Russia’s ‘Cannibal Island’ was home to over 6,000 social outcasts who were eventually driven mad and ate each other… and is now the premise of Netflix film The Bad Batch
Officially called Nazino Island, the small Siberian island is the final resting place of around 4,000 Soviet settlers
THE poorest people in society are cast out into a lawless wilderness where they are left to go mad and forced to eat each other if they want to survive.
That's the premise of The Bad Batch, a new film coming to Netflix - but it also echoes the chilling, real-life events of a place known as Cannibal Island.
Officially called Nazino Island, the small Siberian island is the final resting place of around 4,000 Soviet settlers who had been exiled from society and left to fend for themselves.
Cast out by Joseph Stalin's Soviet government in 1933, the impoverished exiles had been deported from major cities like Moscow and Leningrad because they were deemed classless and socially harmful.
Prisoners, disabled people, the jobless and the very poor were among the 6114 outcasts who were abandoned on the island with little clothing and no shelter.
Labelled as "special settlers", the government stripped the exiles of their rights and tasked them with colonising the inhospitable reaches of Siberia.
With just a few tools for them to use, and only flour to eat, grim fates awaited the settlers who had been sent on this suicide mission.
By the end of the first day on the freezing island, 295 people had been buried, and it didn't take much longer before the outcasts started to turn on one another.
Cannibalism was rife, with the settlers' ill-equipped guards reporting that the exiles had started eating each other in the absence of any real food.
Meanwhile, the bodies of deportees who tried to escape using makeshift rafts would almost always wash back ashore after they had drowned.
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There were originally plans for 2,000,000 people to be resettled in this way - freeing up Soviet resources while also expanding the country's influence and production in Siberia.
The details of the horrific purge only emerged as part of the government's transparency campaign in 1988, although not much is known about what really happened on the island.
Today, what we do know about Cannibal Island - and the 4,000 people who died there - is echoed in The Bad Batch - the only real difference is the setting.
Starring Suki Waterhouse, Jason Moma and Jim Carey, the upcoming Netflix release depicts a twisted version of future America where undesirable people are exiled to the desert.
Those chosen to be cast out are branded with a tattoo and dumped in a fenced-off desert outside of Texas.
In the film, released in June, the wasteland where these doomed souls end up is not considered to be US territory, so exiles are free to commit crimes without fear of punishment.
Before long, survivors are forced to eat each other to survive, medicating themselves with hard drugs to get over the horror.
But while the film may leave viewers disgusted, it is the echoes of the true story of Cannibal Island which are truly disturbing.
Previously, we shared the chilling true story of the murderer who inspired Psycho and Silence of the Lambs.
We also told how a real-life killer clown murdered 33 people during his reign of terror.