Alive: The True Story of the Andes Survivors

by PiersPaulRead (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $4.48

  In 1972, a Fairchild plane carrying forty-five passengers, including the Uruguayan rugby team, crashed in the Andes mountains. The thirty-two survivors were hopelessly lost in one of the most remote places on earth. After eight days of heavy snowfall, the rescue attempt was abandoned. Even if the plane could be found, the likelihood of the forty-five passengers and crew being discovered alive was remote. Yet ten weeks later two emaciated men fell to their knees at the sight of a Chilean peasant tending his cattle in a remote Andean valley. After finally persuading the incredulous authorities that they really were passengers from the missing plane, the two men led a rescue team to the site of the crash, the remaining fourteen survivors and a tale of horrific bravery. Putting to rest the rumours and criticism the survivors suffered, Alive exposes the inescapable truth and stark courageousness of how they lived to tell their story. Weakened by starvation, extreme cold, and by the awful knowledge that the search had been called off, the survivors had to face the torturous reality of their situation: to live, they must eat the flesh of their dead companions...

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $3.36

  In October 1972 an aircraft carrying a party of Uruguayan rugby players and their friends took off from Argentina to fly over the Andes to Chile. It crashed in the mountains in dense cloud, and some of the 45 passengers were killed. The survivors soon realized, by listening to their transistor radio, that the search party had been called off because nobody could be expected to survive at that altitude in so savage a climate. As the days passed, weakened by starvation and sub-zero temperatures, they had to face the inescapable truth - that, in order to survive, they must eat the flesh of their dead companions. How these young men finally sent out expeditionaries to brave the Andean peaks and how, after appalling hardships, they achieved rescue and returned to civilization 72 days after the crash, is recounted in this tale of human courage and triumph. The author is a novelist whose books include The Free Frenchman and On the Third Day .