The worst survival rations in History
Throughout history, people have had to resort to eating some pretty nasty things, especially in the earlier days of civilization before the invention of canned food or plastic. There were limited options for what could be taken on long journeys as without the ability to freeze or even keep food cool, it was basically salting, smoking, pickling, or drying. Here is a list of some of the jobs throughout history that you wouldn’t want to be stuck doing if you enjoyed your food.
1) 1500’s British Navy sailor
Daily Rations:
1 pound of hardtack
1 Gallon of Small Beer
estimated calories per day – up to 1800
During the 1500’s it would take anywhere between 4 and 6 months to sail to India, and with very limited stops on the way a ship would have to make sure it carried enough supplies to make the whole route.
A standard sailor would receive 1 pound of hardtack, which if you’re not familiar is a small piece of bread that has been baked more than once to remove all the moisture, leaving them very hard and often needing to be soaked before they are edible. They would have been around 400 calories a piece and you would get 2 or 3 pieces per pound, this estimate can be considered very accurate, as the recipe today is exactly the same as it was hundreds of years ago.
As for the small beer, this was just normal beer that had a very low alcohol content, normally between 1% and 2.5%. Today small beer has anywhere between 50 and 100 calories, so I’ve rounded it off at 75 to form the estimate of 600 calories. The reason they issued beer instead of water was to ensure that it was preserved, as the alcohol in the beer helped to kill germs and didn’t go stagnant like water barrels often did.
2) 1980’s American Infantry
(A modern version of the MRE, after coming a long way from the 4 fingers of death)
Ration:
MRE – Frankfurters with beans
Estimated Calories – 800
This one may sound far from the worst that you could be stuck eating, but this MRE, or meal-ready-to-eat that the US Army issued during the 1980’s received the nickname “The Four Fingers of Death”.
The reason for the seemingly harsh nickname was simply because the frankfurters were bad, but not just regular bad, the kind of bad where you’d swap it for literally anything else or just go hungry. There are various tales about how these sausages made people throw up and choose to miss a meal entirely in the middle of a war zone, but the accuracy of these are sketchy at best. This one has gone down in US history as the worst MRE ever made.
3) WW1 Turkish infantry
Daily Ration:
1 spoonful of grape jam
Estimated daily calories – <100
During the First World War, the Turkish army was particularly cruel, and almost never took prisoners. The reason for this wasn’t entirely due to their opinions of their enemies, but also because they would only die from starvation if they took them prisoner.
There was mass starvation across the Middle East during the war, and at one point the Turkish army was so starved of resources that the only thing they could offer to their men was a single spoonful of grape jam, which they always had for breakfast. This extreme rationing went on for several weeks until troops started to drop dead from starvation, but soon after the Turks captured more ground and with it, enough food to end the spoonful of grape jam rationing.
4) A knight of the Crusades
(A modern version of pottage, boiled grain with anything else you want to throw in)
Daily Ration:
Pottage
Estimated daily calories – 300 to 500
Pottage is a dish that has been popular across the world right up until the late 1800s, as it’s so easy to make and resourceful. The basic recipe for pottage is to take some kind of base ingredient, normally grain, and boil it with whatever you like for about an hour, where it would form a thick slop with bits in it.
The crusades ran between 1095 and 1492 and included several smaller wars and expeditions, so it was difficult to give a general ration for the people involved. However, there are numerous records that mention the food people took with them, and since meat and salt were expensive and hardtack wasn’t really popular in Europe at the time, the only option was to take dry grain as nothing else would last long enough.
Imagine walking several hundred miles with a sack of dried Barley on your back, and eating nothing but boiled grain with whatever you could find or steal thrown in, something you would be eating nothing but for months on end.
