Stuff You Should Know - True stories of survival cannibalism!

Episode Date: May 11, 2016

Cannibalism is the macabre practice of eating other humans. But sometimes, people have no choice if they want to survive. It's called survival cannibalism and it tastes like chicken. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck.

Right, there's Jerry. And there's a stuff you should know, right, Chuck? Mm-hmm. How are you, sir? I'm good, how are you? Great, just toothless and happy. Good. I'm halfway there.

To your tooth reappearing? To the permative, yep. Nice, when's your next visit? Well, I go in tomorrow to make sure the implant is looking good. I can tell you that, it looks great. And then in August is when I'll actually get the post in crown.

Man, I'm really sorry that you have to do all this. Thanks, man. It sucks. Yeah, that's why I'm sorry you have to do it. And I can't, not that I wear my flipper much anyway, but right now he was like, don't even wear your flipper while the implant's in there. And I was like, all right.

Is that why you're wearing overalls today? That's right. Let's see, Chuck. Chuck, have you ever tasted human flesh? No, but I think you asked me that same question when we did our regular cannibalism episode. Yeah, probably. But this is the subject so nice we had to serve it twice.

Well, we've actually talked about some other stuff too. Like we did a whole Donner Party episode. We talked about the Essex and the Wailing episode. Oh yeah. We've talked about cannibalism a lot. Like if there were a tag cloud, it'd be decent size. Okay. Chuck, we should say if you guys didn't get this

from the title, we're talking about cannibalism and some of the stuff we're talking about gets pretty graphic and grisly. So if you have a weak stomach or you're a little kid and you don't want nightmares, maybe don't listen to this one. Very good, sir. And now let's move on to survival cannibalism.

That's right. So again, people go listen to our cannibalism episode because it was a particularly good one if you asked me. Did we talk, surely we talked about the Uruguayan rugby team? I don't know if we did or not. Is it just that I'm so familiar with the story that? Or actually we probably did,

but we're gonna revisit it today. Okay, well let's go back way back in time to 1972. And the Uruguayan national rugby team is flying through the Andes on the way to play the Chilean rugby team for a match. And they don't make it. They don't. They're playing crashes on a mountain,

something like 13,000 feet above sea level. Basically in the middle of nowhere. That's right, a Fairchild F-227 of the Uruguayan Air Force had 40 passengers and five crew members, including that rugby team. Yep. And it was pretty much mostly just the rugby team, right?

Yeah, they chartered it. Okay. But I think there were some other folks. There were some kids there. Really? Mm-hmm. I don't think I knew that. Yeah.

So here's the deal with the Andes Mountains. It's only 170 meters wide, but they're very tall and peaky. I got you. So the tallest one is almost 7,000 meters. And it's the highest peak on the American continent. Wow. And the Fairchild as a plane

could only ascend to 7,000 meters. So they had to find like low spots to make that passage. That's called poor planning. Well, I would guess that the Uruguayan rugby team would agree with me that that was poor planning. No, I don't think so. Like this pilot had made this passage. I had the number in here,

but many, many, many times before. Safe. 80. It may have been 80. So I don't know if it was poor planning, but it was, here's what happened. Okay. They're flying.

They take a sharp descent at about 330 in the afternoon and they dipped below the clouds because of these strong air pockets. So the captain was like, everyone fasten your seat belts. This is a little bumpy right now. I don't think they felt like they were in real danger yet.

And then it entered a strong downward air current and it said violently dropped several hundred meters. So following that, there was a second sharp fall. And at this point, people looked out the window and saw they were below the clouds and they saw mountains in their face. And they realized this is not good. They tried to gain altitude, could not.

The right wing broke off when it hit a mountain. When that broke off, it went backwards, cut off the tail. And then at that point, several like four or five people were just pulled out at that point and died. Sucked out of the plane? Sucked right out, immediately fell to their death. Then the left wing was ripped off and what you've got is just part of the fuselage remaining.

And it goes sliding down the mountains like a toboggan. And by all accounts, they thought they were done for. Sure. Like there's no way we're gonna stop. But as luck would have it, they did slow down the inner valley and slowed down. But with such force that the seats like ripped from their bolts and they crashed through

like the luggage compartment. Wow. And came to a rest. So how many survivors there were? I'm not quite sure. I know there were 45 people on the plane. 27 people survived the initial crash out of the 45. Okay, so that's bad enough, right?

