Ghosts and demons. Vampires and witches. Zombies and mummies. Classic horror monsters share at least one thing in common. They’re all imaginary! We suspend disbelief when we see them on screen or in books, allowing ourselves to be scared, but we know they exist only in the theatre of the mind. Turn the T.V. off —Dracula’s as good as dead. Fictional scares don’t compare to the true horrors of real life.

AMC’s The Terror exemplifies the terror of existence through the fictionalized account of the 1845 Franklin expedition, in which two British navy ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were sent into the Canadian arctic in search of the northwest passage. The ships were frozen into the ice near King William Island, a region known today as Nunavut. After a year of waiting for the ice to melt, the ships were abandoned, and in 1848 the remaining crew set out across the frozen wasteland in search of salvation. They were never seen again.

In the series, the crews of Terror and Erebus are constantly hunted by a supernatural polar bear monster called Tuunbaq. The creature seems to be nature’s wrath incarnate, sent to scour Europeans from the frigid landscape. But the bear becomes almost incidental as the sailors face more insidious enemies: consumption, scurvy, lead poisoning, and the land itself.

Consumption

Tuberculosis, or consumption, is a bacterial disease that commonly affects the lungs and is spread from person to person through the air. It earned the name consumption because of the rapid weight loss associated with the disease. Other symptoms include chronic cough with blood filled mucus, fever, and night sweats. Tuberculosis is fatal if left untreated.

In the first episode of The Terror, Dr. Goodsir remarks that they’d already buried three sailors on Beechey Island. When archaeologists discovered those remains in the 1980’s, they concluded the men had indeed died of tuberculosis.

Scurvy

Scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C in the diet and was identified by the Egyptians as early as 1550BC. The first signs are often purplish bruises, followed by bleeding along the hairline and gums, tooth loss, skin lesions, the opening of previously healed wounds or scars, constant hunger, weakness, aching limbs and joints, and eventually—death.

Fortunately for the Franklin expedition, scurvy was nearly beaten by the time the ships departed from England in 1845. Each sailor was given a daily ration of lemon juice to ward off the disease. But as the expedition dragged on and rations ran low, it was only a matter of time before everyone felt its effects. Sailors died at their posts or keeled over on marches, never to rise again.

Lead Poisoning

The expedition was well provisioned with a three-year supply of tinned soup and vegetables as well as salt cured meat. Stephen Goldner, the man awarded the tinned food contract, was given a mere seven weeks to complete the order. In the rush to get it done, the tins were sloppily sealed with lead solder that contaminated the food within.

Symptoms of lead poisoning include nausea, diarrhea, numbness, mood disorders, abdominal pain, and inflammation of the brain. The latter being particularly dangerous in a survival situation as it effects the ability to think clearly and solve problems. Several of their bodies were exhumed, examined, and found to contain up to ten times the normal amount of lead in their bones.

The Arctic

The region surrounding King William Island has winter temperatures as low as -40°c, with only four months of the year—June to September—being above freezing. Prolonged exposure to severe cold can cause frostbite, hypothermia, and death.

In the show, sailors protect themselves from hypothermia by burning the oil used to fuel the ships turbines. But crewmen sent on hunting or scouting parties were still subject to the ravages of frostbite. This is starkly depicted in a scene where doctors casually snip off a sailors blackened, dead toes.

Can it get any worse?

Oh yes! All this amounts to increasingly bad decision making and impaired judgement as the sailors try to work through the challenges of surviving in the arctic. Civilization is discarded in the pursuit of survival; they turn on one another. Battling threats from within, and the forces of nature itself, they’re doomed to die.

What makes this story truly terrifying isn’t the supernatural polar bear monster. It’s the perilous lives of the sailors. It’s knowing real people suffered and died under some of the most unforgiving circumstances imaginable: lost, freezing, starving, poisoned, and diseased, with no hope of rescue.

That is the terror of existence.

Nicholas Kungl - A Professional Writing student at Algonquin College who has always been fascinated by the darker side of life. After all, what stares back at you from the abyss is ever so interesting, don’t you think? He spends his free time doing yoga, listening to music, and wandering green spaces with his dogs.