On July 28, 1976, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Tangshan City, Hebei Province.
This earthquake caused great disasters to the world, and at the same time created one miracle of life after another!
For example, on the thirteenth day after the earthquake, a 46-year-old temporary worker in the hospital, Lu Guilan, was rescued after being trapped for 303 hours and 38 minutes.
She was trapped for nearly 13 days, without water or food, and persevered by drinking her own urine, creating a miracle of life.
There are many more examples of human challenges to hunger, including many scientific experiments on hunger.
It is probably best known for the Hunger Experiment at the University of Minnesota in the United States, a hunger experiment conducted during World War II.
The purpose of this experiment is only to test how long a person can live without eating!
So, what was the process and results of this hunger experiment?
Lu Guilan who was rescued
Let's reveal them all:
1. Background
In 1944, World War II was in full swing, and half the world was burning in the fires.
Whether it is the Battlefield in Europe, the Battlefield in North Africa or the Battlefield in China, there are different degrees of famine. In Henan on the Battlefield in China alone, 3 million people died during the Great Famine of 1942.
And the developed European countries can not completely avoid the famine, the Netherlands' winter famine (De Hongerwinter), which affected the entire country for a generation.
Because of its unique geographical location, the United States was not directly affected in the war. But there are also long-term scholars who are concerned about hunger.
They wanted to study how well people tolerate hunger and what kind of harm hunger can do to people.
The experiment took place at the University of Minnesota in the United States, and the main person in charge was Anses Case, a well-known nutritionist.
Dr. Ansel Case
In the experiment, Case recruited a total of 36 volunteers from more than 400 volunteers, all of whom were healthy men aged 22 to 33.
One of the volunteers, Samuel Legg, said afterwards: "All the volunteers are sincere anti-war people who want to use their own strength to recover the losses caused by the war."
Of course, even if the volunteers are voluntary, in order to eliminate unnecessary responsibility, the volunteers also signed a disclaimer, saying that they will not be held accountable to Keith and the experimental party for any consequences in the future.
Keith also explained to them that the experiment was not really about starving them to death, but about observing the effects of starvation on people.
After all the pre-problems are solved, the experiment will officially begin.
The experiment didn't, as many people think, by locking a group of people in cages, not giving them a mouthful of food, and then observing how long they could tolerate hunger.
In fact, this experiment is a holistic process, not only to observe people's ability to tolerate hunger, but also to observe their performance in various hunger situations.
So Keith set the entire experiment into three phases, recording the health data of people in each of these three phases. Eventually, the entire experimental phase lasted a year.
Group photo of volunteers
Second, the stage experiment
The first stage is actually the preparation phase of the entire experiment, which lasts for three months. During this phase, Keith gave 36 experimental volunteers a customized nutritious meal.
Keys is a top nutritionist, and his customized combination is not only nutritionally balanced but also rich in calories, ensuring that the daily calories can be around 3200 calories.
While consuming nutrients and calories, Case also asked them to maintain at least 22 kilometers of exercise per day.
Under the conditioning of Case, the nutrition and eating habits of 36 people were gradually unified. At the same time, their health has also improved in these three months, and the health of some people who are not nutritionally balanced or simply malnourished has gradually improved.
In this three-month period, 36 people's physical health level, eating habits and nutritional status, basically maintained the same, can open the second stage, that is, the real "hunger" experiment!
Stage 2: This phase lasts for 6 months and everyone starts to "starve".
At the beginning of this stage, the amount of food per person is directly halved, and the calories contained become 1600 kcal. The content of the food eaten was basically replaced by potatoes, whole wheat bread and lettuce, and occasionally a little meat, eggs and milk could be eaten.
There are only basic carbs that basically sustain life, and there is basically no protein or other nutrients.
This form of food is basically the same as the appetite of European refugees who broke out during the European war.
Hunger experiments
And at this stage, the volunteers of the experiment can not lack exercise, that is, the amount of exercise is similar to that of refugees in famine.
In this case, the volunteers' weight has decreased to varying degrees, and the basic average weight loss is about 25%.
From the data and photos of the experiment, it can also be seen that many volunteers have obvious signs of malnutrition, and even some volunteers have symptoms of iron deficiency anemia.
In this case, many people can't hold on and just leave. Although the rest of the people insisted, they could also see that there was a considerable gap between them and before the experiment, and one by one they became skinny.
More importantly, the spirit of these people is also inevitably affected, and many people have developed irritability and abnormal negative emotions.
Many people's social skills have even begun to deteriorate, and they are indifferent to communicating with people, and their feelings are gradually missing. Preferring to be alone rather than communicating with people, it seems that talking will make them hungry.
The comedy in the movie is also difficult to make them laugh, and the pictures of beautiful women do not trigger their desires.
These people prefer to stare at the photos of food all the time to the point of beautiful celebrity posters.
The most important change is how much attention they pay to food, where they no longer want to eat together and instead choose to eat alone. Meal times have also been extended, or dining etiquette has become complicated and strange, thereby increasing satiety.
In the absence of food, many people begin to smoke a lot or chew a lot of gum, and some people also drink a lot of water to achieve the purpose of satiety.
