including an entire professional rugby team,

crashed in the Andes mountains between Chile and Argentina.

There was no way the survivors could have known it

at the time, but their nightmare had only just begun.

Their story has been called "The Miracle of the Andes"

on account of the incredible odds

the survivors of the Uruguayan Air Force flight 571

had to overcome to make it home.

Today we're going to take a look at the true story

behind the movie Alive and the crash of Uruguayan flight

571 in the Andes.

But before we get started, be sure to subscribe to the Weird

History channel, and let us know in the comments below what

other unbelievable survival stories

you would like to hear about.

Excuse me, everybody.

This is your captain.

OK, brace yourself.

We're going to the Andes.

The rugby team aboard flight 571 wasn't terribly alarmed

when the pilot told them they were about to encounter

some turbulence.

They were en route to a match in Chile,

and most had their minds on the coming game.

But at least one of the passengers,

a 19-year-old medical student named

Roberto Canessa, recalls someone near him asking,

aren't we flying too close to the mountains?

Moments later, his fear was realized when the plane

hit the side of a mountain.

The crash was later attributed to an error made by the pilot.

While still flying high amongst the Andes mountains,

the pilot turned north to begin the descent into Santiago,

Chile, but the peaks were still too high where they were.

Realizing his mistake, the pilot attempted

to increase the altitude by tilting the plane

nearly fully vertical, which caused the plane to stall.

The engine sputtered, and the plane descended.

And that's when it hit the mountain.

Dr. Roberto Canessa would eventually write the book

I Had to Survive--

How a Plane Crash in the Andes Inspired My Calling

to Save Lives, in which he would detail

exactly how he felt after the plane hit the mountain.

He reported that his body lurched forward upon impact,

and he immediately struck his head.

His first thought was that his life was about to end.

He held on tight to his seat, and he began to pray.

Someone nearby yelled, please, God, help me.

Help me, while another person shouted that he was blind.

When Canessa looked over at the screaming passenger,

he saw that the man's brain was literally

spilling out of his head.

When the plane finally came to a stop, all of the seats

pushed forward toward the cockpit like a row of dominoes.

The smell of jet fuel and the sounds of screaming

filled the air.

The crash split the fuselage of the plane wide open.

It broke apart, and the tail was nowhere in sight.

The rugby team, along with their friends

and family who had been aboard the flight, found themselves

stranded, surrounded by snow-capped mountains

in the midst of a raging blizzard.

After the crash, the team gathered

whatever food and warm clothes they

could find in the wreckage.

Convinced that a rescue mission would arrive quickly,

they took their empty suitcases and used

them to make a cross on the ground

that they believed would be easily visible from the sky.

They also used their footsteps to carve an SOS message

in the snow for planes that might be flying overhead.

On the second day, they heard both a jet and a smaller plane

fly over them.

Both times the survivors became elated,

feeling sure that a rescue was imminent, but day after day

came and went with no sign of help.

Flight 571 took off with 45 people aboard.

12 of those perished in the crash, and five more

succumbed to their injuries within hours.

Another person died one week later from injuries

sustained in the crash, and on the 17th day,

disaster struck again.

A sudden avalanche swept over the crash site,

where another eight people met their demise.

The survivors lacked food, which made starvation

their number-one concern.

However, they were also trapped in an altitude

of 11,800 feet, which meant that their second biggest

problem was the unrelenting freezing temperatures.

To stay alive, the survivors of flight 571 had to get clever.

To get drinking water, they used a section of aluminum

from one of the plane seats to melt the snow.

They also needed to stay warm, so they

disassembled all of the wool seat covers to form blankets.

Walking around in the deep snow wasn't easy,

so they figured out they could use seat bottoms as snow shoes.

They used the fuselage as shelter,

and to block the cold air from getting inside,

they packed suitcases into the open spaces.

Sunglasses were fabricated from plastic that

was found in the pilot's cabin.

Hammocks were constructed for people with broken legs,

and sleeping bags were made from insulation pulled

from the plane's kitchen.

When it came to bodily functions,

the survivors would urinate into rugby balls

because if they tried to do it outside in the snow,

their urine would freeze.

Roberto Canessa, just a young medical student at the time,

used his nascent skills to nurse the injured.

He drained fluids and stabilized fractured bones.

He also assumed responsibility for moving

the corpses, a job some couldn't bring themselves to do.

In an Interview with National Geographic,

Doctor Canessa later reflected on the ingenuity

of the survivors, saying that "You get

very smart when you are dying."

