Episode 638: The Crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571

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That's audible.com slash Wondery. Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid 2025.
2025 edition. It's our first episode.
It's not the first episode you're listening to in 2025 but it's our first recording from 2025 hey yo it is january 3rd second yeah it's the second check us out i woke up early i went on a walk on the treadmill. This bitch is in her resolution

era. I made breakfast.
And I never make breakfast. I made a new kind of breakfast for the kids.
I got up early. I made like a yummy little like breakfast sandwich in the oven.
Yeah, tell them about it it's like a it's like a yummy biscuity crescent roll with cheese and eggs. And then I also made them a yummy lunch.
Yeah, pizza rolls. Which I always make them lunch, obviously, and breakfast.
But I made some different ones. That's part of my resolution is to come up with more creative lunches for their school lunches.
I love that. I have so many resolutions this year.
And I'm going to nail all of them. We are.
We both are. We're lousy with resolutions.
We are. And I feel like I don't, I'm like drawing a blank if you've had a lot of resolutions in the past.
I usually don't make, like I'll, I'll be like, oh, I'm going to eat healthier. Mine are always very nonchalant.
But this year they're're chalant i am so chalant this year i feel very chalant same we're about to be chalant as fuck i got so many just visions for this year yeah and it's an it's not only a new year like calendar for you it's a new year of life for you because it was just alaina's birthday it was yeah yay it's. She's like 87 now.
I am not 87. It's crazy.
I am what I am. And that's all that you are.
That's all that I am. Bye bye.
Yeah. So we're excited.
It's the year of exciting things. Yeah.
Lots of things are going to evolve. Lots of things are going to get better.
Yeah. It's the year of like greatness yeah we're just i'm excited 2025 yeah it's here it's here baby it's here it's here it's here it's here it's finally here and we've been waiting for it because last year was shite it was poo poo and it wasn't even that's the thing like last year was not complete shit no you made the new york times bestsellers list number one on the new york that's been the dream since the beginning the dawn of time yeah i hit that i am forever happy and grateful for that that best year ever for that but it's like other stuff it was just a tough year we were we were swimming through the weeds baby yeah it was tough so that's like i was like waitressing again you could never have a a tough year.
We were swimming through the weeds, baby. Yeah, it was tough.
So that's the reason. I felt like I was like waitressing again.
You can never have a fully shit year or, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's not fully bad. No matter what, there's always blips of greatness in a year.
Of course, yeah. This year though, this year is going to be fucking awesome.
Hell yeah. No bad.
No poopoo caca. No poopoo caca.
like everybody manifest greatness for yourself because you can do it i started listening to the secret and i know it's like super woo but i'm into it okay i love that i think everyone should listen to it that's perfect yeah i'm only speaking about the things i want and the things i will have well that's just nice it is it's not even like woo that's just that's just nice nice it is. It's not even like, woo, that's just nice.
Nice. It's the law of attraction.
It's positivity, you know? Let's fucking go, girls. And honestly, we need more of it in this world right now.
Right? Because shit's popping off. Uh-huh.
But not in our life. And this will be way past the time now.
But like, New Orleans, we're thinking of, yeah. Yes.
And I know i know where it seems like we're we're far delayed from what that happened probably because again i have no fucking clue when this episode comes out but right now it's very fresh while we're recording it i posted some stuff on my instagram about like there's to be some blood donations and stuff happening.

I wish we could get this out sooner,

but you know.

But just know that no matter what,

we're thinking of New Orleans right now.

So with that being said,

let's get into.

That hair toss.

That hair toss.

She just whipped her hair out and she said,

with that being said,

and then she got comfy to tell the story.

Because whenever we do a recording, we both have this problem where we get so hot. So you immediately have to take a layer off.
I was immediately sweating. Toss your curls.
Well, we figured we would start off this. We didn't even plan this, but we're going to start the year off with a mostly survival story.
Hell yeah. Some people pass away in this.
Not great. Very tragic.
This story is brutal. It's tragic.
But it's also got this side of it that is like really inspiring, like really beautiful. These people came together and took care of each other.
We're talking about the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. You may know it as the case, the alive case.
There's a movie about it. There's a book about it.
I'm sure you know it for one particular aspect of it. But Dave and I are here.
To broaden your horizons. To tell you more about it because that is one very big aspect of it, obviously.
You know, the cannibalism is a big part of this. But when you hear the other shit that these people survived and the way that they like held on to each other and took care of each other and just immediately went into survival mode, they all like the mindset that everyone went into is like unbelievable.
Because it's horrifying. You would have to.
Yeah. But some people can't.
No, I could. I don't know that I could.
Yeah. It's like that.
And these people did. It's really, it's really, really a fascinating case.
So let's start back in 1971. The old Christians Club, which was an amateur Uruguayan rugby team, they charted a small plane to Chile to play in a championship game against the Chilean national team.
For most members of the Old Christians, the trip was honestly the first time they'd ever been on a plane and the first time they'd ever traveled far away from home. Oh, God.
This is not when they crash. Oh, OK.
They didn't end up winning the championship, but the trip was pretty exciting, pretty fun, pretty great. Everybody loved it.
So when they returned home, they were like, we got to start planning another trip for the next year. This was too much fun.
So by the time the next year came around, the team found themselves unfortunately not in the best position like last year for going to the nationals okay uh they'd been a little overconfident here causing them to lose the uruguayan championship and this is a quote to a team they considered inferior oh so i think the the cockiness got the best of them here uh the loss made the team's officers questioned whether honestly they wanted to invest the money in a trip for what they were considering a losing team at this point. But eventually they ended up being convinced that this was a good idea.
It was going to be fun. It was going to be great.
And in the fall of 1972, the members of the old Christians Club began planning their trip to Santiago, Chile. Despite their enthusiasm, there was some problems right away.
The cost of charting the small Fairchild FH-227D plane from the Uruguayan Air Force was approximately $1,600, which now is $12,000. I was going to say, I feel like in today's money that would be a lot.
Yeah. So in order to afford it, they were going to have to fill all 40 seats.
Now, they only had 19 people on their team. Oh.
So that's a problem. That's a big problem.
So they were faced with the very real possibility of having to cancel this trip. And so the members of the team started reaching out to friends, family, anyone they thought might be interested in taking a trip to Chile.
Okay. By the time the day of the flight had arrived, they had assembled a group of 40 passengers, which were including family members of the team, several students interested in visiting Chile, and one woman who was traveling to attend her daughter's wedding.
Now, around 6 a.m. on October 12th, 1972, the passengers started arriving at the Carrasco Airport to board the plane.
Everyone was super, like, light. The mood was light, you know, everyone's just excited.
It's like, this is a fun little trip. But they soon encountered another problem.
One person from their group, Gilberto Regulus, had not arrived. Okay.
Although it was a private flight, and obviously they didn't have, like, the strictest schedule, they had been informed that the flight would need to leave as early as possible to avoid bad weather. Oh, okay.
So they were put behind by him being late. The flight was finally able to leave a little after 8 a.m., piloted by two very experienced pilots who are actually from the Uruguayan Air Force.
Oh, wow. But because of the late start, the plane ran into the weather that made it impossible to pass through the Cordillera Range and into the Andes.
So they had to land the plane in Mendoza, Argentina, and wait till the following day. Okay.
Because they didn't want to go through that weather. Yeah, smart.
Especially going through a mountain range. Yeah, that could be wily.
Now, the pilots were not just concerned about the weather, though. There was this, like, super strict regulation against the Uruguayan Air Force, where they couldn't spend more than 24 hours on Argentinian soil.
Oh, shit. And if they did, they would get fined, like seriously fined, or they would get a more serious penalty.
It's like an international incident at that point. Like, it's not good.
Yeah. Now, under those circumstances, the pilots told the passengers to, you know, come back to the airport by 1 p.m.
and we'll get going. We got to get out of here.
But when they they arrived the pilots were nowhere to be seen instead several administrative delays caused them to be late they ended up missing the window to leave and having to wait until the next morning oh shit this is the flight by the way the amount of times that this got like derailed derailed when you look back on it, you're like, whoa. What was at play here? The next morning, everyone gathered at the airport only to find that the weather conditions over the Andes had not improved.
Oh, no. But the Uruguayans were under a tight time restriction to leave Argentina.
So the pilot and co-pilot, Julio Cesar Ferratas and Dante Hector Lagarara, decided that it was honestly better to probably face the inclement weather than risk a literal international incident. Yeah, I can get that.
I understand the thought process there. Because they're also very experienced pilots.
They're in the Air Force. They're probably thinking, okay, we can get through it.
It's going to be turbulent, but we'll get through that. It's a short flight.
Oh, but it's a small plane. Yeah.
And because, you know, they had to make the choice, the flight left Mendoza a little after 2 p.m. Okay.
Within a few minutes, the plane had reached 18,000 feet and was cruising between 20 and 60 knots. And they were thinking they were going to reach Santiago in honestly a little under two hours.
It was going to be super fast. That's a quick flight.
It was an older model plane, but it was equipped with an automatic direction finder, also known as an ADF, and a VHF omnidirectional range. Both of these things were critical for keeping the flight on course and staying in the proper airspace.
About an hour into the flight, the plane reached the Cordillera, and Lagarara dropped into a new air lane and switched frequencies to put them in contact with air traffic control in Santiago. Yeah.
So as he did this, they entered a patch of dense cloud cover, and so they ascended so that they could get better visibility over it. At this point, everything's going fine.
Flight is on schedule. Now at 3.21 p.m., Lagarara radioed Santiago to inform them that they were over the pass of Planchon and were about to fly over Carrico, which is a small town on the west side of the Andes.
A few minutes later, Lagarara radioed again to say the flight was making a slight right angle in order to course correct and keep on the right flight path. Unable to track the flight, Santiago's air traffic control took the co-pilot out his word because once they go out of that flight, like he can't track it.
Can't do anything, yeah. And he was like, you know what, basically basically air traffic control is like he's probably been accurately tracking the flight so they authorized him to descend to 10 000 feet and they began preparing for the descent okay now the plane had descended 3 000 feet and again it was going to be um descending 10 000 feet yeah so it went down 3 000 feet when they shifted from one air current to another, and that caused the plane to jump and shake as it moved to one from that current.
Can I just say I give you so much credit for telling this story as somebody with a fear of flying? Now, the reason I am okay with this is, one, we have different regulations. Yes.
And two, this is a smaller plane. Yeah.
And three, it's flying very close to a mountain range, and I have no plans to do that.

