345: Their Plane Crashed & For 73 Days They Did The Unthinkable To Survive...
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Hey, what is up, everybody? And welcome back to Mile Higher Podcast, episode 304. I'm your host, Kendall. I'm Josh. And we are joined today. Janelle is not joining us today because this topic, it's a little much for her. So I told her it'd be in the best interest of her mental health to sit this one out. And so Tom decided that he would join us. We love having Tom. I know you guys love having Tom. And of course, we have the wonderful Ian.

What's up, guys? Guys, I am so excited for this episode. I think... Which shocks me. I know. I'm shocked, too, because this was, like, freaky for me at first, but I have been so engulfed in this story, so inspired over the last couple weeks that I think this might be my favorite episode we've ever done, potentially. Yeah.

Because I have moved. I'm a changed person. I'm never going to complain about shit again, especially not being cold because I've never actually been cold. I've realized that I'm so tired of hearing you complain about being cold. I'll be honest because I'm cold all the time. But now I really every day about it because we keep our room ice cold. Yeah. And you run fans in December. Yes. On full blast. Yeah.

And she's always like, I'm cold. Why do you do this to me? I'm so cold. I'm always like, I have to suffer. And I must say, since we started learning about this, those complaints have gone down. Because I'm like, I feel like a little bitch complaining about being cold. I've literally never been cold in my life. It's only 55 degrees, 60 degrees. It's not too bad. Okay, so here's the thing.

I have some rules when it comes to the type of true crime or like any type of coverage I will do. And I normally I will not do anything that involves cannibalism. It freaks me out so bad. So I was reelected.

not into the idea of doing this at first, but Josh and I got into the show Yellow Jackets, which I'm sure a lot of you have seen. It's very popular right now. It's an excellent show. Absolutely loved it. But I had to know if it was, you know, based on something. Loosely inspired, yeah. Yeah. It is very, very loosely inspired by what we were talking about today, which is the crashed Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, also known as the Alive Story. There's

several books that have been done on this um an older movie there's a newer movie now that came out in 2023 it's on netflix you guys should watch it i think it's won some awards too it's definitely done some festivals and yeah it's very very well done it was also in the running unless i'm not mistaken it was in the running for a lot of like uh

uh, like Academy and cans and stuff like that. It was making a lot of waves. As it should. I mean, and you just sent me the behind the scenes video too. I need to watch that. Um, but God, this is one of the most incredible stories I've ever heard. I feel like it's more, uh, well known amongst the, uh, boomer generation, older millennials, but the younger crowds, I don't think have heard this story. And then

It's interesting. People that I have talked about it with over the past couple of weeks always bring up, oh, yeah, they ate each other. The cannibal guys. Right. And there's so much more to this story than that. And that's why I've been able to not be bothered by this at all. I actually think it is one of the most beautiful and inspiring stories out there ever. It's certainly the most incredible.

uplifting cannibalism story out there for sure. Yeah. Like when I started the book, which is called Society in the Snow, there's a couple of books. Society of the Snow. Society of the Snow. That's the most recent one and it has accounts from all the survivors who are still alive today. And yeah, when I first started it, I was going into it thinking it's going to freak me out. It's

Can't tell you how many times I cried. I actually just listened to the book on Audible because I'm dyslexic, but it is so good. I highly, highly recommend it. And even if you are freaked out by cannibalism, stick it out. Listen to this episode. We're not going to get too much into that beyond survival. It's not even the worst part of this. Yes. One could argue. No, definitely not the worst part of it and not the most interesting part of the story at all. It's interesting that that's what resonates with people and stays in their mind is the cannibalism aspect, which I get because it's so

you know, out of the realm of... Well, it's pretty rare. Very rare. Very rare. You know, it's not a common thing these days, but I think it... And it's just the whole idea of it is pretty disturbing. Yeah. But it's different... Like, the reason that I was willing to talk about this is because these guys, it's not like they... In the Yellow Jacket show, they are...

like killing people and then eating them, like making sacrifice. There's nothing like that in this. The way they did it was very respectful, completely out of necessity, and they actually formed a way to get consent from each other. And it is just the most incredible story. I'm so excited. I think you could even use the word

it was a sacred ritual almost. You know, there was like a level of respect for one another in a more sacred sense because there is, you know, comparisons to

Communion and, you know, Christ dying on the cross, his body, his blood, you know, kind of a similar the Eucharist, all that kind of stuff kind of gets brought into it to help help them sort of justify their actions. Yes. For the cannibalism. Because they struggled with it. They didn't want to do it. I mean, we'll explain. They didn't want to do it at first. But they also got to the point where when they were talking amongst themselves and saying, you know, if I don't survive, I'd be dead.

like low-key offended if you guys didn't eat me. Like it'd be like dying in vain to not use all resources that are available. And that was the only resource that was available was human bodies. But telling you guys, this is just such an incredible story. These men are my fucking heroes. Truly. It's really hard to wrap your head around or even remotely put yourself in their shoes because nobody...

has, you know, even experienced mountaineers are like, how the hell did they do this? I mean, this is the Andes Mountains, one of the tallest mountain ranges in the world. We're talking below freezing temperatures day after day, 72 days on top of a mountain. 72 days. After a plane crash. And they were so resourceful. And what I thought was really beautiful is how kind they were to each other. They

They really took care of each other. And I think that that helped them to survive. And when we first started talking about this topic, I was telling Ian, you know, if that were me, I could never do it. I would never eat a human body. And now that I've read the book, I think I would. I think I would. I think I mean, again, I think that's one of the strengths of that book is that like, you know, he gets interviews with every single person. And you do understand their mindset. You do understand that it's like, for one, they waited forever.

Like six days before they even talked about it. Yeah. Like six days with no food at all. Small rations. Small. Right. Right. And it's like, I don't know, I feel like anyone in that position would. Yeah. Would at least consider it, you know, whether you go through with it or not. That's up to you, I'm sure. But I don't know. I think.

The way that it's described in good coverage of this story. Yeah, there's some bad coverage, too. Oh, yeah. It should make you more or less empathize with the decision. Oh, definitely. I think most people would understand. Right.

But yeah, I think maybe I would because I kept telling Ian I would be like, all right, someone push me off the mountain or like, yeah, just knife me. You know, I wouldn't even want to be out there trying to survive. But I'm like, maybe the challenge would be fun. Yeah. I'm like, if you're out there with your boys. Yeah. And you're just like, everyone's like, no, we're going to do this. Yeah. We have to work together.

Like, yeah, I'd be inspired. I'm definitely a flight kind of guy. I'm not a fight guy. So I think if there if if I had some encouragement that that would be a little different. Yeah. When you're not easily flighting from these mountains. No, no, no. You're not. You know, there's no escape, it seems. And so you're you're these guys are in their minds trapped and doomed to die. And in the most.

inhospitable conditions and the, you know, just the whole environment and the amount of death and trauma from, from the plane crash and all the things that unfold afterwards is just, it's so crazy. And I said this, you know, while we were going through prep for this is like,

You can't. This is so insane. It almost feels like a Hollywood movie. You know, some Hollywood director would have like cooked this up. You couldn't have written a better movie. Right. And that. But it's all real. It all happened. And it's unbelievable. Mm hmm. Everything they went through. I mean, it was just. Yeah. One of the things they went through is like our worst case scenario. Yeah. Yeah. For us. But they went through so many.

deadly events and saw so many horrific things. And to come out the other side is truly incredible. And come out the other side and live like amazing lives too. I'm so excited to tell you guys about them. So it's a story of death and a story of life. Yeah, it really is. And just the perspective of going through these events and how you come out the other side and process and how do you pick up the pieces and return to a normal life after you've been

In hell. Yeah. You know, in this frozen, icy hell. Yep. I don't know. I don't know how they did it. I mean, and so many survivalists, you know, or people that study

cases like this just can't understand how they survived. I think it's there have been or at least at this point in time, there had been 32 plane crashes in the Andes and they had never recovered a single survivor. Right. And I think and even like found wreckage, which I'm sure it was probably just covered by avalanches and

I mean, where they were is an impossible place for life, is how it's described. But anyway, we've babbled enough. Let's get into it. I'm so pumped. So how did this all begin, Kendall? Well, it begins on October 12th, 1972. Picture it, okay?

These boys were gearing up for their summer break at the end of rugby season, and the Old Christians Rugby Club from Montevideo, Uruguay, had planned a trip to Santiago, Chile, to play their final match against an English team. However, most of the boys were just really excited to have a vacation, to, you know, start off the end of their season. And as a reminder, south of the equator, the seasons are flipped. So in October, they are at the end of winter. So they are, you know, pumped for the summer ahead.

The team had actually done this trip before the previous year and had such a good time in Chile that the team captain, Marcelo Perez del Castillo, and Eduardo Strauch got to work immediately organizing the trip for the following year. Now, most of the boys were enrolled in the Stella Maris College, where the rugby team was formed, like Roberto Canessa, who was 19 at the time and in his second year of medical school. And some were recent graduates, working at esteemed jobs like Eduardo and Marcelo, who worked together in the same architecture firm.

Some of the boys came from a renowned background, like Carlitos Paez, whose father Carlos was a famous painter in Uruguay. Ornando Parado, whose father, a sailor, was a successful businessman who owned hardware stores and was a race car driver. Carlitos described his upbringing as, quote, spoiled. Ornando always said that they were, quote, raised in the sun and on the beaches of Monte Video.

To save money, Marcelo and Eduardo were able to charter a Uruguayan Air Force plane, a Fairchild F-227 for a fixed rate. With 45 passenger seats on board, the more people they could get to join, you know, the cheaper the flight would be. So members of the old Christians team contacted friends, family, and acquaintances to see if they'd be interested in joining, you know, to help drive that ticket price down. Eduardo reached out to his cousin, Daniel Fernandez, who had been out of school for about a decade and hadn't played rugby since then. Eduardo

Eduardo also convinced two of his other cousins, Adolfo Strauch and Daniel Shaw, saying that the Chilean dollar was failing and that they could, quote, live like millionaires while on vacation. Pancho Abal, who was 21 at the time and best friends with Nando Parado, convinced his family friends, Liliana and Javier Methel, to join them. Now, the Methels were considerably older than the rest of the group, but they decided to join the trip after an academic strike canceled classes Liliana was planning to attend.

So Nando's mother, Eugenia, his younger sister, Susie, were genuine fans of the old Christians club and wanted to follow them and see their last game of the season. Numa Turkati, who was 24 at the time and attended a different school, was convinced by his friends Alfredo Delgado, Gaston Costamaye, and Alfredo Sibbles, even though he had never met any of the other boys in his life.

And the plane was scheduled to leave on October 12, 1972, and the boys were set to arrive in Santiago only three hours after leaving Montevideo. However, the first setback came when their teammate Tito Regulas didn't arrive at the airport because he had actually spent the night partying at a casino and forgot to set his alarm, which was actually pretty lucky for him.

So with an empty seat on the charter plane, the 45th passenger ended up being a woman named Graziella Mariani. And she actually had a more expensive ticket book, but she urgently needed to get to Santiago for her daughter's wedding the next day. And with a cheaper ticket and a quicker arrival, Graziella decided to join the rowdy boys on their flight. The fairchild took off at around 8.05 a.m. and headed towards Santiago, Chile.

a flight that was only supposed to take three hours. The plane had to pass over the Andes mountain range to accomplish this arrival time with an average altitude of 13,000 feet. The tallest mountain in this area was Aconcagua, which is only 6,000 feet shorter than Everest, which Everest is what, 24,000, 26,000 square feet? Tom can do a quick check on that. I want to say it's, or maybe it's like 27,000 feet.

29,000 square feet. Whoa. So yeah, 8,800 meters. Wow. Yeah. And this, cause one of my first things that popped in my mind, I'm like, don't they just fly above the clouds? Wouldn't they be high enough that they get like, we've all been on flights, right? And you're up above the clouds. We fly over the Rocky mountains every time we go to California or the West coast. And no, this plane cannot fly that high. They're on like the worst plane possible for this.

