Yellowjackets and History: 10 Shocking Survival Cannibalism Incidents

Mmm, survival cannibalism. Nothing maintains the body’s metabolism and continuity like a little filet of Bob.

Well, believe it or not, Yellowjackets wasn’t the first in the entertainment industry to cover the savagery of the human survival instinct and what people will do to continue drawing breath for one more moment.

Yellowjackets draws us into the depths of human tragedy, desperation, and the primeval substructure of the human mind when the belly draws tight and hunger strikes like a ravenous demon within.

Very little in the world is as distinctly frightening and protractedly painful as raw hunger, and Yellowjackets plays on these moments. A healthy human can live an entire month without food.

That’s a very long time to die. Unfortunately, Yellowjackets didn’t coin the act, though it represents historical events whose details are the stuff of nightmares.

The Donner Party (1846-1847)

In this case, “party” refers to a group rather than everyone singing, dancing, and having a grand old time. The Donner Party was a part of the Oregon Trail that the famous video game didn’t really cover.

The Donner Party departed from Independence, Missouri, following the Oregon Trail westward at a wagon’s pace and with all of the typical hangups that came with traveling in large groups in the 19th century.

Those who eventually stayed in the Donner party made two mistakes, which would eventually lead to the ill-fated survival cannibalism for which they will always be known.

The first was the decision to split from the main group and head in a new direction. The second was to ignore the heated advice of James Clyman, an experienced mountain man.

They took the Hastings Cutoff, well off the beaten path, and ended up in the Sierra Nevada, which is not exactly hospitable in the winter. Heavy snowfall, severe weather patterns, Paiute warriors killing their oxen, and difficult terrain assaulted them relentlessly.

But the lack of rations did them in.

Thanks to Patrick Breen’s diary, we know some of what happened later. They attempted to build rudimentary cabins, but it was not enough, and the threat of starvation drove them out over the mountain passes.

They started dropping like flies at this point, and the feasts began. All told, there were 42 deaths and 47 survivors, many of whose bellies were full of their fellow travelers.

Over the years, a few documentary-style movies have covered the Donner Party. But does it merit a series?

A limited series would be a sweet idea, especially if they base it on Alma Katsu’s excellent book, The Hunger, which covers the Donner Party with a dash of the supernatural.

Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 (1972)

For those of you who have seen the movie “Alive,” this will be a familiar story. Flight 571 lifted off from Carasco International Airport carrying 45 passengers and crew, including the Old Christians Club rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay.

On October 13 (of course, it would be on the 13th), the plane crashed into the Andes Mountains in Argentina thanks to “pilot error.”

They spent over two months out there, and crops don’t grow on mountains at sub-freezing elevations, even if it was a glacial valley between peaks.

In fact, there was only one thing to eat unless some passengers had potato chips or snacks in their bags — none of which lasted very long.

Thanks to the immediate dead and those who succumbed to injuries and the freezing temperatures, there was plenty of food to go around. The event became known as the “Miracle of the Andes.”

Of the 29 survivors, only 16 made it out alive, thanks to the flesh of the fallen. But, it wasn’t necessarily the survival cannibalism that captivated the world. It was their ingenuity and willpower that drove them to survive in the harshest of conditions.

They were hit by an avalanche, killing eight, and were all suffering from malnutrition and altitude sickness. None of them had any experience mountaineering, yet they constructed a sled, manufactured sleeping bags, and sent the strongest out to search for rescue.

Eventually, rescue arrived. By then, they were all shadows of their former selves—bones loosely draped in skin, their bodies having consumed their fat and then the muscle to survive.

Society of the Snow is a more modern interpretation of the 1972 Andes flight disaster, directed by J.A. Bayona and based on Pablo Vierci’s 2009 book.

The Essex (1820)

On November 20, 1820, the Essex set out on a whaling ship to the Southern Pacific Ocean. Those aboard the ship would become famous at the time and historically, along with serving as an inspiration for Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

Today, some would call their fate well-deserved. As a whaling crew, they were attacked by a sperm whale, sinking the ship, with the men escaping in three small whaleboats.

They endured a month at sea, which included starvation, exposure, and dehydration before they beached at Henderson Island. Three men chose to stay on the island while the others moved on.

Those who went on made a grave mistake, leading to 12 of their deaths, with only 5 remaining, thanks to desperation and survival cannibalism.

The irony is that they all would have probably survived if they had followed the Captain’s instructions to sail their three whaleboats toward the Society Islands. However, the men disagreed because they worried the islands were full of cannibals.