Yeah.

La Guerrera turned on the seatbelt signs and directed the passengers to go back to their seats just to avoid any injuries during the turbulence.

And a minute or two later, the plane lurched and dropped several hundred feet because it hit an air pocket.

Oh.

I think we've all kind of been in that scenario where it hits an air pocket oh i think we've all kind of been

in that scenario where it hits an air pocket and just go yep i'm not horrifying i can get in the vibe now that like turbulence won't make you fall out of the sky and like it's just jello air pockets can go fuck themselves because that has happened to me and i thought i was like this is it Like it's just, it's the worst feeling in the world to me.

Not fun.

And this one the several hundred feet drop the passengers were all very alarmed like they were panicked a little bit now the the young men on the rugby team started to chant hoping that the words would distract the other passengers from this like panicked moment i'm not going to lie. I would fucking hate that.
I would hate that so much. I'd cry.
I'd just start crying. They were doing it thinking, just listen to us.
Just listen to us. Don't pay attention to what's happening.
They're like... That's sweet.
And when you hear what they do, you're just like, damn. Thank goodness it was you guys who had to help each other.
You know what I mean? you were all there for each other now most of the members of the rugby team and the others who joined in their chant could not see out the window so they assumed turbulence was just you know this is bad turbulence but the people who could see out of the window they were like something's wrong here because that second bout of turbulence was caused by the air pocket, and it caused the plane to, again, drop out of the cloud cover that they had been above before. Right.
And so they could look out the window and see that they weren't seeing, you know, Chilean villages thousands of feet below them like they should have seen because they were descending. Uh-huh.
They saw the edges of the snow-covered Andes about 10 feet from the tip of the wing. Oh, no.
That's what I'm talking about. They were not supposed to be there.
Like, this was not supposed to be happening. They, 10 feet from the tip of the wing, they see the mountain.
Dude. Like, what do you, how do you come to any kind of resolution in that moment i give them all credit because i would have immediate cardiac arrest i think i would that would be it it would be curtains for me right away like that's it i see that it's gone you would think you were in a nightmare you'd think you're dreaming i i literally can't fathom this Like my brain won't allow me to go into this place where they had to be like i can't that's called preservation yes my brain is deep in self-preservation mode right now my imagination boop turned off like during this whole thing my imagination went i'm gonna take a holiday i'll see you after you It erased the whiteboard.
It went, bye. Like, you don't think any further into this.
Yeah. Now the passengers felt the plane lurch again as the co-pilot tried to make a rapid ascent, tried to lift back up so we could get the fuck out of this mountain valley, but it was too late.
The engine struggled to accommodate the ascent. The right wing tip caught the edge edge of the mountain and it tore the right wing from the plane and sent it flying back over the fuselage where it struck the tail and ripped the tail from the plane.
The wing hit the tail of the plane? Yep, and ripped it from the plane. As this happened, a flight attendant in a row of three young men from the team were torn what it was torn loose the whole row and they all got sucked out of the hole just gone so three of the the people on the team and one flight attendant were sucked right out of the hole immediately.
Oh my God. A few seconds later, the left wing caught on the other side of the mountain and it tore it that free and ripped a second hole in the fuselage.
Then a blade from the propeller broke free, ripped into the fuselage and it flew behind the plane. And so now the plane is flying with no tail and no wings.
It's just a fuselage. Just like free falling.
So it just started hurtling towards the mountain like free falling. Yeah, 100%.
Just like nose diving towards the mountain. Oh my fucking God.
It crashed into a steep valley, and luckily there was deep, deep snowfall that cushioned the plane.

Cushioned is probably a very optimistic word for what happened here.

Yeah, but I see what you mean.

But it would have been even worse if there was no snowfall here.

