History Main / WinterOfStarvation

* EatTheDog: Eating your beloved horse or dog is hard but it's still better than eating your friends.

* ''VideoGme/AgainstTheStorm'': Every year, the third and final season is The Storm, which doesn't have snow but is ''exponentially'' and supernaturally worse. Crops don't grow and you can't plant any[[note]]Your farmers can still work, but all they do is spread fertilizer so the soil has a small chance of boosting yields[[/note]], the negative environment modifiers for your run activate all at once[[note]]if Hostility is sufficiently high[[/note]], and worst of all, everyone is at their most miserable, taking a whopping 4 damage to their Resolve ''per Hostility level'' (which indicates how much the forest and its gods ''hate you''), which is the most common factor that will convince them to ScrewThisImOuttaHere.

* ''VideoGame/DarkestDungeonII'': The Crusader's backstory, as revealed through his Hero Shrines, reveal that he enlisted to earn money and thus protect his family from starvation. His first Hero Shrine shows a flashback of him struggling to reap crops as a farmer during a harsh winter.

* ''Literature/TheLeftHandOfDarkness'': While outlawed, Genly and Estraven resort to an 81-day, 800-mile trek across the polar ice in winter on starvation rations, a [[{{Mythopoeia}} literally legendary]] feat of physical and mental endurance. Estraven's careful planning and survival expertise see them through, even though their food runs out three days before they reach safety.

* The Great Ukrainian Famine, called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor Holodomor]], unfortunately known for being the greatest loss of life by a man-made famine in recorded history 3.5 to 5 million deaths. It took place between 1932 to 1933, and by most accounts, it literally emptied villages and towns making them almost ghost-like. Worst still, there are many reports from survivors from that time which agree that instances of cannibalism/necrophagy were so great that with certainty there were even more that have gone unreported.

* The Great Ukrainian Famine, called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor Holodomor]], unfortunately known for being the greatest loss of life by a man-made famine in recorded history -- NightmareFuel [[red:Warning]] -- [[spoiler:3.5 to 5 million deaths. It took place between 1932 to 1933, and by most accounts, it literally emptied villages and towns making them almost ghost-like. Worst still, there are many reports from survivors from that time which agree that instances of cannibalism/necrophagy were so great that with certainty there were even more that have gone unreported]].

* [https://w.wiki/956n "The Hard Winter,"]] or the winter of 1880-1881, was one of the worst on record for the American Plains, with non-stop blizzards from October of 1880 to April of 1881. Contemporary accounts refer to this as "The Hard Winter," "Snow Winter," and [[http://iagenweb.org/history/IAHistRec/1893_Jul.htm "Starvation Winter,"]] owing to the inability of supply trains to traverse the snow and reach remote frontier tows. Even in March of 1881, snowdrifts were higher than the trains. This winter is documented in Laura Ingalls Wilder's ''[[Literature/LittleHouseOnThePrairie The Long Winter]],'' a semi-autobiographical account of the family's time in De Smet, South Dakota (see "Literature").

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Winter_of_1880%E2%80%9381 "The Hard Winter,"]] or the winter of 1880-1881, was one of the worst on record for the American Plains, with non-stop blizzards from October of 1880 to April of 1881. Contemporary accounts refer to this as "The Hard Winter," "Snow Winter," and [[http://iagenweb.org/history/IAHistRec/1893_Jul.htm "Starvation Winter,"]] owing to the inability of supply trains to traverse the snow and reach remote frontier tows. Even in March of 1881, snowdrifts were higher than the trains. This winter is documented in Laura Ingalls Wilder's ''[[Literature/LittleHouseOnThePrairie The Long Winter]],'' a semi-autobiographical account of the family's time in De Smet, South Dakota (see "Literature").

