Survival at the edge: shipwreck, famine and siege, and the choices people made when nothing else was left. Told from survivors’ accounts, court records and archaeology, without sensationalism.
Each episode is a Short of about a minute on our YouTube channel @MacabreChronicle. Its companion article on this site holds what a minute cannot: the sources, a timeline and a “Documented / Disputed” box.
What this series covers
- Shipwrecks and survival at sea
- Famine and siege
- What archaeology adds to survivors’ accounts
- How courts and communities judged what happened
Episodes and articles
Oldest first. This list updates automatically as new episodes and articles are published. You can also browse the Desperate Measures archive, newest first.
Case pages
All case pages: Case pages index.
How we work
Every claim in this series is tied to a cited source. Read our Editorial Standards, and see the Corrections page for anything we have fixed.
More series in Dark History, Documented: Dark Medicine · Death Customs · Disaster Minute · Strange Justice.
