Prompt Cast
The Horrific Ordeal of the Donner Party and their Desperate Measures to Survive
TLDR The Donner Party faced unimaginable hardships, including being stranded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during a brutal winter. They resorted to eating anything they could find, including their pack animals and even engaging in cannibalism, in order to survive.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
The episode is about the Donner Party and the hosts discuss watching PBS and a fake product called Hufu that is designed to taste like human flesh.
04:17
The Donner Party is discussed, highlighting the horrific circumstances they endured and the fact that people aided each other during this time.
08:53
The Donner Party made a fateful decision to take a shortcut called the Hastings Cut-Off, which was claimed to save them three weeks on their journey to California, but turned out to be a dangerous gamble.
13:06
The Donner Party took a different route that ended up adding three weeks to their trip and resulted in the loss of wagons and cattle, but it wasn't what ultimately caused their downfall.
17:33
The Donner Party encountered setbacks and ended up stranded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during one of the worst winters on record, resulting in them having to abandon their wagons and resort to eating their cattle and even their dog to survive.
21:53
The Donner Party, stranded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, resorted to eating the hide from the roofs of cabins, boiling blankets into a pasty glue, eating shoelaces, bark, twigs, and anything with protein, including the bones of animals, as well as their pack animals, and even discussed cannibalism before finally resorting to it when they ran out of food.
26:05
The Forlorn Hope group of the Donner Party, stranded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, resorted to cannibalism after running out of provisions, starting on day 10 or 11, and continued for the remaining 22 days of their ordeal.
31:01
Multiple rescue parties were sent out to save the stranded members of the Donner Party, with each group bringing back survivors and leaving some behind, and one survivor, Lewis Keesburg, was accused of murdering and cannibalizing the other three people he was left with.
35:27
There is a lack of forensic evidence for cannibalism in the Donner Party, but it is unlikely that they would have lied about it, and there are explanations for why human bones have not been found.
39:55
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