Yes. And they're like, okay, we're stranded up in the Andes. The temperature is like negative 30, negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit, which is negative 34 Celsius. That's right. Too bad it wasn't just negative 40. Right.

So they're like, but at least we have the fuselage of this plane to act as an impromptu shelter while we figure out what's going on. Yeah. Let's take stock of our supplies. Let's see, we've got some wine and we've got some chocolate. And that's it. Yeah.

Not very much. I said a few more snacks, but it was very, very, very, very little food. Right. Yeah. And then a short time after they crashed and they had taken stock and we're trying to like figure out what to do.

An avalanche came and buried the plane, buried some of the people alive inside of it. Yeah. So eight more people died, I think. Yeah. And previous to this, they actually had a working radio and there was a search party and after 10 days, they literally heard on the radio

that they're presumed dead and the search was called off. Oh man. So your spirit's broken. Yeah. Then the avalanche comes and that kills eight people right off the bat, I think you said. Including the guy who was the team captain

who had emerged as the leader of the survivors. Yeah. The avalanche. Yeah. So then they're trapped in there for a few days. And as people are dying, they start making packs. This was a team, first of all, there's a rugby team and then there are family members among the rugby team.

So it was a very tight group, right? And so they started making packs that if I die, you guys eat me so that you can try to survive. Somebody's got to make it out of here alive. So be sure to eat me. Yeah. And they had cleverly found a way to get fresh water by melting snow using metal from the seats

and dripping it into those empty wine bottles. So it was remarkable that they were surviving at all. So they were all very religious or Roman Catholic and you're not supposed to eat people. So for religious reasons, a lot of them had a lot of problems with the notion of doing so. But they did what they had to do in the end.

So they sent out a, I don't know if you'd call it a search party, what's the opposite of a search party? Two brave dudes. Yeah, but those were kids. Yeah. And they went on like a 10 day trek and finally were found by a Chilean shepherd who was working the mountain

and he went and got a search party mustard and brought them back and they found the guys. Amazing. Some survived through in part survival cannibalism but definitely more than just that. These guys just didn't just lay down and die. It was their spirits were still up somehow. That's right, dude.

In the end, 16 people ended up surviving this ordeal. Amazing. Yeah, weeks and weeks and weeks in the Andes Mountains and freezing temperatures. And they made a great movie called Alive. I've not seen it. Is it good? Yeah, it is good.

Of course, in typical Hollywood fashion it was all white dudes. Yeah, isn't Ethan Hawke one of the guys? Ethan Hawke is one of the guys. Vincent Spano is Italian. Oh, but hey, you don't know the difference between an Italian and a Uruguayan? Yeah, they were all white dudes

but maybe not all but the lion's share of them, of course. Gotcha. So aside from that, it was a good movie. And I remember, we definitely talked about this because I remember telling the story being a kid and like the book was a really big best seller. And I thought it was a soccer team because I didn't know the difference

between rugby and soccer. Right. If you listen to our soccer podcast, you might think I still don't know the difference. So up next, Chuck, is Jamestown. This is actually a fairly recent revelation. Apparently, if you were a scholar, an historian of colonial America,

you were in the know that there was persistent legends and rumors that the people in Jamestown had resorted to cannibalism during the winter of 1609 to 1610. Yeah, there were five historical accounts over the years that people appointed to. And these are like first person diaries from the people who were there at the time saying,

it was so bad that we ate anything in sight, including dead people, the end. But there was nothing to back it up. So I guess the historians were like, these colonists are just trying to show off, or they're using hyperbole maybe, like they were saying, I was so hungry, I could eat a horse, but they were using cannibalism instead of the horse

because they actually did eat the horse. Well, then finally, a couple of summers ago, in 2013, some archeologists who were excavating Jamestown came upon a trash heap where they found the butchered bones of horses and human teeth and a partial skull. And when they examined the teeth and the skull, they realized like, oh, wow, these are butcher marks right here.

They weren't just exaggerating or showing off. They really did engage in cannibalism in Jamestown. Yeah, and this is the only artificial evidence of cannibalism by Europeans ever, supposedly. Really? That's what it says. And with science, it's pretty remarkable what we can do these days.

They actually did 3D reconstructions and examined this skull and learned a lot about this 14-year-old girl that they called Jane. She was found buried a couple of feet down, two and a half feet down. But in a trash heap, which is a huge giveaway. A 17th century trash heap in the cellar inside the site at James Fort.

