Timesuck with Dan Cummins

302 - Alive! The 1972 Andes Flight Disaster

Episode Summary

On October 13th, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Andes while carrying 45 passengers and crew, most of them members of the Old Christians rugby team from the Christian Brothers College of Montevideo, headed to Santiago, Chile for a match. Sixteen survivors would spend up to 72 days in the most harrowing of conditions, resorting to two months of cannibalism to survive. No one should have lived - their story is both horrific and inspiring.

Episode Notes

In 1972, the 45 passengers and crew of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 faced extreme weather, avalanches, a variety of injuries, sickness, sun blindness, thirst, and starvation so severe, they were forced to eat the bodies of their friends and family who lay in the snow next to them for over two months in this harrowing tale of survival. Their story is so unbelievable, the first police officers that two members of this group finally contacted took hours of convincing to believe it. No one should have survived a plane crashing at an altitude of over 11,000 feet in the Andes, even in the Spring. The plane crashed far up above the tree line in a snow covered landscape, with no plants or animals for anyone to eat. The plane - because the intended flight was only two hours long - had almost no food on board. It was cannibalism or die. Even with cannibalism, the sixteen men who would make it alive still should have died. Find out why their story is often referred to as the Miracle of the Andes, today on Timesuck. 

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