Just make sure to avoid the brain, and internal organs. My biggest concerns would have to do with the transferrence of infectious diseases from not-totally-cooked meat (although mad cow disease passes through completely cooked beef, right?). Remember – that “kuru” brain disesease is passed from human to human by eating human brain matter.
Ten years ago, my answer would have been “no freaking way.”
I’ve got kids now, though. Now, I could do something like that, if it would keep me alive until I could get back to my kids.
Another poser: Could you eat a loved one, just to survive, to get back to your other loved ones? For instance, if my husband and I were in a plane crash, and he died, would I be able to eat of his flesh, to get back to our kids?
Someone started a thread about this a loooong time ago, and I remember showing it to my husband, and we actually discussed it (we had also recently rented Alive, and we were both still pretty creeped out). We discussed other scenarios, such as “would there be other people there we could eat first?” We eventually arrived at yes, we probably could do it, but only if there was absolutely no other option, and we would never tell the kids.
I think I’d draw the line at consuming one of my own kids, though. In a case like that, I think I’d just hang it up and die.
what are you talking about?
Cecil talks about kuru:
**"From 1957 to 1977 kuru was epidemic among certain New Guinea tribes and was suspected of being contracted by eating human flesh. But cannibalism had been outlawed long before…
…Many now believe, for instance, that New Guinea natives are not cannibals and that kuru is spread by contact with corpses during funeral preparations, although there is still some argument about this."**
supposed to be the…um (hard for me to describe this as i don’t know the technical name for this part of the body)…
it is on your hand, that plump round part under your thumb area, you use it to move your thumb…
i was watching something referring to a documentary or interview with cannibals (i can’t remember in which country), and they said that was the most delicious part of a human being.
but back to the original question…errr
alive - definitely not!
dead - probably maybe
I believe the latest information is that kuru has a long (20+ years) incubation period, and that cannibalism continued in secret after it was outlawed. The people with kuru denied eating human brains to avoid punishment, but later confessed. Sorry I don’t have a source, but I believe it was on one of those learning channel type shows.
Okay, I gotta weigh in.
Eating a loved one:
Yes. Even though I’m single, no intention of ever marrying, so I suppose the ‘loved one’ would have to be a relative. If the person was already dead, no options, same conditions as everyone else.
Eating a younger relative:
Yes. If the child was already dead, yes. It would be among the hardest things I’d ever do, and I’d not be able to so much as speak for months afterward, I’d do it to stay alive.
Bottom line:
Survival is the only concern. High-minded goals can wait until the basic needs are sated. After all, what good does preaching do a dead man?
New question:
Define ‘dead’. Does comatose count? How about if the person is in extreme pain and wants to die. Do you kill the person? Remember, this is an extreme situation. Medical care apart from basic first aid is days, perhaps weeks away. Perhaps longer, if the search teams stop looking.
My opinion:
Comatose is as good as dead, but I’d wait a few days to be sure. Hunger kills over weeks and months, waiting a few days won’t hurt. If the person stopped breathing, I’d try to restart them, but after three seperate occasions, no code (no more CPR). Extreme pain is similar: I’d wait a few days to see if the person improved. I would not stop a suicide attempt. If a suicide attempt failed, I’d help the person if I could, but if they die, they die.
I’m a vegetarian. I find eating animals adhorent.
But if you would eat a cow, sheep or chicken, why
not a dog, cat, or human? They are all living
creatures.
I was going to mention Stephen King’s Survivor
Type, but someone beat me to it. About a low
life doctor alone on a desert island, keeping
a journal while he cannibalizes himself. Truly
the grossest thing I ever read.
no. life is not the only reality in my belief. if i have to die from starvation/lack of nutrition/food or to let others dependant on such a belief that they must survive then so be it. i neither fear death nor abhor it, but i will never eat another human being willingly. not out of disgust, but simply because we are human. we don’t need to eat each other like some animals do, we are more evolved than that in so many ways. as well, i am trying not to eat meat too much just because i find it less healthy for me. i suppose the end answer for me is, i just don’t mind dying. just don’t try to test me though, in self defense, you’ll find me a wasted effort in attempting to kill me. i have been trained by the best you know. 
aha sez:
From my limited experience?
