, i think i’d have to go with cutting away fatty layers of skin first. maybe a little spare tire for dinner.
I’m pretty sure that you wouldn’t even need to “eat” yourself since your body would do it anyway. If you’re too the point that you’re going to starve to death, I doubt there would be much nutritional value anywhere on your body (except for your organs maybe?). In the absence of food, your body would start shutting down non-essential functions and do whatever it could to stay alive.
Just go ahead and let your body do what it can. Plus, I can’t imagine the potential blood loss resulting from whatever part you might eat would be very helpful to your cause.
Someone must have been reading too much Stephen King, there was a story in the book “Skeleton crew” where a surgeon is eating himself to survive.
Anyway, I suppose it would be possible to eat part of yourself, but you probably would need a lot more than a tourniquet or you would lose all you blood in the process. Something to stich your wound would probably be necessary to survive.
Since there’s people without legs or arms and they seem to live ok, you could probably live without them too (good luck trying to eat them alone though).
If I had to eat myself, I would start with the legs (it’s would be hard to remove an arm and stich it afterward with the other arm left).
Since cannibalism is the “procedure of eating an animal of your own species”. If you eat yourself, that could still be called cannibalism maybe?
And to do it for nutritional reasons makes no sense. As previous posters have pointed out, the body is quite adept at breaking down fats and proteins which make up the body, and using them for fuel when necessary. The trauma brought on by the autophagy would waste necessary resources the body is trying to conserve, and the digestive process would not as efficient as direct breakdown from within anyway.
Short answer: Don’t do it! It doesn’t work and it’s silly!
i remember reading a story about an individual (dont know why he was there) who was trapped in a dungeon of an ancient castle without food, when people finally found his bones many years later his jaw was biting into his forearm. So it has been done but the body would break down your own cells for energy anyway.
It wasn’t an emergency, but the one time I tried this I just wasn’t flexible enough to complete the act. However, according to all these kind strangers sending me email, there are amazing pills and patches available now that are guaranteed to add at least 3 inches, so maybe there’s hope yet!
I understand that the body will begin to make nutritional use of itself in times of starvation. Anyone who has done some research on dieting will know that if you do not ingest adequate amounts of protein you will begin to lose muscle mass. That type of wasting away, in my view, would not be the equivalent of chowing down on a nice roast quadriceps.
Think of it this way…any mass you remove no longer has to be supported. The flesh ingested goes to support the remaining living tissue, so it is a better way to go than simply letting the body slowly consume itself.
Ex Machina, what was it about this part of my post above that you did not understand?
The energy your body would expend on repairing the damage of autophagy would far exceed any benefit from said behavior. Hemorrhage, shock, infection and healing all stress the body terribly, and consume resources profoundly.
So how nutritious is human hair and fingernails? Perhaps it’s hard to digest unless chopped fine & simmered over a low flame for a few hours (with leeks and potatoes, a bit of garlic.)
bbeaty, hair and fingernails have no nutritive benefit at all. They will not be broken down by digestive enzymes, no matter how long you simmer them. Keep your nasty fingernail parings and hair clippings, and give me the leeks and taters! [sub]gollum, gollum[/sub]
Well in Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner the sailors - who had been out to sea for months and were starving - cut themselves and drank some of their own blood to wet their throats enough to be able to talk. It’s not the same as eating yourself but I guess some parts of your body can be useful during times of dehydration or starvation.
A person in the process of starvation who has been without food for a week and has no prospect of getting any.
or:
A person who has had his leg amputated below the knee but has enough meat to keep himself alive for 20 days.
I think if you were stranded atop a mountain in the Andes waiting for a rescue team you would much rather be the second person.
The first person will be dead in a couple of days.
Eating yourself is therefore clearly preferable to starving to death.
P.S. Beware of people who pretend to be medical doctors on the internet.
A person in the process of starvation who has been without food for a week and has no prospect of getting any.
or:
A person who has had his leg amputated below the knee but has enough meat to keep himself alive for 20 days.
I think if you were stranded atop a mountain in the Andes waiting for a rescue team you would much rather be the second person.
The first person will be dead in a couple of days.
Eating yourself is therefore clearly preferable to starving to death.
P.S. Beware of people who pretend to be medical doctors on the internet.
The second person would quite possibly be dead in a shorter time, for the reasons that QtM outlined - hacking off your leg is a seriously traumatic and risky thing to do, especially when your body is already heavily stressed and you are stranded atop a mountain, far from medical support.