Oh, damn. Damn.
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And so many people did. Yeah.
And also, they said because it was going approximately 230 miles an hour when it hit the fucking mountain, if it had hit the floor, the ground, it would have just obliterated the fuselage. Right.
There would have been nothing left of anybody or anything. But because of the snow, it at least cushioned it enough that it didn't obliterate.
It really just like all the stops along the way and all the there's some kind of weird thing going on. Some vibe going on.
I don't know what it is. But before the plane hit the snow, two more young men were ripped out of the side.
But the rest of the passengers were all buckled into their seats. Once the fuselage hit the ground, the speed caused the plane to slide down the valley as it was like losing momentum.
And the crash caused tons of the rows of seats in the plane to become unsecured from the floor. And as it's flying down the valley, skidding down the valley, the rows are shifting forward, and they crushed many of the passengers between seats.
Oh, my God. So several of the passengers who fucking survived the crash were killed because they were crushed by the twisted metal and plastic in the slide on the way down the mountains.
Oh, my. And then a bunch more got way more injured in this as well.
Of course, yeah. And finally, the plane came to a stop.
Okay. Now, Roberto Canessa, who was a medical student who'd booked the cheap flight for a short vacation in Chile.
Oh. Yep.
He was among one of the first people to wake up in the plane because they were all gone. Yeah, of course.
In its slide down the mountain, the fuselage had shifted and come to a stop on its side, so it tossed the bodies of living people and dead people throughout the interior of the fuselage. Oh, God.
So, Kanessa quickly located his friend Daniel Maspons and helped to free him from his seat. And then they started making their way through the plane looking for survivors.
And Roberto Canessa is a medical student, so he's trying to think of anything he can do to help anybody. But when some of the survivors made their way out of the plane for the first time, They found themselves in the scariest scenario you can possibly imagine.
Complete isolation. They were surrounded by mountain walls on three sides.
Stop. And then the one open side looked straight down into a valley.
Oh, God. And they said it looked like it went on for miles.
Like, just gone. There's no way out.
Everywhere they looked, they said they saw ice saw ice snow and they couldn't tell whether it was i mean does it was dozens and dozens of feet deep in in places yeah and because they hadn't planned on being in any cold temperatures they're going to chile from argentine like what all of the passengers had dressed in warm weather clothing of course so the none of them were prepared for the literal sub-zero temperatures outside not me packing my fucking park on every flight i go on from this day forward now once outside two of the rugby team members spotted their friend carlos valetta and this is very sad a few yards from the plane and neither of them knew how carlos had come to be so far outside of the plane. But he seemed confused and was walking in the direction of that steep valley.
And so they all called out to him hoping that their voices would bring him back towards them. But it looked like he couldn't see them.
He couldn't hear them. And he just walked deeper and deeper into the snow.
And they were terrified that he was going to slip and fall into the valley so two of them tried to walk out there or like crawl out there to get to him but the snow was too deep and the incline was way too steep and so they only made it about a dozen or so feet before turning back and they all just watched helplessly as carlos stumbled in the snow and then he tried to stand but he slipped a second time and then he just tumbled into the valley below and they just had to watch this happen. That's horrific.
Yeah like their friend just watching this happen. Now back inside the plane the two medical students Roberto Canessa and Gustavo Serbino they did their best to try to injured people.
But it's like, you don't even have anything. They're medical students too.
They are not doctors yet. They only know what they know.
And then again, like you said, they don't have any medical supplies really. And also Zerbino was only in his first year of medical school and he was studying to be a psychologist.
So he wasn't super familiar with emergency medicine. He had some knowledge, but he was like, uh, it's not like a specialty.
Yeah. Aside from the six passengers who'd been thrown from the plane when it started to break apart, only three others died on impact.
Wow. Yeah.
That's insane. I know.
The rest suffered a wide range of injuries, many of which were pretty serious. Several people were unconscious.
And many, mostly all, were in a state of physical and or psychological shock. Yeah.
By the time one of the team members, Mancho Sabella, managed to reach the cockpit, there was really nothing they could do to help Ferratis or Lagarara, the pilot and co-pilot. Oh, that's so sad.
The nose of the plane had been absolutely crushed when the plane landed in the valley, and it crushed the instrument panels into the chests of the pilot and co-pilot. Oh, God.
They were still strapped into their seats. And looking through the windshield, Sabella could tell that Ferratas was definitely already dead, but Lagarara was still alive and was conscious.
Oh, God. At that point, what do you do? So they couldn't do anything.
Like literally, he was in bad shape. So there was really nothing they could do.
So Sabella grabbed several handfuls of snow and packed them into his handkerchief just to try to like comfort

Lagarrara as he died like just kind of like easing his wounds and stuff and just like

being there with him right and he just sat with him until he died like just like comforted him

wow but he had the entire instrument panel like think about a cockpit that whole thing was crushed

against him that's like my imagination will not yeah, Nando Parado was another passenger on the plane. And the first thing he said he remembered was absolute blackness.
He said, I'm dead. This is death.
It's so black that this is death. And he said when he woke up, he had no idea how much time had passed between the crash and him waking up.
That must be so strange. Like, so disorienting.
And then he said he was so thirsty. Like, all of a sudden, he was just so thirsty.
So he said, if I'm dead, I cannot crave water. So he was like, I'm alive.
So like, okay, that's my, like, moment. So he started coming to.
And he said that's when he realized his head was throbbing. And everybody was talking around him.
It's just like a cacophony of voices. The stress.
Yeah. And he said when he opened his eyes, he saw several of his friends' faces who were gathered around him.
And that's when he saw that they were surrounded by the wreckage. Like he had, he was like, what the fuck is going on? So he's like, okay, the plane crashed.
And they explained it to him. They said several passengers didn't make it.
And they said, unfortunately, including Nando's mother, Eugenia, and his best friend, Panchito Abel, and his sister, Susie, was very injured and was laying nearby on the floor of the cockpit. Oh, that's awful.
Like his whole family's there. Yeah.
And Nando remembered crawling over to where she was laying on the floor and curling up beside her. And he said, I stayed with her.
I melted snow with my mouth and gave her water because we didn't have anything. We didn't have cups.
Oh my God. He melted snow in his mouth to give to his dying sister.
That is a brother. Like, I was just like, damn.
Nando. And unfortunately, Susie would die from her injuries on the eighth day.
Oh, my God. And Nando said that he had a lot.
Like, later is when it really hit. Like, because what he said later was that he learned that at those moments, my brain didn't react to anything that was outside survival.
I couldn't cry. I didn't feel sorrow.
Yeah, you're in shock. And he said they buried her alongside the others the day after she died.
Oh, that's so sad. Now, the next day when Nando was able to stand and kind of walk, he went outside for the first time and was overwhelmed by what he saw.
He said, I saw the magnitude of the place we were in. It's immense.
It's huge. And I said, fuck, this is going to be horrible.
How are we going to get out of here? They won't find us here. I mean, I don't know, like, how would, I don't even know how they were found.
And well, and it's worse because he was right. There was very little chance of anyone having found them on that ridge because when the plane failed to arrive in Santiago, the Chilean Air Search and Rescue Service was alerted and they started searching by the air.
But the problem was the plane had come to rest at an elevation of roughly 12,000 feet and it was tucked into a valley, which is not very visible from the air anyway. And also the fuselage was white.
So it was just blending into the snow. I didn't even think of that.
And then what's even worse is that the search and rescue team were searching an area they believed the plane had been to based on the flight plan. They never knew that they had gone off course because they had just kind of trusted each other there.
Yeah. And then all hell broke loose.
Now, in the first few days after the crash, the survivors listened to updates on the plane's radio until after 10 days, they heard a report that the search was called off. Imagine hearing that.
No. Like of all they've gone through and all they've been through up to this point, then you hear that they they're not looking for you anymore.
Because you would just think, I'm going to die here. And what's wild is they didn't lose hope here.
That's remarkable. They somehow took this as like, okay, now our survival is in our hands.
So we need to do it. Like, what the fuck? I'm like, that is.
I mean, you go one of two ways there.

