[Revisited] The Miracle of the Andes: The story of a group of survivors of a plane crash in the Andes in 1972.

[00:00:00] Hey there, listeners! It's Kyle checking in. If you're wondering what's been happening, let me give you a quick update. The one and only Adam Cox and I are pressing pause on the regular schedule to take a well-deserved holiday exploring the breathtaking Gold Coast of Australia.

[00:00:16] But fear not, we are digging through our archives to unearth some of our favourite episodes from the past year, ensuring that you are well entertained in our absence. Today we are revisiting an episode that's very close to my heart and features the

[00:00:29] astonishing survival story of a group of Uruguayan rugby players. Their plane met a tragic fate in the Andes back in the 1970s, yet against all odds many survived this harrowing experience. This tale is a profound exploration of human resilience and the sheer will to survive.

[00:00:47] And if you've caught the recent release of Netflix's film Society of the Snow, just remember we told this incredible story first back in May 2023. So we're really excited to bring this episode to your ears once more and we hope that you find it

[00:01:02] as engrossing as we did. So sit back, relax and enjoy the journey. As soon as the boy turns to move the seats, Sabino just reaches over, grabs the tube and yanks it out. And six inches of his intestines comes out with it.

[00:01:27] Welcome to the compendium, an assembly of ways that the struggle to survive not only shows us humanity at its worst but also as absolute best. Interesting. That sounds quite dark, or potentially uplifting. I don't know what make of that to be honest.

[00:02:01] Well, first of all, you're getting there. You understand that each week the slogan is a clue to the episode and yeah, it does sound uplifting rather than dark. I think from other recounts that have heard they like to highlight the togetherness and the synergy that comes

[00:02:17] out of today's story. But before we get there, let's introduce ourselves. I'm Kyle Riesi, your host and the guy who's only here because literally couldn't find anyone else. And I'm Adam, your co-host and the guy who's just happy to be here.

[00:02:33] So Adam, how's your week been? Did you manage to take a rummage through your mum's things to see if she was holding on to that stolen Rembrandt from last week? Not yet, but I wouldn't put a pasta. Is she a dodgy type of character? No, she's a hoarder.

[00:02:47] Oh, is she? She's not a hoarder. Yeah. No, bless her. But she does seem to be to me. It's the eyes, isn't it? That's the awful thing to say. If she does listen to this, then you're not coming around for Christmas lunch again. How's your week been?

[00:03:04] It's been great. Got back from Iceland, spent the week in Iceland. Obviously, you were there. So I was. Unfortunately for you, I was there as well. Yeah. And it was, well, never gone on a cold winter holiday before. This was the first one

[00:03:19] and it was cold, very cold. I think it got up to, well, no, down to minus 10 or 12, wasn't it? And then the feel like was even colder than that at some points. It's the wind chill that really brings the temperature down. I think at one point

[00:03:33] it got to like minus 20. Yeah. And they said it was like the coldest winter they've had. So we picked a good week. No, that's not how that works. That's like, oh, guys, you picked the wrong week.

[00:03:42] But I guess we did go there because it obviously is a cold holiday. Yeah. But I didn't put us off. We had our layers. We had our gloves and our, you know, various things to keep us warm along John's. They definitely worked. But yeah, it was the

[00:03:55] landscape is incredible. Like everyone I spoke to before we went said how amazing it would be. They're absolutely right. For my honest, it's not what I expected at all. First of all, when we did arrive flying over, everything just seemed quite barren like a weird barren brown desert.

[00:04:12] But it's not until you get on the ground that you really start to appreciate how that look and feel that you see from the airplane fits into the overall landscape. It's really incredible. Yeah, it's either really flat or you've got these great big mountain escapes.

[00:04:26] At some point it felt like you're on Mars and then you've got the textures of like the rocks, the lava fields, the ice, the water. Just yeah, it's incredible. Yeah. I've never experienced anything like that. It was certainly a highlight,

[00:04:40] certainly something to look back on and go, wow, like I'm glad I've done that. Even though it's bitterly cold, the lows for me mostly were down to the temperature because it was just absolutely freezing to the point where you start feeling cold as pain.

[00:04:55] And all you want to do is just get out of the cold. But the thing is though, most of it is the wind because if you can wrap up warm and you can protect yourself from the wind, everything seems fine. You seem quite cozy in your little

[00:05:09] in your little kind of like cocoon that you create with all your different layers. Scarfs wrapped around your face. So all you can see is just your eyes basically are exposed

[00:05:17] to the wind. And even then, yeah, I know what you mean. I'd have loved to have stayed in some of the places longer if we could have done but it was just too cold.

[00:05:25] So for me personally, the highlight was the first day and the last day because of course on the first day, the first thing we did was naturally go to the Penis Museum. I think it's called the National Philharmonic Museum. It sounds more scientific than just

[00:05:41] Penis Museum. Yeah, but I think people come away from it saying, yeah, I went to the Penis Museum. So what was it? We rocked up but just as it opened on the Tuesday morning. So this is our

[00:05:51] first full day and we had these visions of the star saying guys, seriously, it's 10 a.m. There is such a thing as being too gay. Too eager for Penis. Too eager for Penis.

[00:06:05] But no, they didn't say that. But so our worries were unfounded. But I mean, it was awesome. I don't know who thought that chopping off an elephant penis and sticking it to a plaque

[00:06:16] would look good, but it does. It looks really good. We did even see one little display there where it looked like a five minute craft where you see those little videos online where they say,

[00:06:28] hey, you got five minutes, well then you can make this. And what they had done is they taken what looked like some kind of whale penis or killer whale penis and they had hollowed it

[00:06:37] out and they had taken the skin and they turned it into some hanging basket. Yeah, where you can plant your strawberries or your geraniums. They look great. Yeah, no, that was strange. Five minute dig crafts. I like the fact that I assume they were testicles

[00:06:53] but they made a lamp shade out of them. Yes. So what better ambience than a lamp or light coming from a testicle? It was just weird. Like seeing the world's biggest penis along with the world's smallest penis. Literally you could only see it under a magnifying glass.

[00:07:09] A mouse. It was a small mouse of some kind and it was tiny. It was, but yeah, and everything in between. And everything between. What was your highlight? Highlight has to be the ice caves in the glacier.