So 80% of these colonists died in the winter of 1609 and they found what they called multiple chop marks on the girl's skull. Clearly interested in cheek meat, muscles of the face, tongue, and the brain. And they think that the person who at least was responsible for harvesting the flesh and the brain from the head was not an experienced butcher.

Right. The marks on the forehead are hesitant and apparently they couldn't stand or staring at them while they were doing this. So they turned her over and then from the back of the head, that's when the marks became a little more confident and where they finally cleaved her skull open. So they turned her over and that's when the butcher marks

start to get a little more confident. And apparently that's where they were, they managed to access her skull by cleaving it in two from behind. That's right. They also found cuts and saw marks and stuff along her lower jaw that they said was made to get the meat. Who said that?

In this article I read. Arby's. But here's a remarkable thing. They use isotope studies to find out a lot about this girl. So they know from examining her shin bone that she was 14, really sad. But the good news is like she wasn't murdered. No, she starved to death.

Well, good news, bad news, I guess. It's sad anyway you look at it. Although that's not necessarily true. There was a lot of disease that was spreading through Jamestown at the time as well. So it's possible she died of other causes that aren't quite as bad as starvation. Where, here's the deal.

Jamestown was, it's not what you learn about in elementary school. Like it was doing very poorly at this point. People were starving. The local Native American tribe that were once friendly with them had cut them off. And they actually showed up in 1607 or 1607 during the worst drought in the region in centuries.

So it was a really just inauspicious beginning. And they called this period, especially during the winter of 1609 and 1610, the starving time. It was definitely. With capital S and capital T. So you know it was significant. So in 1609, they're already in bad shape. And then 300 new settlers show up.

What's for dinner? On these six ships. They were in bad shape when they got there because they had a rough crossing. And so they believe from studying isotopes in this girl's teeth that a few things. One that is she came over on those six boats. That she hadn't been there long.

Two, that she was either served as a maid to a family of high status or was from a family of high status, cause they found that she ate a lot of protein. And then they determined that she's, it's amazing what they can determine. That she was from probably the southern coast of England because they water that she consumes

while she's got her little baby teeth or forming an infancy. You can tell years later where that came from. So cool. Man, leave it to the Smithsonian. Those guys hats off. So after eating horses, dogs, cats, rats, mice, they ate leather, they ate anything

they could get their hands on. They finally did resort to eating humans. Yeah. Now we have evidence of it. And by spring of 1610, only 60 people had survived. Isn't that amazing? It is. Cause 300 came over on the boats.

I don't know how many are already there. Yeah. Yeah. Man, it's a bad jam. It is a bad jam. All right. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's take a break.

All right, I need to regather myself. All right. and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there

when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll be there for you. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, I believe we talked about this one before too because it's so astounding. But there was a guy named Richard Parker

and he was working aboard a yacht that was sailing from England to Australia and the name of the yacht was the Minionette. Yeah, do you know why it was sailing there? No. A rich dude bought it in Australia and it was just like literally being delivered to him. Oh yeah, I guess I did kind of know that.

Yeah, I didn't know. I just thought it was some expedition or some like. No, I do kind of remember that from when we talked about it before. When do we talk about this? I think cannibalism. So the Minionette is sailing to Australia. A couple of months into the trip, it sank

because it's not supposed to sail from England to Australia. It was not built for that. Oh, really? Yeah, and they even kind of fortified it apparently and didn't work. So on board. Put a raincoat on.

There's a cabin boy, a 17-year-old named Richard Parker. Have you ever seen Cabin Boy, the movie? Sure. Great movie. Yeah. You kidding me, Chris Elliott? Yeah.

I think I saw that in the theater. I was so excited. Oh really? Yeah. David Letterman's in that too. Sure. Yeah. So Cabin Boy,

Cabin Boy, Richard Parker, 17 years old and he, there's an old tradition called the Custom of the Sea where you are in bad shape and you draw lots and whoever draws the short straw says, you know, kill me and eat me. Well, they say,

all right, I won't hold it against you when you guys do. That's probably how it goes. So they consider drawing lots and then the captain, Thomas Dudley, said, let's not even bother. Look at Parker over there. He smells like onions.

I don't like how that kid's looked ever. Well, it's pretty sad. They literally were like, I don't think we even need to draw lots. Like he's clearly the one that needs to go. Right. He was malnourished. He was skinny.

