Every year on December 22nd, a group of people meet in Uruguay. They recall 72 cold days when they had to survive in the mountains, eating exclusively human flesh. Terrible huh?
But how could this have happened? This is actually a fairly well-known story, but I'll remind you of it now.
It happened in October 1972. The Uruguayan youth rugby team flew to Chile with friends and relatives, a total of 45 people with a crew. To fly from Uruguay to Chile on a small airplane, you first had to fly south over Argentina for a long time, go around the southern part of the Andes, and then fly north, because it is not safe to fly directly over the mountains.
However, the pilot turned to the wrong place to the north, the plane hit a mountain peak and fell to pieces (although many call it the professionalism of the pilots that they landed the plane so successfully in the mountains). The fuselage with all the passengers rolled down the snow like a sled down onto the plateau. During the crash, 12 people died, five more were missing. The next day they will be found dead.
On the plane with Nando flew his mother and younger sister. The mother died, and the sister was seriously injured and did not regain consciousness. Nando crawled over to his sister, hugged her and held her until she died - four nights and three days.
There is a saying: if a poor man gets married, the night is short. In other words, setbacks simply followed the passengers on the ill-fated flight. Moreover, they, who had never seen snow, were left without food, shelter and warm clothes in an absolutely deserted winter area at an altitude of 3600 meters. For three days, the living, along with the corpses, were trapped in snow in the cramped space of the remains of the aircraft. To save everyone, the aforementioned Parrado kicked out a small window in the cockpit. Three people died from wounds and frostbite in the following days. Of the 45 passengers, only 16 survived.
Promotional video:
They had a radio with an antenna and could listen to the news. On the eighth day after the accident, one of the radio stations reported that the search for the plane that had disappeared somewhere in the Andes, which lasted a week, was not crowned with success and was terminated. The white fuselage that protected the survivors from the wind was invisible against the background of white snow. To say that they are upset is to say nothing.
The survivors dragged the bodies of the dead aside, while they themselves crowded together to keep it warm. The fuselage protected them from the wind.
On the third day, one of the dead bodies began to move. The team's captain, Nando Parrado, who had been lying in the snow at a temperature of minus thirty-several dozen hours, woke up. The doctors who examined him later said that what saved him was precisely the fact that he was considered dead and put in the cold: such cryotherapy slowed down all processes in the body, and the cerebral hemorrhage, which arose after a head injury and caused a coma, stopped, and the brain managed recover. Nando's mental functions were not affected.
They had plenty of water - people melted snow on sheets of aluminum sheathing and poured water into bottles, and then kept them under their clothes, preventing the water from freezing. There was no food at all.
On the tenth day without food, Nando said to his friend Roberto: “I'm out of my mind. I look at the dead pilot, and I want to eat him. " To which Roberto said to him: “You are not crazy. Others think about it too."
They had to make a decision. If they hoped to survive, they would have to eat the bodies of their dead friends. If they chose not to touch the bodies, they would starve to death. They remembered the body of Christ and how in different tribes they eat the bodies of the dead in order to honor and receive their power. One guy could not step over himself. He never complained, and then died quietly. He weighed 24 kilograms at the time of his death.
Given the fact that there was nowhere to wait for salvation, the living decided to eat the dead. Not everyone found it easy. The survivors were Catholics, and the need to feed on human flesh offended their religious beliefs. In addition, many of the victims were relatives or close friends. Apparently, therefore, they decided to start the meal with a pilot who was not particularly known to anyone who was responsible for the accident.
A month and a half has passed since the accident. An avalanche came down from one of the nearest peaks and fell asleep. Eight more people were killed. Someone said: “For our loved ones, we have already died, and now we are also buried. Let's just sit here and die. " To which Nando said, “Oh no! I want to go back to my father. " He built something out of something for digging and gradually dug a tunnel out. By that time, sixteen of them remained alive.
Nando began organizing sorties to see how far one could get from the fuselage and return while it was daylight. It was very difficult to walk because of the thin air and because of the fact that they fell into the snow. They made snowshoes from pieces of suitcase lids, and things went better. During one of the expeditions, they found the tail of an airplane, and in it, among other things, a working camera. They took some photographs for those who might find them someday.
Before his death, the pilot of the plane said that in order to get out, one had to go west, there is Chile. He thought they were at the edge of the Andes, but in fact they were in the very heart of the mountains, in such a remote place that the peaks there do not have names. But they believed that Chile was in the west, and they had to go west. One has only to climb the nearest ridge, they believed, as green valleys and open spaces would open behind it.
Three of us went: Nando, Roberto and another guy. The ascent to the ridge took them three times longer than they expected. None of them had mountaineering training, they had no equipment. But one of the guys, Carlitos, made a sleeping bag out of the insulating interior upholstery of the plane.
But when they climbed the ridge, it turned out that behind it there were many others, no lower. Nando despaired. Roberto told him: "You and I have already experienced so much and accomplished together, let's take one more step - we will die together." They sent the third guy back to their own, to report what exactly can be seen from the ridge. And they themselves moved on. They walked nine days, and in that time covered thirty-seven miles, according to the map. But these were exceptionally long miles. Already hungry and emaciated, the guys still lost weight during this march - Nando lost 4 kg, and Roberto lost 8. They went down from the ridge into the valley and walked along its bottom. When they saw the border of the snow cover and the river flowing out from under it, their joy knew no bounds. It got warmer, the temperature rose above zero Celsius. The supplies of human flesh they took with themthawed and rotten. Roberto fell ill with dysentery and Nando practically dragged him on himself.