* Music/{{Rush}}: In "Cygnus X-1 Book II: Music/{{Hemispheres}}", when the people start following Dionysus, they're too busy partying in the forest to think about storing food for the winter and are caught off guard when winter eventually comes and "[brings] wolves and cold starvation". This disillusions them to the Heart after they've already rejected the Mind.

* Music/{{Rush}}: In "Cygnus X-1 Book II: Music/{{Hemispheres}}", when the people start following Dionysus, they're too busy partying in the forest to think about storing food for the winter and are caught off guard when winter eventually comes and "[brings] wolves and cold starvation".

* ''VideoGame/DarkestDungeonII'': The Crusader's backstory, as revealed through his Hero Shrines, reveal that he enlisted to earn money and thus prevent his family from starvation. His first Hero Shrine shows a flashback of him struggling to reap crops as a farmer during a harsh winter.

Very much TruthInTelevision, especially in wartime. A good example from real life would be the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944-1945 Dutch Famine of 1944-1945]].

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad The Siege of Leningrad]] is the most lethal siege in all of history, and a large portion of its deaths were of the area's civilians, who mostly starved to death. The winter of 1941 and 1942 being one of the coldest in all of Europe for the 20th century may also have been a significant factor for many of the civilians that were too far away from food distribution considering starvation losses peaked in the winter time, though the freezing temperatures also facilitated quicker supply transportation into the city from the nearby Lake Ladoga freezing over. The degree of hunger the city faced led to [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty reports of cannibalism]], the prevalence of this reaching the point that the city's police were known to use the threat of throwing a suspect into a jail cell full of cannibals.[[note]]Despite this, the actual amount of cannibalism that is believed to have actually occurred during the siege is considered to be surprisingly low (some 2,000 people were arrested for it) considering the mass starvation and it was generally of the already-dead -- the murder of other civilians was far more likely to be for the purpose of just stealing their ration cards.[[/note]]

[[caption-width-right:350:[-''Hungry Years in Petrograd'', Ivan Vladimirov''-]]]

* Creator/JRRTolkien's ''Literature/TheFallOfGondolin'': Downplayed. Tuor and Voronwë must traverse Beleriand during the five-month-long Morgoth-summoned Fell Winter despite their scarce supplies. When they run into an Orc camp, close to his destination, Tuor is so hungry that he would not mind eat them, but he does not go through with it.
* ''Literature/AGirlFromYamhill'': Invoked; in her memoir, Creator/BeverlyCleary recounts an occasion in seventh grade when her writing teacher asked them to write a letter as if they were living in the time of George Washington, and she wrote a letter about killing her pet chicken to provide food for Washington's starving, freezing troops at Valley Forge. Her teacher praised her for using her imagination, while the rest of the class copied her poorly by writing about sacrificing pet lambs and calves for the troops. She felt contemptuous of them for copying her, especially since lambs and calves are born in the ''spring'', not the winter.

[[quoteright:1000:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/364315_sepik.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:1000:Some folks are luckier than others.\\
[--[[https://imgur.com/a/g2oI42Z Image]] by Blake Rottinger.--]]]

* ''{{ComicStrip/Peanuts}}'': Implied by the opening line to one of Snoopy's novels.

* Now is the winter of our ''discount tent''...

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_Forge# Valley Forge]] was one of many winter encampments that the continental retreat from the Philadelphia campaign. Staying there for six months, nearly 2,000 soldiers died of malnutrition or disease. The imagery of Valley Forge played a large part in American myth; images of a bitter cold, snow-blanketed encampment with American soldiers clinging to life through sheer patriotic determination have become commonplace decades after the revolution, with Valley Forge now seen as a symbol of American perseverance in the face of hard times.[[note]]In reality, the primary factor for Valley Forge's casualty rate was not the weather, but the chronic supply issues. Death rarely came from the temperatures alone, but due to the lack of clothes, equipment medicine, and food. The coldest of the winter encampments was Jockey Hollow, which endured the harshest of the winters, but miraculously only sustained 100 casualties.[[/note]]