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Originally Posted by Brother in Arms
but in all seriousness what do you think about its use in a game? And or its effects long and short term on the people who consume human flesh or anything else really about cannibalism.
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Back in 1990, when GDW was still in business, I wrote an article on cannibalism for Challenge magazine, a sort of answer to the Haute Cuisine article on the MRE. Sort of "If the MRE is the best food you can find, what about the worst food you can find?" I received a polite but firm letter from Loren K. Wiseman that such an article was NOT what they were looking to publish. Right afterwards they published "Rifle River" which featured the first group of well-defined cannibals in TW2K, but the difference was that my article was too much like a "how to" article. Too clinical and too specific.
Bottom line cannibalism is about as dangerous to the dinner as it is to the diner. Human cadavers can transmit just about any disease to those who consume them. Larry Niven got it right in Hammer's Slammers when the army deserters who turn cannibal start getting sick and dying because they eat people who are sick.
Since cannibalism isn't likely to happen for nutritional reasons until there is a serious famine, just about anyone who the cannibals target is likely to be malnurished and consequently sick. So it's very likely the cannibals won't be doing much better.
Oh course, cannibalism is more likely to happen for other reasons that starvation. It could be a terror tactic. It could be a way to bond new members to a group. It could be some crazy new post-nuke religious practice. Or all of the above combined.
The real problem with cannibalism in TW2K is that if there is one thing that will get people motivated to get off their asses and come out from behind their barricades and kill some mutha fuckas, it would be news that some group of cannibals is nearby.
It's one thing if the bandits want to shake you down for some portion of your food and supplies, and maybe stop in for some recreational beatings and rapes. Peasants have put up with this since forever. It's quite another when the only relationship you have with the enemy is that you have to go in the stewpot. If there are cannibals in the neighborhood, people are either going to cooperate to exterminate them, or they are going to move out of the area.
Cannibals are going to have that effect. They are going to galvanize people to either flight or flee. So cannibals can't just settle into an area because either their food supply is going to come gunning for them or the food supply is going to leave. Cannibals, IMHO, are going to have to be mobile. Of course, if they aren't eating the grain I guess they can brew it for alcohol fuel and keep on the move.
In my campaign, cannibalism exists in areas of desperate starvation, among the feral crazies that scurry around like animals, and among some groups that are using it for psychological warfare reasons. I just don't think these groups are likely to be very big. I mean, New America, Milgov or any other group attempting to be a national or even regional player is unlikely to advertise that they've taken on cannibalism as public policy...
However, there were stories from ancient Chinese history that during some periods of extreme famine the consumption of human flesh was de-criminalized by the government. It was still illegal to kill someone, but if someone died it was permitted to consume the cadaver. Supposedly such meat was openly sold in markets. Such stories may be apocryphal, much like the stories of North Korean cannibalism. IMHO those stories are false, but what is interesting is that (according to defectors) such stories are readily accepted in North Korea. It's a testimony to how obviously completely FUBAR things are in North Korea that the locals find the story of starvation cannibalism easy to accept.
A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp dba Pagan Publishing