FalloutJack said:
floppylobster said:
Weird set up. What happened to fishing? Or sea birds? Or how about, first person to die of starvation gets eaten? As for the man, how about you ask him if he wants to be fed? And what are you going to feed him? I thought you only had the meat of the fat man? So maybe he still doesn't want to eat it on principal.
Here, let me break this down for ya.
{1} Probably a case where even makeshift equipment to start fishing is not available or you're in an area where that kind of prospect wouldn't be likely to work or, worse, kill you. True, if you've read Catch-22, you know you can catch cod and eat it raw, and you know about sushi, but are you any good at dealing with any of that? Do you have the skills to catch and safely prepare enough fish with perhaps makeshift or even NO useful equipment? If your answer is yes, then you're a better man than I.
{2} I wouldn't eat seagull if you paid me, but putting that aside, they don't often stick around people unless those people are already dying. It brings up the question of catching or killing, plucking, and - if you've any sense left - cooking it. Dunno if that's possible on a lifeboard, but if it is, then it must be a good one. Still, this must again assume the equipment's not there.
{3} D'you know how long it takes for someone to starve to death? A month! Dying of thirst is five days or a week on the outside, and I'm guessing that waiting around for either is gonna be hard. More than likely, the big man in the scenario who got chosen to be eaten ends up outlasting everyone else, kills them, eats them, and then tells them at the coast whatever he likes.
{4} Yeah, you have only the fat man's meat and that's what you'd be supposing to feed him, but I wouldn't. He didn't want it anyway, and a guy like him will ruin things for everyone else. In short, I agree with your statement.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. It's somewhat off-topic but just in case you're interested, this is what prompted my questions -
(cut and pasted from Wikipedia)
Poon Lim was born in Hainan, China. In 1942, during World War II, he was working as second steward on the British merchant ship SS Ben Lomond (or Benlomond), which was on its way from Cape Town to Suriname. The ship was armed but slow moving and was sailing alone instead of in a convoy.
On November 23, the German U-boat U-172 intercepted and struck the Ben Lomond with two torpedoes in position 00.30°N 38.45°W, some 750 miles east of the Amazon. As the ship was sinking, Poon Lim took a life jacket and jumped overboard before the ship's boilers exploded. As the ship sank in two minutes, 53 of the crew were lost including the master, 44 sailors and eight gunners, making Lim the sole survivor. Another account suggested that 11 other sailors may have eventually been rescued.
After approximately two hours in the water, he found an 8' square wooden raft and climbed into it. The raft had several tins of biscuits, a forty litre jug of water, some chocolate, a bag of sugar lumps, some flares, two smoke pots and an electric torch.
Poon Lim initially kept himself alive by drinking the water and eating the food on the raft, but later resorted to fishing and catching rainwater in a canvas life jacket covering. He could not swim very well and often tied a rope from the boat to his wrist, in case he fell into the ocean. He took a wire from the electric torch and made it into a fishhook, and used hemp rope as a fishing line. He also dug a nail out of the boards on the wooden raft and bent it into a hook for larger fish. When he captured a fish, he would cut it open with a knife he fashioned out of a biscuit tin and dry it on a hemp line over the raft. Once, a large storm hit and spoiled his fish and fouled his water. Poon, barely alive, caught a bird and drank its blood to survive.
When he saw sharks, he did not swim. Instead he set out to catch one. He used the remnants of the next bird he caught as bait. The first shark to pick up the taste was only a few feet long. He gulped the bait and hit the line with full force, but in preparation Poon Lim had braided the line so it would have double thickness. He also had wrapped his hands in canvas to enable him to make the catch. But the shark attacked him after he brought it aboard the raft. He used the water jug half-filled with seawater as a weapon. After his victory, Poon Lim cut open the shark and sucked its blood from its liver. Since it hadn't rained, he was out of water and this quenched his thirst. He sliced the fins and let them dry in the sun, a Hainan delicacy.
On two occasions other vessels passed nearby: first a freighter, then a squad of United States Navy patrol planes. Poon contended that the freighter saw him but did not pick him up because he was Chinese. The Navy planes did see him, and one dropped a marker buoy in the water. Unfortunately for Poon, a large storm hit the area at the same time and he was lost again. He was also once spotted by a German U-boat, which had been doing gunnery drills by targeting seagulls.
At first, he counted the days by tying knots in a rope, but later decided that there was no point in counting the days and simply began counting full moons.
He survived 133 days alone in the South Atlantic.
