the darkest scenario in deep space exploration
What happens when your crops fail and you're tens of trillions of miles from Earth?
Perhaps because it's such a taboo topic, cannibalism is a disturbingly frequent theme in fiction. We decry it as the least civilized, most brutal thing one human could ever do to another, and yet we seem fascinated by stories of people being demoted to meat in religious rituals, harrowing tales of survival by any means necessary, and horror flicks where travelers lost in the middle of nowhere find themselves hunted like game by an evil clan of butchers, usually based on a sordid legend from history.
On the cozy animated sitcom Bob's Burgers, the original big plan for the otherwise lovable Belchers was to make them cannibals selling burgers that were less ground chuck, and more ground-up Chuck from the morgue next door. Until the studio had some helpful notes and the pilot episode, Human Flesh, became just a child's rumor blown out of proportion. But dark comedy and horror aren't the only places we're on the menu. It's almost a grim necessity when it comes to an awful lot of sci-fi.
For example, Hollywood warned us about runaway global warming and pollution with the now infamous Soylent Green. In the immense hive cities and chaotic galaxy-wide battlefields of Warhammer 40K, the hungry chow down on cubes of corpse starch. And in the otherwise tame, hard science-driven universe of The Martian, astronauts calmly discuss the possibility of using their bodies for protein, should some orbital maneuvers stretch the food supplies for their rescue mission too thin.
In short, when they envision the worst scenarios while exploring space, writers and scientists conclude that when times get tough, someone's liver is getting paired with a nice chianti. Given humanity's track record in this regard, it's very difficult to blame them or take issue with their conclusions, especially when asking serious questions about the likely outcomes of missions gone horribly wrong.
even in death, i am still served
In 2021, the UK tabloid Metro talked to a pair of astrobiologists and ended up leaning very hard on a few takeaway lines about the fact that crops on our off-world outposts can't fail, otherwise the situation could get dire enough for our explorers will resort to cannibalism. Knowing how a lot of similar interviews work, I think the scientists' actual goal was to impress on the reporters that creating a colony on another planet is going to be a lot harder than science fiction and Elon Musk make it sound.
Moving to Mars or rotating space habitats so we could ignore global warming and the resulting change in climates is ridiculous, on par with venturing out to live in the Arctic among the polar bears instead of just cleaning your house. Outposts far enough away from Earth wouldn't support themselves after a crisis like crop failure, and may be too far away to receive any meaningful help or be rescued before starvation sets in.
Which is there the cannibalism comes in. Given the fact that any help could be years away and backup supplies will be very, very finite, some very grim plans would need to be made to ensure the survival of any base in deep space, or anchored to a planet around another star.
Those who die of infection or suffer fatal injuries, especially after a prolonged period of malnutrition, would be the first to have their cadavers used for purposes we'd call less than scientific. If the food crisis goes on long enough in a big and distant enough colony, it's possible some may be outright hunted for food by desperate survivors, or become victims of cannibalistic cults encouraging certain members of the population to sacrifice themselves to feed the others.
Obviously, this is some grimdark stuff, perfect fodder for clickbait. Sadly, it's also not exactly unfounded because, like I said, we've had similar situations right here on Earth during which starving, injured people driven mad with hunger ate the deceased, then, as the bodies ran out, turned on other survivors. We're driven to explore and survive, so when our backs are against the wall, we'll rationalize the seemingly unthinkable to make sure we live another day.
from explorers, to astronaut a l'orange
As much as it pains me to say it, this is very much something we do need to consider when we send humans to alien worlds. What is the plan if crops fail, and help will take years to arrive? And this is why it was so chilling for Elon Musk, who wanted to spread humanity to Mars, err, excuse me, transport an army of indentured servants to the red planet — until his fears of woke AI nixed that idea — mention so casually and callously that a bunch of people will die in the process.
Because this is how they'll die if we treat space exploration the same way we treated the release of a new game or app. They won't die from accidents or exposure, not all of them. No, they'll die of radiation-accelerated cancers, failing immune systems, and if the colony's food supply fails, rescue missions may find survivors who huddle in the darkness over the bones of their former friends and colleagues, driven to madness by watching enough of their peers starve to death.
Space exploration is fiendishly, absurdly difficult and will rarely always offer merciful, quick deaths. There's going to be suffering, unspeakable acts in the name of survival for just another week, and even horrific acts of cruelty to justify all those unspeakable acts later. Why? Because the alternative is a slow, painful, frustrating death as muscle wastes away, the brain turns to instinctual mush, and the immune system fails.
We could never completely prevent this from happening because, again, it happened on Earth more times than we want to count, or even know. It will doubtlessly happen in space at some point. But by being prepared and by revising our currently simplistic and naïve exploration plans specifically to minimize the odds of it being necessary as much as logistically and materially possible, we could ensure that exploring space will be every bit the adventure we want and need it to be for humanity's future.