Yeah, I don't know if I'd ever even want to step foot on a propeller plane. No. Hell no. I'm reading this story, no. There's something about the jet turbine engines that just provide some comfort. You know, they look fast. They look like they can get you, you know, as high as you need to go. But no, this plane cannot fly that high. Nope. So it's surprising they'd even allow them to fly over the mountains in this plane. Yeah. I mean, well, this was in the 70s. True. Like, jet propulsion was still sort of in, like, the...

The infant stage. Early phases, yeah. And they're trying to keep it cheap, too. You know, to charter a jet plane at this time would have cost a lot more. Right.

However, as the boys flew over Argentina, the flight attendant informed them that poor weather conditions would not allow them to cross the Andes and that they'd have to stay the night in Mendoza. This really upset the boys. You know, they're like, hey, this is going to cause us to lose one of our days of vacation. This is taking way longer. Nobody wants to sit on a plane for that long or be worse stuck at an airport. Yeah.

And more than that, there was political pressure. The weather didn't let up the next day, unfortunately, on Friday, October 13th, 1972. But because they were flying in a military plane, they weren't allowed to stay on Argentinian soil for more than 24 hours. And of course, the boys were getting very angsty. You know, they're they're like, we just want to get there already. We're ready to party. Yeah, let's go.

Even though the weather in the mountains was still terrible, they were pressuring the pilots to leave as soon as possible. Oh, God. Hindsight, man. Mm-hmm. At one point, an old man landed on the runway in a leaking old plane, and he told the boys that the mountain pass was, quote, perfect. And so the boys are like, all right, this guy says it's cool. Let's go. What are we waiting for? Mm-hmm. You know?

And even, quote unquote, calling them sissies. After this, the pilots have one last consultation, decided to leave immediately. That is pretty wild. They called the pilots sissies and that they they came to that pressure. They're like, all right, I'm not going to be a sissy. So here we go. These are also like these are military pilots, too. So I feel like that probably got under their skin. Yes. Extra style. Totally.

As a child of a military. Yeah. I was going to say it probably would like a bunch of boys are like, come on, man. What are you scared? Would your dad do it anyway? My dad is way too smart of a person. He's probably the chillest like person I've met. And he's a very intelligent individual. But contrasted to that with my brother in law.

The exact opposite. I mean, he's super smart, but he is one of the persons who just call him a derogatory name. He's like, all right, I'll do it. Might take a little more risk. Yeah. Versus doing what's safest, you know. But again, the pilots also saw this plane just land in two. Maybe like, you know, we won't really know until we get up there. Yeah, let's just take the risk. Let's just take the risk. Let's just see.

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So even though the boys were eager to hop back on flight 571, they didn't realize how dangerous it actually was. Aside from the Andes being a very treacherous area to pass, they were flying in one of the most dangerous aircrafts ever made. Of the 78 Fairchild FH-227s ever made, 23 had

had crashed, meaning 30% ended in crashes. And you can compare that to the odds of a commercial plane crash, which is approximately 0.00001%. And even more interesting is that it wasn't due to the mechanical issues with the plane, but the fact that the Fairchild did not have the space on board for a navigator, which totally blew my mind. So they normally just leave that role and most others to the pilot.

However, on flight 571, there was a navigator, though he couldn't fit in the cockpit. So he was actually hanging in the back. The plan was this. The pilots would fly south along the Andes above the cloud coverage to avoid the inclement weather. Then they would go west along the foothills until they reached Curacao in Chile and then turn the plane north until they reached Santiago. And for most of the flight, the mood was good. The vibes were high. They're excited. They're excited.

They're, you know, excited to be back in the air. They're running up and down the aisles or playing cards or like screaming to each other, just having a blast. But at 3.20 p.m., Gustavo Zerbino suddenly felt very uneasy. He got sort of a premonition feeling, as you could say, felt.

off about the whole thing, but he can explain why. So he stood up and had to walk around the plane to calm his nerves. And in the back three rows of the plane, he saw that the navigator was playing cards with members of his team, which gave him pause. Aren't we like flying over the Andes right now? Shouldn't he be figuring out the flight path as the navigator? So then he walks to the cockpit and found the pilots engaged in light conversation, drinking tea, just chilling and not even steering the plane.

And the pilots explained to Gustavo that the plane had autopilot and it practically flies itself. And that is a real quote. And then a few minutes later, the pilots informed air traffic controllers that they were passing over Curaco and were beginning their descent. However, when the pilots descended underneath the clouds, they didn't see Curaco. They only saw mountains in every direction. And suddenly the navigator stopped playing cards and rushed to the cockpit trying to figure out their location. Where the fuck are we?

The plane hit an air pocket and experienced some turbulence. A crew member told the boys to take their seats, but, you know, they're having a good time, you know, kind of partying on the plane a little bit. They weren't listening. Like a little turbulence, like a little roller coaster a little bit. Yeah, it can be kind of fun sometimes. But then they hit another, more forceful pocket that shook the entire plane. The boys then sat down and fastened their seatbelts. Then they hit another air pocket with seemingly no end, and the plane, quote, fell like a rock.

The boys could hear the pilots shout at one another, quote, give me more power. Gustavo and others felt like they would smash into the ceiling as the plane descended. So they clearly just dropped out of the sky. And, you know, in recent time, we've seen some of those videos on some commercial airliners that are just dropped. There was that viral clip where the guy was guy ended up in the luggage in the overhead compartment. I don't know how that happened, but.

I think it's hard to wrap your mind around what it would actually feel like to be just free falling like that. Scary. Terrifying. Scary as hell. Nightmare. The pilots saw that they were headed directly for a rocky cliff and could lift the aircraft enough to avoid a direct impact. However, the plane's left wing or belly clipped the mountain, breaking the fuselage in half. The fuselage fell onto the other side of the cliff, speeding down the snow-covered hill like a giant metal sled.

Those inside felt a sudden shift in temperature from the moderate-control plane to the blow-freezing tundra. And as the fuselage slid down the mountain, massive amounts of snow built up around the nose, enough to suddenly break the momentum. Everything inside of this plane shot forward, including some seats that even broke free.

At its fastest, the fuselage was sliding at around 220 miles per hour. So just picture what this is like. Holy shit. You're looking out the window. You're seeing mountains. You know something bad's about to happen. Fucking wing hits the side of the mountain. The plane breaks in half. You see your friends flying out the back, seats flying out the back. And then you're just on, you know, just on for the fucking ride when it's still in the air.

Oh, yeah. And they're they're feeling the temperature of the tundra at this point. Well, I mean, we've all seen clips of when a plane breaks open and, you know, the cabin depressurizes and then it's just it's like a vacuum. It's like, yeah, people's faces are like people are getting everything's getting sucked out. So if you're not strapped in with your seatbelt, you're gone. Everything else that's loose is gone. Yeah. And it's just a.

Yeah, it's probably one of the scariest things to experience. And then to land in the snow and then to just be riding in this thing like a fucking sled at that speed. And I mean, people are getting crushed, mangled. Yeah, seats are flipping forward.

So your body parts are getting mangled into the seats. Yeah. Yep. And there is no like, you know, they always tell you there's this, you know, you're supposed to like bend, crouch over and like kind of put like hold your head down into your lap if you're ever going down in a plane. Is that even true, Tom? Do you know anything about that? But I think they've kind of like debunked that, though. Yeah. But airlines, I think, used to say that or there was some education around if a plane ever go like takes an emergency landing, that you're supposed to like go into that sort of

fetal position almost in your seat, but that doesn't really do anything. I heard it's... I don't know anything about this, but I've heard it's worse. Remember when there was that whole conspiracy going? I remember Shane Dawson years ago talking about a conspiracy theory that they only have you do that to save your teeth to...

to identify you or something or there's an insurance thing oh I thought it was they just wanted you to die so they can't be sued yeah yeah what do you actually know about from what I understand debunking that is actually kind of a myth it does technically help because ideally you're not just hitting the ground you're obviously sliding into it so ideally you're hitting it soft enough that you're still going to jump up so you know hopefully you're not breaking your neck by hitting the ceiling above you and you're

you have a lower center of gravity so you don't move nearly as much. Okay. That being said, I think the reason why people say like some of the myth was or it was debunked as a myth is because

It's kind of hard to control a crashing plane. So, you know, I mean. Yeah. It has to be like perfect conditions for it. Like there's realistically like there's not much you can do. The plane's going down. Yeah. You know. So what's your ideal move? Should you do the cover your head? I sit up as straight as I can and hope I'm the first one to go. Okay. So that's your ideal move. No, no, no. Like it's.

I mean, obviously, like the situation like this, there's no like protocol for it because you have no idea what's happening. I would trust that like my my dad knows what he's doing. And he always like he always said the same thing where he's like, if you are in a plane and you know the plane is going down, the pilots are telling you it's going down. Like, you know, strap yourself down, give yourself as low of a center of gravity as possible, and then just like hope that like it hits correctly and you don't.

Die. Just pray. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. All right. Fair enough. But when the plane finally came to a stop, Roberto Canessa, who was in his second year of medical school, checked to make sure he hadn't lost any limbs or broken any bones. He then tried to get up, but realized that debris had pinned him down. Gustavo was able to free him, and the two asked, quote, what do we do now?

Gustavo was in his first year of medical school, so he and Roberto got to work tending to the injured amidst the crashed plane. Which truly, what a miracle that those two were there. Seriously, that had some medical knowledge. Yeah, that really could have been, I mean, one of the many things that saved them, some of them. Well, and I do believe that the team's like actual rugby doctor was also on board the flight, but he was in the tail section of the plane. Yeah, he went out the back. He went out immediately. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Gustavo and Roberto found some luggage that hadn't flown out of the cabin. So they got to work fashioning bandages and finding layers from the clothes inside.

Most of them had been wearing a T-shirt at the time of the crash, and suddenly they're outside in brutal 20 degree weather. Because they think they're going on a beach vacation. Yeah. That was one of the most mind blowing things to me about this whole story is that they were able to survive without jackets. Winter coats and layers. Most of the time when they're out there trekking around, they're just in like luck. Sometimes they would have two sweaters on, but just like trousers, normal clothes, no gloves. It's I can't even understand.

It's insane. Socks. Not so much. Not so much. I mean, they're going shorts and flip flops. You know, that's like where you're headed. They had a lot of pants and stuff, too. Yeah. Sweaters. But but that's certainly not Alpine tundra. No, no. They're not they're not prepared at all.

And as you can imagine, this scene is absolutely pure chaos. Amongst the dead, some of the boys hallucinated that they were still at home and stumbled into the snow. Roy Harley had become covered in blue liquid after his seat flung forward in the final crash. Nando Parado had entered a coma and Roberto feared that he was dead. When they realized that no, in fact, Nando is alive, they leaned him against the fuselage and tended to his sister who was also badly injured.

Sadly, his mother, Eugenia, had died on impact. And they became resourceful very quickly. Moncho and Gustavo fashioned the back of airplane seats into snowshoes and went around to check on the pilots. Now, the co-pilot was barely alive and had been pinned to the control panel. And the captain had unfortunately died on impact. But the co-pilot kept saying, we passed Curaco, we passed Curaco, which made the boys think that they were closer to the foothills of the Andes.

So, big mistake there. I mean, the guy was dying and... Well, I will say there were rumors, you know, they're trying to... After this whole event takes place, people are trying to piece together, like, what led to the crash. And a lot of people blame it on just the Fairchild's lack of a navigator spot within the cockpit itself. Yeah. There are also some theories that the pilot was letting the co-pilot take over for this one. And so, it...

