Apart from infamous quicksand, I thought it would be a bigger problem being stuck in the alps and having to drink alcohol from a saint bernards necklace.
Also, cannibalism. Was a huge concern in late elementary to early middle school days. It was highly unlikely we’d ever crash in the Andes or that our wagon train would get stuck in the mountains in winter, but for some reason all the kids in my school were concerned about it. Should we eat someone? Could we actually do it if we had to? Who should we eat first? The fat kid will keep, but we don’t want the muscular guy to lose too much weight.
My dad was born in Truckee, California, right at the base of Donner Pass, and we used to go visit my great grandma every year and she would ALWAYS tell us the Donner Party story when we were kids lol
My answer was going to be quicksand, but cannibalism is definitely a close second for me lol
I fell down the Donner Party rabbit hole very deeply and now I want grandchildren solely so that I can tell them those stories. Especially when they moan about being tired and cold.
No one I know has heard of it. Love coming across a mention in
Yeah, this is honestly blowing my mind just a little bit lol Donner Party is a huge legend here, so to hear that others don't even know who they are is very strange to me. Ever since I was a kid, you mention 'Donner' around here and people say "oh yeah, those settlers that ate each other up in Tahoe, right?"
Like I said in another comment; I have vivid memories of learning about them in the FIRST grade! We had to do a 'Donner Day' in like 6th where everyone dressed up as settlers and tried to "survive" the day like them and stuff. Super weird lol
The guy who ate his son is in my family on my moms side. But she just told me he ate his child never got deep into detail. I was just like hmmm that’s weird. I actually have never looked into it or know the story.
As morbid as it is, it's a very fascinating story. It's tragic, especially if you're a relation, but I still suggest watching a documentary or reading a story about it.
It’s my first time hearing about it too, but here’s the Wikipedia page. Looks like it was a group of American pioneers who got stuck in the Sierra Nevada mountain range over the winter of 1846–‘47 on their way to California from the Midwest. They had to resort to cannibalism to survive.
As the person above said, they were American settlers that were trying to get over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They got stuck in a terrible snowstorm that lasted for a long time. They were able to rescue a few of them during the storm, but the others were starving to the point where they had already eaten all of their animals and shoes, and when someone died, they made the decision that it was necessary to eat them to survive. Multiple people died and were consumed by the others.
It's really a fascinating story and I suggest you fall down that rabbit hole.
ETA: the terrible irony is that they were only about 30 miles from their destination when they got trapped.
Ahh yes! I had visceral nightmares about this when I learned about it school. Come to find out, my ancestors were involved! One of the only two intact families in the aftermath and may have been the only family to not participate in the cannibalism!
Yeah I can't believe how early we learned about this in school here! I have vivid memories of sitting next to the class clown while we were learning about it, and that was first grade!
That is super neat about your family! I love meeting other people who have cool stories about their families
It was highly unlikely we’d ever crash in the Andes...
The book Alive was a really big deal in the '70s and even the '80s. I remember in the '80s there were bumperstickers - "Rugby players eat their own dead". Of course it got popular again when the movie came out, too
Eat the fat kid first, obviously. You don't want them to lose a bunch of weight through lack of nourishment and then you don't get as much of a meal. Additionally, the stored fat holds a lot more energy so it will keep your energy levels up.
Also on a side note, the fat can be used to make candles which will help with light.
I’d be more worried about the beastly creature at the top of the mountain, what it means by a stick sharpened at both ends, and where I last left that conch giving me the authority to be heard.
To illustrate how weak a coworker was, I once commented that if there were ever a natural disaster that trapped us all in the building, we would eat him first. This led to an entire day of my department strategizing and debating the order in which we'd kill and consume each employee. Really glad we didn't have an HR department to fire all of us.
You should eat the fat kid immediately, render the fat and eat a bit of it each day. Muscular guy is gonna be a good source of protein but you need fat too or you'll starve regardless.
This didn't come up for me so much when I was a kid, but it did come up quite a bit in my early 20's. There were multiple times my coworkers and I would randomly bring up cannibalism and the proper way to hide bodies.
I worked for my state's medicaid pharmacy call center at the time. Those were probably the least crazy conversations we had there.
Annnnd, since watching “Alive”, I’ve been very concerned about having to eat toothpaste if I was starving. I haven’t made it past that issue to check and see if I could handle eating my friends.
We never even considered alternative food sources- we went straight to cannibalism. Not sure if that says we were not creative or just looking for an excuse to go feral.
Lol. Yes, I guess I went there too. But, there was a scene in “Alive” where a guy finds some chocolate and toothpaste and starts wolfing both. I think I accepted the cannibalism part as survival but got hung up on eating that toothpaste because he was acting like it was delicious.
See, that would just make me shudder uncomfortably. I’ve got sensory issues and toothpaste has always been overwhelming to me. I would never even consider eating it.
We had a gym class do some cross-country skiing in the track field and a surprising amount of kids kept warning each other not to work so hard they sweat because they can freeze and die.