The strength that like talk about the human spirit right there. Like, damn.
Team building. Like the fact that they're just like, okay, so they're not looking for us anymore.
Now we got to do it. We're the only people who can get us out of here.
Now, Ramon Sabella said, thinking of the suffering that must have caused our families at home made us even more determined to survive. so knowing that the search was called off

and knowing their families were probably devastated

they were like, now we gotta get the fuck out of here. And of course, none of the survivors had any idea where they were or which direction that civilization even was.
And then you must be so scared to go in the wrong direction to end up even further lost. Exactly.
Now the first week or so on the mountain was spent taking stock of their resources, stabilizing the injured, and reinforcing what very little shelter they had inside the plane. But those that were physically able to spent most of their time doing their best to cover the holes in the side of the plane to keep out the sub-zero wind.
And then they also were piling and packing snow to create a barrier from the elements. And since it was supposed to be a short trip with a small number of people, there weren't many resources to even be had in that plane.
Chile has a warm climate, like we were talking about, so no one had clothing for cold weather. And other than some candy and other small snacks, there was no food on board.
And they couldn't find the luggage. The luggage was nowhere to be found.
The environment also offered very little in that respect. They were not going to find food out here.
It was freezing cold, super desolate. Other than some roots and some highly questionable berries, which they definitely all found out, there was very little to eat out there.
Oh, man. What they did have, though, was snow in every fucking direction.
So at least they thought, they were like, okay, well, we're not going to dehydrate. Yeah.
Like, we always have water. We can always just eat snow and melt snow.
How long can you go without food? How many days? I got to Google it. I don't know how many days you I know.
I can't remember which one is longer. It's definitely food.
It's food, right? Yeah. You can go longer without food than water, I think.
You dehydrate wicked quick. Yeah.
That's, yeah. It says, so the body's response to not eating can be broken down into three phases.
Phase one, the body uses its stored glucose and glycogen, which usually happens within 24 hours. Then phase two, your body breaks down fat to create glucose and ketone bodies to fuel the brain, which we were just saying, these are athletes.
They don't have a high body fat percentage. And then phase three, the body breaks down muscle tissue to convert amino acids to glucose.
This phase is called protein wasting and can be fatal if protein loss is over 50%. Damn, that's crazy.
And just think of how weak you would feel. Oh, yeah.
And you're just trying to survive. Literally survive.
And the snow thing, like that was like, to them, it was a blessing. They were like, we are surrounded by snow.
We will not dehydrate. That is like one of the biggest problems that we would have had.
Yes. Solved.
So at least we have that. And they're all like, it's again, the way they're looking at the situation, like these people had the best mindset you could possibly imagine.
But it also became kind of a curse because the snow kept them hydrated, but the temperature of the snow made it difficult to consume at all because it would burn their mouths and throats. It was so cold.
Oh, God. Now, the days were obviously exhausting.
They were challenging. But the nights.
I can't imagine. The nights were brutal.
Because it's so much colder. Yeah.
Those, anybody who was, you know, feeling strong physically or honestly, like mentally, did their best to keep up the spirits of those that were injured. And those who'd lost hope, you know, they were trying to make them believe that they could get out of here.
They would tell them stories to pass the time. They would just sing to distract them, like anything.
And with nothing but the cloth from the seats to protect them from the cold, all of the survivors huddled close to one another during the night, just like in one big pile in the fuselage.

Oh, God.

Like relying on body heat to keep them from freezing.

And during the night, their clothing and hair would freeze, like every single night. And they would take turns punching each other's arms and legs to improve circulation.
Oh, my God. And when they became too exhausted to actually hit each other, they would then get as close as possible to each other and just try to breathe like hot breath on each other.
Wow. That's a fucking nightmare.
Like, what? Like, just to take care of your fellow human like that, though. Yeah.
Like. And just not give up.
Like. Wow.
And within a few weeks, everything that he had even remotely passed as food had been eaten. Was gone, yeah.
And the remaining survivors were looking at starvation. They were like, we might die of starvation.
We've survived this far, and we're going to starve to death out here. And in the days immediately following the crash, they stuck to very strict rations for everyone.
A scrap of and they said from alive, which is a very interesting book. I highly recommend it.
We'll definitely link in the show notes. They said a scrap of chocolate, a cap full of wine and a teaspoon of jam or tinned fish every for the day.
And when that ran out, some tried to eat the leather straps from any of the seats or luggage that they like pieces that they could find, but they couldn't eat it. No.
Now it was Nando Parado who first suggested that they consider eating the meat from the bodies of the dead. He later said, I didn't have any doubts.
I had arrived at the conclusion of my thoughts very clearly. No doubt.
This is the only way out. I mean, what else are you going to eat? I get it, man.
And if you're determined to survive at that point? There is no part of my dumb ass that's going to sit here and say to you that after weeks, after a fucking plane crash that I survived on the fucking Andes, that I'm not going to think about eating a dead body. I'm not going to sit here with any kind of fucking like that.

And it's also like you're kind of in the perfect equation

because they're not only, they're preserved.

They're preserved.

Because of the snow.

And what are you going to do?

What else do you do?

What do you do at this point?

Like, I get it.

I get what they did.

Yeah, I do too.

It's totally fine if, you know, if you don't.

But I just can't presume to say that I would, oh, I would certainly not do that. Like, I don't fucking know.
I hope I never have to know that. None of us know because we weren't there and we haven't.
Sounds like an awful experience. Yeah.
The worst kind of experience I can possibly conjure and can't even in my brain. And think of the hungriest you've ever been.
And then multiply that six gajillion literally like no you have to eat yeah you're gonna lose your fucking mind otherwise exactly and like you said they had not begun to decompose because they were laying out and other than you know there being quite a strong social taboo around cannibalism there was really no other argument that had. Like, everybody was like, that's really, it's all really just like ethical kind of thing, like moral stuff.
Which would be hard, I'm sure, to get through. Of course, I can't even fathom this discussion.
To find yourself in that situation. Can't even fathom this discussion.
But I get why it got brought up. Uh-huh.
And again, not a lot, and this decision was not made lightly. No, of course.
These people did not just go like, oh, shit, why don't we eat our friends? That's not what they did. It's everybody's family members and friends.
They did not come to this as just like, whatever, we might as well. This is desperation.
Yeah, and self-preservation. And Roberto Canessa led the discussion and he very much argued his point from his position as a medical student.
He said to them, it is meat. That's all it is.
The souls have left their bodies are in heaven with God. All that is left here are the carcasses, which are no more human beings than the dead flesh of the cattle we eat at home.
I mean, I get it. And I mean, he's just coming from like a very clinical, logical point of view and being like, these are not your loved ones.
Yeah. Your loved ones aren't in these shells anymore.
Right. Now, once the suggestion was raised to the rest of the survivors, the group spent nearly an entire day discussing it.
I'm sure. Amongst themselves before doing anything.
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Thank you, Zbiotics, for sponsoring this episode and our good times. In the years after the rescue, again, like I said before, this aspect of the story dominated the narrative and it overshadowed nearly every other part of their ordeal.
Of course. Which again, I know it's shocking.
I'm shocked by it. I'm fascinated by it.
Like, of course, that's the one part where you go, oh, but holy shit, there's so many other things that they did for each other and to survive this that is like, also unbelievably, incredibly, incredibly like remarkable outside of my realm of comprehension but it was the key to their survival at this point and it was again only a small part of the story that this story that has so many other things that definitely need to be known for sure uh parado later was said everybody that situation, you would have arrived at the same thought and it's easier than you think. Yeah.
Because he's probably said like when you're that hungry. That's the thing.
I can't imagine. I'm just thinking, like I said, of the hungriest I've ever been and then multiplying it to like the nth degree.
Think of that stomach ache you get when you are hungry. And it hurt, like it feels, you feel empty.
So they all also made a pact with each other that should any of them die before being rescued, their bodies were to be used as food to help the others survive. So they all made a fucking pact with each other that if I don't survive this, you're going to survive it because you're going to use my meat.
Wow. What a sentence.
My brain, like like won't i just can't fathom the ultimate selflessness it is like and it's just like and to have to have that discussion and to know if you die out here you're going to be eaten yeah like you're not going to be eaten that would hopefully comfort you in any like sense of the word if you word, if you were dying in that sense, is like, I'm going to keep my friends alive. I'm going to give them a hope.
And in a weird way, it's not even like I'm. Yeah, it's like, I agree with what he said.
This vessel that I'm walking around in will at least be used to hopefully get them out of here. Yeah.
Like, that's weird. I don't know's just that's wild it's some kind of logic you know and i agree like believe whatever you want but yeah when you're gone you're gone yeah i mean that's what i believe yeah it's just like there's there's something else there so it's like yeah it's and but again what a hard to fathom what a wildly difficult conversation to navigate that they must have had.