It sounded like from the accounts I read that they were having to kind of care for him. Like he fell overboard at one point and they had to rescue him. More trouble than he's worth. He drank seawater and got himself sick and everyone's like, you don't drink seawater, Richard.

So they said, I think we're just going to take care of this without a vote. And he didn't have family or anything like that. He was a kid. He'd miss him. So Dudley jabs a pin knife in his neck.

Not a good way to go. Joe Pesci style. You're going to dispatch, be dispatched. That's not a good way to go. A pin knife in the neck? No, I don't know how. I mean, they were on a little dingy at this point. I don't know that.

You just let go. It's not a seagull and then hit him over the head. Then you can stab him with a pin knife once he's out. You don't just go from zero to pin knife in the neck. Hey, I agree. No arguments here to go Pesci style is barbaric. So they kill him with a pin knife, ate his flesh, drank his blood.

And just a few days later, they were found. I don't know if they would have survived those few days or if that haunted them for the rest of their lives. They're rescued ironically by a German ship called the Montezuma, who was the famous Aztec king who ate people. And made them poop. That's right. Oh, really?

Yeah. Huh. That's interesting. It gets even more interesting though. Well, they were tried for murder. I know where you're going and found guilty, but people felt pretty bad for them. They were like, yeah, we've all met Richard Parker.

He did smell like onions. And so six months later, they were released from prison. But here's where it does get a little weird. Oh, me? Yeah. So I love this. This is 1884, right? When this happened?

Yes. In 1838, a little guy named Edgar Allen Poe wrote a short story about a boat that sank. And some guys were in a lifeboat and a guy got killed and eaten. And the guy who got killed and eaten's name was Richard Parker. Isn't that awesome? It's pretty weird. The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was the short story.

And I saw something that pointed out like many other things didn't match up. I was like, that's really all you need to call it a startling coincidence. Sure. Yeah. Pretty weird. Apparently also the guy who wrote The Life of Pi named the tiger Richard Parker as well. Did you know that? I haven't seen that movie or read the book.

I haven't read the book. The movie was really good. I heard nothing but good things. I've just never been in a Life of Pi movie. Do you know what I mean? Sure. The name sort of is kind of like, yeah, who's Pi? Do I care about his life?

No. It's a good movie though. All right. Moving on to Alfred or Alfred Packer. Who knows? I heard it was Alfred, but I've seen it both ways. Yeah. He's an illiterate gold miners in the old West.

Who knows? That's right. February 1874. Alfred, he's a gold miner. He's a prospector and he wants to go to the high mountains of Colorado to find gold and apparently makes like half of the trip and then stops in the winter and stays with the Ute Drive and they're like, you need to just stay here till spring. Don't go any further.

He says, no, no, no, I got this. I'm going to continue on. Thanks for the warning. Right. Utes. So he goes on with his friends and eventually wanders out of the woods alone. Yeah. He went in with five other dudes, came out alone and said, who me?

Oh, I'm just the sole survivor of the group. A storm hit and everybody went their separate ways. Let's not talk about it again. Yeah. He said my feet got frozen and I couldn't keep up and I don't know what happened to those dudes. And they're like, oh, really? He's like, okay, fine.

All right. Yeah, I killed one of them, but it was in self defense and they're like, what? He's like, all right. Okay. All right. We ate some of the other dudes, but they died naturally. Well, the reason they first said, wait a minute, what's going on here? As he said that, I don't know what happened to those guys.

They said, well, why do you have their personal belongings in your pack? Right. Well, I know I've got wallets full of money from these guys. All right. So maybe I should come somewhat clean. So the story keeps changing every time they ask him. They eventually, he's in jail. That's cagey.

It is very cagey. He's in jail at this point. Obviously, while he's being questioned and all this stuff, but the jail was basically a log cabin. No jail can hold Alfred Packer. No, especially not a jail in 1874 in Colorado. So he busted out, goes on the land for nine years. They catch him in Wyoming, leaving under the alias John Swartz.

Actually, somebody who was part of another expedition that he was on, a guy named Frenchy, recognized him. Oh, really? Just happened to run across paths with him. It was like, no way. Yeah. Wow. That's bad luck.

Sure. I guess good luck. So he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 40 years, released on parole in 1901. After 17 years. Yeah, supposedly died of vegetarian at the age of 65. No. That's what they say. No.