When he's sitting there like repeating that line over and over again, it's probably because he was feeling like, oh, shit, this is my fault. Like we pass Kiriko. We pass Kiriko. There's no way we could be in the Andes right now. Yeah. He was wrong. So as night began to fall, they know shit's going to get a lot worse. It's going to get really, really cold. So Roberto used the luggage nets to fashion hammocks to suspend the boys above the freezing floor of the plane.

And that night, he huddled in the hammock with a boy named Koschei Enchiarte, whom he'd actually never met before, but they were getting close pretty quickly. So they held on to each other to conserve heat as the temperatures dropped below zero. And there was complete chaos inside the plane that night as the 29 survivors were packed inside the fuselage. And many of them are screaming.

They have to punch each other to maintain blood flow. The plane's engineer was walking around at one point asking for everyone's tickets in a moment of psychosis. I believe there was another boy, too, that he was confused about where they were and was asking everyone to see passports. That was also the engineer. That was the engineer as well. He was thinking like, you know, again, in a moment of psychosis, like, oh, I'm on the flight. This is an international flight. I got to ask everyone, like, where are your tickets and passports?

A lot of them described this night as just being pure hell. I mean, everyone was screaming out for their moms and crying and just it was absolute pandemonium. And then this is crazy. Someone accidentally bumped into Nando's body and his head actually slumped out onto the ice outside of the plane. And you would think this would be horrible because he's spending the whole night exposed to the cold, which actually...

actually saved his life because the best medical attention for a fractured skull would be ice against the wound, of course, which Nando had contact with all night. So this could have saved his life. And the next day, even though he was still in a coma, Roberto noticed his pulse was even stronger. So they had hope for him. And in the morning, the team captain, Marcelo, assigned roles to the survivors. Roberto, Gustavo, Diego, and Liliana were the medical team.

A few other boys were tasked with making the fuselage more livable, trying to make it a home, I guess. I don't even know how you do that. I mean, think about a fuselage, like how uncomfortable it would be. They're going to be spending a lot of time in there. Well, especially as Josh said, like a mangled fuselage at that. Like all the seats have been fucking torn out. Yeah.

It's not a home at all. No. Yeah, it got to the point where they had to take turns sleeping in different spots because it's so uncomfortable. But anyway, the Strauch cousins were given one of the most important roles, which was melting snow to make water because they had tried to eat the snow at first for hydration, but the boys quickly realized that this couldn't last because for one, the rough, icy snow was cutting up their lips and mouth and was really painful to even get into their mouth and it was causing...

these painful blisters. And then on top of that, the freezing cold lowered their body temperatures even more, putting them at further risk for hypothermia. So the cousins quickly realized that in the back of every seat on the plane, there was this metal sheet that could be bent. And so they bent the sheets to make sort of a funnel and then place the snow on top of them. And then in a matter of seconds, the snow would melt and drip into bottles and cups that they had found on the plane.

And within 15 minutes, they could make over a liter of pure water. So how quickly they pulled out of their trauma and shock and just got resourceful and figured this shit out is incredible to me. I was thinking about like I was in the mountains like while researching this, just I was at Winter Park, you know, I was on a little ski vacation. I was looking at every single peak and I was like,

Yeah, if I was trying to there, I don't think I could make it. I don't think I could make it. Like, hell no. You know, the fact that this is their first full day on the mountain and they're like, oh, these metal sheets, we can use these to make water. Yeah. How the fuck are you guys figuring that out so quickly? I know, right? Just from the chaos and the shock, like, I think I would be...

I would need at least 48 hours of just sitting there trying to process what I was seeing. All of their all these people that they know, their friends had just died around them. They're just, oh, my God. Then think, let's cut open the seats and find metal sheets. It's just it's so amazing to me. I think what you have to remember, though, is that for us humans, the two things

Our most important desires are food and water. And so if you've just gone through this and you're insanely thirsty, I don't know that you're going to think about everything else going around you other than I am just, I am so thirsty. I need to drink something. There's nothing to drink. I need you. It's that fight or flight. You forget everything else you've just been going through and you're like, I need to drink something. Yep.

I mean, my only party. Yeah, we've all been there thirsty. OK, well, we haven't been here. We've been thirsty. I've never been thirsty like this. But think about it. Have you ever been in the car? You're driving and you're like, oh, dang, I forgot to bring a drink with me.

And the more you drive, you're like, oh, I'm getting thirsty. And you will literally drive out of the way to go get a drink. That's such a bad example. I will do that. I will be driving down the highway. I'm like, oh, I couldn't make it there. Survival at its finest. There's a gas station. There's a, you know, there's a, you know, a Maverick gas station five miles off the route. I'm going, I'll go there because I want to drink, you know.

So. Explained it perfectly, Josh. Thank you. Now I get it. Obviously, I'm not trying to compare experiences here, but I'm just saying that when you're hungry and you're thirsty. You're going to stop at a gas station. Nothing else matters. Even our daughter, when she's thirsty, she goes crazy until you get her a drink. Well, no, she always has a drink. If she doesn't have the drink she wants, we have to have like three different drink options. But it's just, I'm just saying those essential necessities we need. I think it,

If it's so severe, you are going to block everything out and figure and you're going to become resourceful to figure out how do I get it? I just I don't know if I would have the strength. And then one thing I kept thinking about when reading this is and maybe I'm just being cynical is I don't know if I don't know if the millennial and.

Gen Z, Gen Alpha could survive this. I think the boomer generation was so much tougher than us. I unfortunately, I don't want to give too much credit, but yeah, I mean, I think part of it is like, you know, I was just talking with my friend last night because he got a flat tire and he was like, oh, how do I patch? I was like, just look up a YouTube tutorial.

Like, that's the thing is if we need to do anything with our hands, we're just we have to look up a YouTube tutorial. I also think the main thing with these guys is that they were on a rugby team. Like, they were already very used and a good rugby team at that. Like, they were used to giving one another orders and relying on each other to get the job done. So I think like just...

just a regular like lost style commercial plane going down. Right. That's a good point. I don't know. Different outcome here. Right. For sure. Rugby is like one of the toughest sports you could play. Right. These are tough, strong guys already going into it. And yeah, they don't have a second brain in their pockets. They've got everything up here. That's what I'm saying is we rely so heavily on technology that if we were in a situation like that, I don't think we would think that.

of ways to survive, but maybe I'm just being cynical. I think you're underestimating humans. Really? You think I could do it? I really do. I think you could stick a plane of sorority girls out in the forest and...

Some of them would figure it out eventually. You know, I think maybe I think when you're in this, your brain just it's like human nature. It's this primitive mind that exists underneath all this bullshit that's on top of it from our everyday life. There exists.

this primitive mind that clicks on in these situations where if you really feel like you're going to die, you are going to become resourceful. And obviously, if you have prior knowledge, you have survival skills, and you grew up camping or were a Boy Scout or Girl Scout, whatever it may be, that's going to aid you and get you to the solution faster. But I think

everybody has that will to survive in these circumstances. How long? That's a different debate. I'm just saying, like, if this was a group of, like, Twitch streamers, could they do it? XQC and...

Like some of the people I cover on the sesh, I don't know. I'm just like, I don't know. They built computers, so maybe... Not all of them built computers. I don't know. True. I don't know. I think obviously, but the difference with these guys going back to rugby players is that they're also used to being in pain. They are in pain all the time. It is a physical sport, no padding. They are beating on each other all the time, every day in practice and in games and matches. And so...

I think they are less, you know, less immune to feeling the extent of all the pain that they're going through. And they're able to fight through it probably better than most of us could because they're preconditioned from the rugby. So I think they already had that going for them. And so the pain is easier for them to ignore because by, you know,

Prior to this, that's all they were doing. And that's what I'm saying is like, I couldn't do this. I am too weak. There's no way I would survive. I can't handle pain. I got a blood blister from my daughter's closet door and I woke up the next day and showed Josh and was like, my hand is fucked. I think if you were faced with the

inevitable probability of passing, you would probably react very differently. Yeah. Maybe, yeah. I guess you just can't imagine unless you're there. You've been in it, yeah. You don't know. And I've never been in a life that I know of, I've never been in a life situation, but I mean, it's scientifically proven that, I mean, if you put somebody in a situation, that's why, like, a lot of people don't adhere to the, like, when you get lost and, like, force rangers are, like, stay put, that's the best way for us to find you. A lot of people will wander off because when you start getting...

hungry or thirsty to a point. I mean, your body doesn't want to go. Even if you want to go, your body doesn't want to go. So it's going to like part of the excuse for like a lot of people going into like a psychosis when they get lost, even though they haven't been lost long enough to be dehydrated or anything.

Is the brain like literally switching off a part of you to be like, no, activate your motor functions. Let's go find something like we can't stay here. You know, we're going to die. So, you know, and again, like I also have a friend who plays rugby and I've seen some of the hits that she takes. I'm like, how the fuck are you conscious? So, I mean, yeah, I can imagine that. Yeah, they're like, I'm OK. Like, I mean, case in point, some of them were immediately afterwards getting up and building shit. Yeah, immediately. Like, I'll be all right.

You know, then and they have, you know, internal bleeding going on and they're just like, we got to carry on. And they just it kicked in. And I think, too, the team atmosphere and the closeness of all of them also amplified their abilities and their motivations and energy, I think, in this circumstance, because they do that on the field.

they're picking each other up. Well, a lot of them weren't actually on the team. No, true. But just having that team mindset and being is helpful for these types of circumstances because those that are better off than others are going to step up for the sake of the team and the team being everyone who survived this plane crash. So I think really a lot of this comes back to the fact that these guys were

Probably in the best condition possible physically and mentally in a lot of ways to be able to survive and sustain themselves after such a traumatic event. In a weird way, it was almost the perfect group for this to have happened to. I know it sounds strange, but and especially because they had med students there and.

Yeah. And I mean, the fact that they're young, too, definitely helps. You know, they're in the best shape of their lives and it definitely gives you a better fighting chance. That's for sure. So true. Next, Roy Harley and others got to work sealing the exposed back of the plane to conserve warmth, especially during the better nights, because you want to try to trap as much of that warm energy.

warm air as possible. You don't want a bunch of giraffes coming through. And they did this using baggage, a metal slab, and a broken door. They also tried to get their bearings. The co-pilot who had died during the night had told them over and over again that they had passed Curaco. Then they checked the plane's altimeter, suggesting they were only 7,000 feet above sea level.

Due to this, they imagined that they were only in the foothills and that Chile was a day's walk down the mountain. The altimeter was broken and the co-pilot was gravely mistaken though. Assuming rescue would be close at hand, the boys created a large cross in the snow along with the letters SOS using their boots. Meanwhile, the remaining group of survivors scavenged through the luggage to try to find any supplies they possibly could. And they ended up finding some things, including broken plates,

intact and broken glass bottles, four cigarette lighters, an axe, a toolbox, a flashlight that required batteries, and a small radio that didn't work. They were even worse off when it came to food, though. They found four tins of canned food, some cookies, chocolate-covered peanuts, four chocolate bars, four bottles of wine, and a bottle of rum. Again, at this point, this tiny amount of food was supposed to sustain over 20 people that were still alive. That is...

Next to nothing. That is some airplane snacks, you know, to get you during a three hour period. You know, that's like enough to sustain you for that. If in modern days, Tom, do they if you're doing a more risky flight like this, do they pack rations and like emergency food supplies in case something like this happens nowadays? If I'm correct, which I may not be, I only know so much just through my dad, but.

But I'm pretty sure that nowadays, because we're just so much more efficient and I mean, we have like vacuum sealed bags and stuff like that now. Doomsday buckets. Yeah. I'm pretty sure most most planes like I even I know even my dad who right now flies like small like Cessna planes right now, like they almost always have like some amount of emergency rations. Like there's always something even in like fighter jet. Well, fighter jets make a little more sense because it's combat role efficient stuff. Right. And it's typically, yeah, there is some kind of like.

stowed away. But you're talking about the 70s. The Air Force One didn't really care all that much back then. They were also pretty new. They were only 20 plus, 30 plus years old at that point. They were still learning. And on top of that, it's the Fairchild, which is one of the most notoriously poor planes in existence. I mean, it's not prepped for anything. I think it's just kind of how it unfolded. I mean, you...