It seems Fate has a very dark and grim sense of humor. Ultimately, the three men left on the island survived, and the 17 men who departed resorted to survival cannibalism somewhere out on the waves of the Pacific.

The Heart of the Sea, starring Chris Hemsworth, is the most recent film about the events surrounding The Essex. A limited series that draws out the encounter with the sperm whale would be an interesting take, but an ongoing endeavor would need a lot of filler and unrelated content.

The Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944)

Survivor cannibalism isn’t something people associate with World War II, at least not very often, unless you’re a historian with all the finer details at hand.

Throughout the siege, never let it be said that the Russian Secret Police (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) failed in their duty. They ultimately arrested 2,000 for cannibalism.

A siege is far more than just holding a city or large township in check. It also means supplies are cut off, with no food, water, medical supplies, or anything else that matters flowing into and out of the city.

Can you imagine no imports for over 2 years? It was no surprise that the people resorted to desperation, eventually turning to cannibalism.

Most of what we know about their cannibalism comes from diaries written by the survivors. One little girl wrote about how her father ate the family dog to avoid going that far.

One of the diaries included the chilling observation of the startling similarities between brutally malnourished men and women. When we shrivel away, we all tend to look the same as everyone else, with gender-specific characteristics all but wiped away.

Life became hell on earth, and parents refused to part with children, not out of love, but because their children represented “uncooked meat.”

There are plenty of nonfiction books and even a few documentary-style movies covering the siege’s events, but nothing longer than that.

Considering how long the siege took place, a lengthy series would be an interesting take, but it’s hard to imagine there being any light and hope in a protracted retelling.

The Jamestown Colony (1609-1610)

The settlers of Jamestown called it “The Starving Time,” and for good reason.

Not every colony survived and became prosperous, with some being wiped clean from the earth and others collapsing into madness and survival cannibalism.

Several factors accounted for the subsequent starvation in the fledgling Jamestown colony: food shortages due to a severe drought, poor harvests, strained relations with the local natives, delayed supply ships, and a siege by the Powhatan warriors.

The colonists ate everything in sight before turning on each other, including dogs, cats, horses, cattle, rats, mice, and the leather from their shoes. Eventually, inevitably, the food ran out.

The colony was rife with dysentery and typhoid fever, so there were a lot of dead bodies to go around, along with spreading the disease even further. Fewer than 60 eventually survived out of 500.

In fact, the remaining colonists decided to haul up stakes and run, eventually sailing back to England.

Unfortunately, they were soon intercepted by a returning governor, Thomas West, who forced them back to nightmare land to rebuild.

The movie The New World brushes up against the events that led to starvation and survival cannibalism in Jamestown but mostly focuses on the romantic relationship between Captain John Smith and Pocahontas.

A well-made series has a lot of potential, but today’s levels of divisiveness over historical relations between colonists and natives would be difficult to navigate.

The Medusa Shipwreck (1816)

No, there were no snake-haired half-women, half-snake tails involved, but the reality was no less terrifying and repulsive.

In fact, “Medusa” was the name of the French frigate that accidentally beached itself, thanks to the ignorance of the navigator and Captain Hugues de Chaumareys.

It was July 2, 1816, and the beginning of a horror show that started with 400 souls and ended with only 15. Lifeboats and a raft were deployed, and the survivors may have wished they simply drowned at sea.

Most of the lifeboats reached the coast of Africa, where the survivors successfully made it inland, finding refuge in Senegal, a French-occupied territory.

However, those on the makeshift raft were not so lucky. The only thing they had to drink onboard was wine. As you can imagine, wine is great at a party and not so great as a mechanism of survival.

Rations rapidly dissipated, and with only wine to drink, drunken fights and death were common. With no more rations, survival cannibalism became the order of the day.

Storms, feasting cannibals, fights, and bouts of survival of the fittest reduced the crew from 150 to 15. The strongest remaining crew members threw the weak and wounded into the sea.

A movie covering these events seems more likely than a series, though a short, limited series might do the trick. The events were terrible, but many of these events are fairly straightforward, and potential showrunners would have to stretch things out and elaborate beyond what makes a good story.

The Greely Expedition (1881-1884)

Exploration is a fascinating subject from the auspicious comfort of your living room. It conjures happy images of adventure, camaraderie, and discovery.

Well, I’ve been through SEER training and well away from civilization far more times than I can count. I can attest to the fact that there is a sense of discovery and camaraderie, but “happy” and “adventure” rarely spring to mind.

A large measure of respect and awe is due to those who brave the unknown in search of wonders. Regrettably, that’s not how things turned out for the Greely Expedition.