It sounds to me like somebody might have buttoned up. Yeah, that's what I think. Well, he's become a beloved figure. I guess there's a statue of him on the campus of UC at Boulder. Well, yeah, they named their cafeteria after him. Right. And with the subheading, have a friend for lunch. Terrible.

Those college students back in the 60s, they had a real sense of humor. And of course, the South Park guys wrote Cannibal the Musical after him. So, Alfred Packer, survival cannibalist, to what degree? We don't know. That's right. I need another break, sir. I'm hungry. Is that awful?

We'll be back right after this. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. So tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay. Did you get something to eat, buddy? No, not yet. Your forearms looking pretty good, though.

I'd make a nice meaty meal. Well, you know, one of the great revelations in my adult life is that when you're eating meat, you're not eating anything but muscle. Yeah. Did you realize that? Yeah. When did you realize that? When you told me on the show. I know that I go over some stuff more than once.

That's right. But it was a big revelation. I know. And that's why red meat is red, because it has more red blood vessels. Those are muscles that you use more often. Dark meat, I'm sorry. Oh, okay. So like in a chicken, the dark meat are muscles that the chicken uses far more frequently than, say, like the breast, which is white.

So there's fewer blood vessels. So it's dark compared to the white meat. Interesting. It's mind-blowing. Do you like dark meat? I like it all. Yeah. I used to just be like, oh no, white meat only, please.

And then I like really sort of trying dark meat. I'm like, yeah, that's good stuff. Now I'm just like, bring it on. Right. Service choice. That's what I always say. Really? White or dark, service choice.

And then I'm like, no, no, no, mixed. I'm not going to leave this in your hands. And they say this diner is so wacky. The Franklin Expedition. Yes. This one is, this is a good one. Sir John Franklin at the age of 60 had already taken two expeditions, dangerous ones. Yeah.

60 also, we're talking the 1850s? Yeah. 1840s. That's old. Yeah. That's an old dude. So hats off to him for doing it again. Yeah.

Salty old, swarthy semen, by all accounts. So they were looking for the Northwest Passage from Europe to Asia up in the Arctic, I guess, right? That would be going westward. A westward Northwest, oh yeah, Northwest Passage. I never thought about that before. But there's no Southeast Passage or Northeast Passage, is there? I don't know.

Who cares, right? Anyway, Franklin's leaving this expedition and there were 134 dudes? Yeah, I've seen another couple of numbers, but we'll go with that. And they're never heard from again? Yes, and they were not, they were pros. They weren't a bunch of dummies that just said, let's take a bag of rice and some beef turkey. They had five years of food.

They went to a provisioner. I didn't really know how this worked, I figured they just went shopping. But you would like, you would find someone to get all your provisions for the trip. Like they would win the bid. Right. And you would hire them. So they hired a guy named Stephen Goldner. And he apparently was in a rush because I guess they just cut it close time wise.

And hastily put together five years worth of food and tens, soldered them shut. Eight thousand tens of food. Eight thousand. He soldered them shut. Apparently that's how they say it in the UK. So shout out UK. All right. And here's the quote I saw was that the lead dripped like melted candle wax down inside

the surface. That's a bad soldering job. It is. And we just did an episode on lead so you know that if lead is in your canned goods, that is no goods. Right. So this expedition had two ships and they were really well outfitted ships. They had internal heat.

Hot water was piped throughout the cabin so that they could stay warm. They had railroad engine screw propellers. They were fitted with iron. They were iron clad in parts to break through ice. They were really nice ships. The Arabus and the terror. Yeah. Very poorly named.

Yeah, the terror is not where you want to name a ship on an expedition, right? No. In the Arabus, I looked it up because I was just curious and apparently in Greek mythology, it's the place where you would go right after death. It's the personification of darkness. So. Terrible names. Yeah.

The terror and the Arabus. Right. So Chuck, they found at least one of the ships. Yeah. Just two years ago. Okay. They discovered the wreck of the HMS Arabus offshore of King William Island. Underwater is trapped in ice.

Oh, no. Underwater. Okay. But they think that it was trapped in ice is how they originally perished. Yeah. Because they were stuck. There's a big mystery with the Franklin expedition because even if they were stuck, they had plenty of supplies.

Five years worth of supplies to wait until it thought enough to sail, at least go back. Right. So why would they abandon these ships? It's a huge mystery. A lot of people say, well, it was the lead. Look at the behavior. They apparently took lifeboats, dragged them across the tundra. They had non-essentials on board with things like silverware.

