Throughout history people across the globe have often run into times so dark and desperate, that their daily lives needed to be filled with extreme actions just for them to stay alive. Here’s a few of the worst historic survival situations people have ever been in and what it took to come out the other side.
The Black Death
Death toll – 75 to 200 million
Chance of death – 50%
During the 14th century a disease called the bubonic plague, or black death as its more commonly known swept across Europe and Asia and claimed the lives of millions of people. This disease was carried mostly by flees that travelled around on rats which seem to have a skill for getting just about everywhere.
Medicine during this time wasn’t really “medicine” as we know it, but more experimental procedures using herbs and other treatments that didn’t really do anything. The only thing people could do was try to avoid it or attempt to make themselves immune, which was done in a less than pleasant manner. People had worked out getting sick with an illness meant you were less likely to suffer from it in the future, and so people tried to infect themselves with small doses so they had time to build up a resistance to it before it became fully active. This was done by either rubbing some infected puss into an open cut or grinding up a scab from an infected person and snorting it, needless to say both methods weren’t exactly effective.
Being alive during this time meant being isolated to the most remote village you could find. Wearing full face coverings when ever outside and avoiding people from outside where you live at all costs. Living through the plague meant you had a 50% chance of dying, no matter where you were in Europe.
The Jamestown winter of 1609-1610
Death toll – 250 to 350
Chance of death – 85%
Jamestown was established in 1607 and was the first English colony in north America. To begin with the native Americans had a good relationship with the English, seeing them as a minor threat and intrigued by their goods and level of technology. During the first couple of years the Indians were the reason the English settlers didn’t starve to death as the first colonists were mostly middle-class or builders and knew little about farming and hunting.
It didn’t take long for the English to anger the Indians who instead of attacking just cut them off. They offered no trade and no help with getting food which led to the worst winter the colony ever saw. When the cold set in during the winter of 1609, the Indians were now hostile but not openly at war with the settlement, and instead tried to steal their food and managed to kill 3 settlers outside the walls.
The food stores were poorly built and the small amount of supplies they did have quickly spoilt, and with the threat of the Indians outside the walls this made hunting and fishing much more difficult. There were over 300 settlers in Jamestown at the start of winter, with only 60 making it to the spring when a supply ship arrived and ended what came to be known as “The starving time”.
The Donner Party – 1846- 1847
Death toll – 40 to 45
Chance of death – 50%
The Donner party is probably one of the most famous survival stories in the world, with movies, books, roads and even the mountain pass it happened on being named after the event. Before the Panama canal was built the only way to get to the west coast of north America was a very long voyage around south America or by walking. Each year at the end of summer an expedition would take place when normal people could pack up all their things and walk in a huge convoy to the other side of the country.
The Donner party was a group of around 85 people made up of several families who formed the end of the convoy. They weren’t able to leave when they should have and were a considerable distance behind the rest of the convoy, hoping to catch up at some point. At one of the forts along the route they received word there was a short-cut through the mountains and so opted to take it. After realising the path was no where near as clear as they were told they became even further behind, and on top of this no one else knew where they were.
The group got stuck up a mountain range with their route blocked off by deep snow. They were forced to make three small cabins next to a lake up the mountain and had to eat all their animals, which didn’t last long. Things got so bad one family who were using a cow skin to cover their huts roof had to give it to another family to re-pay a debt, when it was then cut up and boiled to make soup.
Things got so bad one family brought the carcass of a cow that had starved to death from another family for the cost of $25, a sum which would fetch 3 healthy cows at the time. After people started to eat each other and most of the party had either left or died, small rescue teams came in to escort a few people out at a time, and on one such trip they discovered the chopped up remains of someones child in a cooking pot.
Mao Zedong’s “Great leap forward”
Death toll – 20 to 46 million
Mao Zedong was the founding father of the Peoples Republic of China and put into motion a plan known as the Great leap forward. The idea was to restructure the entire country and make it as advanced as foreign superpowers like Europe and America, a plan that cost the lives of millions of people.
To achieve his goals he needed many things doing in the country and the only way to do this would be to get as many people working on his projects as possible. Ordinary civilians were forced to work for no pay and were often killed in the process, mostly from starvation. If people were building roads they couldn’t be farming their own crops, and what little food they had would be “donated” to feed the soldiers overseeing the work.
Surviving through this ordeal would depend on how well you can work for 16 hours a day without eating, something that at least 20 million people couldn’t do. The official figure is 20 million, but due to the intense censoring in the country this figure is put as high as 45 million by some historians.