[00:07:22] Oh my God. So we went to the largest glacier in Europe and it covers about eight percent of Iceland. Which just to put that into perspective for you, it was five times the

[00:07:32] size of London. Yeah, I think that's what he said. Yeah. That's just one big slab of ice on top of a bunch of mountains. And bearing in mind this is obviously as it is now but it gets smaller by about

[00:07:43] 100 meters every year or something like that, isn't it? So, but I'm going to try and pronounce it. It's called Vatna Jokul. Do you know what I can neither confirm nor deny that that's correct

[00:07:54] but it sounds great. It sounds very Icelandic. Yeah. So I'm going to go with that. But so it, I think what was incredible was we put on these crampons. So these little metal

[00:08:05] grips that stick to the bottom of your shoe so you could walk really easily on the ice. So they took us up the glacier and then once we were there, they then took us into the caves

[00:08:15] so we stepped down and all you can see the layers of the ice over 800 years or something. Yeah. Isn't it like that? Yeah. Every year there's a new layer. It looked like black marble, didn't it? It did. There was that marble effect and but then in other areas,

[00:08:29] I think they mentioned something to do with the oxygen. It made the ice bluer and so that looked really impressive and I think it's almost like a James Bond like layer. It does feel very

[00:08:43] layer like. Yeah. And some of the spaces you have to really crawl onto basically your knees in order to kind of fit through but it's definitely worth it. So if you're going to go

[00:08:52] to Iceland, I recommend it but the one thing that's quite unique is each year the ice caves are different than how they form. Yeah because that's all gone, isn't it? Yeah. So the ice caves that

[00:09:02] we visited won't be there next year so it'll be a brand new set of ice caves because as the ice or the glacier is shrinking by about 100 meters a year as I said so. That was quite the surprise

[00:09:13] for me as well because we got dropped off on the bus and then they took us with these four by fours where they then drove us up into the vicinity of the glacier and they parked

[00:09:20] up and then we had to walk a good 15 minutes. Something like that. Because in just that one year they've just receded and remember that's the entire circumference or perimeter of the glacier that's just restricting by 100 meters every year. Did they not say that if all that ice

[00:09:37] melted it would cover the entire island in 30 meters of water? That's how much water? Yeah. And then so you kind of start to understand or get the perspective when they're talking about icebergs melting and what kind of impact that has on the sea level and stuff like that.

[00:09:56] There's just so much ice there. It's crazy, isn't it? But it was so unique and certainly one of the best places but it's damn cold. Yeah off to the Mediterranean next for sure. The other

[00:10:08] highlight for me was the Sky Lagoon which was just a perfect way to end the trip because we were so busy and it was just unbelievably relaxing that last thing that we did before we had to get on

[00:10:19] the plane the next morning. I was concerned about alcohol being held in the lagoon. Obviously for safety reasons three drinks was the maximum that you're allowed but I was concerned that three drinks was enough to help just the ordinary person forget their inhibitions and

[00:10:36] not nip off to the loo whenever they needed it and it didn't really smell too much of chlorine so I was a little bit dubious about what was in the water. I don't think there was any chlorine.

[00:10:46] There was no chlorine in the water so how was it sanitized? Well you have to wash before you go in but obviously what you do once you're in is completely different. But yeah the seven

[00:10:55] step ritual. Yes the seven step ritual. So for those of you who are interested in what the seven step ritual is first of all you start off in the lagoon where you're all warm you know and a little

[00:11:06] drunk and then once you're ready the second step is that you have to plunge into an ice cold pool and you can't not do it because everyone is smugly watching you as they queue up to

[00:11:19] peer pressure. The peer pressure of it all yes so you have to kind of go in there submerge yourself while everyone watches. Then after that after the ice plunge pool you then have to

[00:11:29] scramble into this incredible glass front of sauna overlooking the Reykjavik bay but everyone has to sit in complete silence all facing the same way and they're all just looking out through this gorgeous three meters by ten meters. Something like that and because we went in the sort of

[00:11:44] afternoon or late afternoon we got to see the sort of the sun was sort of lower in the sky it's a really nice you kind of felt like the warmth from the sauna was actually kind of from

[00:11:52] the sun it's kind of like warming you but it was just bliss. Did you get the sense that while we were sitting there all looking out this window did you feel did it feel a little bit culty?

[00:12:02] A little bit because when you walk in like no one really looks at you in the room and you just kind of have to find your sit and you just all look and listen to this music almost like you're

[00:12:13] being brainwashed a little bit. That's it yeah and this room is absolutely freaking hot like five minutes in you are I was certainly dying but you can't leave oh no because everyone again is watching you and judging you and you certainly cannot leave before the person that was

[00:12:29] in front of you in the plunge pool because then you're that guy right you're that guy who couldn't handle it who had to leave before the person in front of you so you have to stay there for the

[00:12:40] at least until the person in front of you leaves to hold face but then you move obviously into the next stage which was the ice cold rain room which is situated under this cliff

[00:12:50] and it did make me chuckle because when you were standing there all stiff with your hands clenched with the water spitting down on you I remember our eyes met for a second and we were both trying to show that we really appreciated this experience and you were like

[00:13:04] I love it I really love it and it's like you blatantly didn't. I think after you just came from the sauna which was lovely and relaxing and then you're into this with this cold mist

[00:13:13] and dripped on and it was like no get me out of here and then the next step was they rub you down with this almond salt scrub and then off to the steam room which they don't

[00:13:22] rub you down just just to be clear if any all yourself so just in case anyone's thinking that's probably going to get it. I'll put some on your back you did that you did and then obviously

[00:13:31] it's off to the steam room which is so thick and there's so many people packed in I just thought you were gonna potentially sit on someone's lap it was just that thick. I've never been to a

[00:13:41] steam room with that whether steam is that thick as you said it reminds me of that scene from friends when Chandler goes and sits on his father-in-law's lap. That's true and then

[00:13:51] I mean I must admit that was the best part because that marked the end of the seven step ritual and then you shower back into the lagoon. Well then back in the piss pool which felt good but yeah so

[00:14:06] that was the two highlights for me but I mean that then brings us on quite nicely to the topic of this week because it's quite fitting really in today's episode of The Compendium and in honour

[00:14:17] of our recent trip to the wild plains of Iceland I'm going to be telling you about The Miracle of the Andes a story of a group of survivors of a plane crash in the Andes in 1972

[00:14:28] who got stranded on a glacier. Okay so Adam do you know anything about The Miracle of the Andes? I feel like I say this every week no idea but then that's why I'm here to learn new things.

[00:14:40] That's why you're here so today's story is based on a 1974 book called Alive by a British author Pierce Paul Reed which is written on behalf of the survivors of our story and it documents the

[00:14:54] events of a bunch of Uruguayan people and the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. This has to be one of the most harrowing stories I've ever read and today's story is not just a story of survival

[00:15:09] but it's also one of stepping up and banding together and of the will to survive even when faced with the most unimaginable circumstances. I think I agree with many when I say that this

[00:15:21] is why I love survival stories because in the most desperate situations we get to see humanity at its worst but also at its absolute best and I think this story absolutely encompasses that.

