Crazy Games 911 Cannibal
Demeter Exekutor
Fruitcake is kind of weird. And drinking eggnog...well, you either love it or you hate it but none of our Christmas traditions beat the weird one that Wisconsinites are into and it involves eating a 'cannibal sandwich.' I kid you not.
Okay listen, I try to keep an open mind when it comes to food and traditions and all of that, but my mind shut down completely when I heard about cannibal sandwiches and it probably has something to do with the memory I have of summer camp 1988 when one of the male camp counselors dared us to eat a handful of raw hamburger.
Not one to ever pass up a dare, I shoved my handful of raw meat straight into my mouth, swallowed, and plastered on a fake smile all while the jaws of my fellow campers fell. Truth is, it was the most disgusting thing that I've ever, ever, ever eaten.
So back to this cannibal sandwich business. Did you know that in Wisconsin it's a Christmas tradition to eat a sandwich which is made of raw ground beef on bread with sliced onions, salt, and pepper? That's right. Raw ground beef sandwiches. But you (and they) really shouldn't.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services sent out a Tweet reminding people that, "eating raw meat is NEVER recommended because of the bacteria it can contain." In a Facebook post, the agency wrote, "Time for our annual reminder that there's one #holiday tradition you need to pass on: raw meat sandwiches, sometimes called Tiger Meat or Cannibal Sandwiches."
I did a tiny bit of research (read: I didn't spend hours looking into it) on how and why the tradition of 'cannibal sandwiches' was born but all I kept finding were articles of people telling stories about how they'd grown up with the very strange Christmas tradition or articles stating that nobody knew where it came from.
In other words, it appears that many people have been observing the tradition for decades without even knowing why they're putting themselves through misery (and misery appears to be the common thread in each personal story I read on the tradition).
And there you have it. Raw meat sandwiches are a Christmas tradition in Wisconsin. You're welcome for that little nugget of knowledge you'll drop at Christmas dinner if even one of your kids so much as wrinkles their nose at what you prepared.
There are the cannibals who plan their attacks, waiting days or sometimes months to create what they think will be a perfect crime. Take Issei Sagawa, for instance, who planned his crime over a few months, calculated the best way to attack and eat a woman, only to misstep upon disposing of the body.
Then there are those who attack at seemingly random times, in front of dozens of witnesses, without a care in the world. Like the Greyhound Cannibal, a bus rider who simply started eating the man next to him, on a crowded Greyhound bus.
Whose to say which kind of attack is crazier, the premeditated one, or the random one? We'll let you decide. We've compiled a list of some of the craziest cannibal attacks of all time, some random and some planned, in no particular order. You be the judge, which is the craziest of them all?
Enjoy this look at famous cannibal attacks? After reading about crazy cannibalism throughout the world, check out the most infamous cannibalistic incident in American history. Then, read about the horrific cannibalism that took place during the siege of Leningrad.
Dr. Jessica Beake is a freelance medical writer and co-founder of Beake Medicom Ltd. With an inquisitive and analytical personality, she has a flair for communicating medical data accurately and coherently. Her specialty is cardiovascular disease, having written her Ph.D. thesis on cardiac metabolism and function in the aging heart, but 15 years of experience in medical communications and scientific research has given her extensive knowledge across a broad range of disease and therapy areas. Find her on LinkedIn.
Maria is an insatiably curious soul, particularly fascinated by the mysterious workings of the human brain, medical history, and our relationship with our own bodies, both during and after life. Before joining Medical News Today, Maria worked as a teacher, academic ambassador, and a freelance writer and copy editor. Recently, she finished a Ph.D. in English at the University of Warwick in the U.K. In her spare time, she learns Japanese, occasionally practices taxidermy, and spreads her infectious love of invertebrates.
In Europe, from the 12th century up until the early 18th century, people knowingly sold and purchased human body parts as medications, particularly bones, blood, and fat. Even priests and royalty routinely consumed human body products in an effort to stave off anything from headaches to epilepsy and from nosebleeds to gout.
In some cultures, once a person has died, their loved ones consume parts of their body so that they, quite literally, become a part of them. To Western minds, this might seem disturbing, but to those who entertain these rituals, burying your mother in the dirt or leaving her to be entirely consumed by maggots is equally disturbing.
For the purpose of this article, we do not need to wade into the interplay between instinctive gut feelings and cold, hard logic. Here, we will focus on the ramifications of cannibalism for human health.
Kuru is a unanimously fatal transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). TSEs are rare degenerative brain disorders or prion diseases. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, is another of these conditions.
The Fore people are the only population who have experienced a documented epidemic of kuru. At its peak in the 1950s, it was the leading cause of death in females among the Fore and their nearest neighbors.
This sex difference in the impacts of kuru appears to have occurred for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Fore males believed that consuming human flesh weakened them during times of conflict, so females and children more commonly ate the deceased.
Although kuru is never likely to be a major health issue for the majority of humanity, the outbreak has proven useful to medical researchers. The relatively recent concerns around BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease spawned a resurgence of interest in kuru.
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