Soviet experience of hunger campaigns. Two weeks without food

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Imagine: you find yourself in a deep forest, and not a crumb in your knapsack. First, try to find food for yourself - mushrooms, berries … And in vain, says the master of sports in tourism G. Ryzhavsky (the conversation took place in 1986 - ed. Kramola). He, the organizer of 2 extraordinary hikes, is convinced that a person can do without food for a long time without the slightest harm to health.

The first campaign took place in 1981. It was attended by nine guys and two ladies - different in age and physical characteristics. They walked along the Valdai Upland for 14 days on complete starvation, consuming only water. During this period, the travelers lost from 13 to 18 percent of their initial weight, but were active and could continue their own path. Psychophysical tests carried out in the course of the experiment by its scientific advisers, candidates of medical sciences G. Bobenkov and V. Gurvich, assured not only the preservation of the usual state of the participants, but even its improvement.

The second "hungry" trip was carried out by a new group of 7 enthusiasts - on kayaks along the Ural river Belosnezhnaya. 15 days without food. The result is the same. The travel was not detrimental to any of the participants.

- So, two weeks on the same water? - check with G. Ryzhavsky.

- Yes, - he confirms. - But for contrast - in all forms: raw, boiled, cool, hot. True, one exception was made in the 2nd campaign. The youngest of the participants, student Sasha Bombin, is 18 years old. They built a "table", laid out napkins, uttered toast and drank a bottle of narzan. One in seven.

- What about the unfortunate exhaustion, loss of strength, starvation?

- Most of us have heard about the tragedies of recognizable travelers, people who happened to be in an extreme situation and died of hunger. I myself had to face a similar problem. A couple of years ago, I walked with a group in the Northern Urals. In the upper reaches, a small river suddenly bumped into two young men who were sitting under a tree and looking at us with indifferent eyes. They didn't even realize right away that they were saved. The guys had guns, they counted on hunting and therefore did not take food. The hunt was unsuccessful, the guys did not eat anything for a number of days and literally died of hunger. All this gave me a clue to the idea of "hunger" trips. Indeed, in the place of those young men, there could be at least some. The case, frankly, is not very rare. So I wanted to test it for myself, in order to find the correct line of behavior, to tell others about it.

- Well, after 2 weeks of fasting you didn’t look like dying at all …

- We even played football … The fact is that a healthy person can go without food for 30-40 days. The mechanism of hunger is essentially simple. For the first two or three days, a person who has stopped taking food, painfully wants to eat, feels a kind of weakness. But after the last remnants of food are digested and excreted, the body is rebuilt, internal reserves are opened. The feeling of hunger appears from a lack of carbohydrates. Many, probably, noticed: it is enough to eat a piece or two of sugar - an unspotted carbohydrate - hunger seems to recede. So, with a complete rejection of food, on the fourth or fifth day, fats and proteins, the supplies of which in the body are quite significant, begin to be partially processed into carbohydrates. A superbly new state comes: the body has switched to real internal nutrition, and the person does not experience hunger.

- Did your group have any special training?

- Yes, but not physical. The main condition of the experience was the role of the most ordinary city dwellers in it, while not all of them were even tourists. We were preparing for the campaign psychologically. They knew that a two-week fast would not do any harm. After the famous trip on a small boat across the ocean, Alain Bombard made a fundamental conclusion: it is not nature, but horror that kills a person. And we decided not to be afraid. In most cases, people in a similar experimental situation will panic. They are trying to find and eat at least something: berries, bird eggs, mushrooms, nuts, roots and fruits of various plants. With such "nutrition", malnutrition and, naturally, depletion of the body occurs. Go. however, it will not work for internal reserves, since there is no complete starvation. Here comes dystrophy, metabolic disorders.

- What are the practical results of the experience, and what can you recommend to those who suddenly unwittingly find themselves in your place?

- Two trips allowed us to create a method of life-saving fasting, which we proposed to specialists for training with tourism instructors. Obviously, during long trips, you need to anticipate all the precautions in advance. But, if a person is still lost, lost, the main thing is not to panic. Depending on the events, one should judge: expect help on the spot, or try to go out to people, to the nearest housing. If you decide to go, then do not forget to leave notches along the way. If you have food supplies with you, you do not need to crush them into pieces, stretch them. Continue to eat as usual, and then skip to complete fasting. Overcome the feeling of hunger and horror of the first days, apathy that can turn into horror. A small weakness will soon disappear by itself. Do not under any circumstances look for a substitute for real nutrition - it, as already mentioned, will only aggravate the state of the body. Do not waste your energy and time on this, but make sure that the internal resources are completely enough for four or even 5 weeks. Enough time to find a way to a home or to a large navigable river. Do not forget the well-known rule: after fasting, you cannot immediately gorge itself. You need to get used to food slowly, starting with juices and porridge.