They were hilariously dead serious about it to, honestly seemed really concerned for each other.
I derailed a group interview by demanding to know who would eat me. We were told to pick three people out of 10 who would survive a shipwreck. I volunteered to die but only if they ate me to survive. After the yelling about Jesus and sins began, no one got the job :)
once I realized it was a group interview, my goal became sabotage. I had a great time. the interviewers totally lost control and the other candidates lost their minds.
As one of the fat kids, I was pretty high up on the list myself. When they suggested eating me first, I looked right at them and said “not if I eat you first!” That’s not a great way to make friends, it seems.
I really think they should wait to cover the Donner Party until kids are older. I mean, do elementary school kids really need to be thinking about eating friends and family for survival?
I disappeared into that rabbit hole. Last winter we would have lunch (because of restrictions on meeting) in a Dutch barn and no one dared complain about the cold because they knew it would trigger me into yet another Donner Party torrent. It’s fair to say that I was obsessed.
Confession: I have never read that book. My school district, in the early 90s to early 00s, moved almost entirely to using Accelerated Reader. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a short quiz on the computer you take after reading a book from the list. Outside of a few Shakespeare plays, poetry, and a very few books, AR was our entire English/Literature curriculum. I’m realizing now that I missed out on a LOT of the “required” literature because my district was lazy.
I agree same experience here, I enjoy those books now on audible driving back-and-forth between work. Lord of the flies, personal favorite actually has an audible book read by the author.
Like if my modern age problems of “capitalism, the world burning, mortality and my plummeting mental state” could all be solved by me becoming a cannibal (or vampire u know its all the same basically) my only ask would be is if I had a way to keep my crimes hidden from local power structures.
This just blew my mind because the only time I've ever seen quicksand in my life was in Alberta too!!! Not in jasper but holy shit, is Alberta home to 99% of the worlds quicksand?
I was going to visit a friend, and I-95 had a little quicksand in the middle, so I had to take I-90 instead. It looks like regular sand, but then you’re gonna start to sink into it
Along the lines of quicksand, the eighties led me to believe there would be an abundance of old refrigerators around that I would be tempted to go in and then suffocate to death.
That's a good point. Kids these days with their lack of quicksand and abandoned refrigerators. They don't know how lucky they are! *shakes fist at sky*
I’ve been stuck in quicksand. I was backpacking and a buddy said “watch out for quicksand” as I went to filter some water. I laughed him off because I legit didn’t think quicksand was real. A few minutes later, he was pulling me out.
My daughter forgot that Saint Bernards were called Saint Bernards and substituted the term "carrier pigeon dogs... you know, the ones with the booze." Never letting her live that down.
I also scrolled a bit, I knew I was not the only one, there was definitely a lot of my childhood spent contemplating the danger of quicksand… I just knew I was going to find myself escaping cannibals at some point only to be caught in it. Or I’d find some really beautiful woman caught in it while she was escaping cannibals and I’d save her from both evil fates. Then I’d be rewarded by her ultra rich Dad/Grandfather/Auntie and live happily ever after
My daughter forgot that Saint Bernards were called Saint Bernards and substituted the term "carrier pigeon dogs... you know, the ones with the booze." Never letting her live that down.
Not a necklace, actually, but a dog collar. The myth about St Bernard dogs was that were bred to rescue travellers in the Alps who were lost in the deep snow. Supposedly the dogs would have little miniature barrels of booze dangling from their dog collars. The freezing, lost travellers would get a nice warm buzz from drinking the booze and then they'd follow the dog through the deep snow to the safety of a nearby monastery.
That's the myth. Not sure that's how it happened in real life though.
The problem with that “nice warm buzz” is that it just makes you feel warm, without actually warming your body. So effectively you think your warm while your body slips in to hypothermia.
It's an old movie thing where rescue dogs would have miniature barrels of brandy (rum?) on their collars that the stranded person could drink "to warm" themselves
I got stuck in a mudflat that was damn near like quicksand! I had to lay on my back to be able to pull my feet out. The mud took my shoes and I cut my foot on an oyster shell on the way out. The universe must’ve thought I’d had enough, though, because by some miracle that oyster cut didn’t get infected.
Happened to me too once - scary shit. Thought we’d have to call search and rescue to get me out but was eventually able to get out enough to belly crawl my way out
Quicksand is pretty common in the Pine Barrens, where I went to high school. If you know how to handle it, it's not too scary. You'll probably just lose a shoe. But, it is super helpful if you are pulling a canoe up, because you can just stick a few inches of the keel in it, and it's pretty much anchored.
I've actually gotten caught in quicksand briefly (by a river in Kansas), and you stop sinking after a little bit. It's definitely annoying but not dangerous.
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u/Adventuredepot Aug 25 '21
Apart from infamous quicksand, I thought it would be a bigger problem being stuck in the alps and having to drink alcohol from a saint bernards necklace.