Alive
(Piers Paul Read)
True life cannibalism; this and many other unsavory topics are covered in the book ?Alive.? This is the true life account of a South American Rugby team who survived an incredible air crash high in the Andes in the seventies and survived for months against all odds on a high altitude snowfield amid sub zero temperatures and avalanches.That anyone survived the crash was a miracle. The plane clipped a valley, broke in two and sent the fuselage tumbling and sliding to a stop on a slope of snow and ice many of its passengers still Alive and strapped into their seats.When it became clear that no rescue was likely to find them, the survivors took matters into their own hands, adapting to the environment, surviving on snack foods in the planes and the remains of their loved ones and eventually sending two of their number to walk off the mountain long after hope had been given up by their families.While the presence of cannibalism makes the story sensational, most of the book is taken up by the social lives of the survivors and other practical considerations. They discovered for example that putting snow in your mouth to thaw it freezes you before enough water to matter gets melted. Instead they design snow melters out of sheet metal and glass bottles. One survivor was also hording his cigarettes. It had somehow become important to him, when the rescue comes, to be able to say, ?No thanks. I?ve got my own.?Rescue does come after the two walkers, using seat cushions as snow shoes, finally find a small farming village and helicopters are sent. You can almost hear the starving men?s tears as the roar of the rotors comes closer and closer. The plane, remains and all, was burned.
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