You'd have to just be totally off your nut to be on like a survival expedition to go find help and you bring along silverware. So everybody pointed to what was the dude's name? Richard Golding's work. Terrible soldering work. Stephen Goldner. And that the lead had poisoned these guys and clouded their judgment. Yeah, they kind of went mad.

But apparently some of the bodies have since been found and they did some forensic analysis of it and said, actually, no, these guys have lots of lead poisoning, but it's distributed evenly throughout their bones like they were just poisoned by lead throughout their lives. It wasn't acute poisoning from this soldering work. Yeah. So it just remains a mystery, I guess, huh? It does and some Inuit tribes reported seeing about 40 guys, 40 white men, that were in bad shape that they sold some seal meat to.

And when one of the search parties came across the Inuit tribe, they told them this story. And I think over the years they've been finding piles of these bodies in different locations. And the Inuits first were the ones who said, yeah, we actually saw one of their camps like after we ran into the guys, we think we found them again, all dead like the following year. And there was like human bones in their kettles and stuff like that. So they definitely resorted to survival cannibalism at some point. Yeah, it said the direct quote was from the mutilated state of many of the bodies in the contents of the kettles. It was evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last dread alternative cannibalism.

Kind of dramatic. Yeah, for sure. So check, let's do one more, huh? Okay. Let's do our famous top 10 consisting of six tops. Boy, this one is super, super sad. Like there's not much joking about this. I mean, none of this has been funny, but we're trying not to just depress everyone.

But the Siege of Leningrad is one of the saddest moments in world history. It's when the Nazi forces invaded, bombarded over three years against what is now St. Petersburg. And basically for 900 days, cut them off in an effort to starve out a city of 3.3 million people. And it worked. Yeah, it's in. It's a great effect. And 3.3 million people, a million died over the three-year siege. Yeah, and 800,000 of those died from starvation.

800,000 people. So the government, nobody could get to it. The Nazis had formed a ring around the city and were defending it and just trying to... They were bombing it every day, but they were also well aware that they were purposely starving the population as well. Inside, the people had a ration of bread once a day, a piece of bread about the weight of a bar of soap. Yeah, manual labor has got 250 grams of bread, but apparently the bread was cut with pine shavings. And they were subsisting on 300 calories a day. Yeah, and if you were in the army, you would get things like fern leaf soup and cream of nettle.

Probably not even cream, but like broth of nettle soup. So people were joining the army just for that, just to have that every day. Yeah, here's some of the things that they use as food substitutes. Cotton seed cake, macaroni, which is in quotes, made from flax seed for cattle, meat jelly produced from boiling bones and calf skins, yeast soup from sawdust, fermented sawdust, joiners glue, boiled and gelified, toothpaste, cold cream. Basically, it said they even licked dried paste off wallpaper. Yeah, because there was a rumor that it was potato-based. Anything for calories. I mean, that's how desperate things were.

Yeah, and not just even calories, but like vitamins too. Apparently, they were sweeping the tobacco shavings from a tobacco factory's ventilation system because tobacco has vitamin C in it. Unbelievable. Or vitamin B, one of those too. So what happens is a crime wave starts breaking out, as you would expect in a city that large that's starving to death. Like people literally just laying dead in the street, like everywhere you look. Right, and apparently not just laying dead in the street, they were half eaten, some of them laying dead in the street. And they kept this under wraps for many, many years because they didn't want people to know the world to know how ugly it was.

But we have a lot more information now. But you would have these ration cards to get the tiny allotments of food that they had. And so if their relatives died, they would hide the bodies so they could still use a ration card. And then these gangs, these teenage boys started breaking out where they would mug you for food in your ration card. One 18-year-old killed his two younger brothers for their cards. One guy murdered his grandmother and boiled and ate her liver. And a 17-year-old stole a corpse from a cemetery and put it through a meat mixer. Wow.

So it's one of the most shocking things that I've ever heard in world history. And it isn't much talked about. I mean, you hear about the Siege of Leningrad, but the details of it are just horrifying. Yeah, it was pretty whitewashed, I think when I studied it in college. Well, that's because the Soviets just denied the horror of the whole thing. 2,000 people were arrested for cannibalism. 586 were executed for murdering people and eating them. And it said most people arrested were women. Apparently mothers would smother like their youngest kids to feed to the other kids.

