Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 302 - Alive! The 1972 Andes Flight Disaster

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

In 1972, the 45 passengers and crew of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 faced extreme weather, avalanches, a variety of injuries, sickness, sun blindness, thirst, and starvation so severe, they were forced to eat the bodies of their friends and family who lay in the snow next to them for over two months in this harrowing tale of survival. Their story is so unbelievable, the first police officers that two members of this group finally contacted took hours of convincing to believe it. No one should have survived a plane crashing at an altitude of over 11,000 feet in the Andes, even in the Spring. The plane crashed far up above the tree line in a snow covered landscape, with no plants or animals for anyone to eat. The plane - because the intended flight was only two hours long - had almost no food on board. It was cannibalism or die. Even with cannibalism, the sixteen men who would make it alive still should have died. Find out why their story is often referred to as the Miracle of the Andes, today on Timesuck. Bad Magic Productions Monthly Patreon Donation:  The Bad Magic Charity for June is The Rainbow Railroad. We're donating a TBD amount. Founded in 2006, the Rainbow Railroad  assists LGBTQI+ people who face persecution because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Rainbow Railroad's main goal is to help those who are in danger by relocating them to a safer country or a safe house. To get involved, learn more, or request help - go to rainbowrailroad.org TICKETS FOR HOT WET BAD MAGIC SUMMER CAMP!  Go to www.badmagicmerch.comWatch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UnmIGFVtrbAMerch: https://www.badmagicmerch.comDiscord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard?  Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

Is the plane supposed to be flying so close to the mountains? That was the last thing a passenger of Uruguayan Air Force flight 571 said before the plane crashed into the Andes mountains. The plane cared 45 passengers and crew, most of whom were members of an Uruguayan rugby team, a few friends and family, and one woman who bought a seat to attend your daughter's wedding. It was supposed to be a two hour flight to Chile for a rugby match, turned into an unbelievably harrowing and horrifying ordeal that would test the passengers' physical and mental strength and their will to survive.

And many would not survive. For those who didn't die in the initial crash, they would suffer for up to 72 days and what would become known as the Valley of Tears. In the end, only 16 of the original 45 would come out alive. The passengers of flight 571 faced extreme weather, avalanches, a variety of injuries, sickness, sun blindness, thirst, and starvation, social year, they were forced to eat the bodies of their friends and family who lay in the snow next to them if they wanted to entertain any chance of continuing to exist.

Tragedy after tragedy struck the survivors until two of them set out on foot on day 60 determined to either hike out of the Andes or die trying to find help. Nando Pirado and Roberto Canessa, the group's expeditionaries, would save their friends from certain death, but they aren't the only heroes in this story. Every passenger played a role in the group's survival from organizing and rationing food, butchering bodies, delegating chores to keeping people's spirits up with prayers and stories. What the surviving 16 men would go through was something very few people will ever experience in their lifetimes. The true story of these passengers has provided a case study on modern cannibalism, mental and physical toughness, teamwork and desperate situations, and the human survival instinct and will to live.

These survivors have said that although a human flesh gave their bodies just enough energy to survive the mountains, their desire to live, to see their families again, to tell their story to others, to help each other, that is what really got them out alive. Could you do it? Could you survive being stranded amongst the freezing, barren peaks of the Andes Mountains? Would you be able to eat your best friends if that was your only survival option? Would you try to hike out yourself in sub-zero temperatures with no equipment, no protective gear rather than wait for rescue?

After hearing the story of the miracle of the Andes, I'm guessing you'll feel a huge amount of admiration for the survivors and what they went through. During this story though, you'll probably often I've still discussed it and horrified. I sure did. Settling for one hell of a survival tale on today's, could you actually do this,

even if your life depended on it, edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday, Meat Sack. Welcome to the cult of the curious. Hail, Nimrod. Hail, Lucifer, and a praiseable jangles and glory be to triple them. Michael, mother, fucking McDonald, Tis the season for him once again. Summer finally came to court of lane. The sun has been out. The lake has been beautiful. And I feel like a new person. It's a yacht rock at clock. Beautiful bastards. Hope you're able to get outside and enjoy the simple beauty of nature and some good weather.

I forgot to wish anyone a happy father's day on time, gave a belated greeting last week, now gonna give a belated happy juneteenth greeting this week. I am terrible at holidays, especially when I record in advance. If only there was something called a calendar on my phone that I could easily access in like one second.

How about just one quick announcement this week before another hopefully very gripping tail? A little different type of merch in the Bad Magic store. Head on over to badmagicmerch.com, check out the new Atomic Pinnett, classic Atomic logo on a black and blue dowel rod championship style penet. Be a time stuck fucking champion. Get off the bench, get in the game. I don't even know how that relates to this.

Show your time stuck love in your home office basement, boat, shed, kill room, doomsday bunker. It doesn't matter. Put it on your riding lawnmower. Available now at BadMagicMurts.com and that is it for announcements. So what are we talking about today? Death and life in the Andes. The peaks of

the Andes mountains and the area around them, one of the harshest high altitude barren environments in the world, kind of like a high altitude Antarctica in the middle of the South America. Just how did the pastors of flight 571 end up stranded in the valley of tears and what kind of conditions did they face during their grueling torture is 72 days on a frozen mountain. Would they have survived? Had they not been strengthened by the nutritious and delicious Papa John pizza, better ingredients, better pizza, better human flesh, better pizza, Papa John's better organs of your closest friends better take what you can get me don't have pizza Papa John's why am I talking about

Papa John's again this week. It's just a let's just go ahead and start this story. On October 13th, 1972, 45 passengers and crew boarded flight 571, not knowing of course that only 16 of them would ever make it back home alive. The majority of the passengers were members of the old Christians rugby team from Stella Marise College, aka the Christian Brothers College of Montevideo. Montevideo, a private college with a reputation for having a good rugby team, located in the capital and largest city of Uruguay. About two million people currently live in Montevideo.