If you knew the statistics and knew these things, but I don't think they really did. You know, this was just the plane that was available. These were the guys that were going to get them there. This is what they could afford. So they just went with it. And it was should have been a it should have made it. That's the thing. This should have never happened. But it did. Yeah. So they weren't they weren't prepared at all.

But the rest of the day was spent burying the dead and preparing the fuselage for the next sub-zero night. On the morning of the second full day, October 15th, the boys heard the unmistakable noise of an airplane outside. Some boys dragged themselves outside to see a jet in the distance, along with a propeller plane and a twin engine plane. The boys saw the jet tip its wing, and Carlos Roche, the last surviving member of the flight crew, said that in aviation, the plane tipping meant that it had seen them.

And to many, this was like huge, huge moment of celebration. They're like, oh, validation. They've seen us. We're going to survive. They're going to come rescue us.

They returned to the fuselage, found the bag Marcel had used to store the food reserves, and ate nearly half. Because they're like, we're not going to be here that much longer. So why not enjoy the rest of this? We're starving. And when Marcelo got back, he yelled at the boys and told them they couldn't be playing with their lives like this. And unfortunately, he did not know how correct he was. Because the airplane had not seen them, nor had any of the many other search and rescue planes that flew over the mountain valley where they had been trapped.

Because if you think about it, this plane is white. The fuselage, you know, the remaining part of the plane blended into the white snow around them. And plus, these aircraft had to fly very high to avoid those deadly air pockets. So,

I mean, even from the top of the mountain range looking down at this fuselage, which we'll talk about later, this thing is invisible. Yeah. You can't see it. And the buoys just look like little rocks. Rocks. And there's rocks everywhere amongst the snow. So they're virtually invisible to anything up that high. And they can't send helicopters because...

helicopters really they don't send helicopters there it's not safe to to fly in this area i mean tom you sent me just the other day about um that other uruguayan plane that that crashed and that wasn't found until what like a couple years ago this year 2018 oh really and what's interesting is that they were flying in the same plane that's being used for these search and rescue missions interesting so it's like it's

It's not safe for anything. Like the only reason they would ever bust out a helicopter is if they knew, okay, this is exactly where the fuck they are. Yeah. But like not to search. Right. And whereas like with these other, these larger planes,

Those are still like that. I believe that plane crash happened before this. So they're using these these larger planes. However, they're like, yeah, this is still just as fucking dangerous. Like we can't get too close to actually spot anything. No. Still, despite their false hope, the boys did find methods of survival. They tore apart the upholstery of the seats and sewed them together using copper wire to create blankets and

And then they made better versions of the snowshoes using seat backs and actually even used the axe to create small knives out of the passenger windows, which became very crucial. Adolfo Strauch's most useful invention was creating sunglasses from the glass of the tinted cockpit windshield. And he fashioned the frames with plastic lids of the engine covers, which he cut one by one using nail clippers.

Then he sewed them all together using copper wire, elastic from the seats, and underwire from bras found in the luggage. They also removed the leather from their rugby ball to conserve an external heat source and cut a hole in the middle. And they used the ball to urinate in at night to avoid the nighttime freeze, acting as sort of a heat pad to get through the frigid night. Unbelievable.

And despite their ingenious creations, the survivors were definitely starting to fade. By the fourth day, the lack of food, sleep, and anxiety, not to mention all the cold, had caused them to fall over if they even stood up or moved too much. However, around then, Nando finally woke up from his coma, and for 10 hours, he gained consciousness. Can you imagine waking up to this? God. And he could only see everyone at this point as just gray figures.

And then he could recognize the faces of Marcelo, Roberto, and Gustavo as they cared for him. And finally, he could eventually hear their voices again. And he asked them at that point what happened to his mother and his sister. And they just told him straight out that Eugenia had died in the crash and Susie was quickly fading. So he actually spent the rest of that night holding his sister as she died in his arms. And the other boys...

offered to bury her, but Nando wanted to spend one more night with her. He was very close with his family. And one night later, Mancho Sabela saw Nando hobble outside, and Nando whispered to himself, quote,

We are going to have to get out of here ourselves. And boy, was he right. The survivors were all starving at this point. Their food reserves had all but run out and there was no natural way of getting sustenance in these absolutely lifeless mountains. Nando made a single chocolate-covered peanut last for three days. Isn't that fucked up? It's crazy. And what did he do? He ate the chocolate?

coating on the first day and then he split the peanut in half and had it the second and third day. Unbelievable. Just the self-restraint. I know.

to take a single peanut and ration it for three days. God, it's amazing. You'd be screwed because you're allergic to peanuts. I think I'd eat the peanut. Deal with the scratchy throat. I mean, yeah, your allergy isn't bad enough. I think if I was hungry enough, I'd say I love peanuts now. And if I die of my peanut allergy, then so be it. But I think I'd eat the peanut. And also remember the effects of being at such a high altitude made their bodies require higher amounts of calories than usual.

and still they're barely eating anything. They're just absolutely starving and so they're trying to figure out what alternatives they have. One night Nando leaned to Carlitos and the two spoke about how there is nothing left to eat in the pantry. Nando told Carlitos, I'm going to get out of here but in order to leave I have to eat and there is nothing here but the bodies. And so

This is when it all begins. Everyone had spoken about it in small groups by the sixth day, but no consensus had been reached about what should be done. They gathered within the fuselage and Adolfo explained to everybody that it was unfortunately...

The bodies were going to be the only way they could possibly survive. Because remember, I mean, there is nothing out there. They can't even throw a rock at a bird. I mean, there's no animals. There's nothing. There is no other option. No. Although the human body can technically survive weeks without food, which is because the body begins breaking down its own organs and cells for calories, eats itself.

Without any sustenance, you're going to, you know, whittle down. Think about what that would feel like. Your body is eating itself. Oh, it's horrible. Probably one of the worst things you can, a human can experience. Incredibly painful. And then your mind starts to go and you're just completely losing it. The cramps and the just like, oh, man.

It'd be so painful. How sick you'd feel. Yeah. Anyone would be desperate enough that you would do whatever, whatever you could. And that's eat bodies of people you know. Be so hard. I think it was in the, you might know better than me because I think you watched it. But the 2020 doc, I think it was Nanda who said that it was like,

weird because he could feel his body eating itself yeah he was getting full but he was still losing weight he wasn't actually like so like he was always hungry but he could feel himself filling up because he was again like digesting his own livers yeah yep yeah that was an interesting part dude i cannot imagine i'm getting sick just thinking about my body yeah my stomach hurts right now i'm not even kidding you're gonna be okay yeah continue on well it's gonna get worse from here

After Adolfo spoke, five more people spoke to the group, three in support and two against eating the dead. Those in support, Roberto, Nando, and Daniel, said that aside from it being the only path to survival, they would offer their bodies to the group if they died while on the mountain. They even compared it to the Eucharist and how Christ offered his body and blood to the group.

The next morning, Daniel said to Adolfo, quote, it has to be done now. They know it's critical. We are going to die.

So Daniel Adolfo and a boy named Gustavo walked to one of the bodies that was lying face down in the snow. And using one of the knives that was fashioned out of the passenger window, they cut three pieces from the frozen leg the size of matchsticks. So really small at first. And Gustavo covered his piece with snow to mask the taste. I mean, imagine doing this for the first time. You'd be really freaked out. So they like just tried to.

cover it in the snow. But they all ate, and the rest of the survivors were just watching this happen from the inside of the fuselage, knowing what had to be done at that point. But they were freaked out. So they cut 20 match-sized slivers and left them on an aluminum tray to dry in the sun. So they're basically making, like, jerky. And very few, including Numa and Liliana, turned down this first piece. Still freaking them out. They're just like, I'm not going to do it.

And then on the 10th day, Roy Harley was able to fix the small portable radio using an improvised antenna that was fashioned from some of the airplane wreckage. And while they listened to the news, they learned that the SAR mission for Flight 571 had been called off till summer. Can you imagine hearing that? Well, and I just like, imagine hearing it and having no way to contact them. Yeah. Like, no, we're here, man. Don't stop. For real. Yeah. So.

As you can imagine, they're freaking out. Marcelo began to cry, saying, quote, I organized this flight and just look at what it ends with, eating our friends.

Gustavo Nikolic, who informed the rest of the survivors, quote, Boys, I have good news and bad news. They are not searching for us anymore. So now we have to get out by ourselves. And we were a little confused by this quote. We were talking, what was the good news? I think he said it as a joke. I think he was like, boys, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is they're not searching for us anymore. The good news is we have to get out of here ourselves. I think that's how he meant it. He's like, the good news adventure awaits. Right. Teamwork. We're going to be so close after this.

Yeah, just crazy. By the end of the 10th day, every survivor had eaten a piece of human flesh. Liliana Methel, who was against eating the flesh until that day, wrote this letter. Dear family, what is happening to us is so strange that 10 days after a crash in the Cordillera, 26 of us are alive. The plane broke in two. We both had small injuries that have been healing, and in the 8 o'clock news we found out that the search was over from Curaco. The stop we should have taken, but by mistake,

It was not so, and we diverted earlier. I believe that this is a test from God. If we get out of here, it gives us an experience that I will have in my life. If not, I hope God helps my children and that they never blame him for anything. Each person has a destiny. I

I hope the family takes care of them. I do not want to give responsibility to anyone they will already know who will take them. Well, you can't imagine the beautiful group of young people who accompany us and because of the faith in God that we have and everything that we have. And soon they all became accustomed to the process and the match-sized pieces became the size of chocolate bars eventually. And slowly they all felt the strength coming back to their bodies.

And they were very methodical about this process. Only six people ever cut meat from the bodies, and they made sure that they were all face down so they didn't know who it was, which makes total sense. It would be so much harder to eat if you knew whose body it was from, of course. And soon, Roberto and Gustavo argued that they needed to get more nutrients than just protein from the muscle, so they created another group amongst the injured to cut away at pieces of the bone to retrieve the marrow from within.

And soon it got to the point where they ate everything. I mean, everything. They began with the kidneys, and then they eventually got to the liver and the heart. And eventually they even had to eat the brain. They had to use, I believe, an ax and break open the skulls. And one boy actually described it as delicious, which I don't know.

It's interesting to think about what a human body would actually taste like. It really grosses me out to think about it. I wonder how delicious it actually is or if you're just at that point anything. Not to be too gross, but I have heard it called the long pork. The long pork? That's what they call humans, the long pork. Interesting. What does that mean? We taste like pork. Oh, because we're long. And we're long. Oh, I get it now. Yeah.

Just crazy. How would you feel if you did a blind taste test between pork and human meat and you couldn't tell the difference? I'm sure it wouldn't... I don't know. God. I mean, I'd never want to try that. I'd do it for science. John. I'd do it... I could have it, like, smoked with, like, a barbecue rub on it. Ew! No, you're getting some nice human. Yeah. Yeah. Like, if it was for science and, you know... People are clicking out. I would try it. I would try it. I would be interested. I mean, we're...

We're all made of the same atoms, molecules, and cells. Are you just saying that? No, I would. I would. You'd snack down on some human. I would try it. If it was donated for science. Yes. If it was donated for science and it was cooked, I would not eat it raw. I would eat it cooked, but I would try it. Just why not? I mean, why though? Why?

In case I'm ever in this situation. I've maintained that, like in this situation, 100%. I get down to it. But I've maintained that if I go to anyone's house and their family cooks me anything, I will eat it. Because that's just so nice. You're being so nice to me by cooking me something that I'm going to eat it no matter what it is. Even if they're like, yo, this is...