Smells like tuna, tastes like chicken!
::ducking and running::
self defense! I have yet to meet a man who can beat 357g of lead. pass the BBQ sauce please.
michael
labdude, hungry?
try it without the lead. you leave your weapon at home, and i’ll leave mine. i’m pretty confident my having avoided unnecessary death and serious injury thus far are related to my training.
you dissapoint me though lab, because you completely missed the point. :rolleyes:
I’ll answer provisionally–it has to be provisional, since I’ve never been in the situation. I wouldn’t have a moral problem with eating a dead human–whatever made that pile of meat a person is gone. Whether I could get over the emotional difficulty I would have with such a thing is another story. I think I could, since the alternative would be starving to death–one of the less pleasant ways to die.
It would be harder if it was a loved one. Logically, it should make no difference–they are dead and gone at that point–but I think it would. For that matter, I think I’d have to be near starvation to even start–what passes for my logic may not be operating too well. Starvation can drive you mad, and make you do that which you never would otherwise. That’s why traps are baited with food.
As for whether I’d actually kill someone in order to eat them…I’ll say no for a loved one, but I’m not so sure about a stranger. As I said, starvation can drive you mad. That might make an interesting defense if you were rescued and prosecuted for homicide, too.
(So…anybody wanna go tour the Andies with me?)
Now here’s another couple of questions on this topic. Could you eat the dear departed if there was no way to cook the meat–raw, that is? (Some of the answers seem to presuppose cooking.) And could you eat the dear departed if you had no cutting implements–if you actually had to chew mouthfuls off?
Gotta go–time for dinner.
This thread reminds me of an…interesting…story about the infamous “Donner Party”.
The Donner Party was a group of settlers during the westward expansion in the U.S. who messed up big time, and got stuck in the Rocky Mountains during the wintertime. Things became pretty gruesome, and as everyone slowly died off, the members of the party started to eat the dead to survive. Afterwards, of the few remaining survivors, only one would talk about the cannibalism. His name was William Eddy, I believe.
Anyway, after arriving in California, he decides to make the best of his life. So he decides to…anyone want to hazard a guess…open a restaurant!
Does anyone else find this really funny? (And also gross.)
This thread reminds me of an…interesting…story about the infamous “Donner Party”.
The Donner Party was a group of settlers during the westward expansion in the U.S. who messed up big time, and got stuck in the Rocky Mountains during the wintertime. Things became pretty gruesome, and as everyone slowly died off, the members of the party started to eat the dead to survive. Afterwards, of the few remaining survivors, only one would talk about the cannibalism. His name was William Eddy, I believe.
Anyway, after arriving in California, he decides to make the best of his life. So he decides to…anyone want to hazard a guess…open a restaurant!
Does anyone else find this really funny? (And also gross.)
Or could you eat the dearly departed if all you had were a pair of pliers and a bottle of worchester sauce? And what if your mouth had frozen shut during the night and you had to cram the meat up your ass? Ya think that would be good eh?
haha sorry just kiddin MysterEcks
aha said:
Hey, long as you spell my name right.
For the record, I recently read that there are no laws on the books in any European or American countries against cannabalism.
So, unless you do the slaughtering yourself, you won’t go to jail.
Jerry Springer Show yes, but not jail.
(Westerners are pretty healthy, and carry few parasites. Human tartar would probably be safe, or at least safer than starvation, but it is best to cook any meat thoroughly.)
I dont know if I would be able to eat another human being. I think that would be a pretty traumatizing thing to undergo. But you never know what you are capable of till the time comes.
BTW I was eating some nice yummy New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream… but I think I lost my appetite… thanks 
I don’t think I could do it. I can’t even eat sashimi without getting sick. I acknowledge that hunger is a motivator whose force few of us have ever really gauged, but still . . . I don’t think I could do it. And, I think I’d rather die, it I had a choice. Maybe throw myself off of a cliff or something before I had time to degenerate that far where I’d consider it.
Of course, not if any of the rest of the party of potential cannibals were still alive. Then I’d have to stay alive. For fear one of them’d eat me.
It would be especially difficult to contemplate if it were a loved one.