But, you know, they'd already gotten through the worst.

They had.

Now, after they'd come to an agreement, and it was, everybody came to the agreement,

a small group of the young men left the fuselage and walked to the area where they had put the bodies of the dead.

And they...

That must have been heavy.

They said they were all wildly uncomfortable, of wildly upset but they just knew what they had to do but none of them walked out there being like cool we're gonna go eat our friends like they were all horrifically yeah traumatized by this yeah but they reasoned that you know and this is a quote god wanted them to live and he had given them the means to do so in the dead bodies of their friends it would be wrong now to reject this gift of life because they were a little too squeamish okay it was decided that canessa because he was a medical student was probably the most appropriate person to cut the bodies because they didn't want to mutilate the bodies of their friends either and so they used a a piece of broken glass from the plane. I was wondering what they ended up using.
And he cut pieces of frozen flesh into 20 strips and laid them out on the roof of the plane to dry in the sun. And then he went back inside and let them all know, it's up there.
If you want to eat it, eat it. Okay.
It's there. All right.
Despite all of them being in the most profound state of hunger that you can possibly even conjure in your imagination, none of them made a move to get it.

You would not want to be the first person to make that move.

That's the thing.

But Knessa himself said he was going to try to set an example, try to make them all feel better about the whole thing because he knew they were all starving. He's like, you, you're starving.
And you're going to, and this is what we have to do. I'll be the one to start the whole thing.
And he went out and he got a piece from the roof. And, you know, he was the one that just a few hours earlier was like convincingly arguing that it was no different from the meat of the cattle back at home that they were accustomed to eating.
But it is because it's you. But he found himself like pretty much paralyzed when it came to actually eating the meat and

he had to force himself to bring his hand up and like shove it into his mouth.

Decades later, Ramon Sabella would recall this whole experience with the same way.

He said, of course, the idea of eating human flesh was terrible, repugnant.

It was hard to put in your mouth, but we got used to it. So none of them were like, yeah, it was great.
Like, thanks. Thanks a bunch, friends.
No, of course not. They're like, it was the fucking worst experience of my life.
Yeah. Duh.
And it's true. The food actually, and it's like remarkably nourishing, this sustenance.
Really? So it has a lot of, you know, we're full of vitamins and nutrients. So it's like this was, and it's meat.
It's got a lot to cure protein. So for the first time since the crash, several of these young men started feeling like, okay, I'm getting my strength back.
Like, I'm feeling like I can get through this. And because they were feeling physically stronger, their resolve was getting more strong.
So they were like, this is the gift that our friends have given us. Like, they wanted this.
You know what I mean? Like, that's how they had to look at it. They would have wanted this, yeah.
Now, having solved their biggest problem, starvation, they started discussing how they might get the fuck out of the Andes. After a couple of weeks in the mountains, they had actually kind of acclimated to their surroundings a little bit, and they started to learn things they should do, things they shouldn't do.
Parado said, we started to acclimate. You start to learn.
I started to learn how to walk in the snow properly. On day 12, a small group managed to climb several miles up the mountain, actually.
Wow. cropping of rock finally that had broken through the snow that they found one of the plane's wings and it was twisted scattered across the snow and with it they found five of their former traveling companions oh god gaston costamale alexis haoney guido magri joaquin ramirez and ramon martinez that must have been awful yeah Yeah.
They were, you know, preserved as well

because of the freezing temperatures,

but their faces were black,

which suggested that they had been burned

by the engines or the fuel

when they were ripped out of the plane.

Oh, my God.

Now, although they had discovered more of the wreckage

and the missing bodies of their friends,

they didn't really come out of the mountains

with anything else, unfortunately. They hadn't managed to gain any more insight of their friends, they didn't really come out of the mountains with anything else, unfortunately.

They hadn't managed to gain any more insight

into their location.

They hadn't found anything useful in the wreckage

that they had found.

And most importantly, they were now exhausted physically.

Literally trucked up a mountainside.

And they said if they thought they were going to be

hiking out of these mountains to go get help,

that short excursion proved that that was going to be a lot more difficult than they thought.

Maybe impossible. Yeah.
Now, by October 29th, the survivors had fallen into kind of like a routine at this point. They were keeping a schedule.
You have to. They were maintaining order.
It was like a little village. It's like survivor.
Yeah. and that day

October 29th

they had broken into smaller groups

and spent the morning cleaning the fuselage

cutting and drying meat, melting snow. And those who were still too weak were, you know, resting in hammock beds that they created from materials.
And for most of the day, it was unusually calm. But then later, the sky started getting darker.
And this wicked cold wind started whipping through.

And everyone, it was too cold for everyone to be outside. So they got into the fuselage all together.
And they spent the rest of the night just telling stories, trying to keep warm, chatting with each other about family, about what they're going to do when they get out of here. And then one by one, they drifted off to sleep.
Now, Roy Harley was laying awake on the floor, squeezed between Javier Methyl and Carlitos Piaz, when he felt this weird vibration run through the floor of the plane. And just seconds later, he heard what he described as the sound of metal falling to the ground.
And he jumped up to see what was happening, and he had a t-shirt covering his face to try to get away from the wind. But he'd only just stood up when he was hit by a wall of snow that buried him to his waist and nearly knocked him to the ground.
Is it an avalanche? When he pulled his shirt away from his face, he was horrified to see that the plane was just hit by a fucking avalanche and the entire fuselage was filled with snow. Densely packed snow.
It had knocked down all of the walls that they had built up and it had buried everyone who had been laying on the floor. So not only did these people survive the wildest plane crash of all time, but now they've been hit by a motherfucking avalanche.
And all the shit that they have spent weeks and weeks building to keep themselves together, gone. And all of the bodies, which is their food source, is now buried under how much snow? Mm-hmm.
Oh, my God. So, Roy.
You must question absolutely everything. Like how do you go...
After the avalanche, I'm like, how? How did you get the will? Because that would have been... I don't know how mentally I would have been able to get myself out of that.
No. So Roy is frantic.
He starts digging down into the snow to get any of his friends and manages to uncover Carlito' face. But the snow was packed too densely and he wasn't able to free any more of his body, just his face.
He knew there were others, so he left Carlitos where he was and started furiously digging around. And he kept seeing hands pop up.
So he's digging around the hands and he managed to first free Roberto Canessa, who immediately immediately started digging to free others and one by one they dug each other out of the snow which had begun to settle and was now forming a sheet of ice across the surface oh my god nando parado had also been laying on the floor alongside several others and was completely buried when the avalanche hit he later said said, which good news, I couldn't move. I was under rubble, but I could breathe.
And he said he laid buried in the snow for 30 minutes. And he would take shallow breaths to try to keep from suffocating.
How do you not hyperventilate? I have no idea. I would absolutely, without a doubt, hyperventilate.
Yeah. And he said after the 30 minutes, he said he just kind of like accepted that he was going to die buried in snow.
And then someone started scraping the ice and snow away from his face and hauled him out of the snow. Even I feel like I can't breathe just hearing this.
Yeah. And they just didn't give up on each other.
No. These people must have been lifelong friends after this.
Yes. Yes.
Spoiler alert. Yes.
And like after ripping each other, being buried in the snow, hit by an avalanche. By a motherfucking avalanche.
Being torn out of the snow. They all just immediately start digging for the other people.
They're not like taking a second to be like, oh my God, I just got hit by an avalanche. They're all just running on crazy adrenaline.

