Alive: The Miracle of the Andes

Alive: The Miracle of the Andes is a 1993 movie directed by Frank Marshall that narrates this story which is one of (if not the most) notable cases of surviving cannibalism in modern history. The movie was based on the book "Alive" by Piers Paul Read which was based on the Andes flight disaster.

On October 13, 1972, a Fairchild FH-227 twin turboprop airplane departed from Montevideo carrying the Uruguayan rugby team from the Stella Maris (Christian Brothers) school, who were on the way to play a friendly game in Chile. Along with the team were some relatives and friends. The plane crashed in the Andes near the border between Chile and Argentina. After ten days of struggle for survival with minimal rations, the numerous survivors decided to eat the bodies of the deceased passengers in order to survive.

After several weeks on the mountain, eight of the remaining survivors were killed in an avalanche. In the weeks that followed, several others died of starvation and complications from wounds sustained in the crash.

On the 62nd day of their ordeal, Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa, and Antonio Vizintin attempted to climb out of the crash site to seek help. Three days later, Vizintin was sent back to the plane so Parrado and Canessa could continue with his rations. After a 10-day, nearly 50-mile trek through the rugged, treacherous Andes, Parrado and Canessa encountered a local farmer with a horse, who fed them and helped take them to a telephone. A military helicopter of Chile arrived and saved the remaining 14 survivors on December 22, seventy-two days after their plane had crashed due to the pilot's navigational error.

External links

• Internet Movie Database (IMDb) entry for Alive: The Miracle of the Andes
• Alive: The Andes Survivors: links about the incident from P.L. Duffy Resource Centre, Trinity College, Western Australia