You’ve all heard the stories – when there’s no food left, and death is closing slowly inwards, there’s only one logical source of nutrition: Eat the weakest group members.

This post-apocalyptic blog has covered a variety of weird topics,  but none were as strangely disturbing to write as “How to cook human meat“, released recently. But practical culinary application aside, just what would the consequences be for eating human meat?

Let’s discuss.

The potential consequences of cannibalism

To get it out the way, the most likely consequence of eating human flesh would be some significant jail time – particularly if the lunch-time special his or herself wasn’t exactly willing. But in a post-apocalyptic landscape decimated by war, disease and hardship, there is likely going to be a moment where you have to YOLO it and chow down on little Timmy.

But maybe the following will make you think twice.

Consuming human flesh can cause a build-up of a type of protein material inside the human body – particularly the brain – called prions.

Consuming human flesh can cause a build-up of a type of protein material inside the human body – particularly the brain – called prions. These prions can be infectious little bastards, but infectious in a way more similar to tumours than bacteria (as in, it’s your own body working against you). You see, a prion disease (also known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSE for short), is the accumulated build-up of misshapen prions that are going around trying to capture normal prions and turn them into criminals.

Prion disease and brain damage

Normally, prions live out their life and are then broken down by enzymes in the body. However, ‘misfolded’ prions can be more resistant to this process, meaning they don’t vanish. If the clog becomes too great, it can actually start harming the nerve cells in your brain, interfering with the functioning of your brain – according to the UK’s MRC Prion Unit.

In fact, misshapen prions are so hard to destroy in some cases, many healthcare guidelines stipulate that should surgical equipment come into contact with an infected piece of tissue, that equipment cannot be used again – because it can’t be cleaned off, but could transmit to a new patient unknowingly.

Transmitting brain-eating infections from person to person? Yeah, I’m thinking prion-induced ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. Someone write that down, quick.

For reference – the MRC’s Prion Unit states that it is not currently known what regular, normal-shape prions do – but it is thought to have something to do with the communication of messages between brain cells.

Commonly known TSEs are kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Actually, mad cow is also a TSE, but for cows. Don’t feed cows cow brains!

Can placenta cause kuru?

This may lead some of you to wonder why people would consume their own placenta if human meat is such a danger to fellow people.

Well, the most common way to contract TSEs like kuru is to consume the flesh of someone who already has it. In our current time, the disease is restricted almost entirely to Papua New Guinea, and even then, only a very small subsection. And on top of that, misfolded prions occur most commonly in the brain and nervous system, which the placenta is not a part of.

You are unlikely to contract kuru or an alternate TSE from the practice of consuming placenta.

So, without diving into the science behind placenta eating itself (because that is a can of bloody placenta this blog shall not open), you are unlikely to contract kuru or an alternate TSE from the practice.

So, will I get a disease from eating human flesh?

Potentially, but you’d have to be doing it a lot and over a long period of time – probably for multiple generations. UNLESS you have the misfortune to consume someone who already has the disease, but then in reality, that would be karma at work, now wouldn’t it? You monster.

Post-apocalyptic fiction aside, kuru’s biggest known epidemic happened in the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea back in the 1950s and 1960s because the people at that time practised regular ritualistic cannibalism – part of their funeral rites required tribespeople to consume the flesh of the deceased.

In a post-nuclear landscape where humans are your only nutritional source of food, it could honestly go either way. As I mentioned, you’d need to consume the flesh of someone whose prions were already misfolded in order to contract it yourself – but then, who knows how nuclear radiation on that scale will affect the brain?

Maybe just try find something else to eat.

If you’d love to contract a vicious brain-eating disease from more of Duncan P. Pacey’s work, check out his Facebook and Twitter pages below!