72 days of cannibalism: anniversary of the Andes plane crash

A participant in these events, Fernando Parrado, published his feelings of that time in the form of a book, excerpts from which we are citing.

"Old Christians" in full force

Throughout the summer of 1972, Nando Parrado, a 22-year-old student at the prestigious Catholic College Stella Marie in Montevideo, was a happy beach bum. He drove friends in his Renault along the ocean coast, swam in deserted lagoons, took pictures of girls and, having eaten his mother's lunch at home, went to training for the university rugby team. In the fall, Old Christians, one of the best rugby teams in Uruguay, were to fly to Chile for a friendly.

Their relatives and friends also went to cheer for the athletes and look at another country. The Merry Company bought the twin-engine Fairchild, which could accommodate 45 people, including the crew. On October 12, Nando, along with his mother, his beloved sister Susie and friends, climbed onto the plane, anticipating new experiences.

On Friday, October 13, Fairchild, with passengers on board, struck a wing over an unnamed rock in the Andes at an altitude of 4000 meters.

Why is it so cold? What happened to your head? It seems that blood clots have dried in my hair ... I almost twisted when I realized that I was pressing pieces of a crushed skull right into my brain. For more than two days I lay in a coma and woke up to see the nightmare in reality.

When Nando regained consciousness, several teammates were sitting nearby, who explained to him what had happened. After a collision with a rock, their plane was torn off both wings and a tail. The twisted fuselage buried itself in the snow, which softened the impact somewhat. Thanks to this, 28 out of 45 people survived. Nando's mother died, 19-year-old Susie was seriously injured and did not recover.

It was so cold in the snow at night that you could only sleep inside the fuselage. During the day, the survivors went outside and tried to give signs to the rescuers. They were obviously looking for: two planes flew past, but did not notice the people waving their hands. All that remained was to gather all the strength and wait.

There was a camera in one of the suitcases. In the first weeks of waiting, the guys took a lot of pictures.

I looked at her with a frozen gaze and realized that the smell of blood made my hunger completely unbearable

Nando spent the next few days with his sister. He warmed her legs and hands, drowned water in his palms to give her water, and all the time whispered that the worst thing would soon end - they would be found and taken home. On the eighth night, Nando felt that Susie's body was different in his arms. She somehow relaxed all, and then stopped breathing. The next morning he buried his sister next to her mother.

Now he fully realized the horror of the situation. Mountains and snow stretched all around to the horizon. No vegetation, no animals. A few days ago, the pitiful supply of nuts, cheese and wine, which they should have been given in flight, ran out. Just to keep warm, the young kids' bodies burned a huge amount of energy, so food soon became an obsession.

Nando furiously joined his comrades, who methodically examined the luggage and pockets of the dead all day long in search of something edible. They turned all the stones around the crash site, thinking to find sprouts or worms, but at that height under the stones there was only frozen ground. They tried to eat leather straps of bags, although they realized that chemically treated leather was unlikely to benefit their unhappy stomachs. In the end, they opened the plane seats because someone suggested there might be straw there. But they only found artificial foam.

It was late afternoon, we climbed into the fuselage and got ready for bed. My gaze fell on the wounded leg of a young guy who was lying not far from me. The center of the wound was damp, and a crust of blood was caked at the edges. With a frozen gaze, I looked at her and realized that the smell of blood made my hunger completely unbearable. Suddenly I realized that all my comrades were looking at the wound. We looked away at once and went about our business. At that moment, something changed in me: I realized human meat as potential food.

In the morning, the survivors sluggishly continued to search for food, at the same time everyone felt that their only way out of the situation had already become obvious to the whole group.

On the ninth day after the disaster, medical student Roberto Canessa, who also played in the Old Christians, gathered everyone near the remains of the plane. He said that the guys have two choices. The first is to lie down in the fuselage, save energy and wait for them to be rescued. The second is to start eating the frozen bodies of the dead: the dead no longer need flesh. Then the rest will have the strength to try to get out of the trap on their own. You need to explore the surroundings, find the tail of the plane, which should have batteries - with their help, you can revive the transmitter in the cockpit and send people a signal for help. The mechanic told him about this before his death.

There was a heavy pause. "Will God forgive us for this?" one of the Old Christians whispered. “God will not forgive if you refuse to live,” Roberto replied. In the end, they all ate the "body of Christ" and drank its "blood" during the sacrament. The discussion on the ethical side of the issue continued until the evening, but none of the guys strongly opposed it.