As the period of starvation increases, new discomforts begin to appear in their bodies. Iron deficiency anemia is becoming more and more serious, and a series of problems such as body edema, gastrointestinal diseases, and hair loss have appeared.
In the process of physical examination, it was found that their body temperature was generally reduced, their heart rate was slower than that of healthy people, and their metabolic levels were reduced by more than 40%.
As the experiment progressed, many people's personalities began to change. By the end of the month, only 11 people were left to hold on. And many people's withdrawal is not simply voluntary, but there are various problems.
Samuel Leger's spirit was not able to hold on, and he used a jack to roof the car, put his hand under the tire, and crushed his own hand, so he left the experimental base and was admitted to the hospital.
Unexpectedly, three days later, he actually cut off three of his fingers with an axe! In hindsight, he admitted that he was almost crazy at the time.
Another volunteer, Franklin. Woggins also developed mental abnormalities.
Under great psychological pressure, he rushed out of the experimental base and ran to a nearby town, gulping down ice cream and milkshakes.
Afterwards, he threatens Keith, saying he will kill him and then commit suicide!
As a last resort, Keith had to send him to a mental hospital. Soon after resuming his diet, his mental abnormalities gradually disappeared.
The people who eventually persevered also had problems, and these skinny people not only did not feel thin, but also felt that others were getting fatter.
This reaction is the opposite of anorexia, where people feel that they are getting fatter.
Phase 3: Six months, the 2nd stage of horror finally survived, followed by a three-month recovery period.
As a nutritionist, Keith did not directly let go of the diet and let them eat openly, but customized a nutritious meal specifically for recovery.
However, when they were allowed to eat freely, the people still ate more than their normal physical needs.
There are not a few people who eat an average of more than 5,000 calories a day, and even some people eat more than 10,000 calories, which is equivalent to eating fifteen or six standard two-two steamed buns!
Some people even overeated half a year after the end of the experiment, so much so that they suffered from gastrointestinal diseases and fell ill and were hospitalized.
After a recovery cycle of more than half a year, most of the volunteers returned to their health. Eating habits and psychological states have basically returned to normal, but some people also suffer from different degrees of binge eating disorder.
Many of them have increased their food intake to varying degrees even if they do not have bulimia, and many even increase their food intake by 25%. Many people's weight has returned to the previous situation, but the body fat rate has increased greatly, and some people's body fat rate has even reached 140% of the previous situation.
III. Other experiments
After the end of the experiment, many media made accusations against this experiment, mainly accusing the experimental team led by Keith of being inhumane.
But the purpose of Keith's experiment is only to study the health changes of people under hunger, and also to provide some data support for the United States to enter the war.
After all, they did not study, and the maximum time for people to survive under hunger did not cause human lives because of it. The subjects of the experiment were also volunteers, not forced.
But there are other countries that carry out related experiments that do not take humanitarianism seriously at all, and it can even be said that this is a group of animals in the name of scientific research.
That's Japan's "Unit 731"! The herd built the base in the pingfang area of northeast China, and more than 10,000 people were killed in the trial. In this evil experimental factory, they carried out all kinds of cruel killing experiments, including hunger experiments!
The Japanese did not treat the experiments involved as human beings, but called them "wood", "special materials" and "maru da".
The starvation experiment of Unit 731 was divided into two types, one was a fasting test and the other was a water shortage test. The fasting experiment was given only to prisoners, and not a drop of bread was given; The water cut-off experiment was the opposite, giving prisoners only water to drink and nothing to eat.
With only water supply, prisoners can live an average of 60 to 70 days; In the absence of water for only bread, prisoners basically only live for about 5 days.
From the experimental records alone, we can't even imagine how terrible the behavior of these beasts is! This is a trampling on the entire civilized society, and it is also a crime against all mankind by that crazy nation!
Fight hunger
As a writer whose grandparents personally experienced the Tangshan earthquake, I often heard my grandparents talk about the experience of starvation during the earthquake, and their emphasis on food was not available to young people.
It is precisely because China has experienced so many natural disasters and famines that Chinese has been on the road to fighting famine!
In the fight against hunger, we have to mention one person, that is, Yuan Longping, a recipient of the Order of the Republic, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the father of hybrid rice!
He has been rooted in the hybrid rice business all his life, created a super hybrid rice technology system, and made great contributions to food security in the mainland and even the world!
It can even be said that Yuan Longping has made people all over the world more away from hunger!
With the development of science and technology and the progress of productive forces, hunger seems to be getting farther and farther away from us. However, we must not take it lightly, we must pay attention to food security and cherish every grain.
Resources:
1. Do people not eat? Hebei Agricultural Machinery. 1994,(04)
2. How long can people skip eating Mental health doctors No. 4, 2009
3. Zhou Xiangqian Memories of the Great Famine in Henan in 1942 Old Age World 2013 No. 14
4. "What kind of evil unit is unit 731- from Abe's admiration of unit 731 to see its militaristic trend" Editorial Department of "Red Flag Manuscripts" / Heilongjiang Provincial Center for Socialist Theory Research with Characteristics