Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

I can't remember why I suddenly had another urge to read about cannibalism and survival while stranded in wintry mountains again so soon after last fall's reading adventure with the Donner Party, but I was suddenly seized with the desire to run off to the library and borrow Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974) by Piers Paul Read.  Alive is the story of a Uruguayan plane carrying the members of a rugby team which crashed high in the Andes back in the (southern hemisphere) late winter of 1972.  There were forty-five people on the plane; sixteen of them survived two months in deep snow in the mountains, living in the plane's fractured fuselage while given up for dead by most of the world.

It's a gripping story, and very different from reading about the Donner Party or the wreck of the Essex (another true story of survival cannibalism, involving a nineteenth-century whaling ship).  Alive takes place in modern times, and the book was written immediately after the disaster, with the author working with the actual survivors and their families.  So there is much more detail and considerably less speculation involved.  This is great for poring over the gory details (though less so when they include close descriptions of both constipation and diarrhea), but the author's very inclusiveness means that between the stranded boys themselves and their various family members and girlfriends involved in the search, the cast of characters is large and unwieldy, with a mix of usage between first and last names that is particularly confusing when you have fathers and sons with similar names.  The book could really have used a character index.

Even knowing the more-or-less-happy ending, it's a fabulous story.  Most of the stranded are teenagers and young men, and the way they pull together and innovatively solve the challenges of survival is amazing: aluminum sheets draining into bottles to melt snow, pieces of the plane's heating element insulation sewn into a sleeping bag, cushions as snowshoes, etc.  Even after hearing on their radio that the search has been called off, they remain determined and manage to strengthen and outfit "expeditionaries" to set off across the mountains for help.  They are strengthened by their religious faith, to the point of making explicit comparisons between cannibalism and Catholic communion, but they are no angels.  Read is unfailing in pointing out their character flaws and personal issues.  That makes it even more impressive how they managed to rise above them (not to mention subzero temperatures, avalanches, starvation, and the heartbreaking need to eat their friends' bodies) to save as many as possible.

Interwoven with their story is that of the frantic efforts of the parents to continue the search, first for their sons and then -- as they thought -- for their bodies after official search-and-rescue operations ceased after only a couple of weeks.  The shifts back and forth are occasionally confusing, since they often involve moving back in time from where the boys are.  This makes it hard to keep track of what was happening simultaneously.  But that's a minor quibble.

There has been at least one major film made of the story and a handful of documentaries.  I'm not sure yet whether I want to see any of them, but I definitely enjoyed reading the book.  I recommend it for anyone else who likes disaster-survival stories.

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Comments

[Serge]

Another sign of my status as an Elder is that I remember when it happened. Meanwhile, are you that hungry? I think I'll make sure not to bring the Chianti when we meet again.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Nah, I'm well-fed, and believe me, the descriptions of cannibalism in Alive did not make it sound remotely enticing.