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Stranded: I’ve Come From A Plane
That Crashed On The Mountains
What did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbit? Are you gonna eat that?
Jeffrey Dahmer's invited a couple of his friends over for dinner. In the middle of the meal, one of them turns to him and says, "You know, I really hate your neighbors."
And Jeffrey replies, "That's okay, you can just have the salad. – A couple of old cannibal jokes
A space alien circling above our planet, monitoring our entertainment, trying to understand us, would conclude that humanity regularly chows down on each other. Even though actual cannibalism is pretty rare, usually due to severe starvation or religious notions involving ingesting the essence of the one you are eating, our entertainment is filthy with such stories. Ancient people delighted in stories of remote tribes, marooned survivors of shipwrecks, and strained wagon trains. Soylent Green is people after all. Like a baby memorized by a game of peek-a-boo, cannibal stories hold an extremely powerful place in our psyche. Is it the ultimate taboo? Is there something primitive and powerful about the act that speaks to our reptilian brain? Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) has been named as the greatest villain in the history of cinema by numerous film societies. Sweeney Todd has delighted and gotten the toes tapping of Broadway audiences for years. You are not going to be eating just “Fried Green Tomatoes” at the Whistle Stop Café. Even the guys behind “South Park” had Cartman feeding the school bully chili made from meat of his parents. “The body of Christ is given for you.” “The blood of Christ shed for you.” Try explaining the Eucharist to someone unfamiliar with it sometime.
It is why, even though there has been thousands of airplane crashes, one of the most famous continues to be Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, better known as the airplane crash in the Andes where the soccer team ate their fellow teammates and friends in order to survive. In 1993, twenty-one years after the accident, it was turned into a feature film entitled Alive starring Ethan Hawke. While the cannibalism gets the lion share of attention, the story of how sixteen young men stayed alive in one of the hostile environments on this planet for seventy-two days with little food and no proper gear is truly amazing and goes to show the ingenuity and lengths people will go to survive.
On October 13, 1972, a twin turboprop Fairchild FH-227D took off from Montevideo, Uruguay, carrying the Stella Maris College rugby team to a match they were to play in Santiago, Chile. Because the plane could not climb higher than 29,500 feet and thus could not climb over the Andes Mountains, so instead of taking a direct route to Santiago, the airplane had to fly south pass the city of Curico until the pilot could turn west through a pass in the mountains and then turn north again to get to their destination. Due to a strong headwind which slowed the craft down, the pilot misestimated his location, turned west into cloud cover, and crashed into an unnamed peak in the remote mountains between Chile and Argentina. The force of the crash cut the airplane in two, sending the fuselage skidding down a steep mountain slope before coming to a stop in a snow bank. Of the forty-five people onboard, amazingly only twelve where killed in the crash. Five more died of their injuries by the next morning and another lingered for eight days before succumbing. Twenty-six survivors emerged largely intact, except for a few broken bones and bruises, but they lacked the clothing and footwear suitable for such a cold weather climate. Pooling their food and supplies, they quickly discovered that they only had a few odds and ends, a handful of chocolate bars, and several bottles of wine. So, they hunkered down in the fuselage, turned on a small transistor radio they had found, and waited for the rescue they knew was bound to come.
Because the skin of the airplane was white, against the snow, it proved impossible for search parties to see. After eight days, authorities gave up hope and called off the search. Yet, the boys would not learn of their fate until four days later when the news came across their radio. They were lost and alone and had almost no hope of being rescued. Trying to make the best of their situation, one of the boys shouted amidst the tears and dismay, “Hey boys, here’s some good news! Because it means we’re going to get out of here on our own.” Many of those, who survived the next couple of months, credited that ray of hope from having them totally give up.
With their first priority being water, the young men quickly devised a system where they used pieces of metal from the airplane to build a solar oven. This concentrated the sun’s rays, and melted snow they placed in it. The water would drip down the metal into waiting empty wine bottles. With their food rations almost gone and no source of food to be found, they quickly realized if anyone was to survive they were going to have to eat the dead bodies of their friends if they were going to prevent starvation, because “there was nothing here but aluminum, plastic, ice, and rock.” This is not something they took lightly and it took several days for many of them to overcome their reservations.
Then things got worse. Sixteen days into their ordeal, an avalanche buried their habitat, killing eight more of their comrades. It took them three days to dig their way out of the confined tomb-like space. It was then, that these young men decided that their only chance of rescue was to make it out themselves. Believing they were closer to civilianization than they were, the healthiest took it upon themselves to find an escape route. This lead to several expeditions of their surroundings, but the parties were always forced to turn around due to the bitter cold that occurred when the sun went down. In such an inhospitable climate, they were going to need better clothing and footwear to escape and get help. It was on one of these expeditions that they discovered the tail section of the airplane, which held a few scraps of food, a handful of suitcases, some clothing, and most importantly, insulating material used to wrap around pipes. Using this material and the sleeping bags, they created a large insulated sleeping bag in which three men could sleep and withstand the below freezing temperatures that night brought. Upon completion, three of the healthiest survivors headed west. On December 15th, three days into their journey, in spite of the bitter cold and low oxygen, they reached the top of the mountain and were dismayed to discover that there were mountains as far as the eye could see. Yet, in the distance, one of them spied what they thought was a way out of the mountains. Sending one of them back to the wreckage to tell the others, the two remaining members hiked on. After six more days of hiking, they reached the edge of the snowline. As they built a fire to keep warm, one of them spotted what looked like a man on a horse, on the other side of a river. Soon, they spied three men on horseback. Trying to convey their situation across the river to these three Chileans, it was not until the next day when one of the horsemen returned the next day with a pencil and some paper which he threw to the rugby players that they were able to scribble a note detailing the plane crash and their location. It took several hours for these cowboys to get to civilization and for rescue helicopters to appear. The next day, rescue reports reached the survivors and on December 22nd, a helicopter found the remaining boys. Although it would take another day until the sixteen survivors were able to get out. Taken to hospitals around Santiago to deal with their frostbite, dehydration, broken bones, malnutrition, and scurvy, they quickly became international sensations despite efforts to keep things private until the families of the departed had been talked to. Authorities then returned to the crash site, buried the dead about half-a-mile away, and burned the remains of the fuselage to keep it from becoming a center of curiosity.
Verdict: A Great Documentary