| Say you were a person in 1846, and say you were on your way to California in a covered wagon. And say you took a new trail over the Sierra Nevada, one that wasn't so much a trail as a line on a map, and say you got snowed in, up there in the mountains. You are a member of the Donner Party! But don't worry. While you might think this is a death sentence, certain types of people fared better than others during this famous, tragic disaster. In his recent piece for WIRED, writer Cody Cassidy explores how you might make it out of the hills alive—and what got the group in trouble in the first place. As Cassidy notes, a lot of things had to go wrong for the group to get in such a mess. "At least a dozen times the Donner Party made 50/50 decisions, and every single time they lost the coin flip," he says. And, interestingly, the thing that the group is famous for—eating members who died—is something they came to reluctantly. "I think they're sometimes portrayed as cruel or even bloodthirsty," he notes, but that characterization is misguided. "Many of the Donners died rather than cannibalize, and it was really only when they began to watch their children starve that they began to eat those who had already died." The moral of the story: When things get desperate, you can save yourself with luck, some good choices—and a dose of grim pragmatism. Sarah Fallon | Deputy Editor, WIRED |
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