With the onset of darkness, the disputants quieted down: everyone realized that they had reached an agreement. It remained to decide who would take care of the practical side of the decision. Who is brave enough to cut meat from a dead friend? “I'll do it,” said Roberto. Another medical student volunteered to go with him.

After that, all the survivors joined hands and agreed that in the event of the death of any of them, the rest have the right to eat his body.

They went to the graves. The guys could be heard talking quietly during their terrible work. Pretty soon Roberto and Gustavo returned. They brought in small chunks of gray-white frozen meat, hard as wood. I stared at my piece for a long time before putting it in my mouth. Once or twice I chewed it without feeling the taste. Then he made an effort and swallowed. I was promised that the bodies of my mother and sister would not be touched. Even without them, the meat would last for many weeks. Reassured by this thought, we fell asleep.

The next day, people woke up for the first time with a desire to do something. An expedition was organized, which planned to climb up the trail of the collapsed fuselage. Closer to the top, where the collision occurred, the tail with batteries could lie. The members of the expedition were tied to their feet with pillows from the plane - so they did not fall into the snow. However, the researchers returned with nothing. They found only a fragment of a wing and a few dead bodies, which, however, everyone regarded as a useful find.

Fried facts

Vitamins and minerals
Dr. Leslie Hensel claims that human meat contains increased amounts of vitamin A and amino acids. When the level of these substances in the blood rises, it can provoke a state of heightened arousal and euphoria.

Who would you eat?
In 2002, psychologist Stephen Scher of the University of Illinois conducted a study in which he used a series of tests to find out in what cases a modern person might break the taboo on cannibalism. In particular, Stephen came to the conclusion that sexually attractive people seem to be the most appetizing to us.

For the cannibals who try to quit
A special type of tofu cheese, hufu, has recently been developed. Its taste matches the taste of human flesh as much as possible. On the website, it is positioned as "the perfect snack for cannibals trying to quit" and as "an educational snack for anthropology students studying cannibalism."

How to calculate a cannibal
Anthropologists name several signs by which it is possible to determine that cannibals once lived in this place. First, these are split human bones, from which they obviously tried to extract the bone marrow. Secondly, burnt skeletons. And finally, the skulls opened with a sharp object.

I was promised that the bodies of my mother and sister would not be touched. Even without them, the meat would be enough for a long time

On the evening of October 29, the victims of the crash once again settled down for the night in the plane's fuselage. After a short, disturbing sleep, Nando woke up feeling the touch of something wet on his face. In the next second, a cold weight fell on him. As Nando tried to inhale, snow poured into his mouth, the snow porridge filling his ears and nose. He realized that he was about to suffocate, and even thought with some interest that he would soon find out what was there, on the other side of life.

At that moment, a hand tore through the snow in front of his face, and Nando was able to breathe. He guessed that his friends were digging him up. An avalanche covered the fuselage at night. Some of the sleeping people were crushed by the snow that fell into the plane. Eight of them were never dug out until they suffocated.

For the next three days, the survivors sat inside their shelter, buried under an avalanche. There was no more than a meter from the snow floor to the ceiling, so you had to either lie or sit with your legs pulled up to your chin. I managed to dig a hole for air access with a long pin. By some diabolical coincidence, two captives had birthdays at this time.

Outside there was a heavy blizzard, so it was impossible to start digging. The worst thing was that the captives were deprived of access to food: the bodies of those killed in the disaster remained forever under a thick layer of snow. Of course, right before their eyes were still quite fresh corpses of friends, but even the most hungry were stopped by the prospect of witnessing the terrible work of doctors cutting meat, to see with their own eyes who they would have to eat.

On the third day of the snow captivity, one of the survivors could not stand it - he found a piece of glass and went to one of the dead.

I watched as he cut open our mutual friend, heard the sound of skin bursting as the glass entered the body, and experienced a uterine horror. The bloody lump that was handed to me nearly made me vomit. But I still tried it. The meat was soft and fatty in taste, sometimes with cartilage. I gagged and ate ...

On the fourth day, the sun came out, and people were able to dig out from under the snow. It took them a week to clear the fuselage of the ice crust using sharp pieces of plastic. A huge cross from suitcases was laid out next to their parking lot. They were now confident that if they continued to search for them, rescuers would see the camp from the air.