[00:15:34] So today's story is about what extraordinary things people are capable of. We will be looking at what happens when a plane crashes on a glacier and what it takes to survive even when everyone

[00:15:44] has given up on you. You ready? I'm ready good buildup. So the date is October 1972 in Uruguay and we meet a bunch of boys who are former students of a private or catholic school for

[00:15:57] boys between the ages of nine and sixteen and it's called Stella Maris College. So even though football is immensely popular in Uruguay, the college adopts rugby over football believing that football turns young men into selfish, egotistical adults but rugby would teach them humility

[00:16:16] and devotion and so at the heart of these boys' formative years was rugby. Now discipline plays a central role in a lot of catholic education systems specifically around this time but because this was a private school physical punishment of the boys was completely forbidden but the belief

[00:16:34] was that rugby would provide discipline where physical punishment wasn't able to provide that. Now these boys love rugby, they loved it so much that after they graduated from Stella Maris they formed an alumni rugby club which went on to win national championships both in 1968

[00:16:53] and in the 1970. Now these boys are young, the oldest is 26, the youngest is 17 but most of them are roughly 19 to 20. They are super celebrated in Uruguay at this point in time basically little rugby celebrities because of their religion they're incredibly devoted to

[00:17:12] both each other and also to their sport because of just their upbringing. So these boys they get invited to play a friendly match in Chile which they decide to make a holiday out of it. They

[00:17:23] decide to charter a military plane to take them over the Andes and into Chile which unfortunately they have to pay for themselves so they don't fill all the seats so what they decide to do is

[00:17:35] they decide to sell the remaining seats to help subsidize the cost of the charter. The plane ends up being filled with these rugby boys, a couple of their friends and a few other random people

[00:17:45] who just needed a cheap ticket to Chile. So they end up being exactly 40 passengers and five crew members. Now there are a number of red flags with this flight already. The plane is a

[00:17:57] Fairchild FH227D it is nicknamed the lead sled because it has a reputation of not having a huge amount of power. The second red flag is that the Andes has an altitude of up to 20,000 feet

[00:18:12] this plane can only travel up to 22,500 feet so it's going to have to navigate between the mountains instead of going high over them. There's also two pilots who will be on the plane one

[00:18:25] pilot Julio Ferradas sorry if I put to that name but he served in the Air Force for about 20 years and he's flown over the Andes 29 times so he's experienced but he's not going to be flying

[00:18:36] the plane. The co-pilot Dante Lugurara is going to be flying now he doesn't have much experience at all. The last red flag is they're not supposed to fly over the Andes in the afternoon because

[00:18:50] the air currents become very dangerous at this time of day due to a phenomenon called wave turbulence caused by strong winds and rising hot air as well as that high altitude. So they set out

[00:19:03] and everything appears to be fine but when they get over Argentina the weather begins to turn and the plane has to land and they decide to stop over and wait for the weather to get better which is

[00:19:12] a wise move. Naturally the boys are a little bit disappointed because they're losing out on one day of the holiday but they're determined to make the best of it. They spend the night

[00:19:20] in Argentina going out partying, they go to see a car race, they see Barbara Streisand in What's Up Doc, they find some girls and to sum it up they end up partying until four in the morning so

[00:19:31] they actually do make the most of the stopover. Now in the morning the weather is still not optimal but the boys try persuading the pilots to try and fly over the mountain. Alongside this the pilots also have a dilemma because this is a military aircraft they are

[00:19:48] not allowed to stay in Argentina for more than 24 hours so they have to go to Chile or they have to go home and even though the weather is not optimal they do decide that they're going to go to Chile

[00:20:00] which means that they'll be flying over the Andes in the afternoon. So the boys are happy, they're having a blast on the plane and they're throwing the rugby ball and they're playing cards, they're having a great time. Then suddenly the clouds part and they look out the window

[00:20:14] and they see the mountain 10 feet from the right wing. Everybody knows that something is really wrong at this point because the co-pilot is desperately trying to climb and trying to get over the mountain. The plane suddenly tilts upwards and this causes everyone to start screaming

[00:20:29] and then the plane starts shaking violently and the wing hits the side of the mountain and breaks off cleanly. As it's breaking off it cuts off the end of the tail of the plane

[00:20:39] so now there's a massive open hole the back of the plane and people are just being sucked out of the opening. A steward, the navigator and three boys are sucked out the back and one moment

[00:20:50] later the left wing then breaks off too. So now what you have is this fuselage which is the torso of the plane just flying through the air. So I'm guessing they couldn't see through the clouds

[00:21:03] that there's no kind of radar detection or anything that kind of senses? I think what's going to come down to is that the pilot didn't quite know where he was, he thought he was

[00:21:12] somewhere else so I think that took him by surprise and because obviously the plane doesn't have a huge amount of power it couldn't really react in time to kind of straighten out and get over that mountain.

[00:21:22] So amazingly though the plane does land on its belly in the snow, it lands in such an angle that it begins to slide at 200 miles an hour down the slope. Many of the seats are ripped from

[00:21:32] the floor and they pile up in the front of the plane and people are trapped between them. One boy nicknamed Koche looks down and sees that his necktie is just completely shredded by the wind. That's how strong the forces are at this moment and suddenly everything is still

[00:21:47] and some of the boys are very injured and some of them are basically fine as well. The team captain called Marcelo Perez, he's injured but he immediately begins to organize a rescue of the people who are trapped between the seats. Two other people that are medical students,

[00:22:03] their names are Conesa and Zabino, they jump in to help as well. Now they have very little experience between them. Zabino only has one year of medical training but has spent half of it

[00:22:15] on psychology and sociology which is super handy because Zabino sees a boy who's got a metal tube literally sticking out of his stomach and he knows that doctors are supposed to be reassuring

[00:22:26] so he's like it's fine, it's fine, it looks fine and the boy's like are you sure I've got a pipe sticking out I mean Zabino's like it's fine. He tells the boy that he needs

[00:22:34] help moving some seats and as soon as the boy turns to move the seats Zabino just reaches over, grabs the tube and yanks it out and six inches of his intestine comes out with it. So this boy is just looking down at his intestines, isn't that horrific?

[00:22:50] It's like when you have a plaster and sometimes you know rip the bandaid off. I'm going to confidently say this is nothing like ripping a bandaid off. No I know but that kind of, I understand that kind of you know but I guess maybe that's

[00:23:05] an experience wouldn't have expected that to happen. No right sorry to have shocked you so early on the podcast. It is a sign of things to come because it is going to get a little bit

[00:23:15] dark but remember as I said within this story there are moments of really uplifting just brilliance of humanity that will really make you happy. Okay I'll hold on to that. So everything is of course a mess after the crash. There's people with amnesia,

[00:23:33] there's people with altitude sickness, one guy has been hit in the head and he keeps just trying to walk away. One of the boys Raphael has his calf ripped off in the crash and is wrapped

[00:23:42] around his shin. There's a boy with two broken legs, there's a woman who had bought a ticket to go to a daughter's wedding and she's crushed between the seats, both the legs are broken, she's screaming no one can get her out. Every time someone is freed from their

[00:23:55] seats they are immediately joining the effort to try and rescue the others. So there is this boy called Nando Parado whose skull has broken into pieces and he's basically in a coma. He's non-responsive and basically they count him amongst the dead.

[00:24:11] Meanwhile the pilots are trapped in the cockpit. Now Knessa that's the medical student manages to get in but the pilot is dead. The co-pilot who is flying is screaming and keeps repeating again and again. We pass curico, we pass curico, we pass curico. Nobody knows what

[00:24:27] that means. The pilot begins begging to be shot with his own gun but the boys will not shoot him but they also can't get him out so they have to just leave him and return back to the rest of the

[00:24:35] team. Now that night temperatures dipped below minus 40 degrees Celsius. At this temperature this is where you really start to experience cold as pain and the thing to remember is that these boys are just wearing blazers and cotton shirts. The team captain, Marcelo, leads the others

[00:24:52] to carry out all the dead outside and get all the injured inside. He has people build a wall with luggage across the opening of the fuselage so that they can get just even a little bit of warmth.