A human? This is grandma? I don't know. I mean, if they're nice about it. I don't know. You can't turn down people's food. Tom, are you saying would you eat human? If you were in this situation, just for funsies. Oh, if I was in this situation, yeah. I'm doing my best to get out alive. Yeah, same. I'll do whatever it takes.

But if you weren't? If I wasn't, like, I don't know. I feel like I wouldn't be able to mentally process it. Same. Like, that's why I said, like, if it was a blind test and I didn't know what I was eating and I was told after the fact, I could probably, like, just get over it and be like, oh, okay, well, that was disturbing. But no, I think, like, consciously having to eat it outside of that, I don't think, no. No, no. And if I was told after, I'd go and throw up and I'd be really fucking pissed and sue somebody. I mean, cannibalism...

Has been going on since the dawn of men. Of course. Yeah. You know, lots of ancient cultures would eat their dead. It was a sacred thing. Mm hmm. You know, so I don't know. I don't see in the right context. I don't see that there being a huge issue with it.

I don't know. I think many people would disagree with you. I want to hear... Ethical free-range human. Grass-fed? Pasture-raised. Well, let us know what you think. What would you do? So, yeah. Anyway, back to the system that they had developed for harvesting meat. It was very methodical, but there were incidents. One day they decided to actually cook the meat, and it was one of the very few times that they cooked rather than dried because they had limited amounts of...

Fuel for fire, yeah. They're above tree line, so they can't like... There's not a lot of oxygen. It's hard to keep a fire going. They had to just burn things from the plane too, and it's hard to keep it. But the second group preparing a fire using wooden boards from a Coke case and seat pieces received several pieces of meat from the Strouches. When Adolfo returned, he saw that one of the fire makers had eaten four of the pieces. And Adolfo told the young boy,

whom has never been named, they've been very respectful about each other, that he wasn't a bad person, but that he simply could not be entrusted with the meat anymore. You have lost your meat privileges. And so the boy immediately understood. And the way that they conducted themselves and the respect that they had for each other and the way they communicated, it's amazing that they didn't get into crazy fights and stuff. And I guess because I watched Yellow Jackets and

They were fighting as soon as they hit the ground. I just didn't expect their ability to be kind to each other. Well, they're a team. I think it goes back to the team. I think if you put a bunch of random strangers together, this would be a slightly different scenario that plays out. But I think because they were already so close. Kind of set the tone for the rest of the people who weren't from the team. Yeah, exactly. And plus the other people that were there were mostly older than them as well. So, you know.

Could, you know, they have coaches and stuff, so they respect their elders. And once the survivors regained some of their strength after eating, they were able to find other activities to pass the time. Because what else do you do? Dude, think about that, the boredom alone.

Sitting in a plain fuselage. Especially once the sun goes down, can't really go outside. It's too cold. They can't even use their rugby ball because now they have to use it as their heat pad filled with urine. So most nights the survivors would take turns describing food. What the most delicious or sweetest dishes that they've had or that they could make themselves. You know, coming up, cooking up new recipes. Yeah. They were going deep into the ingredients they would use, the herbs, you know, what it would taste like in your mouth. It actually really helped them a lot. Yeah.

I can see that. They even imagined opening a restaurant when they returned home. They also, of course, prayed together, passing a rosary and reciting the mysteries. Some would even try to make jokes about their predicament, sometimes saying the meat they were eating came from the best deli in Montevideo. How could you not make jokes at that? You'd like have to. Yeah. Otherwise, you just go insane. And I mean, you got to take care of your mental health as well. Yeah. Got to keep the vibes as much as you possibly can. Laughter is good for us.

But obviously the most important activity was escape, trying to figure out how the hell we're going to get off this mountain or be rescued. Roberto and the others spent hours examining maps and figuring out their surroundings, trying to figure out where the hell they were. They had done an expedition on the fourth day, but the participants were too weak to get above the valley and locate just where they were. On the 12th day, Gustavo, Numa, and Daniel Mespones created an expedition group. Nando wished to join, but he was still too weak from his injuries and stayed behind.

with Roberto. The expedition had two goals. One, climb the mountain to the south to get their bearings and hopefully find the plane's tail section. And two, they hoped that the tail, which was where most of the luggage was stored, would contain foods, perhaps some better clothes, as well as the plane's batteries, which they hoped would be able to power the main radio and transmit a signal to air traffic control. The boys left around nine in the morning and quickly learned that

We are so underprepared. After four hours of walking, they reached an area they had previously thought was the summit of the Southern Mountain. And they were surprised when they realized they weren't anywhere near the top. But also that they couldn't even see the fuselage anymore as it was completely blended in with all the snow. As they kept climbing, it felt like the summit kept moving away from them further and further. Because mountains do that, man. Have you ever been in the mountains or been hiking?

Or hiked a mountain. It's very deceiving. They look a lot closer.

When you're standing at the foot of it until you start getting on the trail and you're like, oh, my God. Yeah. This is going to take a lot longer than we thought. Because, again, this is another thought I had while in Winter Park. But it's like you look at it and you're like, yeah, it was big, but I could get up there pretty easily. But then you take the chairlift to the top and then there's just more peaks and more mountains. It just keeps – it gets worse and worse and worse the higher up you go. Yep.

False summits, baby. False summits, that's the term? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. False summits. I haven't heard that. It's the dumbest thing ever when you've been hiking for eight goddamn hours. God. And you think you're at the top and you like look at your map and you're like, yeah, I'm a quarter mile from the top. And then you hit the false summit and you're like a quarter miles a lot further up than I thought it was. Damn. Yeah. You have to imagine too going straight uphill. Fuck no.

Fuck no. Going up a side of a mountain at a 45 degree angle. I have no interest in hiking for eight hours. For me, like a hike to three. Kendall's like, can I take the train? Can I take the chairlift? No, chairlift scares the fuck out of me.

Can I take the train? I'm only going up a mountain if it's got a train. Pike's Peak? Or drive. You would have had a heart attack on the chairlift I took in Canada. I forget the name of the peak. I'll put it in somewhere. But the chairlift that you take to go up there, it's like a mile or so long. And it's one of the things you go under. There is so much space between you and the ground. It's really disconcerting.

And you're so, you're so suspicious because it's like a basic like ski chair lift. So like a gust of wind comes and you just go like that. Oh, no. I could just swing right out of it. Dude, I would pass out. It was me and my friend Alex and I was sitting on one side and he's on the other. And like I'm around like 190, 193 and he's like 140. So the wind would hit and it would just go. He's going up into the air. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I would seriously. I'm so afraid of heights. That's why I stopped skiing. I had like a panic attack on a chairlift once and never went back after years and years of skiing. I want to try it again one day, but you can do it. I know I can. These guys can survive this. You can. I know after reading this book. Yeah, I think I could get back on the mountain, man. Conquer it. You're right. Yeah, I'm going to do it one day. One day. One day far from now.

Well, let's take a look at this quote from Numa. Numa said, Yeah. Man. Two sweaters, dude. It's cold, too. When it's snowing here in, like, Denver metro area, I have to be in, like, a full-on ski jacket, normally a coat that goes all the way to my legs.

And just gets... All right, next time we have...

Similar weather. I'm going to challenge you. No. Why would I do that? Two sweaters. No. Absolutely not. No boots. Rugby cleats. Rugby boots are fun. Yeah. God. Fuck that. Insane. I think it's just because it was the 70s and they had better made clothes. Yeah. I'm going to tell you honestly because we just have dog shit. True. Quality. Their sweaters are probably like a thick hoodie. Yeah. It's like alpaca that's like handmade. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Fuck cleats, though. I don't know if you guys ever wore cleats, but like I did baseball as a kid for years. I cannot fathom hiking in cleats. No, true that. It's been a minute since I wore cleats, but how bad the soles of your feet hurt. They're so uncomfortable. They're meant to be on like one type of surface. So if you're going over rocks and snow and ice, all these different types of surfaces, your feet got to be so sore. Better than barefoot, though.

So eventually they found the plane's propeller, which was nailed into a rock, and it was still spinning in the strong wind. They kept climbing, but they realized that by dusk that they were too far from the fuselage to return by nightfall. So they're like,

Guess we're hanging out here for the night. And without shelter or the physical ability to move on anymore, they decided to just stop there. So from 6 p.m. until the sun rose, these guys are like cuddled up, taking turns punching each other to keep their blood circulating. And when the punches were no longer enough, as it plummeted to negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit, they took turns jumping on one another, shouting, quote, one for all and all for one.

I just, I don't think I'd have the strength. I'd be like, all right, leave me here. So when they were too tired to jump, they took turns lying stacked on top of each other. And when they needed to urinate, they aimed it at their hands and feet to keep them from going numb. And I'm sure that felt so good for a couple of moments, but then got cold very quickly. And their mouths were so frozen that when the sun finally rose, they couldn't even form words. Like, it is incredible that they survived that night.

And without realizing it, they climbed another thousand feet and found the plane's rudder, pieces of the bathroom, and seats. And some of them still had their friends sitting strapped into those seats, which was, I'm sure, very traumatizing to see.

Gustavo, whose sunglasses had broken the previous day, had actually gone snow blind. So at that point, I mean, he can't even see. So they're like, we've got to head back down the mountain. But they didn't even have enough strength to move their legs. So they had to move them individually with their arms. Can you imagine that? Then they found one of the wings and used it as a sled to slide down the mountain, which sounds kind of fun.

horrible, horrible, not fun at all. So Numa sat in the front and he acted as the lookout to avoid rocks as they're picking up speed. And they got, they went fast. After 40 minutes of sliding down the mountain, they finally saw the fuselage again. But there was another problem. They couldn't stop. So as they approached, the three men jumped off the wing as it slammed into a snowbank. And imagine how that would hurt so bad after how sore and all your body's in such bad condition, you have to just jump off of

Oh, man. And then 10 survivors retrieved the boys and brought them into the fuselage, which, quote, felt like a palace. That's the point where they were at. And they realized that a single night outside had nearly killed all three of them and turned them into, quote, old men.

If they ever wanted to escape, they needed to prepare extensively. In addition, the boys who had been to the top told them that there was nothing but mountains as far as they could see. And I can't remember which one of the three had spoke about it in the book, but just how depressing that was when they finally got to the top and looked out and just were like, holy shit, we are fucked. This is horrible.

So Gustavo, poor Gustavo, is laying snow blind in the fuselage and told Roberto that his teeth were falling out. And Roberto looked, and although his teeth hadn't fully come out, they were extremely loose and, quote, dancing in his gums. Think about that pain. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Dude, they're in so much pain. Dude. Oh, my God. And tooth pain.

is unlike anything else. One of the worst. Yeah. So it snowed intensely for the next three days, and at that point, they were only leaving the plane to urinate. Then on October 29th, the 16th full day spent on the mountain, the survivors experienced the worst tragedy since the crash. I can't even believe this next part happened. It's so fucked up. Yeah, just when you think things couldn't get much worse. It certainly did. It gets worse.

A lot of them describe this as being even worse than the plane crash itself. I don't blame them. Yeah. Because there's no prep for this. It just hits. So at 4.10 p.m., the survivors decided to enter the plane for the evening to get out of the intense, dusting snow that had been coating the valley for the previous few days.

And it's important to note that the survivors would rotate sleeping positions as certain parts of the airplane were much more uncomfortable than others. And that night, Diego Storm asked Roy Harley to switch positions with him to the highest, most uncomfortable part of the floor, as did Marcelo, who asked Koschei and Gustavo Nikolic, who switched with Gustavo Zerbino. While seemingly pretty normal, this would ultimately decide their fates.

As Roy settled into bed, he covered his face with a shirt to shield himself from all the snow particles entering the fuselage. While lying there, he felt a vibration coming from the mountain and then a loud roar.

Then in an instant, he heard a cracking noise come from the body of the plane before a thick layer of snow covered him because the plane had been struck by a major avalanche that had moved it to the other section of the valley and completely buried those who slept in the lower area of the plane. Which is just another one of the worst ways to die, I think, being buried by snow. Yeah.

