Can you eat your dead loved one to survive for more than two months?

October 13, 1972. Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed from Montevideo, Uruguay en route to Santiago, Chile, in the icy Andes mountains of South America. The plane was carrying 45 passengers and crew, including 19 members of the Old Christians Club rugby union team, along with their families, supporters, and some friends.

The plane crashed in the remote part of the Andes mountains at an altitude of 3,570 meters (11,712 feet), west of Argentina, near the Chilean border. Several passengers and crew were immediately killed in the crash, while others aboard the plane were killed in the following days due to extreme cold and injuries. 13 more passengers were killed within two months. The remaining surviving passengers were forced to eat their bereaved companions to live for more than two months. 72 days after Flight 571 crashed, on December 23, 1972, 16 survivors were rescued. This tragedy is called the "Miracle of the Andes".

The Old Christian Club rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay is set to play against Old Boys Club, an English rugby team, in Santiago, Chile. The Uruguayan Air Force twin turboprop Fairchild FH-227D (Flight 571) was chosen by the teams to board Chile. The plane was carrying 40 passengers and 5 crew.

The plane took off from Carrasco International Airport in Montevideo on October 12, 1972. Due to inclement weather in the Andes mountains, the plane was forced to stop for a while in Mendoza, Argentina, before resuming flight at 2:18 PM on October 13. Colonel Julio Cesar Ferradas was the pilot of the plane along with co-pilot Lieutenant-Colonel Dante Héctor Lagurara. Ferradas has been able to fly in the Andes mountains several times but his co-pilot has no experience in such mountains. The pilot misread their location detection instrument. It was accompanied by bad weather. Assuming they had reached Santiago, Chile (they were still in Curico, Chile), the air traffic controllers allowed them to land. This is where the tragedy began. Flight 571. landed and landed. The plane was completely unlucky. The plane's right wing was cut off and its body split. It even slipped on a slope with a height of more than 2,000 feet before it finally fell into the snow.

Of the 45 people aboard the plane, 3 passengers and 2 crew members on the tail of the plane were immediately killed - Lt. Ramón Saúl Martínez, Orvido Ramírez (plane steward), Gaston Costemalle, Alejo Hounié, and Guido Magri. A few seconds later, Daniel Shaw and Carlos Valeta fell off the plane. The two were able to survive the fall but Valeta eventually died due to extreme cold. Four more were killed when the plane crashed into the ice.

The remaining passengers are in serious condition. Some of them broke their legs and were stabbed with metal due to the fall. None of the victims survived. Nando Parrado was hit in the skull and comatose.

The search for the crashed plane began after they heard it was missing. They failed to locate the plane so they stopped searching on October 21, 1972. The passengers heard the news that they had stopped searching with the help of a small radio they were carrying. It was here that the passengers prayed while others lost hope.

In the first five nights, five more people were killed. Survivors squeezed themselves into the wrecked plane to survive the extreme cold. Three days later, the comatose Parrado woke up again. The remaining passengers had to endure the extreme cold that hit −30 ° C (−22 ° F). Almost all of the remaining passengers have never experienced snow. Their food supply is also limited and they do not have any winter clothes.

Passengers shared the few foods they had: chocolate bars, jams, candies, and a few bottles of wine. Cold, no plants and animals can be caught, in this condition, the survivors have been forced to eat the cotton and leather of the plane seats. They could not bear it and others fell ill.

Continuing to fight hunger and death, the remaining passengers agreed to be eaten by the time they died to save the rest of the survivors. Survivor Roberto Canessa described their decision:

Our common goal was to survive — but what we lacked was food. We had long since run out of the meager pickings we’d found on the plane, and there was no vegetation or animal life to be found. After just a few days, we were feeling the sensation of our bodies consuming themselves just to remain alive. Before long, we would become too weak to recover from starvation.

We knew the answer, but it was too terrible to contemplate.

The bodies of our friends and team-mates, preserved outside in the snow and ice, contained vital, a lifea -giving protein that could help us survive. But could we do it?

For a long time, we agonized. I went out in the snow and prayed to God for guidance. Without His consent, I felt I would be violating the memory of my friends; that I would be stealing their souls.

We wondered whether we were going mad even to contemplate such a thing. Had we turned into brute savages? Or was this the only sane thing to do? Truly, we were pushing the limits of our fear.

Some passengers survived because of the food of their dead friends and relatives. Canessa used broken glass to cut human flesh. He took the lead in eating human flesh. They ate only skin, muscle, and fat but when they ran out, they were able to eat the human heart, liver, and brain. Others do not want to eat human flesh. Eventually, others are forced to do so after realizing that this is the only way for them to survive.

Aside from the problem caused by hunger and extreme cold, the calvary increased the number of passengers when an avalanche took place on October 29. Eight people were killed by the avalanche. Two other survivors were killed in November, Arturo Nogueira and Rafael Echavarren (died of wound infection). Numa Turcatti, who chose not to eat human meat, died on December 11.

Sixty days after the plane crashed, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa decided to climb the glacier for help. They traveled more than 60 miles [61 km] in ten days before seeking help from a local. They told the story and it garnered attention around the world. On December 23, 1972, more than two months later, 16 survivors were rescued.

Later, survivors of the public confessed their cannibalism to survive. It garnered negative comments but survivors explained that The Last Supper, in which Jesus Christ gave bread and wine to his disciples as his body and blood, inspired them to do so. The public accepted their explanation and the Church later acquitted them.

This incident inspired several books and films, including Piers Paul Read's best-selling book Alive (1974), which was filmed in 1993.