[00:25:04] Now Nando Parado the guy with the broken skull was outside with the dead but the last minute someone drags him in even though it doesn't seem like he even has a chance and at this

[00:25:14] point 32 out of the 45 are alive and the sun begins to set. At one point Sabino, the medical student that's the one who pulled the pipe out of that boys side thinks that he sees the light of dawn

[00:25:27] and he's relieved because he thinks they finally made it through the night and he looks at the clock and it's only 9 p.m. So they're in an endless night that feels like hell essentially. So by morning everyone is covered in a thick frost. The co-pilot has stopped moaning,

[00:25:42] he has died and the survivors had eight bottles of wine with and they drank five of them just to get through that night. Over the next day, Marcelo, the team captain continues to take the lead

[00:25:53] and the boys already see him as a leader. He's assigning tasks and keeping people busy because things do need to be done, things need to be cleaned, snow needs to be shoveled, the injured need their wounds tended to but he also knows that these tasks are going to

[00:26:07] keep people out of despair and Marcelo sets an example by taking the hardest jobs for himself and he sleeps in the coldest part of the fuselage or the plane torso if you will. Wow, it does sound like he's really stepped into this role.

[00:26:22] Yeah, so Marcelo is responsible for dividing up the rations. They gather everything they have that is edible and he divides them up into meals. At this point a typical lunch would be

[00:26:33] a square of chocolate, a deodorant can filled with wine and that was it. Each boy would get one of those. Now we're starting to see differences in the boys' attitudes at this point. Some are really

[00:26:46] optimistic and are super hopeful that they're going to get rescued and some are just considered realists. So some are physically fine but emotionally paralyzed and others are physically messed up but are still doing everything they possibly can. So for instance, Autorio,

[00:27:02] he has two broken legs but he devotes himself to studying maps in order to figure out where they are and he finds the only clue they have and it's the name Curico which is what the

[00:27:12] co-pilot was repeating again and again and again. He finds this on the map and it determines that if they've passed it then they've flown almost entirely across the Andes. So this is really good news because it means that they're in the western foothills right

[00:27:29] over the mountains to the west are the green fields of Chile basically. So they're not that far potentially. Right. Now one of the boys, Fito, he is like the inventor of the group and he figures

[00:27:40] out how we can make snowshoes from passenger seats and also a way to melt snow by putting aluminum foil out and putting the snow on top of it and then decanchoring them into different containers. And also Marcelo, he organizes the survivors into three groups. There's

[00:27:56] the medical team who are doing things like cleaning that one guy's intestines with cologne which I think is really clever. Really? There's a group that's keeping the cabin tidy and then there's the water makers and their biggest job actually is finding clean snow because there's

[00:28:09] so much of the snow around them that's completely filthy. It's dirty for blood, it's got oil in it from the plane. They also paint an SOS sign using lipstick and nail polish

[00:28:20] on the side of the plane as well. So when rescue teams fly over they'll be able to see them. They had enough nail polish to do that? I think they just found in some woman's handbag.

[00:28:33] So Kinessa, the medical student, he's a volatile kind of guy at this point. He's not very patient with the injured. He steps on them when they don't get out of his way quick enough and

[00:28:42] he's ordering people about but his heart is in the right place. He has a sense of duty. He does eventually figure out how to make hammocks so the people won't get stepped on when anyone is kind of navigating through the fuselage. This guy is really turning into

[00:28:58] quite an interesting character which he played a big part in our story later on. So remember him, his name is Kinessa. Meanwhile they're also constantly learning about the place that the stranded. They quickly realize it's completely incompatible with life. There

[00:29:13] are no birds, there's no plants, there's not even soil, there's absolutely nothing and there's just nothing with calories anywhere. The environment is just brutal too because they're on a glacier, it's incredibly bright which leaves people in danger of snow blindness which is essentially sunburn

[00:29:30] of the eyeballs and these boys don't have any sun protection and they don't have the correct clothing and it's minus 40 degrees centigrade and it's just brutal on the ice. Remember when we were in Iceland and how just bitterly cold it was but we had some incredible clothing

[00:29:46] that we could wear to keep warm and it was still freaking cold. I can't even imagine how they're doing all this in that kind of temperature. Yeah, it's just crazy. So remember Nando

[00:29:58] Parada, he's the guy with a broken skull. Well he wakes up and he reaches up and touches his head and it's all sponging. He is literally pressing on his own brain. Now Nando only survives because

[00:30:10] the cold prevented his brain from swelling so he's basically fine. He just hasn't got a skull. He has got a skull but it's broken and you can actually when you press down on it they feel

[00:30:23] like little buttons that you're pressing basically because they're not attached to the main skull. Okay, they're just floating on top of him. Okay. So he's also an amazing character. He is kind

[00:30:32] of a follower, he's not like a nerd or anything but he's definitely not an alpha male. So Nando only gets the girls because he's inseparable from his best friend, Panchito who's honestly really good with the girls. But when Nando wakes up he discovers that his

[00:30:49] best friend, Panchito, has died along with his mother. Nando's sister Susie is still alive but she is gravely injured. Now the moment he is awake Nando devotes himself to his sister. His entire focus is helping her. He wraps himself around it to keep her warm. He's massaging her,

[00:31:09] he's talking to her. He's just embracing her constantly all the time just to keep her from freezing. Now day five October the 17th several boys decide that they're going to climb up and

[00:31:19] check out the surroundings. Specifically they want to find the tail of the plane which is broken off just before the fuselage crashed. They know that it has supplies as well as a battery

[00:31:29] which they hope will power the plane radio. They also want to locate the bodies of the boys that were sucked out the back as well. So using the snowshoes that Fito made from the plane seats

[00:31:40] they set out but they just keep falling into the snow literally waist deep. Because of the altitude there's also very little oxygen so they're literally gasping for air. They discover that the mountain is much steeper than it looks and there are these crevices all over the

[00:31:55] mountain that makes it really extraordinary treacherous. Because of the cold and because of the altitude regular mountaineers in these conditions would need to eat around about 15,000 calories a day just to maintain their current weight. 15,000. It's just because I guess their

[00:32:12] body is just focused on keeping warm I guess. And you also dehydrate way quicker as well because every time you breathe out you're breathing out moisture and it's just evaporating so you also dehydrate way quicker as well. Luckily they have the water from the glacier that they can

[00:32:27] melt. But now it's day five and they've hardly eaten anything and they're burning 15,000 calories and their bodies are literally now breaking down. Day eight Nando sister has died and his obsession with protecting her shifts he's now completely obsessed with escape and he insists that he's

[00:32:45] going to walk over the mountain and everyone thinks he's just completely bonkers. Now that Susie has died there is only one other woman left and her name is Liliana. She's 35 and she survived

[00:32:58] the crash with her husband Javier. Now together they have four kids back home and Liliana is instantly like a mother to all the boys. She is kind of a constant reassurance to them. She's always reminding them to wear hats, she's rubbing their feet to help keep their