In parallel, the group did not give up trying to find the tail of the plane. By mid-November, the search was crowned with success. In the tail were found not only the cherished batteries, but also a supply of cigarettes. It took another week to try to connect the batteries to the transmitter, however, despite all the efforts, nothing worked. In the end, the rugby players realized that the mechanic was mistaken: the transmitter was working from the general network of the aircraft. Thus, the last hope left them in early December.

More than a month and a half have passed since the disaster. If the rescuers were looking for them, they probably stopped searching by this time. Even more frightening for the survivors, the food supply was coming to an end. Now they got to what they could not even think of before: the brain, liver, lungs ...

It was decided to go for help. To survive the chilling cold of the night, the guys sewed a sleeping bag using insulation in the sides of the plane and material from the seats. One of the rugby players found a set of needles in his deceased mother's purse. With their fingers naughty in the cold, they sewed a sack for three people day after day. Huddled together, the people inside had to survive the night even on bare snow.

On December 12, Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa and another of their comrades, who felt able to make a long march, got up on an early sunny morning and headed west. Where, according to their ideas, civilization was located. They decided to go while they had enough strength.

I got dressed in the evening: a cotton shirt, two women's trousers, three jeans and three sweaters. I put plastic bags over four pairs of socks to keep my feet dry. I tied pieces of fabric on my hands. I also have a long aluminum bar with me to lean on and a lady's lipstick to keep the wind out of my lips.

On the ninth day, Nando and Roberto (their third companion could not go further and remained to die in the mountains) went to the camp of the shepherds. On December 22, helicopters with rescuers flew to the mountain camp of the survivors of the disaster.

Rugby players who rose from the dead have become national heroes in Uruguay. At first, they made a decision not to tell anyone about the cost at which they managed to survive. However, photographs from the scene got into the press, journalists began to guess what people ate during the two-month wait. The sensation spread to headlines around the world. Very soon, the surviving heroes realized that cannibalism attracted more people than they could have imagined when they violated this sacred taboo on the verge of death.

One day in October, they got together as usual and decided that they would still make it to Chile to play their rematch there. On October 12, 1975, the rugby players from Stella Marie College boarded the plane again, looking challengingly at each other. The next day in Santiago, exactly three years later, the same demonstration game with the Chileans took place. Since then, the Friendship Cup has been held annually, and each time, ascending the plane, the gray-haired rugby players understand that they are stronger than their fate.

The text uses excerpts from the book by F. Parrado "Miracle in the Andes" (2006).

True experts in this field distinguish four types of K.

1. Ritual

It took place in prehistoric times: one or another part of the deceased could be eaten out of respect by members of his family. Nowadays, it is rare. For example, the people of Papua New Guinea eat their enemies to take away their power. A single case of ritual K. was observed in Ukraine: in 1999, Satanists under the leadership of a certain Dmitry Demin killed a 15-year-old woman from Kiev, and her tongue was eaten by the leader himself.



2. Hungry

This is the type of history of the crash in the Andes. It was also noted:

• in Jerusalem 70 A.D. during the Roman siege;
• in 1072 in Egypt, after the Nile had not flooded for eight consecutive years;
• in 1315-1317 in Europe during the Great Famine (Dante was just finishing his description of hell);
• during the blockade of Leningrad;
• during the famine of the 1990s in North Korea;
• in the same Ukraine during the famous Holodomor of 1933.

Most often, it is accompanied by the murder of a future food object (by the way, in most countries, the consumption of human meat itself is not punishable by law). A special surge in criminal K. was observed in the 20th century, when he became the object of inspiration for many writers and directors. Such authorities are widely known in this area as:

• American Edward Gein, who became famous for his weakness for outfits from the skin of victims;
• German Armin Meiwes, who posted on an Internet forum an offer to eat any boy he wanted - and ate it (after that, you still don't believe in online dating?);
• Well, our famous compatriot Andrei Chikatilo, who amazes not so much with his imagination as with the amount.

The rarest species: the eater of human flesh enjoys its taste. Here the French became famous, in particular Nicolas Clos. He stole meat from the morgue where he worked and cooked it at home, trying different recipes. Finally, Nicolas concluded that the best human flesh is raw: it resembles beef in tartar sauce (but the taste, of course, is much subtler).