How is survival presented in Roberto Canessa’s experience in the 1972 plane crash?

The pilots’ quick reaction when they saw the ridge saved some people because if they hadn’t “gunned the Fairchild F-227’s engines in a desperate effort to climb”, the plane might have directly crashed, and no one would have survived.

Imagination and creativity were required to survive. They had to think outside the box to use the aluminium foil to make the water drinkable and get the idea of eating human flesh. Nando also thought of sending Tintin back to camp so they had enough food for the journey. These abilities were important in order to find a way to pass these obstacles to survival.

The most represented qualities are stubbornness, determination, and endurance. Nando declares “I will not die here”, “I was doing what I had to do to survive”, “I would rather walk to meet my death than wait for it to come to me”. That mindset kept them going to find help and save himself and his friends.

Luck also played a part in their survival. When they reach the river, “it was a matter of simple endurance now, and of luck and time”. The next day, a man was passing nearby and saw them, that is how they were saved.

Hope played a major role. “We all believed that rescue was our only chance of survival, and we clung to that hope with an almost religious zeal.” Hope and determination are linked if we have hope that rescue will come, we are determined to survive, if we determined to do it, we are going to make it. Even though he doesn’t explicitly say it, he is determined, this means he has hope. Hope allowed him to go on.

The group had to organise themselves. The ‘doctors’ tended to the wounded, and the people who felt they could cut the meat did it. They also comforted and helped each other. This gave everyone a chance to survive. Survival is presented as a community task, not a responsibility shouldered by one person.

Survival is presented as acting and not giving up. Survival is also presented to be hard, you must make hard decisions to stay alive.