[00:33:14] circulation up. The boys absolutely adore her and they're also given her special treatment as a result of it. They want her to sleep in the warmest part of the plane, she refuses. Overall Liliana being there is just an incredible comfort and morale for these boys who are

[00:33:32] of course also missing their mothers I guess. Now there is a search effort that is going on for the survivors but it is quickly decided that they're no longer looking for survivors because the temperatures at night on minus 40 degrees centigrade they now believe that

[00:33:48] they're just looking for bodies. At night they're constantly punching each other's feet as well just to keep up the circulation and the thing is though like this behavior isn't unusual for them because they're part of a rugby team, they are trained to have this camaraderie, they're trained

[00:34:03] to have this devotion with each other so this behavior, this constantly rubbing and reassuring and punching each other looking after each other just comes naturally to them which is just so incredible and this is one of the first examples where we see that in desperate

[00:34:17] situations you can have some of the best parts of humanity that are keeping each other going and keeping each other alive. Yeah, that whole morale building and maintaining that you can clearly, I guess this helped them if these were just strangers and stuff like that maybe they wouldn't

[00:34:32] have, well I don't know where this is going but up to this point perhaps they wouldn't have survived like they have done. You've got it nailed if they believe that they're looking

[00:34:39] for bodies rather than survivors how is it that they've managed to survive and I think that is it, it's their teamwork that is keeping them alive right? Marcelo's kind of leadership skills and

[00:34:51] knowing things that needs to be done and keeping each other busy. And the trust they must have in each other as well must help with this. I think you're right yeah. Now the families

[00:35:00] of the boys obviously haven't given up one of the boys' father decides that he's going to try and search for the crash by himself on horseback. Other families are consulting psychics and many of the mothers are organizing prayer vigils to pray for the safe return of their kids.

[00:35:16] Meanwhile as the days are going by the survivors are getting very discouraged and very hungry. They're an altitude of 12,000 feet and at this height as I said earlier on you dehydrate five times faster than you would normally at sea level and this is because you have to breathe

[00:35:31] much faster because there's low oxygen. Now I'm going to read you a quote from Nando, he's the our Skoll friend about a peanut that eats towards the end of the first week. It's a chocolate

[00:35:42] covered peanut and he has one. I slowly suck the chocolate off the peanut. I then slip the peanuts into my pocket of my slacks. On the second day I carefully separated the peanut halves

[00:35:54] slipping one half back into my pocket and placing the other half in my mouth. I suck gently on the peanuts for hours allowing myself only a tiny nibble now and then and I did the same

[00:36:05] on the third day and when I'd finally nibbled the peanut down to nothing there was no food left at all. How heartbreaking is that he had one peanut over the course of three days? I just can't even, the temperature, the hunger, the altitude, literally everything is stacked

[00:36:28] against the ground. It is, yeah. Obviously these boys are social for food everywhere and of course there's nothing to eat. Of course the plane isn't edible and it's not even burnable

[00:36:36] either so they can't have been burned on fire. They do try to burn money but as you can imagine how that goes like it'll give you a bit of warmth for five seconds. What's the point? Right?

[00:36:46] I'm going to read you another quote from Nando which is taken from his book The Miracle on the Andes which came out in 2006. This is his own book. So he survives I'm guessing.

[00:36:54] Well I mean spoiler. So he's looking around and he notices a leg wound of a boy lying near him. The center of the wound was moist and raw and there was a crust of dried blood on the edges.

[00:37:07] I could not stop looking at the crust and as I smelled the faint blood scent in the air I felt my appetite rising and then I looked up and met the gaze of the other boys who

[00:37:17] had also been looking at the wound. We read each other's thoughts and quickly glanced away but for me something had happened that I couldn't deny. I had looked at human flesh

[00:37:28] and instinctively recognized it as food. Wow. So how does it say how far in this was? How many days in this was? So this is roughly so the peanut incident was at the end of the first week.

[00:37:42] So we're getting to that point where survival instincts are kicking in. That's it yeah like you're looking for food everywhere. Now whispers are going around the group and finally Knessa the med student brings it up to everyone. So Knessa is one of the more religious

[00:37:56] boys and he makes a religious argument to the group. He says morally they should eat the meat because God let them survive and through the dead God has given them a way to survive and to stay

[00:38:07] alive. The other boys begin weighing in. Sabino says if he dies then they'd better eat him or he's going to kick their ass from behind the grave. Before long everyone in the group

[00:38:18] is in consensus about wanting to be eaten if they end up dying. What is interesting is the idea of eating another human being especially in the eyes of the Catholic Church is typically considered abhorrent. I don't know what society it is acceptable. The arguments that they're

[00:38:38] presenting obviously in this time of desperation end up being both logical and theological. In the light of their faith they come up with a super meaningful way to justify eating of the meat and

[00:38:49] they liken it to communion and that's how they're justifying it because it's literally written in the Bible. So I think it's very clever and I think in desperation they've justified it because of course they are extremely devout human beings. It's really hard to relate to that but interesting

[00:39:07] that they all sort of came to this agreement. It sounds like quietly and no one was objecting or did anyone object? Well so there are some people that just can't do it but none of those

[00:39:20] people try and stop the others from eating the human flesh. So yeah they all kind of accepted it would happen if they didn't want to get involved. It's either that or death right? Yeah

[00:39:29] they literally have nothing else to eat. They have no other option. And then I'm guessing they're eating it raw. They're not cooking it as you said with there's no fire. Well

[00:39:37] Kinesa makes the first cut. He cuts tiny slithers from one of the bodies and then he dries it in the sun and then brings it back to the group and many of them eat the meat. One of the boys

[00:39:47] Gustavo wrote to his girlfriend about this day and here's what he wrote. I pray to God from the bottom of my heart that this day would never come but it has and we have to face it with

[00:39:58] courage and faith. Faith because I come to the conclusion that the bodies are here because God put them here and since the only thing that matters is the soul I don't have to feel any great

[00:40:10] remorse and if the day came and I could save someone with my body I would gladly do it. Wow so sad. I feel so awful for these boys. So and they're young boys some of these 19

[00:40:27] make these kind of decisions. Yeah that's a lot. If I'm honest I think it's a very easy decision to make. What makes it difficult for these boys is the fact that they're Catholic and they're

[00:40:42] and it's their family and friends right? That's what must make it even harder because if it was strangers you could probably could you know there's no emotional attachment and whilst I get

[00:40:52] the fact you know body and soul different but the people that you... Well hold on to that because we're going to find out what happens with Nando's sister and mother because you raise a really

[00:41:04] interesting point because they actually refuse to eat the sister and the mother out of respect for Nando. So you're right it's that detachment right? It's like they have a friend that they

[00:41:14] really care about who's alive and out of respect for him they decide not to eat him but again once all the bodies disappeared then it might be re-up for negotiation. Exactly but we'll come on to

[00:41:24] that in just a moment. So day 11 the boys find a small radio and a few of them hear that the search has been cancelled and nobody is looking for them anymore. The boys who hear this debate

[00:41:36] whether or not to tell the others because they don't want to bring down morale but finally Nikolai says he's going to go tell the others and he says to the boys good news they've cancelled the search and immediately they're like why is this good news

[00:41:50] and he's like because now we know we have to get out on our own. So Marcelo the captain and the leader is completely crushed Adam because he is the one who chanted the plane he blames himself massively for the crash and he just breaks down which completely terrifies

[00:42:07] the others because they've all been leaning on him for guidance for leadership for like just having a purpose to get up every day and without him. Farther figure almost than this. Nando now becomes obsessed with escaping and the other boys have to physically stop it.