On the evening of the ninth day, Roberto saw a ranchero rider on the other side of the river. The next morning he saw them too, but he could not believe that in this wilderness two guys had come from somewhere, disheveled, terribly thin, frostbitten. The mountain stream made a terrible noise, and Nando and Roberto could not hear the rancheros, and he could not hear them. But the ranchero was very resourceful. He took a sheet of paper from a saddle bag, a coal from an extinguished fire, wrapped the paper with a coal in it to a stone, tied it with a string and threw it to the other side. Nando scribbled their story and request for help on a piece of paper, and the ranchero rode off. But before that, Nando and Roberto threw part of his supplies - bread and cheese. It was the seventy-first day since the accident.
The next day the ranchero returned with ten horsemen. Among them were journalists. Still, such a story - those who were considered dead, it turns out, are alive. There was an insert from the filming of that day in the film. “What did you eat there? "I would rather not answer that question." The news that Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa were alive came on the radio, and those who remained at the fuselage found new hope.
Roberto was sent to the hospital, and two rescue helicopters were sent in search of the remaining survivors. But the pilots said they couldn't find the fuselage just by verbal description. Nando had to fly in one of the helicopters as a navigator. They made out the fuselage only when it was three hundred meters away. All survivors were rescued.
And then, it seems, they were tried for cannibalism, but acquitted: after all, they did not kill to eat, but simply tried to survive. All sixteen are still alive. They meet every year and understand what matters in life and what doesn't. Some of them returned to the scene of the accident and took expeditions there for those who needed to see it with their own eyes. At the site of the accident, a monument is now erected to those twenty-nine who, after death, saved the lives of their comrades.
When Nando returned home, he found that his father could not bear the grief and, in order to be able to live on, got rid of all the belongings of his wife, son and youngest daughter. The only thing that reminded of Nando in the house was one of his photographs. But Nando did not lose heart, but started from scratch. He became a race car driver and later a businessman and what is called a motivational speaker.
Nando Parrado.
Since then, the story has received the appropriate name - "Miracle in the Andes". Nando Parrado, in collaboration with writer Pierce Paul Reed, published a book reconstructing his memories of the ill-fated Flight 571, which became a bestseller.
By the way, Nando himself, returning home, found that his father could not stand the grief and, in order to live on, got rid of all the things that belonged to his wife, son and youngest daughter. The only thing that reminded of Nando in the house was one of his photographs. But Nando did not lose heart. He became a race car driver and later a businessman and trainer.
- Aren't you afraid to fly?
- No, it gives me pleasure. I am a fan of technology, I have a racing car driver's license, I have participated in auto races in an Alfa Romeo. Powerful machines are my weakness.
- You survived a plane crash, and after that you live as if nothing happened?
- The catastrophe happened 36 years ago, but you need to look ahead.
- Then you were a student and played in the national rugby team. Your team flew to the next game in Chile.
- On October 13, 1972, our team, which consisted of young boys, who were then in a good mood and felt immortal, flew to Chile. We were interested in rugby, girls, cars, we craved pleasure. After 2 hours we found ourselves among the rubble, having collapsed from a height of 4000 meters.
- Did you receive serious injuries?
- I was unconscious until I woke up a few days later. Then I found out that my mother and both of my best friends did not survive that disaster. My sister was in a coma.
- Today you are reading lectures about that incident, why?
- I haven't talked about it for ten years, I was distracted by everyday worries, work, family, car racing. Later, the International Union of Young Entrepreneurs invited me to talk about this incident. Other invitations followed.
- In Hollywood, the thriller "Alive" was filmed about your fate (based on the script by British writer Pierce Paul Reed "Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors" (1974). Director Marshall invited Nando Parrado as a consultant - ed.). How close is this to the truth?
- In reality, everything was much worse. For an hour and a half film it is impossible to tell everything that we experienced in 72 days, when in a 30-degree frost in a place absolutely hostile to people, we desperately cried for help.
- After you were rescued, you were silent for a long time, in particular, that you had to eat the human meat of dead comrades.
- You are not right. At the very first press conference, we all honestly told about everything.
- How did it come to the point that you began to eat human flesh?
- We first started talking about this about 2 weeks after the plane crash. We found out on the radio that they were looking for us, but we were considered dead. All supplies have run out. We had only one alternative - to die. One night I asked a friend if we were going to eat pilot meat.
- How were you able to overcome disgust?
- We didn't think that there were people in front of us. You know, civilization has a very thin skin. Before the fear of death, you do not think about what cannot be imagined in a normal environment.
- The British "Sunday Times" at that time described the eerie place of the disaster: "Some of the frozen bodies are buried under the snow, inside the plane there are thin rags of meat, ready to eat."
- Some journalists tend to exaggerate. I am a journalist myself. All this is terrible to hear when you sit at home in front of the TV. But we need to understand our position. We barely survived the disaster, as if we lived in animals in one of the coldest places in the world, we had nothing to eat, and we also learned that no one has been looking for us for a long time. For us, it was tantamount to being shot. There was no way for us to be saved.
- Once you mentioned that the dead were your food.
“They donated their bodies to us. How many donors donate their blood or other organs to others?
- Besides hunger, did anything else torment you?
- Nothing, much worse than anything else was the certainty that we had completely died for everyone, if we did nothing.
- How did you and your friend decide to leave the others to seek help?
- It was a decision between two extremes. At first, only 33 of us survived. The rocks killed one after another, some died from loss of strength and infections, some were buried by an avalanche. It became clear to me: I did not want to die of inaction.
- What helped you survive this emotional drama?
- My father. When I got home, he said, “Nando, there is no need to look back. So you fought for your life, now you need to work, get married, pay taxes, make a bunch of mistakes. If you look around, you will only feel intense pain. " He was right. People go to a psychoanalyst and ask: "Why did this happen to me?" The psychologist has no answer to this.
- Do you have?
- Yes. It so happened that the pilot made a mistake. Everything is very simple.
The following film was shot about it: