You have planned a great holiday with your family or closest friends. You’ve prepared everything. You got on the plane and are having exciting conversations about what you will do at your destination. Suddenly turbulence started, but since it was a routine thing, you weren’t too worried. Until… The plane was thrown here and there among the mountains.
This frightening scenario happened while the rugby players were on their way to the match in Chile. There were 45 people on the plane and not all of them were team players. Some had family members or supporters. When the accident happened, there were neither plants nor animals around them. They were left alone in the middle of nowhere, among the Andes Mountains. Things had gotten to such a scary level that they turned into cannibals!
Unaware of what would happen to them, the players looked for the cheapest way to fly.
On October 12, 1972, flying from Uruguay to Chile by passenger plane was expensive, so they looked for the cheapest option. The solution was an air force plane!
Moreover, this aircraft was named “sled” due to its high weight and weak engines. But no one knew about it. All they knew was that they had found the cheapest flight to play their rugby match in Santiago.
The first part of the journey was cut short by a storm over the Andes and they had to stop in Argentina. After the break, they continued their flight happily, unaware of everything. Then one of the players said that the plane was too close to the mountains, and the passengers slowly started to panic.
The pilots had made a terrible mistake.
The pilots told air traffic controls that they would reach the airport within a minute, but they could not see the surroundings fully due to the clouds and were wrong about the time. They could reach it in 11 minutes, not 1.
When they descended, they were in the middle of the mountains. The wind was terrible, the turbulence was increasing. While the plane was swinging left and right, the clouds parted and the pilots saw something black in front of them. They were going towards the mountains.
The rear of the plane hit a mountain and broke off. In the next collision, they lost their wings and part of the fuselage. They were exposed to freezing cold in the middle of the sky.
Only the front part of the plane remained. Then “BOOM!”; The rest fell into a snow-covered mountain. 12 people had lost their lives, and some of the bodies, whose seats had been ripped off, were piled up towards the pilot cabin. Those who survived, as if by a miracle, were screaming and moaning.
Since they were in a place surrounded by glaciers, the region they were in did not even have a name.
The chances of them being found in this area where they crashed were almost zero. The weather was freezing cold and they were having difficulty breathing due to the altitude.
On the first night, at -30 degrees, they tried to take shelter inside the plane by covering the holes in the remaining fuselage with suitcases. That night, 5 more people lost their lives, bringing the total number of people killed in the accident to 17.
The captain pilot was dead, but the co-pilot was found alive under the wreckage. He had a gun with him and asked the passengers to end his suffering by shooting him with that gun. Even though the passengers did not agree to do this, the co-pilot died in a short time.
There were neither plants nor animals around them.
They started looking for food from the suitcases, but there were only 8 chocolates, 3 jars of jam, a box of almonds, some sugar and a few bottles. They melted the snow and put it in empty wine bottles and used it as water. With each passing day, the death toll was increasing.
They found a transistor radio in the wreckage, but what they heard would turn their psychology upside down. They learned from the radio that they had stopped looking for them. They felt completely helpless now.
They even tried eating strips of leather torn from pieces of luggage. One of them came up with the idea of eating the dead passengers and pilots. Unfortunately, they had no other choice. They would either eat their friends or die themselves.
The 27 survivors started cannibalism by eating the pilot.
They ate everything that had meat, including internal organs. Just when they thought they had solved the food problem, another disaster occurred. An avalanche hit the area. All the holes of the plane were blocked with snow. In this incident, 8 more people lost their lives.
The rest had made makeshift snowshoes, beanies and coats with items they found in their suitcases. Thanks to them, they expanded their walking distance a little further and reached the rear fuselage of the plane. Here they found some food and comics. They spent that night reading comics.
The next day, one of them came up with the idea of going up the mountain and walking. They knew that Chile was to the west, and thanks to the pilot’s announcement, they were aware that they were not far from the landing strip when they crashed. But even the shortest route was at least 60 kilometers, of course they did not know this. All they knew was that they had no other choice.
Before the journey, they took with them a stock of human flesh.
By the 61st day of their journey, the number of survivors had dropped to 16. They were trying to survive with the protective clothing they made and human corpses, but as they walked, they encountered more mountains.
It was as if they were on a journey towards eternity. When they arrived on the 8th day, they found a river and greenery among the melting snow. More importantly, there was a person across the river!
However, they did not have enough strength to cross to the other side. They slept by the river that night and saw the same man the next morning. The man tied a pen and paper to a rock and threw it towards them.
The survivors wrote on paper, “We survived the plane crash. “We have no food, we can’t even walk anymore.” Wrote. The man across the river immediately went to call for help and that’s how they were saved.
Then, teams went to examine the area.
The teams were shocked when they came across human corpses with their bones removed, but if the survivors had not eaten that meat, they would have died there too. This information leaked to the media caused the survivors to be labeled as “wild cannibals” and they received a great reaction. As a result, all 16 people were alive.
Some of those who managed to survive after the accident:
This incident, of course, became the subject of films and documentaries:
- Prisoners of Snow
- Survive!
- cyclone
- Alive
- Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
- Trapped: Alive in the Andes
- I Am Alive: Surviving the Andes Plane Crash
- Rick and Morty – episode “The Vat of Acid”
- Society of the Snow
What would you do if you were in their situation? Come on comment. (I’m vegan, even I would eat it.)
Our other content about plane crashes:
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