Book Review
“Only after experiencing the most dreadful situations by themselves, humans can fathom what life and death mean.”
Title: Miracle in the Andes (72 days on the mountain and my long trek home)
Author: Nando Parrado with Vince Rause
What pops into your mind when you hear the words desperation, distress, agony, misery, relentless, unforgiving, etc.? Having a bad day at work is probably the closest thing to these words that the majority of us will get to. Hopefully, most of us don’t and would never comprehend the true meanings of these words.
A while ago, I finally decided to read a book on “one of the most popular and gut-wrenching survival stories of all time” after watching a documentary on the story. It was co-authored by one of the survivors himself. It’s one of the most mesmerizing stories I’ve ever stumbled upon, perfectly describing how despite all our technological advancements and mental prowess, human beings are still minuscule in front of the most generous yet unforgiving mother nature.
This story explores how in just mere moments, our life can change tremendously. It encourages us to appreciate the importance and luxury of the small moments in our lives that we often take for granted. Only after experiencing the most dreadful situations by themselves, humans can fathom what life and death mean.
The story is about a widely recognized plane crash that happened in October of 1972, over the Andes Mountains range at an elevation of roughly 13,000 feet above sea level. It was transporting the members of a rugby team along with other passengers. The flight originated in Uruguay and was scheduled to land in Chile, but it crashed en route in one of the world’s most dangerous locations due to a fatal navigational error. Many passengers died immediately upon impact, including the co-author’s mother, while his sister, best friend, and fellow colleague died days later.
Imagine not having access to food, shelter, and warm clothing for a day in a place where the temperature pummels down to -40 degrees Celsius. Mother nature has made even the professional mountaineers scared of scaling its summit before.
The survivors suffered the pain and agony of staying in the harshest environment for over 72 days with literally no hope of surviving and never having experienced such a situation beforehand. They had little to no food supply, warm clothing, or equipment necessary to withstand the Andes for a single day. Most of them had seen snow for the first time, let alone survived in what is presumably the coldest and remotest place on Earth, with no human intervention.
Most of us would’ve succumbed to such a gigantic place in a day or two, let alone nearly three months, excluding the severe injuries that survivors sustained during the crash with no medical attention.
Days turned into weeks, and the possibility of even the most competent rescue operations team rescuing them pummeled rapidly as the probability to locate a small plane’s wreckage in the colossal mountains was already slim.
Dread of death was evident amongst the so-called lucky ones who survived the initial crash, and they had no choice but to rely on the bodies of dead ones for food. It was just a matter of a few days when the survivors started to succumb to their injuries in such a merciless place, losing men day after day.
Some of them, with nothing remotely close to any tangible resources, tried to find a way out but were met with disappointment each time they tried.
The most fascinating and mesmerizing fact about this story is that despite death staring into their souls, some of them refused to surrender.
The co-author and two of his friends and teammates, barely recognizable as emaciated silhouettes, roughly 60 days after the crash, despite them having suffered from a cracked skull and fractures decided to go on a superhuman expedition to look for help.
With makeshift blankets and tattered shoes from the plane’s seat covers, they began their seemingly impossible expedition to scale the 15,000 feet high summit of Mt. Selar. Step after step, breath after breath, with their emaciated bodies struggling to keep up with their unbridled will to survive and hopes of fellow survivors, they kept walking for days with death closer to them than their homes.
Nearly after ten days of grinding, with nothing left on their bodies but raked skin, two of them luckily reached the outskirts of a village to ask for help, thus successfully surviving and helping to locate other survivors.
Only 16 of the 50 occupants of the plane made it out alive. Their unprecedented courage and tenacity that a normal human being can’t fathom kept them breathing minute after minute for 72 gruelling days.
It was arguably one of the first documented feats of valour and perseverance of its kind. This story is a prime example of what human beings are truly capable of and how the worst can bring the best out of us. It shows how minuscule our misery is compared to someone else’s and how it takes just a moment to turn us into a version of ourselves that we couldn’t imagine otherwise.
If you’d like to know more about the author I suggest you checkout his TED Talk.