The party set sail from St. John’s, Newfoundland, in July 1881 to establish a meteorological observation station and collect scientific data. They were successful in establishing Fort Conger upon their arrival in Lady Franklin Bay.

Sadly, their relief supplies aboard the Neptune did not arrive in 1882 as they expected. Needless to say, their remaining supplies didn’t last long. Starvation, disease, and survival cannibalism ensued not long after.

The only difference between the Greely Expedition and the others on this list is that the survivors denied indulging in cannibalism despite the fact that a body was exhumed from the site, all but confirming that it took place.

The shame of cannibalism runs deep, intrinsically tied to the very core of human beings. As such, the denial was not surprising, though the results gave voice to the lie.

Several documentaries cover the Greely expedition, including one from PBS America. In some cases, the events leading up to historical tragedies aren’t very notable, and it’s difficult to translate them into an entertaining narrative without compromising the historical facts.

Unless, of course, writers and showrunners go with a Dan Simmons or Alma Katsu angle.

The Franklin Expedition (1845)

The Terror, released in 2018, was loosely based on the Franklin Expedition, adding supernatural elements pulled from Dan Simmon’s book of the same name. Thanks to its fictional aspect, the series definitely carries a horror classification.

However, the real story of the Franklin Expedition is no less terrifying. In 1845, Captain Sir John Franklin led an expedition to the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage.

The expedition consisted of the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, two ships with ironically macabre and prophetic names. They departed from Greenhithe, England, on May 19 and were last seen in Baffin Bay later that July.

No one bothered to send a search party until two years later, thanks to the ample supply of provisions on both ships and the slowness of communication then. There were no survivors from the expedition, so accounts of survival cannibalism were secondhand.

Researchers finally discovered the wrecks of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror nearly 170 years later. Testimonies from the local Inuit, bone analysis from dead crew members, and later, archaeological excavations told the tale.

In fact, experts suspect that the level of starvation and deprivation was so bad that some of the crew cracked open the bones and sucked out the marrow, a practice known as ‘end-stage’ cannibalism.

Both ships likely became encapsulated and frozen in the glacier. The shifting ice eventually compromised their integrity, and they sank soon after. The Terror, a series based on Dan Simmon’s book of the same name, had to embellish quite a bit, both in the historical narrative and the supernatural.

The Siege of Potidaea (432 B.C.)

A siege in 1941 Leningrad was no different than a siege in 432 B.C. The results are always the same: deprivation, desperation, and eventually, starvation. The Siege of Potidaea took place during the Peloponnesian War on the Chalcidice Peninsula.

Potidaea made the “brilliant” decision to thwart Athens, specifically concerning Corinthian magistrates and hostages. It was probably not the best decision ever made.

Naturally, Athens besieged the city, with the impasse lasting two years, more than long enough to send the inhabitants into a frenzy of survival cannibalism. Worse, it was a land and sea blockade, with nothing going in or coming out.

In fact, the siege probably lasted as long as it did because of the surplus of dead bodies for the defenders to fall upon in a starvation fever.

Several historical accounts describe the descent into cannibalistic madness that took place within the city walls. The Peloponnesian War is not well represented in the entertainment industry, and historical events like the Siege of Potidaea are ripe for plucking.

The Siege of Ma’arra (1098)

Survival cannibalism goes hand in hand with sieges for obvious reasons. This particular siege took place in 1098, during the First Crusade. Raymond IV of Toulouse and Bohemond of Taranto led the siege of Ma’arra, which only lasted a couple of weeks.

Strangely, the survival cannibalism that took place after the sacking of the city came from the Crusader’s side, not the citizens of Ma’arra.

Apparently, the besiegers were near starvation, and sacking the city was no different than walking into an all-you-can-eat buffet with Ma’arrans on the menu.

According to some accounts, it wasn’t even a shameful act, as is often the case in the worst of circumstances. The crusading army made a spectacle out of it, consuming the flesh of the conquered in the streets as both a consequence of extreme hunger and an act of celebration.

According to the chroniclers of the time, Fulcher of Chartres, Albert of Aachen, and Ralph of Caen, cannibalism extended to both Muslims and Christians alike. Basically, if you were dead or dying, your nationality and religion made no difference.

There are plenty of movies out there that at least touch on the Crusades, and there’s also Knightfall, which only made it to two seasons on the History Channel.

With the right creative minds behind it, there’s no reason a fairly epic series couldn’t cover the Siege of Ma’arra.

Care to share your own knowledge of survival cannibalism in the archives of history? Which of the above events creeps you out the most?