The Science Behind the Cannibalism on Yellowjackets

The cruelty of teenage girls can generally really feel like life-or-death—but in Yellowjackets, Showtime’s hit series about a New Jersey girl’s soccer group that gets stranded in the wilderness, it seriously is. Starving, freezing, and with no animals to hunt and small else to drop, the teens have gradually transformed from classmates into cannibals.

It is not an unrealistic scenario—the show’s creators have referenced the true-life catastrophes that inspired it, quite a few of which devolved into cannibalism. But with a dozen mouths to feed, it appears like an unsustainable dietary approach for the show’s survivors. The show’s creators are organizing for 3 far more seasons, so viewers are left to wonder: How can any of the Yellowjackets remain alive till their rescue?

What we know so far about the Yellowjackets timeline

The team’s plane appears to crash in the spring, and they make it via the summer time relatively conveniently by hunting animals. But as soon as it begins snowing, the Yellowjackets—now a group of a diverse sort that consists of their assistant coach Ben and their head coach’s two sons, Travis and Javi—run out of meals. Soon after queen bee Jackie discovers that her finest pal Shauna slept with (and got pregnant by) her boyfriend, but fails to make the group turn against her, Jackie retreats alone into the cold, exactly where she freezes to death in an early-winter snowfall. Jackie becomes the 1st group member consumed about late November, just after the group has been hungry (and storing her physique) for about two months.

Sheer desperation is what 1st pushes the group to cross the line into consuming one particular of their personal, which aligns with what we know about the lengthy history of human cannibalism. “We’ve noticed reduce marks and tooth marks on bones going back about a million years,” says James Cole, a principal lecturer in archaeology at the University of Brighton in England. Consuming animals has generally been preferable to consuming individuals, in portion simply because humans have significantly less meat on their frames compared to creatures like cows or mammoths. But when animals had been scarce, due to illness, climate, or competitors, individuals did resort to it, Cole says.

Jackie’s ostracism from the group prior to her death may well have produced the act of consuming her much easier to sit with emotionally, says Cole (who does not watch the show). “Because she’s no longer noticed as an integral member of the group, their empathy is degraded,” he says.

Most likely a month later (judging by the length of Shauna’s pregnancy), the group is once more desperately hungry. Simply because we know the group in the end spends 19 months in the wilderness, that leaves ten far more months amongst the meal they produced of Javi in the season finale and their far-off rescue.

The terrifying science behind true-life cannibalism

So how a lot sustenance could a human physique offer? Cole’s 2017 paper published in Nature Scientific Reports, which explores cannibalism in Paleolithic instances and how quite a few calories the practice would most likely render, provides some clues. Cole analyzed the total chemical breakdown of the human physique and estimated that a Paleolithic man’s skeletal muscle would include 32,375 calories. Adding in the organs, skin, marrow, and other physique components that would most likely be consumed in a survival circumstance would boost the count to about 125,822 calories.

The common Paleolithic man from Cole’s study weighed just 110 pounds, although the typical weight of a 17-year-old girl for the duration of the Yellowjackets universe—set in the ‘90s—was 137 pounds, according to information from the U.S. Centers for Illness Handle and Prevention (CDC). Of course, starvation can result in substantial weight loss, the quantity of which can differ tremendously from particular person to particular person primarily based on complicated metabolic elements. Some information on formerly wholesome hunger strikers recommend that extreme healthcare challenges start when about 18% of physique weight has been lost although some Yellowjackets have certainly crossed this line, employing this as an approximation requires them down to 112 pounds each and every. For that reason, the typical Yellowjacket (most of whom are higher-college seniors) would yield about 128,109 edible calories. Simply because Travis and Coach Ben, two other survivors, are each male, they’d yield far more calories: about 149,843 and 161,796 respectively, employing the CDC’s typical weights for a 17-year-old boy and a man in his late 20’s at that time and the identical starvation-driven weight loss estimate.

Study Far more: How the Wild Yellowjackets Season two Finale Sets Up a Savage Path Forward

The worst-case situation is that only Travis and the six girls we see as adults—Shauna, Natalie, Taissa, Van, Lottie, and Misty—survive, which would give them roughly 4 other Yellowjackets and Coach Ben to consume more than ten months, for a total calorie count of 674,235.

The Yellowjackets’ wilderness diet plan

Sydney Daley, a group efficiency dietitian at the University of Michigan (who hasn’t noticed Yellowjackets), says that even athletes with higher metabolic prices “can survive on pretty small meals for really some time.” Water, which the Yellowjackets do have, is a lot far more vital. Whilst the group would almost certainly consume about two,000 calories each and every per day back in New Jersey, a quantity closer to 800 or so could preserve them going in a survival circumstance, she says. “But devoid of the correct quantity of specific nutrients, you could possibly run into seriously extreme well being challenges,” says Daley. Plus, just after so quite a few months, they’ve all lost weight and are operating on empty.

We haven’t noticed the Yellowjackets consume a lot foraged vegetation apart from some weak-sounding soup. But the truth that they’re all nevertheless alive just after nine months in the wilderness, let alone wholesome sufficient to run and attempt to hunt one particular an additional, most likely suggests that they’re nibbling trace amounts of anything that is not meat. “Strictly consuming meat, regardless of whether it is human meat or animal meat, can just result in a lot of distress,” says Daley, mainly “really horrible gut challenges.” Assuming our survivors are obtaining about one hundred calories a day of factors like berries, ferns, and belt soup, that puts their lengthy-term survival requirements just after these snacks at 700 per day.

So, assuming the quantity of individuals splitting each and every caloric load decreases by one particular each and every hunt (and that they’re only ever killing one particular teammate at a time), that suggests the seven surviving Yellowjackets would be in a position to final about 109 days on a diet plan of their teammates and meager foraged meals. But that is just a small more than 3 months, when they have ten far more months to go in the wilderness. In truth, according to our calculations, only two Yellowjackets could survive till rescue with this diet plan alone—and that is even if they decrease sharing by saving Ben and Travis for final.

How will the show sustain the Yellowjackets via these remaining months? The stranded teammates could go back to hunting typical game when the snow melts and the animals return for the summer time. Or possibly the wilderness has far more surprises in retailer.

Far more Need to-Reads From TIME

Speak to us at letters@time.com.