Outside the plane, there's a blizzard raging, by the way.

Stop it.

Inside, they're doing their best just to get everyone out of this fucking snow.

And in filling the plane with densely packed snow, the avalanche also blocked every exit.

And they were now trapped in the fuselage.

No.

Yep.

Buried to their waists in freezing snow. Oh my.
How did they not get hypothermia? I have no idea. And some, I mean, some of them most certainly did.
Yeah, of course. And they didn't know whether the weight of the snow on the top of the fuselage was enough to crush them.
They had no idea how much snow was on top of them. Oh my God.
Parado later said, we didn't know if we had enough air. We didn't know if we had 2 meters, 4 meters, or 50 meters of snow on top of them.
Oh my god. Parado later said we didn't know if we had enough

air. We didn't know if we had two meters, four meters, or 50 meters of snow on top of us.
They had no idea. And equally bad was the realization that not everyone had made it through the avalanche.
Some had been completely buried by the compact snow and others had been crushed by the falling debris from the makeshift wall. Oh.
Like, can you imagine? No. No.
Of the 27 survivors who laid down to sleep that night, eight died in the avalanche. Wow.
Those killed were Carlos Roque, Daniel Maspons, Juan Carlos Menendez, Liliana Methel, Gustavo Nicolich, Marcelo Perez, Enrique platero and diego storm were all killed in the avalanche sad now a few hours later a second avalanche struck no no yeah but the only good thing was that they had already been buried by the first one so it just kind of rolled over the already buried plane. Once it felt safe enough to move without triggering another avalanche, Nando used a cargo pole to punch a large hole through the roof of the plane, which allowed fresh air to enter through.
Wow. But while it was keeping them from being suffocated by this, they were still buried.

And even if they could get out of the plane, the blizzard conditions outside were going to kill them. Right.
Like, what do you do? I have no idea. The group spent four days buried in that plane, just waiting for the blizzard to pass.
Four days. Stop it.
Yeah. At night, they slept in just like a tangle with each other, again, punching each other's arms and legs to try to keep circulation up.
On the fourth day, when they were finally able to emerge from the plane, they forced themselves into the cockpit and squeezed past the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot who are still there. And then they spent hours working in 15-minute shifts to dig out and exit through the broken windshield of the cockpit.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
They managed to drag some of the bodies out through the tunnel they'd created, but those that were buried too deeply in the dense snow were just left where they died. In the week that followed, they worked tirelessly to clear out some of the snow so they would at least have like some protection from the elements.

But much of the interior was too densely packed with snow.

They couldn't even move it.

Wow.

With what little resources they had, now obliterated by an avalanche, and their shelter, I mean, seriously compromised, there were now 19 survivors and they had to make a fucking decision at this point. They were like, what do we do? We can't stay here.

If they were going to make it out of here alive, they were going to have to walk out.

Yeah.

So in the earliest days after the crash, several of the survivors started talking about walking

out of the mountains for help. Of course, that was always on everyone's mind.

Yeah.

The problem, of course, was that they didn't have any equipment. They didn't have any training necessary to make that kind of trek.
And they're on the side of a fucking mountain. And also they have no fucking idea where they are or what direction civilization is.
So they would take short hikes out of the valley just to see, like we talked about before, but again, those would only emphasize how unprepared they were to take such a trek. So once the danger of the future avalanches and snow drifts was here, they decided the only way out was for them to hike out.
So three of the strongest members of the remaining survivors, Parato, Canessa, and Antonia Visinton, volunteered to make the trip. And they started immediately preparing.
They weren't just going to go straight

