How Long Does It Take to Starve to Death?

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

How long does it take to starve to death?

                         How long does it take to starve to death? A modern medical study estimates that “Complete starvation in adults leads to death within eight to 12 weeks.” Death can come in a variety of guises: Hypothermia. Pneumonia. Anemia. Chronic diarrhea. Madness.

                            

    Of more than two hundred people alive at Jamestown, Virginia, in October 1609, only sixty survived until May.

 

How many will survive in Gaza in 2024??

A recent news clip breaks my heart. Food being given out: 2 little boys, each with a large pot, get to the supply late, when only crumbs—grain, peas—? remain. The first boy is so hungry he scoops up a handful and crams it into his mouth. The second one scrapes up less than a handful—all that is left—and puts it carefully into his pot—to take back to his family. 

 

Cannibalism at Jamestown, 1609, revisited: Some lines from JAMESTOWN: THE NOVEL (available on Amazon):

“Then they took that poor boy’s body, and they washed it, and they chopped off his arms and his legs, and they roasted them and ate them!”  p. 123

 

Three days later, Peter Scott cut his wife and unborn child into pieces and salted them in a chest in his house. p. 126

  Before the winter was out, of some 300 people at Jamestown, only 60 survived until spring.