Gotcha. Man, what a horrible time. Alrighty. That's a nice uplifting way to leave people. Yeah, there's others that we haven't touched upon. So if you want to learn more about it, you can just type survival cannibalism into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said that, it's time for... Facebook Questions. I can't think of a more inappropriate way to end this show than to take social media questions and laugh. But maybe we need to laugh now.

Let's. Alright. I've got a hilarious one. Alright. This is from Lou Jean. If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? Fried chicken. Oh, yeah?

Easy. Mine would be either a really good Indian curry or a really good Japanese curry. Either one of those I'd be happy with. So a curry? A curry. A good one, though. Great one. There you go.

Well, on food, fried chicken, I'm going to... If it's a meal, I'm going to say fried chicken mashed potatoes with gravy and cornbread or biscuit or something like that. What about greens? Yeah, I'd have a... But dealer's choice, like you said. Okay. Green beans, collards, whatever. Alright.

But that would be my meal for sure. Okay. Good one. That was hilarious. This is from Jeff Ruth. Why doesn't John Candy get comedic props that he's due? Great question. I agree.

One of the great, great comic actors of our time. Yeah, it's great. Sad, sad that we lost him. He was huge at the time. I mean, everybody knew John Candy. He was into major, major motion pictures. Many of which were surrounded by him. I think he's gotten tons of props.

So what are you saying, Jeff? Wake up? Wake up also because he's Canadian. Okay. Good answer. Here's one from Lily Higgum. What is it like for Jerry producing stuff you should know? Well, here's Jerry's answer.

Alright. Yeah, nice, Jerry. That's illuminating. Good answer. That's always. Russell Redman, what's your favorite breed of cat? And don't lie, because I'll know. Russell, I mean, I think I'll probably go with the breeds that I have right now because

they're dear to me. So I'm going to say a Tabby and a Maine Coon. Okay. Yeah, those two. Are you ready for this question? Yeah. Charlie Manson asks, Chuck always wears a baseball cap. Is there a reason for this?

Chuck, I think if you tell them right now, you're not wearing a baseball cap. I'm not, because as most of you know, my beloved Last Chance Garage hat that I've had for 20 years was lost in Austin, Texas and is in a dumpster somewhere in Austin, Texas. I don't know that that's true. I think it's adorning the hat of a hipster in Austin, Texas. Seriously, if you're in Austin, keep an eye out for that thing. It says Last Chance Garage. It's black.

Circle. Circle emblem. Smells like 20 years of Chuck. Anyone else would want to wear that hat, I'm guarantee you. But now I don't wear a hat that much anymore because of that. I love that hat. Okay. RIP.

RIP. Okay. Jack Mayhan says, what is your favorite automobile and why? Mine is probably the AMC Pacer, just because it's pretty cool looking. I'm not a big car guy, but I'm going to go with the 1960s BW Beatles because I drove them and I still love them. I saw a beautiful looking Beetle the other day. Gary restored to the sky I was driving and I was just like, man, I'm getting another

one one day. Nice. Totally. Do it, Chuck. I am. I'm going to have a real nice one. Okay. Brian Tarbell.

Oh, Tarbell. Why do you tempt me? Describe Deflate Gate in one word. We go at it a lot on Facebook. He's our friend from Boston. You're right. In one word, two words. Three words.

Tom Brady cheater. Oh, moving on. I think score one for Chuck. Tara Dickinson asks, is ketchup a sauce or a condiment? I think it's probably both. I don't think it has to be one or the other. I did a Don't Be Dumb on the origin of ketchup though. Did you know it's Vietnamese origin?

I had no idea. Really? Ketchup. Is that how it was pronounced? Yeah. Really? And is that why it's spelled as ketchup? Yes, that's exactly right.

That's the tradition spelling? Yeah, and did you know originally before tomatoes weren't introduced until the late 19th century, but the British were making versions of this stuff from the mid-18th century, and they were using things like walnuts and anchovies and all sorts of weird stuff. Mushrooms. There's more like a fish sauce. That's how ketchup started. Really?

Yeah. Is that why it's got vinegar in it today, probably? Probably. I don't remember why. I think it might have been originally a preservative. Gotcha. I'll do one more for me. This is from Caleb James Wyant.

Would either of you ever consider running for public office? For me, not a chance. No way. Never had any interest whatsoever, and I wouldn't be allowed to anyway. They would expose me so quickly for past crimes against humanity. They would dig stuff up on me, and I would be disqualified now for many reasons. I think that's a great way to end this. Great.

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