out. They were going to prepare for it.
Now, this kind of journey would have been hard for the most experienced mountaineer to do. And even then, they would have been outfitted with like everything that you need, specialized climbing and hiking equipment, all the things you need.
Food. Yeah.
Water. And among all of this, they were also complete, these people are also completely unfamiliar with the terrain outside the valley.
So they were at huge risk for falling into hidden valleys and random crevasses in the earth, slipping off an ice plane, becoming buried in a snow drift. There's like any host of dangers out there.
And also they would have to do a certain amount of climbing over icy and rocky terrain, all of which they would have to do without climbing shoes, ice axes, any safety equipment, ropes. All I can do right now is think of the beginning of this episode when I was like, I woke up early and took a walk on my treadmill.
Wow. Wow.
Wow. Wow.
Wow. These people are like, I survived a plane crash, two avalanches and hiked outside of mountains that I don't even know where they were.
Yeah. With no equipment.
And I complained about like waking up early. But you know what? If this isn't motivation to get the fuck up and do some stuff you've been meaning to do.
My damn. Here you go.
Yeah. Parado said, I knew that when I gave the first step to leave the fuselage, I was not coming back.
This is a kamikaze expedition. I mean, yeah.
So the three men spent weeks preparing for this, gathering whatever supplies they could find. They made sleeping bags from sewn together cushions and fabric.
How did you, how'd they even sew anything together? No idea. I think it was like hand-tied kind of shit.
And they made a sled crafted out of suitcases, like pieces of suitcases that they had. Because I think they didn't have like, maybe they had like one or two pieces of luggage, but they did not.
They were missing quite a bit of luggage. Yeah.
They also spent the days consuming large amounts of fat and meat to try to, like, build up strength. Yeah.
They took short trips into the surrounding mountains, like, trying to see how they could build up their strength. And on one of those trips, they found the wreckage of the tail, the plane's tail, and all of the fucking luggage.
Oh, okay. Well, that's good.
They found the luggage. To them, this was like a fucking goldmine.
The ultimate sign to keep going. They got dry clothes, chocolate candies, a ski kit with poles they could use for the fucking hike.
Wow. Tell me they weren't meant to find that shit.
Dude, that just makes you believe that the universe fucking works for you a ski kit with a with poles that is so it's the secret it is that's wild like purest form like they said we're getting out of here yeah we're gonna figure it out we're gonna build up our stamina and they were not it didn't sound like they were negative in any way whatsoever and they all the shit they needed not all the shit but like most of the shit they needed came to them and it's like you know there were times of deep despair of course and deep hopelessness here i can't the likes of which probably most of us can never even understand or fathom or conjure in our minds no but i think that like what was important here was that they didn't let it consume them. Yeah.
They just said, we're getting out of here. We're going to figure out how to get out of here.
Hey, weirdos. I'm Mike Corey.
And like you, I'm drawn to true crime, creepy history, and all things spooky. If you particularly enjoyed Ash and Elena's coverage of the USS Indianapolis, where 900 sailors battled rough seas, sharks, dehydration, and madness in the open ocean, you need to check out my podcast, Against the Odds.
We dive deep into this survival story across four full episodes, revealing details you haven't heard yet. Each week on Against the Odds, we put you in the shoes of real survivors, from the Thai cave rescue to Somali pirate hostages to the Donner Party.
These aren't just headlines. They're incredible stories of human endurance.
Follow Against the odds on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to both Against the Odds and Morbid early and ad-free.
Start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Like for them to do these little trips to try to gain the strength and to prepare they weren't just like let's give it our best shot they were like oh no we're going we're getting the fuck out of here we're gonna make sure we are prepared and out of here i cannot wait to hear about the lives that they led it's wild they also in the luggage they found a bottle of rum.
You need that point many cartons of cigarettes nice bottles of coca-cola which holy shit a crisp coke after two avalanches oh my god i can't imagine how good those cokes oh my god but also you have to go so slow you can't just your body's not used to it yeah oh my god They also found a crate of moldy sandwiches, which at that point, eat away. Let's go.
That night, they camped at the site eating a pretty large meal. They had a feast that night.
And finishing it off with a dessert, they called it, which was a paste made of sugar, toothpaste, and rum. Oh god.
which you know you know, they're hungry. But this time, unfortunately, was not one just of hope and just of good things.
There was more tragedy to come. Two weeks after the avalanche, one of the survivors, Arturo Noguera, had become sick and started getting weaker as the days passed.
He became delirious and eventually fell into a coma and died on November 15th. Imagine, like, he got so far.
You get that far. That's awful.
Noguera's death was followed a few days later by Rafael Echeverrin, who died from an infection in his leg. Oh.
A few weeks after Echeverrin passed, Numa Tercati died in his sleep from sepsis. So it was, like, after the other.
And to get that barn to survive the crash, survive two avalanches, and then have that be the case, like... That's awful.
Now, by the time that Tercati had passed, the group had been stranded in the Andes for 61 days. 61 days.
And it was clear to the three volunteers that the longer they waited, the more likely it was that people were going to die. Yeah, they had to go.
So on the morning of December 12th, Parado, Canessa, and Visinton left the valley, headed to the west where they believed they would find help. Before leaving, they dressed in several layers of clothing because, again, they had found those fucking luggage things.
Yes. And even fashioned socks made of human skin.
They did this because they felt like it would keep their feet from getting soaked with water. Yeah.
Which would put them at risk for frostbite. Yeah.
Pretty smart. Smart.
Very macabre. Rough.
Very smart. Morbid.
Within a few days of hiking, it became clear to the three on the trip that this was going to be a lot harder than they thought it would be. And they thought it was going to be pretty fucking hard.
There were several sheer ice cliffs and rock walls to climb, all again with no equipment or experience. On the second night, Knessa and Parado suggested it might be better if Visinton returned to the plane because they said it would give them more food rations and increase the likelihood of getting help.
They were like, maybe we shouldn't have all three of us out here. So Visinton agreed.
He was like, you know what? Yeah. So he began the trek back to the plane while they continued west.
Imagine doing that all by yourself. No.
For nearly a week, Canessa and Parado hiked and climbed through the fucking Andes. At times, climbing nearly a thousand feet in one day.
Holy shit. That is twice the recommended daily climb for an experienced hiker.
That's insane. That just shows you how absolutely fucking determined they were.
They also were going through several bouts of altitude sickness, which is fucking awful. If you've ever been altitude sick, oh.
Now, on multiple occasions, they were deceived, too, by what looked like a short distance between one location and another, only to have it suddenly stretch out for miles and miles. Early in their trip, they spent days climbing thousands of feet up the mountain, too, to just look on the other side and find it completely impassable.
So, God. So to have to go all the way back down.
That's horrific. Now, after about a week of walking, the pair began to notice the environment around them started changing a little.
Okay. The once frozen terrain started to soften.
And then all of a sudden they started seeing signs of fucking life. I can't even imagine what that would feel like.
They saw an old campfire. That would be euphoric.
Animal manure. Stop it.
Eventually, they saw some cows. Dude, I would cry.
I would cry on those cows. Finally, on December 20th, Canessa and Perado reached a river and began following it until they saw the smoke from a campfire across the river.
Shut the fuck up. Then Canessa spotted two men by the fire, one standing, standing the other on a horse too weak to walk he just yelled for parado who ran to the edge of the water and immediately they were trying to catch the men's attention urging them to come to the edge of the water which the man did yeah and then but the noise of the rushing river made it impossible for them to hear each other stop it so the man across the way pulled out a piece of paper and wrote a message and then he wrapped it around a rock and tossed it to the other side.
Just the wherewithal of these people. I always say people are going to people.
Here's another reason. People are people.
In a good way. But in the good way, people are peopling.
Nando grabbed the rock and unwrapped the note, and it read, There is a man coming later that I told him to go. Tell me what you want.
And in response, Nando sat down and wrote this note. I come from a plane that fell in the mountains.
I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for 10 days.
I have a friend up there who is injured. In the plane, there are still 14 injured people.
We have to get out of here quickly, and we don't know how. We don't have any food.
We are weak. When are you coming? Oh.
and wrote SOS on the bottom of the note. Okay.
And then he threw it back to him. The man read the note slowly, then looked up at Nando and indicated that he understood.
Then he took a large chunk of bread from his bag and tossed it to them. People gonna motherfuckin' people.
People gonna people. Oh my God, can you imagine? This is what we needed to hear like in the beginning of the year.
Yes, truly. We didn't need another hopeless story of people being fucking terrible to each other.
We needed this. This is the energy to bring into 2025.
Imagine what that bread must have tasted like. Oh my god.
Wow. I can't even fathom.
Wow. I say I know I've said that a lot.
I can't. Fathoming is not something I can do during this episode.
I've said wow. I've said remarkable.
We're all using the same adjectives. And it was before he left to get help.
He was like, here's some bread. Please eat.
Nando rushed back to Canessa and they shared their food and news that after 69 days in the mountain, they were going to be saved. Now, it turned out that the man on the other side of the river was a local farmer named Sergio Catalan.
He lived high in the mountains. And after discovering Prado and Canessa by the river, he himself traveled 10 hours by mule to the nearest police station to get them help.
10 hours by mule. By mule himself.
And they must have been losing some kind of help. Yeah.
Hope at that point. Like not knowing if he's going to come back.
Because then it's, like, I'm assuming 10 hours back. Well, and then a few hours hours after he left they were discovered by another man on horseback who gave them more food and water then carefully he loaded them onto the back of his horse and brought them to his hut oh my god where he shared some cheese and gave them a place to lay down and rest oh people peopling people angeling right parado said Roberto was very weak.
He gave everything that he had. Everybody gave everything that they had.
Over the course of 10 days, the two men had traveled 37 miles. Oh, my God.
Under some of the most intense and bad conditions that you can imagine. Climbing hundreds of feet every single day.
And in fact, years later, when they discussed the trip with mountaineering experts, they were told that they, quote, achieved what they did because of their ignorance. Had you known what you were going to face, you would have never left the airplane.
You never knew what you were going to face, and that's why you made it. So they're literally like, had you known, no way you would have made that out.
But because you went in there completely ignorant and just said we're getting out yeah you did it the next day a helicopter arrived in the village and canessa and parado were presented with maps and asked to point where the plane had crashed but they indicated where the plane was and their rescuers were like no that's nearly 80 miles away in argentina like. Like, what are you talking about? It couldn't possibly be where it was.
So Nando was like, do you want me to get in the fucking helicopter and go show you? Despite everything that he had been through in a fucking aircraft, he was like, I'll get in the helicopter. The fact that that didn't even register in my brain after everything these people have been through, this guy offers to get in a helicopter.
Nando was like, I'll get in the helicopter so we can go get my friends because I need to get you to them. Wow.
They're safe. He's getting in there to get the rest of them.
He's like, I can't let you not get them. So I'm going to get in here.
That's insane. Despite what I've been through in the fucking air.
That's a fucking king right there. If he wanted to, he would and he did he wanted to he would and he did damn and what he said about it later when they finally got to the crash site he said three of my friends jumped over me like dogs kissing me and shouting oh it was a very surreal and emotional scene it was their first spark of being alive again wow the helicopter't accommodate everyone all at once.
So they had to leave a few survivors at the site and come back for them after the first group, which like, must have been the scariest because you're just like, please come back for me. Eventually, they did manage to rescue all 16 survivors who were taken to the hospital that were at the site, taken to the hospital in San Fernando, Chile, where they were treated for various injuries and severe malnutrition.
But the news of the rescue came as an absolute shock to everyone, particularly the families of the survivors. Oh, you must have just thought your family member was dead.
They were grieving them. It's been two months.
Even more surprising was the fact that according to their doctors, their survivors deemed to be despite all they what they went through in surprisingly good condition wow despite what they had been through like it you know relatively like you said we're full of vitamins and nutrients but although they had lost a significant amount of weight now at first the group appears to in the beginning they look like they kind of like minimize their ordeal to the press they did

