In 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed into the Andes mountains, forcing the survivors to endure freezing temperatures, avalanches, starvation and, eventually, eat the dead among them.
That true story is now being told in the hit Netflix film “Society of the Snow.” The movie chronicles how the survivors made it through the famed disaster, from the horrific plane crash all the way to their improbable rescue 72 days later.
How did the plane crash?
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was carrying a total of 45 passengers and crew members while heading from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile. Nearly half of the passengers were members of the Old Christians Club amateur rugby team, while others were their friends and family.
Bad weather forced the flight to stop overnight in Mendoza, Argentina. The next day, Oct. 13, 1972, the plane took off again and was flying through the Andes when the co-pilot at the controls started to descend, mistakenly thinking he'd cleared the mountain range.
The aircraft hit a mountain, breaking both wings off and causing the fuselage to slide down a mountain. The rear of the plane also broke off in midair, taking five people with it. After a long slide, the plane’s front end wound up stopping at an altitude of more than 11,000 feet.
“When the plane lost the wings and tail, it began to slide at an incredible speed,” survivor Dr. Roberto Canessa, who was 19 at the time, told Time magazine recently. “I thought my feet were going to go through the back of my ears. So when it stopped, I couldn’t believe I was alive. It was absurd.”
How many people died in the crash?
Twelve people died in the initial crash. Five more died the first night, and another person died about a week later from injuries.
“I thought I was going to die,” Canessa told TODAY last November about the crash.
Out of the 45 people aboard the plane, only 16 survived the entire ordeal, which lasted more than two months.
How did the passengers who lived manage to survive?
“Society of the Snow” chronicles how the survivors saw search planes overhead, but rescuers failed to spot them in the snow. The group recovered a transistor radio, only to learn the search had been called off and everyone onboard was presumed dead.
The survivors created a makeshift shelter out of the fuselage. After a few weeks passed and their predicament became dire, the group resorted to cannibalism, eating the bodies of the passengers who had died.
“I thought if I would die, I would be proud that my body would be used for someone else,” Canessa told TODAY.
Canessa said he wrestled with the notion of not just eating another human, but a person he once knew.
“You are eating a dead person and the person is your friend and you wonder, ‘Should I do this? Or should I let myself die?” he told Time.
“But I have seen how mothers cry when they lose their sons and I didn’t want my mother to go through that. I realized that when you have a reason for doing something, nothing stops you.”
What about the snow and the elements?
An avalanche buried the fuselage in snow on Oct. 29, killing eight more people and trapping other survivors inside. They managed to break out, but had to return when a blizzard hit. During their time stuck in the fuselage, the survivors ate those who died in the avalanche. At that point, only 19 people remained alive.
The survivors eventually managed to break out of the fuselage, but three more people would later die.
Who rescued the survivors?
Three of the men who were still alive — Canessa, Nando Parrado and Antonio “Tintin” Vizintín — decided to hike through the mountain range in an attempt to get help. Vizintín eventually returned to the makeshift camp so the other two would have more rations for the trip.
About 10 days after they initially set out, Canessa and Parrado came across a Chilean man named Sergio Catalan who was riding a horse, but they were separated by a stream. He promised to return the next day.
When he returned, Catalan wrapped a pencil and paper around a stone and threw to the men, according to a recent Esquire story.
Parrado jotted down what had happened, prompting Catalan to take action by riding to the nearest town to inform authorities about the other survivors.
On Dec. 22, helicopters began evacuating the remaining 14 survivors at the camp.
Has this story been told before?
The story of the crash and unlikely tale of survival has been told in books, documentaries and movies, perhaps most notably the 1993 film “Alive,” based on author Piers Paul Read's 1974 book, "Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors."
“Society of the Snow” is based on Pablo Vierci’s book of the same name.
“This is a story of 45 individuals providing a window through which we can observe how they endured major adversities and built a society where compassion and mercy prevailed,” he told The Associated Press earlier this month.