It was nine days after the crash that the food ran out.

The land around the crash site had no vegetation,

and there were no animals at that altitude either,

so hunting or foraging was out of the question.

With nothing to sustain them, it was only a few days

before they were all feeling the symptoms of starvation.

The survivors were aware that if they waited too long to eat,

they would be too weak to survive.

They were also aware that the bodies

of the deceased passengers lay preserved in the packed snow,

not too far from the fuselage.

It didn't take long to realize with the only option really

was.

Many of the survivors resisted, and some of them

prayed to God, asking for guidance as to

whether or not they should resort

to eating their fellow passengers and teammates.

There was plenty of discussion among the team, but in the end,

starvation led to action.

As a medical student, Roberto Canessa

knew that human tissue contains proteins and fat,

like any other kind of meat.

He knew that it would be sufficient for sustaining

the starving survivors, and as the closest thing

they had to a doctor, he felt confident about being

the first to cut into one of the corpses.

In his memoir, Canessa would later

write about the mental barrier he encountered when

he tried to eat his friend.

For him, it was one thing to at an intellectual level

that you were hungry and needed food to live,

but it was another thing entirely

to know that the so-called "food" in one's hand

is from the body of a loved one.

The experience for the survivors was, needless to say,

unbelievably stressful.

Canessa used a shard of glass to slice into the first body,

and each survivor took a piece, forcing

themselves to consume it on the spot,

every survivor except one.

Coche Inciarte initially refused to take part,

as he could not stomach the idea.

Eventually, though, even he gave in and ate to stay alive.

Technically speaking, what the survivors did

is not cannibalism per se.

That term usually refers to the devious means

in order to consume a person.

What the survivors did is actually

known as anthropophagy.

Despite the pedantics, the survivors

realized the severity of their actions

and vowed to consider it a sacred act.

Of the then-10 remains they had, they

deemed three of them off-limits.

Those were the bodies of Fernando Parrado's mother

and sister and Javier Methol's nephew.

All of the survivors had serious difficulties

committing to the idea of eating another human being.

To come to grips with the situation,

Canessa and the others reasoned that if the situation was

reversed, they would want their own bodies to be used for food.

Canessa felt the act of eating another person connected

the two physically and spiritually.

With all in agreement, the survivors

vowed that if they themselves perished,

they would willingly donate themselves

so the others could live.

During the avalanche that hit on the 17th day,

the frozen bodies that the team were living off of

were all swept away.

However, the avalanche also resulted in the loss

of eight additional passengers.

The survivors once again faced an agonizing decision.

Should they consume their friends who only hours earlier

had been living and breathing?

After more discussion, Canessa and the others

once again decided to do what they must to survive,

and they fed off the newly lost passengers.

Though they were stranded, the team

wasn't totally cut off from the outside world.

They used a transistor radio to hear about the search

efforts being made to find them, but on October 23, 1972,

they heard some gravely distressing news.

After over 100 attempts to locate the crashed plane,

the authorities were calling off the search.

The survivors realized that if they

were going to make it home, they would

have to get help themselves.

Soon afterwards, Canessa, Nando Parrado, and Antonio "Tintin"

Vizintín set out on a hike to find rescue.

They reached the top of the mountain,

but once they got there, they realized

they were so far from finding safety.

Tintin was sent back to the plane

so that Canessa and Parrado could better divide

their meager food rations.

At night, they endured sub-zero temperatures.

But after 10 days of walking, they

reached a spot that had grass and water,

and they suddenly felt confident that they

were going to survive.

Canessa and Parrado hiked 10 days and 44 miles

before they finally found someone who could help them.

It was 70 days after the initial crash

when they finally emerged back into civilization.

The two then led authorities to the crash site,

where the rest of the survivors were saved.

Considering their severe malnutrition

and the incredibly dangerous terrain they walked across,

Canessa and Parrado's feat was nothing short of astonishing.

On December 22, 1972, two helicopters

were sent to find the survivors still living

in the plane wreckage.

Six were immediately flown home, but eight others

had to wait until the next day due to poor weather conditions.

The rescue made all the headlines,

but reactions quickly shifted from joyous amazement

to shock and disgust when word got out about what

the team had to do to survive.

It wasn't until the survivors were

able to express their own hesitations about their actions

and describe the spiritual battle that

ensued over the decision that the public was

swayed to support them.

Especially troubling was that the church took issue