I remember one day when I was really little and in ski school, my dad, like after he dropped us off, he'd go skiing and he'd always hit the back country stuff. And there was one day I was like pissed off because he was super late to come get me. And then he came down like with ski patrol, like looking like he'd seen a ghost. Oh, no. And he was like, I was in an avalanche. And it was exactly that. Like he was caught in an avalanche and the way he figured out where he was is you spit

And where your spit goes, that's where you can tell where, you know, if you're facing up. Because if you spit like this, it lands on your face.

That means you're like facing towards the sky. Whoa. And so through then he was able to like crawl out and the ski patrol got him. But I was just like, okay. Like, and you were late. Why? Why? Ski school is awful. That's crazy. Yeah, he still skis like every weekend, but he was like, that was the worst experience like I've had. Wow. Dude, that is. Okay. Another reason why maybe I shouldn't go skiing ever again. Yeah, sorry. That is crazy.

Yeah, there was, I can't remember who it was, but in the book, one of them described like just kind of accepting death in that moment that it almost felt peaceful and that he like peed and it felt warm and he was just like ready to die. And then they actually did pull him out and he survived. But dude, I cannot imagine what that would feel like. So Roy was at the highest point on the plane and therefore was the only person who could rescue those that were trapped beneath. And so once he like kind of got his bearings, he started

pulling people out of the snow, digging through the snow. And remember, they don't have gloves, so they're just digging through the fucking snow. And the first person he pulls out of the snow is Adolfo Strauch and then Carlitos Paez. And then he found Gustavo Zurbino in the spot initially meant for Gustavo Nikolic, who had already been killed by the impact, which is it is crazy that they had switched spots that night.

But out of the 27 survivors, eight had been killed by the avalanche. In an instant like that, eight of them gone. 16 of the survivors huddled next to the cockpit, while the other three tried to dig holes for oxygen from where they were buried inside the plane. As the boys huddled together, squatting on each other's backs, they began to feel intensely sleepy. So Pancho Delgado lit a lighter, but the flame immediately went out, so they realized that they were running out of oxygen.

So they inserted an aluminum tube from a luggage rack through the cockpit's broken windshield to create a ventilation shaft. Then Moncho used his body to form a tunnel from the buried fuselage into the cockpit and opened a window by a few centimeters, giving the survivors a tiny bit more oxygen. And despite the exposed windows, the plane had become sort of an igloo and actually maintained a livable temperature.

Still, though, the boys were running out of oxygen and their fingers and toes were turning purple. So they are trapped inside this airplane for numerous days. And while they were there, they had a couple birthday celebrations. They celebrated Numa and Carlito's birthdays while they were just trapped underneath the snow. And Numa, who had grown weaker since his expedition, had suffered a hematoma on his foot after someone accidentally crushed it in the avalanche. And then, you guys, they were forced to eat the body alive.

of one of their friends who had perished in the accident, although Numa refused to eat more than one bite. That would be really tough, especially someone that you were just spending time with, had just died, but they had no other choice. Well, and especially when, like, they made such a big deal of, like, when we cut meat from the bodies, like, they have to be face down in the snow, so we don't know who it is. But this time...

They're like, fuck, we just have to do it. Yeah. It was here that Nando expressed to Adolfo that they needed to escape the mountain, ASAP, and that it needed to be organized in the best possible way. Nando said, quote, I am breathing, and if I am breathing, then I am alive. If I'm alive, then I'm going to make every possible effort to get out of here until I am breathing no longer.

On the third day around noon, the tunnel to the cockpit was finished and the boys went to the window which they had previously been able to open only a few centimeters and now they could kick it open and peek their heads out, revealing a totally different landscape. For the rest of their time on the mountain, the boys feared every rumbling in the distance as a new avalanche. The fuselage, once their only safe haven, was now also a source of danger.

But still, there was a blessing. In the days before the avalanche, they had been running out of food, but now they had eight more bodies and eight fewer people to feed. And Nando thought this was important for the expedition as it could get them out of the mountains. So team captain Marcello had died in the avalanche, and so Nando went about deciding who could be on his new team of captains.

expeditionaries. Now, out of the survivors, four of them were severely injured and four more had no training, leaving a group of eight who could potentially go out into the wilderness. Gustavo Zerbino and Numa wanted to be included in this list and be expeditionaries until the end. Still, both had nearly died during their night on the mountain, and Numa's hematoma was getting worse. So finally, they settled on Roberto Canessa, Tintin Vizentin, and Nando himself.

Roberto was amongst the most physically able, having not suffered any serious injuries on the mountain, and Tintin was an excellent rugby player who followed orders well. Nando's decision to be an expeditionary himself was more personal. His mother and sister had already died on the mountain, and he wanted to give back to his father and his other sister as soon as possible. On November 5th, Roy Harley, Carlitos, and Tintin left on a test hike to determine the best route for the actual expedition. How

However, they encountered conditions similar to those on the trip that nearly killed Numa and Gustavo.

The boys were caught in a disastrous blizzard that nearly buried them in the tundra. And when they returned, Roy and Carlitos were so shaken by the experience. However, Tintin only said, quote, it's tough, but I think it's doable. And from then on, he was relied on as one of the most capable. Roberto, Nando, and Tintin enjoyed special privileges. They could eat as much of the meat as they wanted to, and they weren't expected to help around the camp so that they could conserve their energy for this final hike out.

They were given anything, even shoes that the others were wearing. All they had to do was ask.

On November 15th, the three went down a slope to the east instead of climbing the mountain to the west, and according to their calculations, all they would have to do is find a water source that would point them west, and they would soon see the quote green valleys of Chile. However, after encountering heavy snow, they returned to the fuselage and left again two days later. Nando carried a baby shoe belonging to the son of his other sister, Graciela. He hoped to reunite the shoe with her back in Monte Video.

They had brought four blankets each sewn together from the upholstery of the airplane seats, but they would still have to find a dry spot as they got extremely damp when they were left in the bare snow. They used aluminum tubes as walking sticks. The bottom of a plastic suitcase was used as a sled to carry the blankets, makeshift snowshoes, several socks containing meat, and two bottles for water collection. They also carried backpacks fashioned out of denim jeans

that contained more rations. If you've watched any content on, I just wanted to point this out, if you've watched any content on YouTube on this, there is a lot of misinformation. Even documentaries though too. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of incorrect information out there. And one of the wildest things I heard was on this final expedition, the guys, they apparently took flesh, meaning mostly skin around the elbow area of the dead,

And then use that to wrap their feet because they didn't really have socks. And so they use that to keep their feet warm. And that is not true. No. But there are a lot of especially YouTubers out there have covered this who, of course, report that that's what they did. Yeah, they've been doing that.

As a fact, and that is and really just sensationalize the, you know, what they did with the dead. And it's pretty disrespectful. Yeah. Yeah. Seems pretty. Yeah. When I heard that, I was like, it seems a little wild. I mean, maybe, but no, that did not happen.

From my understanding, they use their rugby socks to transport the meat. But I think that's the craziest thing done with socks throughout the whole ordeal. Crazy. Two hours into the hike, Roberto had gone far ahead of Tintin and Nando, and then he stopped at a snowbank and waved them over. In the distance, they could spot the plane's tail section containing the batteries necessary for the radio, more luggage, and more bodies. In addition, they found bottles of rum, cigarettes, and a camera,

with film inside that Cochet's girlfriend, Sully Dodd, had gotten him before the trip. That first night, they cooked some meat using broken Coca-Cola cases and had a dessert consisting of mixed sugar packets with toothpaste and rum. I love that they made a little dessert. That kind of sounds kind of yummy.

I mean, it would be out there. They're even able to connect the battery to the small light in the ceiling. And this was the first night since the crash that they could see the inside of the plane. They left after a blizzard cleared up at around 9 a.m. the next day, and the weather worsened as they continued down the eastern slope, searching for a water source.

They then came to a rocky section that, if they guessed, could be the source of a small river. However, thinking of the snowy conditions, they worried that they could fall into a hidden crevasse, ending any chances of rescue.

And that night, they slept against the rocks and felt their hands and feet go numb as their blankets really didn't offer any real protection against the rough snow. They tried to light a fire using a book that they had brought on the hike, but that certainly wasn't enough. And when the sun rose the next morning, they immediately headed back to the trail. Unfortunately, if the boys had continued due east, they likely would have arrived, and this pains me to say, at the Flacos Hot Springs, which is a small hotel only three days away from where they camped.

In fact, the rocky outcropping they slept next to can be seen from the hotel. So they were that close. When they returned to the tail, they decided that their best bet was to try to get the radio to work and try to contact air traffic control. However, they attempted to transport the large batteries and realized they couldn't move them. I mean, they're massive. So instead, they rested for two days, and then they returned to the fuselage to bring the radio to the batteries. And when they returned to the fuselage, they learned that their friend,

Rafael Echevaran had died four days earlier on the 18th and everyone else was in much worse shape. So if they wanted to fix the radio, they had to act fast. After fixing the tiny speaker radio, Roy Harley was designated the plane's engineer. However, he cursed that they wanted him to fix the plane's massive radio with the batteries left in the tail section. And for one, he was scared of the journey.

Rightfully so. He was in worse physical shape than the others, plus he smoked and he feared his lung capacity wouldn't be enough for the hike. More importantly, he had no idea what he was doing. While the speaker radio fix was simply fashioning a new antenna, this would require rewiring hundreds of cables from the battery to the radio, assuming it even worked after the crash. On November 23rd, they removed the radio from the cockpit and accounted the number of cables he needed to hook up to the battery correctly. And guess what that number was?

167. Unbelievable. Adolfo approached Roy, who desperately feared the hike to the tail. Adolfo and he had been friends since childhood, and their love and respect for each other only grew stronger after the crash. Roy was honest about not knowing anything about the plane's radio. Adolfo said he knew that, but Roy was the least ignorant of them all. And then he said, quote, Roy, the group needs your abilities. All we're asking is that you try.

On November 24th, they set off again to the tail, dragging the plane's radio in the makeshift sled. For two days, Roy and Roberto messed with the radio, and at a certain point they could hear buzzing, but no signal was picked up. Tintin and Nando returned to the fuselage for more supplies. However, they found everyone there had deteriorated. They were too weak to even dig for bodies in the snow now. Tintin and Nando stayed there for two days to dig up bodies and help everyone regain strength. When they returned to the tail, the radio was sparking constantly and, of course, still not working.

They began taking pictures using the camera, imagining that the film could show the world how they lived if they ended up dying out there. Some of the more famous photos show the bodies of those they ate picked clean. However, after days spent trying to fix the radio without any sign of progress, tensions were starting to grow high, as you can imagine. Roy, who was the only smoker out of the group, had been needing one of the many cigarettes that they had found in the tail section. However, the other three didn't allow that.

as they wanted to conserve the lighter fluid for the trip out of the valley. But they ended up catching Roy smoking a cigarette and immediately laid into him, and this was one of the few times that they yelled at each other during the entire ordeal. Roy felt as if they were going to explode at anything, not just the cigarettes.

I'd be losing my damn mind at this point. So I understand. Especially without a damn cigarette. Yeah. You know, I understand everyone in this scenario. Roy for just like, fuck, give me a cigarette. And for the other guys for being like, dude, what are you doing? Yeah. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. You can see both sides for sure. So even though the radio still couldn't work, the next day brought the most important discovery yet.

Tintin had been tearing apart the fabric surrounding the ventilation ducts in the plane's tail and learned that they were completely waterproof and could be made warmer with the insulation inside the walls. And this was crucial. So using more copper wire, they made sleeping bags using the miraculous material. And that finally allowed them to sleep outside regardless of the elements. A huge game changer for them. And then on the 28th, Roy connected the speaker radio to the transmitter and

And while they couldn't speak into it, the more powerful transmitter picked up the weaker radio signals. And then they heard that a government plane had been dispatched to search for the boys. And I mean, at that point, I'm sure they were just...

trying to find bodies and, you know, they didn't expect any survivors. In fact, while the Uruguayan government officials called off the search back in October, the boys' parents never gave up the search, never gave up on their children. Carlitos' father, Carlos Paez, had gone on numerous flights over the Andes searching for the boys himself.