like yeah they're all just like you know what it's fine so robert roberto canessa told a reporter

after the crash i looked to one side and there was my friend fernando i asked him if he was all right

and he said yes he said he only had some bruises wow the truth of what happened prada was unconscious

for several days and had sustained a head injury oh but he was just like, ah, I just had some roses. I looked over, my friend was fine, let's move on.
He was just like, ah, we don't need to talk about it. Because it probably didn't sink in for all of them right away.
Instead, none of them wanted to focus on the tragedy of the whole thing. Instead, they wanted to focus on their survival instincts.
We got out of here. We got out of there.
That's what matters here like none of them wanted like pity none of them wanted any of that they were like we got together we stayed together we worked together and we stayed alive together and they probably were like we're out of there now and we don't really want to think about it that much again well and i think they were literally like what you need to know is that we worked as a team and because we cared about our fellow human, that's why we're here.

Look where we are.

And Kinesa said, all who could do so worked.

The others prayed, but we all kept our faith.

Wow.

And again, who knows why they chose to minimize the extent of the trauma and injuries they sustained.

But the most glaring thing that was left out of their story, obviously, was how they had managed to avoid starvation. The press noted that they had melted snow to avoid dehydration and, you know, managed to avoid starvation by rationing, you know, what food was left on the plane.
And I understand why they wanted to leave this part out of the thing. You know, like why, that's not what should be focused on here.

But within a few days, Chilean officials had leaked the real explanation

for how the survivors had stayed alive.

So unnecessary.

Yeah, and the press, of course, sees the story.

Oh, yeah.

That's salacious.

The report said police sources said that after the food aboard the plane ran out,

the exhausted survivors ate one body every five days. And sources told journalists the rescuers quote found six cut up human bodies at the crash site which is like yeah that's true that is what happened and of course reporting on it would be priority because that's a very fascinating and horrifying part of it yeah because obviously cannibalism has been the subject of like horror and also fascination to the public for literal centuries.
So like you understand why this is like a massive part of this. And obviously it's like one of the biggest taboos you can conjure.
Of course. And again, they had good reason to keep that to themselves because of that.
In Alive, which again is the book that you guys should definitely read, by Piers Paul Reed, he said they thought they would be stoned in the streets. Like, they were scared.
But fortunately, while understandable, that feeling, they were wrong. That's not what they received.
They still claim they had a significant amount of food on board the plane. One survivor said that they thought they could survive if they rationed for another few weeks.
But the reality of their surviving on chocolate and other snacks for two months was just not reality. Not going to happen.
In the end, most people understood that under the circumstances, they had no other choice but to resort to eating meat. In his speeches about the experience, Ramon Sabella always asks the audience, would any of you not have done the same thing? And he has yet to have anyone raise their hand.
Yeah, that would be such a fucking dick move. Imagine looking at that man and being like, Nat, I let it.
You know somebody would. Fuck off.
In the years that followed, the survivor's story became honestly like a beacon of hope. Yeah.
And like the ability to triumph over the most extreme circumstances and challenges you can imagine. In 1974, Reed's book about the experience, Alive, the Stories of the Andes Survivors, was released.
Much acclaimed. To this day, people know that book.
and this is it kind of like reignited the interest in learning more about this story and what they

went through. Oh, yeah.
Outside of just the cannibalism kind of thing. Right.
Knessa said of the whole like fame that came with this story, he said, there's a difference in how you feel you are and how others see you. And he said he was surprised at how little judgment they had received for their actions.
And he was also kind of shocked by the attention they were getting for surviving the whole thing, which I was like, dude. Like, the fact that you don't know what you've done.
Now, in the decades since the crash, the survivors have all gone on to live very productive lives. Yes.
None of them want to waste their good fortune. Yeah.
Like all of them looked at it as like, this is a gift and I need not waste it. Nando Parada became a motivational speaker.
Nice. And has written a book and several articles about the whole thing.
Knessa went on to finish medical school. Yes.
Yep. And became a pediatric cardiologist.
Wow. Yeah.
He also has written and spoken extensively about the whole ordeal in the Andes. Many of the others have chosen to keep their lives a little more private.
Yeah, I could totally get that. They're kind of, they're doing the damn thing, but they're like, yep, I did it.
But they've all gone to find success in whatever they've done. Yay.
And every year, the remaining survivors get together on the anniversary of the crash, and they all gather in the salon that Roberto Canessa has built onto his home, specifically for the purpose of this yearly meeting. Shut the fuck up.
And I have never been happier to hear something like that. I was like yeah you do i love that like that's a bond that no one other than those 14 14 to 16 people yeah like that's like ever understand i'm just i can't imagine like imagine being in that room this like that feeling in that room must be insane and reminiscing like remember when you breathed your hot breath on me to keep me alive and like punched my leg to keep circulation until you were too exhausted my god and just the the trauma that they all share my god the trauma bond everybody beyond but like just and the fact that roberto canessa has like one gone on to become a pediatric cardiologist incredible when he was in medical school during that like good for him yes and then like built this specific little thing onto his home so that they can have their meetings every year like shut the fuck up that's beautiful it is it's so beautiful that is one of the gnarliest stories I've ever heard most tragic but most inspiring and like uplifting in the end and I had heard of that one and of course i mainly just heard that like they ate each other to stay alive but wow i did not know the details it is such an it is just an incredible story a plane crash and two motherfucking avalanches yeah in the middle of absolutely nowhere yep wow like and then the guy throwing them the bread oh my god that's the thing like it just is like and i like you look at the pictures oh yeah that they have from the crash site and everything it's unbelievable crazy truly unbelievable wow yeah well new year new us yeah if that doesn't tackle everything we ever dreamed of if that doesn't inspire you to like do whatever the fuck it is that you were thinking about doing or changing or fixing or getting better at or yeah releasing from your life yeah i'm going home to play my fucking electric keyboard i'm gonna figure that shit out hell yeah if those people can figure out how to fucking hike thousands of miles yeah out of a valley in the middle of the andes i can learn the the g chords fuck yeah you can let's go brother fuck yeah you can wow yeah wow wow wow i have nothing other than to say except that's all you can't speak at this point

so with that being said go crush your motherfucking day do it we hope you keep listening and we hope

you keep it weird but not so weird that you ever think you can't do anything ever again because

this story is proof that you could do legitimately anything literally Literally anything. No excuse.
Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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Hey, weirdos. I'm Lindsey Graham from the podcast American History Tellers.
And if you're still reeling from Ash and Elena's episode on the Boston molasses disaster and you want to dive even deeper, you're in luck. My show doesn't usually venture too far into the spooky or creepy, but we've dedicated two full episodes to uncovering fascinating details about this bizarre molasses catastrophe.
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