Humans, The Other White Meat
When the hungries hit, when the hungries hit, hit the Red Barn, or your next door neighbor.
Your loving, attentive dog will eat you within hours after you die because they are scavengers and when they’re hungry you’re just a meal.
Your cat, that’s right, the furry little creature snuggling on your lap will probably put you on the menu within 24 hours.
Humans, being constricted by cultural and moral issues, will probably wait about a week before you start looking like a rack of ribs.
There is a long history of cannibalism, in indigenous cultures, which was often used by explorers as a justification for conquest of “the primitives.”
There are cases of extreme hardship, like the Donner party, where cannibalism allowed some to survive and criminals like Boone Helm and Jeffrey Dahmer.
Generally, the idea is frowned upon in our “enlightened” society but, depending on the availability of food as the system collapses, some may find it expedient to put their friends on the menu.
In his 1729 satirical essay, A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift suggests “that poor people in Ireland could ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to the elite.” (source)
There is a Twilight Zone episode where earth is visited by, supposedly, benevolent aliens who promise to turn the planet into a utopia, which they do, but one person translates their book, To Serve Man, and discovers that it is not about helping us but about eating us.
I think it is hubristic to think that in a crisis situation, our better angels will triumph, and we will not resort to tossing little Bobby on the barby.
W.C Fields, when asked if he liked children, replied, “Only if they’re properly cooked.”
Even though, right now, the idea might seem abhorrent, that could change rather quickly.
One person, on a Reddit thread, suggested that if the grocery store shelves were empty, in his estimation, we would only be able to hold out for about 3 weeks.
Doomers are tasty too.
I would like to suggest that, instead of stocking up on beans and rice, that you begin to seek out and befriend all the doomers you know that claim to want to die instead of living through what’s going to come. They might object to you wanting them around so that you can eat them after they off themselves, so I would keep that to yourself.
Having a ready supply of doomers on the hoof available might make the difference between your living or dying.
You may need some side dishes, so perhaps keep some of the beans and rice in your pantry and take Hannibal Lecter’s suggestion and stock up on a few bottles of a nice Chianti.
After the collapse, be very careful when someone offers to have you over for dinner. 😮
UN studies have found in areas of intense famine caused by drought.
Only 3–5% of a starving population will resort to consumption of the dead, and only an estimated 1–2% to predatory cannibalism.
Which means, that even in the event of a “starvation level” food shortage in your area, almost none of your neighbors will try to kill you in order to eat you.
The idea that there were studies done to try and quantify this is appalling. However, if you are planning disaster relief in an area of acute famine this is something that needs to be considered. Some of the survivors probably "survived" by gnawing meat off a corpse AND a few of them might have killed people to eat them.
People will be killing each other "for food" far more frequently than people will be killing each other "as food" even if it means starvation.
The things you learn from reading.