From: dcrosgr@uoft02.utoledo.edu
Newsgroups: alt.war,soc.women,alt.war.vietnam
Subject: Donner Party, Survival Ratios?
Date: 7 Jan 93 09:36:28 EST
Organization: University of Toledo, Computer Services

In article <1993Jan7.021039.6855@msc.cornell.edu>, hillyard@msc.cornell.edu writes:
> From article <C0GBJo.110@panix.com>, by erover@panix.com (Elizabeth Rover):
>> In article <1993Jan5.225135.324@wetware.com> drieux@wetware.com (drieux, just drieux) writes:
> [...]
>> A recent study (ie: within the past year) of the Donner Party's failed
>> attempt to get from the east coast of the U.S. out to the west coast showed
>> that women tend to be better survivors than men. Discover Magazine wrote
>> this whole thing up, and I don't remember which issue it was, or the facts
>> of the expidition, but what it came down to was that they encountered a
>> horrible winter, and the men generally died before the women. Somehow,
>> someone, somewhere, disproved the old theory, that the men were chivalrous
>> and let the women eat the food, and took better care of the women than of
>> the men. The truth of the matter, in this case at least, is that, even
>> without training, the women had better endurance than the men. So, to say
>> that "a woman's survival rate would probably be about 2 or 3 seconds" is
>> not only unfounded, but unsubstantiatable. 
> 
> I find it quite easy to believe that a man would starve to death before a
> women would (Their main problem was lack of food.  The famous thing about
> the Donner party is that they ate the people who died); higher metabolism 
> and less fat storage after all.  But I am somewhat skeptical of common claim 
> that women have better endurance.  Looking at track and field (something with
> nice, objective performance ratings), the difference between men's and women's
> world class times are the same 10% from the 100m dash to the marathon.  Maybe 
> a marathon isn't long enough?  About a month ago I watched some Iron Man 
> Triathlon (x miles swimming, 112 biking and then a full marathon), the top men
> finished in 8 hours, the top women 10% later.  So when is this greater 
> endurance supposed to take effect?  [a quick note is that world class track 
> times are about 10% different, as you go down in ability the difference 
> widens, to about 20-30% for Div III times, for example.]
> 

Actually, stamina had nothing to do with the Donner Party survival rate. As the
article In Discover showed, as it broke down the statistics on who lived and
who died, there were three STRONG trends:

1. The young (uder 5) died. (Too great a surface area v. biomass, they didn't
starve to death, they froze to death.)

2. The old died. (No explanation needed.)

3. Those without family to help them died. (The majority of those who died were
single males who had no one to look out for them, and males who had relatives,
but because of the 'rescue' teams, became seperated from them. If you had
family with you, they would band together and try to sustain you until food
'became available'. If you didn't have family with you, as you started to
slip away, the clans would wait until you 'became available.'

The ONLY factor gender had to do with survival is there was only one woman
who was NOT part of a family. However, about half of the men were on their own.

If you want to try and find GENUINE examples of survival ratios, you would
probably need to look at something like the Warsaw ghettos, or seiges of
Lenningrad or Stalingrad, during WWII. However, be certain to take into account
the edicts of the Nazis (kill X number of men today) or the fact that 
women are less likely to be killed when you have an arbitrary male 'jailor' as
she can supply the 'guards' with a service that is more likely to be 
appealing than the male prisoner can. (Iraqis in Kuwait nothwithstanding, they
raped everyone and killed both genders with equal glee.)

You probably must look at the seige cities and then take into account the
starting numbers, the ending numbers, the women who died as a result of being
weakened by pregnancy, and the men who died as a result of fighting.

Good luck!
Newsgroups: alt.war,soc.women,alt.war.vietnam