[00:42:23] Later on three of the boys go on a mini expedition up the mountain and they're gone overnight. They come back the next day and one of them is completely blind from snow blindness but while

[00:42:34] they're out there exploring they're able to see that the plane is almost nearly invisible against the snow from up above. They know that there is no chance that the plane is ever going

[00:42:45] to be seen from above even if the search is resumed and now they begin to come around to Nando's way of thinking and they agree they need to escape. So now the leadership has taken a shake

[00:42:59] up and a clear leader starts to emerge and that's our little skull button pressing friend Nando. Yeah Nando has never been a leader in his life but he has this intense obsession with getting out and remember Nando has lost his mom and his sister and his best friend.

[00:43:16] All he has in this world is his father. Here's my final quote from him. My greatest fear was that I would grow so weak that escape would become impossible, that we would use up all the bodies and that we'd have no choice but to languish

[00:43:30] at the crash site as we wasted staring into the eyes of our friends waiting to see which ones would become our food. God that's harrowing. It's so shocking. Now Nando begins implementing

[00:43:45] his plan and he starts thinking about who he's going to be taking with him on his escape team. He picks Kanessa, the medical student. He also picks Fito, that's the guy who invented the snowshoes and a guy called Numa. Now these four boys become known as the expeditionaries

[00:44:01] and because they're preparing to escape they begin to get special treatment, extra food, they get to sleep in later and everyone else has to do extra chores. Now one night they're all

[00:44:11] asleep and a guy named Roy who is amongst the youngest of the group he just happens to be awake and he hears a vibration coming from up the mountain. He hears a sound of metal falling

[00:44:22] and the sound is so unusual that it makes him jump up and in that moment they are hit with an avalanche and the fuselage interior becomes completely packed with snow. Roy only survives because he jumped up

[00:44:35] at that moment and he's the only person who's not submerged. All around him there are people buried and it's not just a case of crawling out from the snow because the snow is set like

[00:44:47] concrete in the surface of the snow begins to freeze instantly. Like when we're in Iceland we would just walk along you'd wipe your nose and then all of a sudden that would just freeze.

[00:44:55] Yeah, like a wet mist, it just forms and freezes. That's it. Now what does he jump on? Sorry. He just is just standing up. Standing up. Yeah, all around him people are buried

[00:45:06] and it's not just a case of you crawling out because it's set like concrete. Now Roy begins to dig out people one by one as soon as one person's dug out they join in to dig

[00:45:15] out the others. Now while Fito, he's one of the expeditionaries was buried under the snow he felt another boy bite his toe and that's the only reason why they know that there was someone there

[00:45:25] and he gets out alive. Oh my god. Several of the others who were buried described the experience, oh my god, they described the experience as realising that they were going to die and describing it as relief. They were almost happy. Yeah. They're all not happy, sorry but

[00:45:43] just relieved. That's the only word right? So Javier, that's Liliana's husband, he gets out, he begins to scream someone dig out Liliana, it's too late and by the time they get her out she's dead.

[00:45:57] Eight more die in the avalanche at this point the depths of the spare is immense. There's 19 people left alive from the original 45 and they're all packed into a space that could fit four people. They cannot get out because the fuselage itself is just buried in snow, it's completely

[00:46:16] jam-packed. There is no insulation and their friends' bodies are just all around them. It's dark, they're trapped and all they can do is wait for daybreak but people start to cough and they realise that they're running out of oxygen. Nando finds a pole somewhere and

[00:46:36] somehow he finds a strength to stab it right through the ceiling of the aeroplane, puncturing a hole right through out of the snow and allows oxygen into the plane. And they slowly start taking turns digging out a tunnel. Finally the tunnel gets to the surface,

[00:46:52] Roy pokes his head out and there is a raging blizzard outside. So they're trapped and the survivors agree that the day spent waiting for the blizzard to end was the worst of the entire

[00:47:06] experience. This is, oh god, it just feels like it's getting worse and worse. I almost had hope for them and now they, yeah how they must keep the morale up for this. Well one of the boys

[00:47:24] remembers that a taxi driver told them that summer starts on the 15th of November. So Nando decides that he's going to wait till the 15th of November to initiate his escape plan because of course if

[00:47:35] he leaves now and there's another blizzard it'd be a disaster. Now the blizzard finally passes and they start to search for the other bodies that were buried in the avalanche and it's

[00:47:44] hard to find them. One of the strategies that they assign themselves is to pee in the same place each time and each time they pee it'll melt a little tunnel through the snow and they'll look

[00:47:55] down to see if there's a body there. Also at this time they're all incredibly constipated so they start to have a competition to see who's going to last the longest without having a bow

[00:48:04] movement and the winner goes 34 days. 34 days without, can you imagine? I mean I know they're not eating much but 34 days. Yes completely constipated. Now around about this time the expeditionaries resume their plan to find a way out on the 15th of November. Now Canessa and Nando

[00:48:21] don't have great shoes or socks for the expedition so they make the socks out of human forearms. The 15th of November comes and the expeditionary set out and immediately they're hit by a storm and they're forced back to the plane. It's a false start Adam

[00:48:38] and it's another two days before the storm passes. Now Numa who is one of the expeditionaries his leg is getting really infected following the avalanche and he's told that he cannot come on the expedition anymore. On the 17th of November that's two days later it's finally

[00:48:56] a clear day and the expeditionaries they leave again and this time they decide that they're going to go down the slope instead of going up the mountain which kind of means they're going in the wrong direction. Their thinking is however that by following the valley down

[00:49:13] they're hoping that it'll turn and so they'll start going around and what ends up happening is then finding the tail section of the plane which they've been looking for. It has one clothes, it has chocolate, it has cigarettes, it has a camera, it has meat pasties and most

[00:49:30] importantly it has a battery they can now potentially send out a radio for help. Now these boys have been having the time of their life at this tail end because they're able

[00:49:43] to eat moldy sandwiches and they're able to read comic books after dark so they love it so they stay there for around about a day and then they continue down the valley which then makes them think

[00:49:51] that they might be walking deeper into the mountains after all. So they decide that they're going to go back to the boys and figure out if they can just fix the radio. Okay now the survivors

[00:50:02] back at the crash site they're not thrilled when they see them because they've been gone for six days and they were hoping that they would be in civilization by now but they're not

[00:50:11] that just back at the plane. Now they've all decided that Roy that's the youngest guy that he's the most experienced with electronics, they decide that right and they're like Roy you have to fix

[00:50:22] the radio and he's like I can't fix the radio and they're like you have to fix the radio you've got no choice. I feel sorry for Roy. He has his personality that some boys find super annoying

[00:50:31] and they're kind of mean to him because of it. He's kind of like me. You can relate. I can relate now Roy heads off to the tail where the battery is and he

[00:50:40] tries to fix the radio. He's unsuccessful but he does manage to play a little bit of music but he can't send out the signal. Now eventually it's time to go back to the fuselage again.