Carlos, a famous painter, used his influence to pressure the government to continue the search in November. The government had spotted a large cross-shaped object in the snow, and while the boys had created one using suitcases at the tail section, the one that the government had spotted was actually created by the Forest Service to measure snowmelt in the Andes. During the beginning part of his search, Carlos spoke to a woman whose brother was a cowboy who worked in the Andes foothills on the Argentinian side.

His name was Sergio Catalan. However, back at the tail section, the boys had given up hope. On the 29th of November, Roy started kicking the radio out of frustration. On the walk back to the fuselage, the boys were stuck in another terrible blizzard.

Exhausted and disappointed in himself, Roy told the rest to leave him behind. Nando grabbed him and pulled him in the snow to the fuselage, yelling insults the whole way. And when the boys returned to the fuselage, they told the others of their failure to fix the radio. However, they showed them their new sleeping bags and something else had happened. Although they had spent more than a week at the tail, it helped them. The weather had begun to change and it was quickly becoming spring.

which meant that the conditions would finally be ready for the final expedition. It was go time, baby. But on December 11th, Numa actually died due to the injuries that he had received on the night of the avalanche. And because he ate the leaves out of everyone, his hematoma never healed. And it eventually actually turned septic. And at the time of his death, he only weighed 55 pounds. God, that's mind-blowing. Unreal.

And he left this note behind. It says, quote, Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Roberto simply said, quote, We leave tomorrow. Tintin, Nando, and Roberto left at 7 a.m. to take advantage of the firm morning snow. As previously mentioned, they believed that they were stranded in the foothills near the Chilean side.

While they believed that traveling the eastern route would lead to death in a crevasse, they decided to take the western route, which involved scaling up the 16,000-foot mountain that had stared at them since the beginning. They left with the sleeping bags and three days' worth of meat stuffed into the rugby socks. They believed that the hike would only take a few days to reach the summit of the mountain and then another day to descend before they reached civilization.

However, it took the boys two nights to get to the top of the mountain. On the morning of the second day, Roberto thought that he saw a road in the distance on the eastern side. Nando told him that it was a mirage, but Roberto asked to stay behind and see if he could figure out a route while Tintin and Nando climbed to the top. Tintin grew tired, and Nando was around 200 feet in front of him when he reached the summit. Unfortunately, he was horrified by what he saw. Mountains as

far as he could see. They were not near Chile at all, but rather in the middle of the Andes, near the Argentinian side. And they weren't only at 7,000 feet elevation, like the altimeter said, but the valley was 13,000 feet high. There was not a single spot of green as far as the eye could see.

And as you can imagine, they're feeling hopeless, but they couldn't help but admire the view around them as maybe the only people who ever reached the top of this mountain. I'm imagining it would be spectacular to see. So Nando told Tintin to get Roberto without telling him what he saw. And when Roberto finally reached the top, the boys were defeated. However, they had done this numerous times in a row, leaving the plane only to return with less food and energy to continue.

Not only was the weather getting better, but the sleeping bags made it possible to sleep outside. On top of that, they knew that if they didn't find help soon, they're going to run out of food, out of bodies. Roberto and Nando thought they saw a valley at the horizon's edge and decided it was best to walk towards it. They spent one night on the summit, and the morning of the third day, they sent Tintin back to the fuselage. They took his food and supplies before they headed down the other side. They used their airplane seat snowshoes as sleds and slid down the mountain.

For four days, the boys slid and walked until out of nowhere, they finally saw green. And of course, they started feeling warmer. In fact, they felt hot. Can you imagine, dude? Oh, I feel like a dream. So smart though. I know. Resilient beyond words. Like just a natural navigational skills. Yeah. I mean, to see a valley like, you know, an impossible distance away and you're like,

I think that's what we got to go towards. Yep. And we're just going to do it. Right. That's crazy. It is. There's no other word. Finally find grass. Well, at this point, the boys ditched their sleeping bags and kept walking before they saw a lizard, which was the first living thing they had seen in two months. Dude, I'd be like, oh, this is my pet. I'm going to keep him forever. And then on the eighth day, they saw a cow. And once you see cows...

You know there's got to be... There's not just like wild cows roaming around, right? You know there's humans. Well, I think there are. There might be, sure. This is actually funny because that's a debate that Nando and Roberto still have to this day apparently, whether there are wild cows or not. Because Nando was like, oh my God, there's got to be a human to tend to this. And Roberto was like, no, you idiot. There's wild cows. Or maybe it's Switch. But yeah, they still debate that to this day. Yeah, they debate a couple of things from their final journey. No, there are truly...

Not wild cows in the sense of completely untamed. Really? Oh. There's no wild species that exists independently of human influence. Interesting. I didn't know that. Okay. Learn something new every day. Kind of makes sense. I mean, they saw the cows were like, all right, humans must be near. So they continue to follow the stream they found further down into the Green Valley. However, they encountered another problem with the temperature change. That meat they've been carrying had gone rancid. Yeah.

Because, I mean, it was preserved by the fact that they were like living in a freezer. Right. Now. It's thawing out. Yeah. It's starting to stink. On the ninth day, Roberto contracted dysentery from the meat and couldn't walk. However, that day on the other side of the stream, they saw a man on horseback, which was probably one of the greatest things they've ever seen.

finally. Nando ran to him. That man, Sergio Catalan, thought at first they were hunters, but he could make out a few words over the rushing water, including airplane. Sergio's sister had told him about the crashed Uruguayan plane. Sergio told the boys, quote, tomorrow, and they waited right there. Sergio returned the next day, the 10th day of their walk out of the Andes, and he threw a piece of paper and a pen strapped to a rock, and Nando wrote this now famous note.

And this note reads as follows. I come from an airplane that crashed in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for 10 days. I have a wounded friend up there. In the plane, there are still 1,400 people. We need to get out of here quickly, and we don't know how to. We don't have any food. We are very weak. When are you going to come to get us? Please, we can't even walk. Where are we?

Sergio told him that he would take the note to get help before throwing them bread. And Sergio, the fucking badass that he is, rode 10 hours to the closest town, Los Matenes. On the way, he passed another cowboy and told him to take the boys to a cabin. Do you know how psyched they were to get that bread too? Oh yeah. Dude. It tasted so good. So good. And that's one of the other things that they argue about is how many pieces of bread they were given because I believe it was a...

Nando that Roberto accused of eating like three of the pieces and then yeah but they like still argue about it to this day I think it's a cute detail but dude that bread would taste so good yeah tastes like the best thing ever they talked about how it was like the best bread they've ever had in their lives and it probably was just like some shit Sergio had packed for like his time being a cowboy

Totally. Some cowboy bread. Stale as fuck. But when the boys finally entered the cabin, they had been officially rescued on December 22nd, 1972. And the next day, Sergio returned with members of the Uruguayan military and to the surprise of Roberto and Nando, international media came as well. And they immediately asked them how they had survived, but the boys didn't tell them what they had eaten. They're like, we know they're going to figure it out, but today is not that day.

So then Nando tried to show the search team where the plane had crashed, but they didn't believe him. It was over 30 miles into the mountains, and no one had ever been there before. They're like, there is no way that that's where you guys have been. But the military asked Nando to get on the helicopter to help them find the location. So in a flash, Nando was back in a helicopter, which...

First of all, I'd be so scared to get in any type of flying contraption. Like, hell no. But I guess at this point, whatever. But they headed back to the fuselage and the conditions were horrible. And the helicopter almost crashed multiple times. There's one of the pilots, one of the boys talked to him later and he was like, I didn't tell you guys then, but that was the most dangerous flight I had ever been on in like my 30 year career.

Holy shit. So what if they had crashed and they went through all of that just to crash in a helicopter? There's a serious possibility, like more likely than not, that's what would have happened. I really like I believe something divine was like protecting these guys. It's it's just doesn't it's a miracle. So back at the fuselage, the boys had heard the news that Nando and Roberto had been rescued. They had the radio on. They hear this.

Think about that. Yeah. What a moment. Oh, my God. And then they got ready to be rescued themselves. They're like, OK, we got to pull ourselves together a little bit. And in the time since they had left, the boys had grown inconsolable. I mean, they were really just like hopeless at this point. And they were urinating right in the aircraft. They were barely moving. They just were hoping that maybe they had survived. And I think they were feeling pretty bleak about the chances of their survival, especially after 10 days since they thought it was going to be so much shorter.

But, yeah, when they heard the news that Roberto and Nando had been rescued, they began celebrating. And then the radio played. And this part made me cry. The radio started playing a Spanish rendition of Ave Maria. And they just got this feeling that they had already been saved. It was over. And when they heard the news, they celebrated and they shaved their faces and tried to... They also tried to clean up some of the body parts from the valley, stuffing them inside a bag. Dude, it just makes me so emotional to think of...

What that moment must have been like for them. Incredible. Especially thinking like our friends saved us, like wondering what they had been through. Oh, it's just incredible. So when the helicopters arrived, the boys ran outside of the fuselage to greet them. They're like jumping up in the air. There's actually a famous picture of them at that point. And conditions, of course, were still bad. And the helicopters could only hover for less than a minute.

Six of the 14 hopped on the helicopters and three aid workers stayed back with the remainder of the boys and gave them beef sandwiches. And I'm sure they were very happy with that. This is actual vision of the rescue. The living numbered 16. 29 had perished. My father, when I met him, he still didn't know if my mother was alive or not. How many family members do you have? Do you have more siblings? No.

I had my mother and my sister, who unfortunately died in the plane, and I have another sister.

And then the next day, the remaining eight were rescued. After 73 days out on that mountain, they were free. I just imagine like being one of the boys, because, you know, when you look at the number, when you search like how long were they trapped in the mountains, it's always 72 days. But no, there was still like a pretty sizable number of the boys who were still on the mountain that last night. Yeah. And I just imagine like being that aid worker and you're just like,

All right. What happened, guys? Yeah. So what when what y'all been up to? So this is where you've been living. Holy shit. Yeah. I wonder, are there any interviews from the aid worker that I could find? Not that I could find. But yeah, there were there were like just dudes who slept with them on the plane that one night. And it's just like, Jesus Christ.

God. Well, not to mention that before they did, the rescuers did show up. They had to clean out the whole fuselage. Yeah. There was body parts everywhere in there. And so they had to, they removed it, kind of clean it up a little. Let's tidy it up here a little bit. Yeah, there is even that famous picture where they're sitting outside smiling after they've kind of gotten shaved up, ready for rescue. And in the very right bottom corner, you can see a vertebrae.

I don't know if they just forgot that one or at some point they didn't care. Their teeth look really white and good after all that time, though. Yeah, I wonder. I mean, they were eating bone marrow for calcium, so I wonder if that. The teeth were strong. Yeah. That's the secret. The beauty secret, you guys. Just imagining like 10 days of straight just like.

Everything stinks. It's all dark. Like there's just shit and piss and bodies everywhere. Yeah. Just completely hopeless. And then the silence gets broken by like, hey, we found the other two. That must have just been like the greatest feeling in the fucking world. Dude, right? Like, and then the Ave Maria is playing. And at first they didn't know if it was for sure them because they just said they had found two survivors, but they didn't give names or anything. So they weren't completely sure. But they're like, it has to be them. It has to be them.

Well, and there was actually a big, like there was a huge deal made about the note that Nando gave to Sergio.

Because in the intervening 73 days, a ton of people had come to the police being like, oh yeah, we're those guys. We're those guys. Oh, really? Yeah, there were a lot of fakers out there. Oh, I'm sure. So the fact that Sergio had the note from Nando is what made the police in Los Matenes actually be like, oh, fuck, no, this is for real. Wow. Interesting. I didn't know there was fakers. Of course there is. There's always fakers in these stories. Well, let's talk about what was people's reactions. Yeah.

