This is
real problem for some people.
When I crashed over the Alps in a 747 flight to Greece, we had this very choice to make. We obviously had to eat someone. We decided (by vote I might add) to use the the airline food in its little plastic boxes to construct a number of small shelters. Keeping the food in the boxes aided insulation. Chicken and two Veg turned out to be a better thermal insulator than the cans of Polyurethane Spray-Foam Insulation, which we used to build big wobbly snow men.
However, I digress...
On that flight, the 747 was full, meaning there were 524 passengers. All the cabin crew, unfortunately, jumped overboard a few miles before the point of impact, and none of us were prepared to go and find them. Some passengers claimed to have seen parachutes too, so we were unlikely to find any dead bodies back there anyway. Of the 524 passengers, incredibly, all had survived the impact. The question was not just "who shall we eat?", but "who shall we kill-and-then-eat?". The obvious solution was to wait until the first people died of hunger, and for the survivors to eat them. This plan was rejected unanimously for 2 simple but compelling reasons:
- By the time the first person fell victim to starvation, all of us would be weak. Perhaps too weak to recover fully.
- One of the passengers, a tracker and wildlife expert, told us that animals that have starved to death are stringy and tasteless. We guessed humans would be the same.
An alternative suggestion was to kill and eat the biggest, fattest passenger(s), thereby feeding more people per innocent life taken. This idea too, provoked unhappiness. Some of the women on the plane were on a diet, and wanted to avoid
fatty meat.
Eventually, we decided to have a race, with the winner being roasted immediately on a large Polyurethane Spray-Foam Insulation-bonfire. The premise was that lean, strong individuals would make a tasty meal - without being too fatty. As you can imagine, this was a disaster. No-one really put any effort into the race, with some people going to laughable extremes not to win. This farce lasted for 6 whole days before a toddler, oblivious to everything that was going on, crossed the line by chance. His mother had been too busy feigning a broken leg to keep an eye on her little boy, who we ate later that day.
We were picked up the next morning by a rescue party. They had been alerted by smoke clouds (caused, I suppose, by the enormous bonfire we lit). We were all a little too embarrassed to admit what we had done, so you're unlikely to see a film about our exploits. Even the toddler's mother didn't say anything. She couldn't really, as she was the only one who had a second helping.
These days, my advice to friends who find themselves is this situation is: "Eat the little ones first, they're delicious".
By the way - and the fact that I find it necessary to say this is rather worrying - this is not a true story.