[00:50:51] It's a big journey and a storm hits while they're en route. Now Roy begins to cry and he's really upset. Roy tells Nando just go on without me. Nando refuses to leave him but he's also really furious at him. Nando starts yelling at him. He's kicking him,

[00:51:06] he's punching him in the face, he's stomping on him. He's taking out all his anger on Roy. He says things like you're a motherfucker, you're a son of a whore, stand up I'm going to kill you.

[00:51:18] Eventually it works. Roy stands up and Nando shoves him all the way to the fuselage and they both end up surviving which is good. So it's now the first week of December and we actually start seeing summers coming. They see two condors which are vultures

[00:51:37] essentially that appear in the sky. The boys do become really terrified that the condors are going to come down and start eating the carcasses that they've been eating. They also find a couple

[00:51:46] of flies and they also find a butterfly. Can you imagine how happy you must be just to see one fly or one butterfly? Just something that just anything yeah they then hear on the radio

[00:51:58] that it's now summer and the search has been resumed. So Kinesa and the expeditionaries say let's stay here and just wait for the rescue but everyone is really pissed off because they've been getting all the special treatments and now they're trying to get out of the expedition

[00:52:13] that everyone has been working really hard to get ready for. So on the 11th of December Numa, one of the expeditionaries, the one with the leg infection, he dies and this is what finally spurs Kinesa and Nando to set off on the expedition. Okay so until this moment

[00:52:30] the boys have not eaten Nando's mother and his sister out of respect for him and he's super grateful for that but he's now leaving and he says look if you have to do it

[00:52:41] then you just need to do it and then the three boys set off up the mountain. The boys know nothing about climbing a mountain they don't know that you're supposed to find the gentleness

[00:52:51] route up the slope instead they go straight up the mountain. They don't know to avoid avalanches, they don't know how to avoid crevices and they think they're at like 7,000 feet because that's what the planes ultimately said when actually they're at 12,000 feet and it turns out that this

[00:53:07] mountain at the climbing is one of the highest in the entire Andes. In the first morning they climbed 2,000 feet which is twice as far as you're supposed to climb in a single day at these altitudes because going too fast contributes to altitude sickness which can cause an

[00:53:23] increase in fluid in the lungs which could potentially mean instant death. But they went to know this. They didn't know. Who does know this? Exactly, I tell you I didn't know it but I guess if you're

[00:53:32] an experienced mountaineer you know it right. Of course yeah. It's also very steep Adam so they're literally pressing their chest against the snow at times just to keep themselves from falling back the rocks are falling past them. The third expeditionary's name is Tintin and

[00:53:46] he gets stuck at one point because his backpack is pulling him backwards and he just can't move. Then eventually they find these ravines which are like these vertical shoots that are a little bit

[00:53:58] easier to climb but what they don't know is that they're basically funnels for avalanches so at any moment they could die. They climb all day and they finally get to the top and they're

[00:54:09] finally going to look down on Chile and see the green valleys that they've been thinking about but when they get to look down over the other side all they see is more Andes endlessly in every

[00:54:19] direction. So they feel like they're stuck in the middle. Yeah it turns out that they were not at the edge of the Andes far out of the distance they see two mountains that don't have any snow on them

[00:54:30] and they decide that they'll aim for those but they realize they don't have enough food with them because it's much farther than they anticipated so they vote Tintin off the

[00:54:38] expedition and they tell him to leave his food and go back. Can you imagine? I would be like no not going back come this far. Yeah and he's got to make all the way back across the treacherous

[00:54:51] mountain all by himself. All on his own. That doesn't feel like it's going to end well. Andando says to Canessa can you imagine how beautiful this place would be if we were not dead men? Canessa replies you and I are friends Nando and we've been through so much

[00:55:08] now let's go die together so they just keep going. Day eight they hear a sound it's rushing water they come to the base of an ice wall and there's a river coming out of it they follow the river

[00:55:22] and they reach the end of the snow and then they enter boulder fields. Canessa can see cows for the first time and they also find a soup can. A soup can yeah which they're just ecstatic about

[00:55:35] Nando can't bring himself to believe this he's like I think a soup can fell out of a plane and Canessa's like oh yeah because planes have windows that just allow soup cans to fall out.

[00:55:45] So Canessa finally sees a man on the other side of the river but Nando can't see anything so in a panic Canessa starts shouting to him to run left to run right Nando is running all over in his

[00:55:58] zigzag trying to run towards a man and by the time it gets close where the guy was he's gone they hear a voice they turn around and there is a man on horseback across river they cannot hear

[00:56:08] what he's saying over the Russian water but they do hear the word manana which means tomorrow and then the man disappears. Tomorrow. It's crazy can you imagine how you must feel at that moment?

[00:56:22] Yeah like all this building up at this moment and they have this slither of hope well actually they feel like they've been found or they're going to be able to get help

[00:56:29] yeah and he just shouts a man yeah tomorrow yeah so the next morning is December the 21st it's day 10 of the expedition and they wake up and there are three men across the river sitting by

[00:56:41] a fire so Nando starts trying to mime forwarding out of an aeroplane to try and explain who they are and what the situation is and the message is just not getting across so finally one of the men

[00:56:52] ties paper in a pencil to a rock and throws it across the river and Nando writes in the paper I come from a plane that fell in the mountains I'm Ureguayan we have been walking for 10 days

[00:57:05] there is a plane and there's still 14 injured people he doesn't know if he has enough strength to throw the rock back over the river but he manages it and the men read it and they understand

[00:57:19] they are then guided further along the river to a section where they're able to cross and they did it they are in an area called Mantanes and one of the men sends off for police which is a

[00:57:31] 10 hour ride away on horseback they are taken in by these guys and they meet some locals who feed them and clean them and they're allowed to nap caness and Nando start telling them the story

[00:57:44] about what happened and then they nap some more they wake up and they eat some more they're then interrupted by two police officers on horseback who are waiting to be led to the crash site the police think that they can ride to the crash site on horseback

[00:57:58] but Nando and Caness are like no no so they have to send people back to town to radio for a helicopter from the capital which is Santiago that will take at least a day and only if the weather

[00:58:11] is good they really start to get worried about the boys back at the crash site because it's it's been 11 days and they know that some of the boys were in really bad shape suddenly there is a

[00:58:22] bunch of journalists from all over the world that start arriving they talk to the journalists for a little bit but obviously they have other priorities the rescuers and the helicopters arrive they pull

[00:58:32] out a map and they ask Nando and Canessa to show them where the the crash site is on the map now Nando points out where he thinks they are but they're like you're wrong this couldn't

[00:58:42] possibly be the crash site because that's over 70 miles away so they learn a little bit more about their geography now that they're on the outside if they had followed the valley beyond the tail

[00:58:56] instead of climbing up the mountain to the west they would have come to a road in just three days also five miles east from the crash site there was a hotel which was closed but it was filled with canned food