Yeah, it was interesting. Well, at first, you know, people are amazed. Like, wow, how'd you guys survive? That's what everybody wanted to know. You know, they're constantly in medias, you know, pressuring the boys to tell them how they survived. And at first, you know, the boys are smart. They're like, well, it's just straight out of the gate. Maybe we should just kind of like... Let's not drop it on them that early on. Let's, you know, technically not...

Completely untrue. You know, we ate food and rations that we had. Yeah, they said they had, I believe, bread and cheese. Cheese and bread, yeah. But then a Chilean newspaper printed a photo of a half-eaten human leg. They did them dirty doing that. Yeah, that's, yeah. So at a press conference, the boys confidently told the public of their decision to eat the dead. They informed them that they had no other choice and they had gained consent from all others who died after the crash.

And they compared it again to taking communion and the Eucharist, just as they had said on the mountain. Which I think was really smart and just a true reality for them. And, you know, very important to their faith. Yeah. But some of the press was pretty brutal on them in the very beginning. Like saying there were titles saying things like, may God have mercy on their souls and things like that. And then their families, too, were pretty brutal.

Like just disturbed. Some of them, like I can't remember who it was, but one of their mothers was just like, what the fuck? Like really, really freaked out hearing that. Well, if all you hear is the cannibalism part, you don't have all the other contexts. You know, if you're not if this is the first time you're being introduced to cannibalism, you're not going to understand why they did what they did. Yeah. And they're probably there was probably a lot of rumors and thoughts of did they

Did they kill people? Yeah, right. And then picturing it so different than the reality. Oh, I'm sure there was rumors and stuff out there. They're picturing like yellow jackets type shit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You should watch Yellow Jackets if you haven't, by the way. Great show. Ridiculous. Not based in reality at all. But luckily and pretty quickly, it became pretty universally understood why they did what they did. And even Pope Paul VI even sanctioned it as it was in extremists.

Of the 16 survivors, most lived very successful lives. Roberto became a very successful pediatric doctor. Dude. A doctor. Just continues like, I'll pick up where I left off. Yeah. But, you know, just amazing. We have no excuses. None of us. None of us can ever make an excuse ever again. No. And they didn't want to. I mean, they were just so inspired by, you know, everything that they had learned and everything.

They wanted to live life to the fullest. I mean, wouldn't you after? Yeah. Like I got this second chance. I'm going to make the most of it. I'm going to go chase all my dreams. Do amazing things, help other people. It's really, really cool. Like you would kind of expect that most of these guys would be like so mentally disturbed and not be able to do much with their lives. But they didn't. They they went on to live super successful lives and have families.

And they all many of them speak, do public speaking and have inspired people all over the world with their stories. And it's incredible. Well, and there's there's a cool part at the end of Society of the Snow where the author is talking about Roberto's house because he's loaded, you know, and the author says, like, he never stops building his house. Like it's labyrinthian. It's like so many new rooms. He's always adding on to it. So he hired this caretaker.

And the caretaker actually was, he was pretty upset. Like, he had gone down a bad path in life. And Roberto asked, like, what happened to you? And he was like, well, when I was, like, a cowboy working the Andes, I had to save these two boys who... And it turned out he was the cowboy that Sergio...

had like grabbed and been like hey you need to take those boys to the cabin complete like just complete coincidence oh i must have missed that part it was that was crazy to me that was crazy to me just a complete coincidence and roberto's like yeah that was me man look at where i'm at now like it's chill it's good come to my palace right yeah roberto is so cool it sounds like his house is kind of the gathering place for the survivors to get together and i'm sure i mean i can imagine after going through something like this he'd stay close with

Oh, yeah, they have. Yeah. Your fellow survivors, man. What's interesting is that with Javier Methil, one member of each graduating class with Stella Maris for the previous 16 years had survived. Is that interesting? Wow. It's like one of those really weird coincidences. One from each graduating year. Really cool. And Roy. Remember poor Roy? Yeah. He became an engineer. Yeah.

And one survivor even opened a restaurant, Monte Video. Do we not know who opened the restaurant? I can't remember. It says in the book, but I couldn't find the page. Yeah, I can't remember now either. Just like he had fantasized on the mountain, though. Yeah, he's like, I'm going to do it. Everybody's like, if we're getting out of here, they probably had talks. If I get out of here, I'm going to do X, Y, Z. Oh, they did. They did. Yeah. And that's, in fact, what they did. They just, you know, didn't let all this sort of consume them and deter them from doing

Living life. No, it made them live life to the fullest, really. Yeah. Fullest they probably ever would have unless, you know, if they didn't go. Of the 16 survivors, only three have died since 1972. Koschei was the most recent in 2023. After the crash, he married his girlfriend, Soledad, whose camera captured their survival and they stayed married until his death. Wow. Beautiful.

Incredible. Sergio Catalan remained close with the survivors and played rugby with them every year on the anniversary of their rescue. He passed in 2020 at the age of 91. Very full life. Nando opened a media production company that covered race car driving, and he even drove some himself. He's quite good at it from what I understand. He's just such a fucking cool guy. He's a badass. I fucking love him. He and Roberto, I mean all of them, but they're just such cool guys.

The mountain he and Roberto climbed to safety is named Mount Sailor after his father. Sailor Parado climbed to the Valley of Tears nearly 20 times to visit the graves of his wife, Eugenia, and his daughter, Susie.

And after all those years, an iron crucifix is the grave marker for almost everyone who died on the mountain. Rafael's father went to the crash site to retrieve his son's body. He was arrested for grave robbery. There was some confusion. They didn't really know what was going on when they saw him doing that. But given the circumstances, obviously the charges were dropped.

While the fuselage was being destroyed, some of it was covered with snow and couldn't be burned. In 2006, when Koschei returned to the Valley of Tears, he thought it looked exactly as it did for those 72 days in 1972. I love the last photo here of Nando and Roy and then a couple other survivors playing rugby as men in their 60s. Yeah, they ended up playing that rugby match that they were supposed to all those years ago. Yeah. Yeah, I mean...

Just shows you how strong humans can be. They can prevail in the worst of conditions. Yeah. If you have the right mindset and you have the right people with you. Yeah. Alone, this would have been impossible. Right. Of course. But, you know, they really stuck together. Yeah. Their companionship is, I think, a big part of their survival as well. They're motivating each other, taking care of one another and

Yeah, just the love for one another, the love for one another, for those that were lost and the respect and the truly not taking life for granted, man. Yeah. Like they recognize that their life.

Yeah. And guys, if you found this story interesting, which I'm sure you did.

I highly recommend reading Society of the Snow because it just there was so many more details that we couldn't put in here. There's just endless amounts of information, but so many cool little stories that happened along the way. And it's like even some funny moments and sweet moments and then just what they all learned from the mountain and what it gave them and their respect for the mountain after everything. It's just amazing.

It's it has really left me feeling inspired. It's an inspiring, motivating story as dark and disturbing parts of it are. It's it's the triumph over the darkness. It's kind of a shame that it's it's mostly remembered by people about the cannibalism, you know, and it's such a minor part of it because the media and other people out there who only people.

Only tell the story for that, that fact and not the, the, the human story here. Yeah. Like, I feel like most people who have heard of this haven't even heard of the, you know, the avalanche or anything or all the other.

how they actually got out of there. It's so amazing. Like I said, you really could not write a better Hollywood movie script. Well, the movie that is based on Society of the Snow, the book, is on Netflix. Highly recommend. If you haven't watched it, go check it out. It's very, very good. You can either watch with subtitles or they actually have an English dub too. But it was filmed on location of where this all actually happened. Yeah. Tom, I didn't have time to watch that video, but

So it was, just to clarify, it was filmed partially on location. So what they did is actually, it's crazy fucking cool what they did. So some of the, I don't know if all of them went at one point, but some of the actors went with the director to the location and they scouted out and everything. Excuse me. Obviously, because of its location, that would have been crazy difficult because they shot a hundred and three days worth of footage. And you can just imagine having to go back and forth from that area for a hundred and forty and it just wouldn't happen. What they did was,

They went physically to the valley. They brought really high resolution, like 360 degree cameras. And they created like a, just a giant virtual super composite of the entire valley. So then when they would shoot like scenes in like the Sierra Nevada Valley, which is where they shot a majority of the outdoor stuff. And then when they would shoot indoor stuff, they would just super composite the background, which was the actual footage they shot. And then just wrapped it around the entire like virtual set basically. Oh, wow.

crazy cool how they did it. It was wild. And then there was also like in that video, they show you like the, uh,

physical training regimens they were doing to like have them actually look like more physically like the characters and like the exercises they had to go through and the weight they lost and the weight they lost is unreal oh my god yeah the scenes when they like get them back and the doctors are checking them out oh i thought it had to be fake but that's real huh yeah they they went through that went through some shit wow and i believe that the director went on note because if you if you notice the main character basically of society of the snow the film is numa is numa and

The director said that that choice was because like oftentimes like the story is incredible. But what's forgotten is that like most of the people involved died. And so he wanted the main character for most of the film to be the last person who passed away just to kind of give, you know, honor really to them all. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I noticed that. And I also really appreciated that they took the time to just like whenever they're

Anyone died in the movie, they would put their names up there, their age and everything. And really, they did a great job of honoring everyone. And it was pretty accurate. There was a couple of things that weren't. Yeah, there were some like Numa's injury is not accurate. Kicking out of the... Right. A little Hollywood. And of course, they don't... Anytime they eat meat in the movie, it's always the matchstick as opposed to in real life they were.

There were some scenes where it was like a little thicker, a little chicken wings. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess they were they were working on this film for a long time, like years. And they weren't even sure if it was going to ever make it out. Oh, my God. Can you imagine being part of it and then not being released? And luckily, I think Netflix like infused a bunch of money and and help them kind of get get the funding and resources. Yeah.

Bring it to completion, then bring it to Netflix's massive audience. And it's, yeah, it's a very, it's very well done. It's very touching, has beautiful music and definitely, yeah. Michael Giacchino does the score and he's great. It's also worth noting because it is a technically a biopic, if you want to call it that.

It was made with the consent of the people who survived. And there's a lot of behind the scenes footage of like them. They actually brought them on the set and they kind of watched the scenes play out. And I think it was Eduardo. I could be wrong. It was either Roberto or it was Eduardo who said it was like watching like what happened all over again from their memory. So they gave like full consent for like everything that you see. They saw first, they approved it and they said like this feels like how we felt.

So, yeah. Yeah. I think they they captured it really, really well. Did they sleep out there? So actually, yes, some of them did. And the specifically I know they did sleep out in the valley. They obviously they brought like modern tents, obviously. But the entire like camera crew, art department, sound team, director, producing team, they all slept out there for I don't remember how long you said. I think it was a few weeks.

So they all went out to the valley and stayed out there for the whole time. They were getting the whole like virtual wraparound. Fascinating. Yeah, I really enjoyed this one though. I did too. I did too. Yeah, let us know guys what you thought of everything, thought of the story in this episode. And if you'd be interested in hearing more survival stories, I would love to do coverage on some more. Yeah, or if you know of one, drop a suggestion for us and we'll check it out.

Definitely. But yeah, that's going to be it for us today. Appreciate you going along this journey with us. And definitely gives you a lot to think about. There's a lot of takeaways from this. Yeah. A lot of things to contemplate. For sure. Would you, in this situation, would you eat your fellow human? Do you think you could survive the cold? The cold is what is truly just the...

The cherry on top when it comes to making this complete. It's the ice cream. Yeah, it is. It really is. The freezing cold. Yeah. But yeah, we'll see you guys next week. Until then. Keep on taking your mind as high as the Andes Mountains. We'll see you guys next week.