[00:59:14] I mean like if you knew you knew of course yeah so back at the plane the boys here on the radio that they've now been found immediately they smoke all the cigarettes that they were going to

[00:59:26] say for Christmas and they start joking about how they're going to meet the rescuers because they want to play pranks on them some of them suggest that they're going to sit in the plane

[00:59:35] and when the rescuers arrive and someone comes up to the door they're just going to be like hello what do you want what are you doing here get out of my land get off my land

[00:59:47] they also decide to do a bit of a cleanup they take off the outermost and the in the most layers so they're just wearing their middle layers which is the cleanest and they also become very aware

[00:59:57] of how gruesome the scene is and they also try to clean that up a little bit as well now just when everything seems great someone screams avalanche is coming and they see a wall

[01:00:08] of white coming towards them and it turns out it's just Fito playing a prank with a fire extinguisher oh my god I would like this is not the time but that's the thing though one thing that didn't

[01:00:19] really get across in this retelling is how often they would play pranks on each other because it really did help keep up the morale and also their best friends and they're so devoted

[01:00:28] and it's in those moments of despair that you can have a joke and like you can joke about the worst possible things in life you know that's why when I've heard a couple other retellings

[01:00:40] the story from other podcasts like there'll be moments where you would say something really gruesome and people would just laugh and it's not coming from it's coming from an awkwardness right like when you're telling the story like how often does someone say something really

[01:00:53] shocking you end up laughing but it's because it catches you by surprise I know of course it's how you cope with these weird situations right and playing the pranks on each other is kind of similar

[01:01:03] but yeah I guess so but I guess part of me thinking even though they know that rescue or help should be on its way soon the fact that their thought process was all let's clean up some

[01:01:16] of the bodies around here let's make it look presentable let's or playing with a fire extinguisher I don't know just quite odd sort of processes but I think is also very human as well yeah yeah

[01:01:26] so finally the rescuers make it to the crash site they rescued the spiders in two batches meanwhile the boys that remain behind get very upset when the rescuers start taking photos

[01:01:36] the boys don't want any evidence of what they've had to eat but they are promised that the photos will only be used as proof for the army and whenever be published the families are obviously

[01:01:45] thrilled when they hear that the boys have been found the next day is the 23rd of December and the rescuers do indeed come back for the eight that are left there the boys are brought to a specific

[01:01:57] wing in a hospital where they're all checked out and that is when doctors realize that the boys have been eating something on the mountain and there's only one thing that they could have

[01:02:06] been eating now words starts to get out some of the families are really shocked when they find out what they've been eating and the boys are really hurt by this and they interpret this to mean

[01:02:17] that their parents would have rather they died than starved that's off I mean they can't even possibly imagine the scenario that they've been in and it's not like they've gone out to kill their friends this is what's happened through natural well not you know through what's happened

[01:02:34] basically well a newspaper publishes a photo of the half eaten human leg in the snow and the media goes wild some people even start to suggest that the avalanche never happened

[01:02:46] and it was just invented as an excuse for the fact that the stronger boys are killed the weaker ones that's so there is that speculation is crazy adam a Chilean newspaper headline read may god

[01:02:58] forgive them and the media are using them as an example of how the world has lost its humanity however the catholic church does come and defend them do you remember however the boys justified

[01:03:11] eating the human flesh like taking communion yeah now the catholic church says no it's not like that apparently it's very important for the catholic church to get that message out but they do defend

[01:03:22] the boys and that means the world to them and their families as well and starts to kind of like rectify things the tide starts to turn a little bit at this point and they become

[01:03:31] national heroes back at home businesses are literally refusing to take their money and a lot of the boys keep their hair long because it makes them like super recognizable people come up to nando

[01:03:41] in the streets and tell them how envious they are of his experience and they wish it could have been them that was up in the mountain isn't that crazy yeah while they are loving the attention

[01:03:52] the adjustment back home is not easy nando struggles in particular remember he was this wannabe playboy before all this happened and he was never really good at getting girls well suddenly everyone wants him and he's like yeah i almost died and now the girl's like oh my god

[01:04:08] that's a shut up line yeah for sure eventually nando goes too far when he signs up to judge a beauty contest and the other survivors step in and he does eventually step down out of respect

[01:04:19] for them but i mean everyone's adjusting in different ways but the group stays incredibly close to this day how many days were they gone in total so like 72 days 72 days before they're found

[01:04:33] and rescued and the my thought of those that being rescued about eight of the boys had to stay behind and i'd hope that it brings some food and supplies and things like that for them i think

[01:04:43] they would have done yes but the thought of like people going you're like please come back please come back yeah i reckon the type of person that you are you would have been on the second

[01:04:51] flight anyway you know you would have had no let me get me out of here i've learned something new about you today any other questions i'm just like i don't know lost for words and this is

[01:05:03] incredible is this like this should be a film it is a film there is a film that's based on this exact book let's go through what's happened to the survivors so nando he becomes a race car driver

[01:05:15] and he was of course reunited with his father people have discovered a route to the crash site that is possible in the summer it's eight hours by off-road car and then two and a half days

[01:05:26] by horseback now nando and his father they return to the crash site every year in honor of his mother and sister the survivors also reunite every year on the 22nd of december and they consider

[01:05:38] this their communal birthday so it's the day that they're all reborn together nando and kinesa they are best friends and tenessa is a pediatric cardiologist he did run for the presidency of

[01:05:52] uragwai at some point and nando is the godfather to his son who also plays for the same christian rugby team now coche he became one of the largest dairy producers in the country and two other boys

[01:06:06] became partners in an oscish farm now roi the really young boy who nando beats up is now an engineer and apparently he's a massive fitness kind of guy and even to this day at his age he has

[01:06:20] the best abs out of everyone the best abs in uragwai now the the guy who rescues them he doesn't feature too much in the story but he's an incredible guy he's the guy who found them

[01:06:32] and he's been completely adopted into the group and in 2005 for his 50th wedding anniversary the boys flew out to surprise him and they did so by approaching him on the road and saying excuse me

[01:06:44] we're lost can you help me one more time oh that's sad wow and that's it it's almost got a tear to my eye but yeah that's the story of the miracle of the annies wow what a story and yeah it makes

[01:07:00] total sense to how you said what an awful situation the things that they've had to do this extreme you know extreme things they've had to do in this situation and yet the positivity

[01:07:11] that it seems like this family this bond that they've built yeah for sure just incredible so i just want to thank everyone for joining us today and we do hope that you've enjoyed the

[01:07:21] episode on the miracle of the annies remember this episode is just a short telling of this incredible story if you are interested in learning more i highly recommend reading pierce paul's 1974 book called alive nanda also released a book in 2006 titled miracle in the

[01:07:39] andes if you're into podcasts then check out blare braverman's account on this exact episode on your wrong about with serah marshall which is heavily based on today's episode the pace in which it

[01:07:51] is presented is just super palatable as well now remember you can also follow us on instagram at the compendium podcast you can also email us now at the compendium pod at gmail.com and thanks again for tuning in and we will see you next time you