Video, Montevideo, there we go, Montevideo there we go Montevideo. Good not remember the syllabic emphasis Uruguay not a very popular country or populous Jesus. That's a very different not a very popular people fucking hate it It's shit. It's shittles. No, that's great country. It's not very populous only around three and a half million people lived in the entire nation. There's a Montevideo and then there are the suburbs of Montevideo and There is a Manta Vadeo and then there are the suburbs of Montevideo and After that just a collection of a few small cities of under a hundred thousand people each along the borders with Brazil and

Argentina and not much else population center-wise just a just a bunch of rural areas and small villages Super cool countries. I've actually been reading up on the past year here and there clearly have been Listing to a lot of videos on it, where the pronunciation becomes second nature. Great place for USX paths to live, other than just being so damn far away from almost everything else in the world. But this little Atlantic ocean facing Spanish speaking nation, South of Brazil, East of Argentina, has a high income economy, ranked first

in all of Latin America and democracy piece and low perception of corruption, also super socially progressive, very relaxed drug laws, contribute more troops per capita to the UN, to their peacekeeping missions than any other nation in the world, etc, etc, etc. So go Uruguay. The Uruguayan rugby players on flight 571 back in 1972 were great friends, almost like brothers, and they'd spent months learning to work together as a team before they're crashed. Many of the survivors would end up agreeing that this is what allowed them to survive for so long. The fact that they could work well

as a group and that they were very committed, emotionally attached to one another. The struggle for survival so intense that some of the survivors would later say that had they known what was going to happen to them, they would have given up not wanting to suffer through it all. Some of said they might have just accepted their fate as soon as the plane crashed, letting the icy mountains freeze them to death that very first night. But they didn't. Instead, the survivors worked together to create what they called a snow society where everyone had an important role.

And things to them all working together and things to the leadership of a few brave men. They were able to survive through something that appeared to be impossible to live through to many. According to Roberto Cunessa, one of the survivors appreciating the joy of just living, even in the most dire of circumstances. That was one of the most important things he did to overcome death, his attitude. In an interview with National Geographic decades after making it off the mountains, he said, who survived?

It wasn't the smartest, most intelligent ones. The ones who survived were those who felt the joy of living. When he says there reminds me of our 2020 year end Victor Franklsock. Remember him, the noted psychologist came up with a psychological school of thought, local therapy, while surviving the horrors of the Holocaust as a Jewish concentration camp victim. He was surrounded by death, he studied it, he made note of what qualities people who could survive the horror possessed and also what qualities those who didn't had. He would base logo therapy in three primary tenets. One, life has meaning

under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones. Two, our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life. And three, we have freedom to find meaning in what we do and what we experience, or at least in the stance we take when faced with the situation of unchangeable suffering. I think Kinesa is speaking about the same thing. Right, the survivors of Flight 71,

those lucky enough not to be critically injured, were able to survive in large part because they still found meaning in their lives in the direst of circumstances. Their will was strong. They kept their attitude positive as positive as could be in that situation. They chose to hang on to hope, even the most hopeless of situations. Survivors experienced conditions at professional climbers full time residents of the Andes Mountains would never want to be in.

Never choose to put themselves in conditions they actively avoid. In this episode, we'll discuss the conditions of the Andes Mountains, who settled there centuries ago, how they adapted to live amongst its peaks, what weather conditions are like there, conditions that would of course greatly impact the ability to survive for members of flight 71's crash,

and we'll examine the full 72 day timeline of the survivor's harrowing tale of their days on the mountain. Let's first really familiarize ourselves with the Andes. It's people, history, geography, help us really wrap our meat sack minds around what the playing crash survivors were up against. And also just learn some cool shit

about a really interesting place. Although many people think of South America as a continent with tropical rainforests, warm sunny beaches, hot summer days, and there are plenty of that in South America or is plenty of that, there are also parts of the continent that remain frozen year-round, specifically high up in the Andes Mountains. It's actually one of the most inhospitable environments in the world. As the altitude increases, almost all signs life cease to exist. Despite these conditions, there are a lot of people

who figured out how to live and work in the rugged andies. Their bodies have evolved and adapted over time to survive the especially harsh conditions there. And those people are the people that we're most proud to say we're for Papa John's pizza. Better bodies, better people. Papa John's, I wish I knew how to get that out of my head. I'm like, go and have these notes. It was all I could think about. Oh, it's seriously people in the andies People! Papa John, I wish I knew how to get that out of my head.

I'm gonna have these notes. It was all I could think about. But seriously, people in the Andes have literally evolved to adapt themselves better to high-altitude living, continually maced at what a resilient and adaptive species we meet Saksar. These people are often referred to as Andian. Andian is a general term to describe people

who live in the mountains. Important to remember that mountains span multiple countries. People who are classified as Indians speak multiple languages. There are a variety of unique cultures that exist under that umbrella term. We'll briefly go over a bit of this. And it includes parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile,

Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Not Uruguay. Each area relies on the mountains for different economic reasons. You know, really wanna weave some reasons into another Papa John reference right now, but not going to willpower. Thank you for the strength Nimrod. Oldest human remains found on this mountain,

10,000 to 12,000 years old, fairly recent in terms of human history. Understandably, the Andes, you know, probably not one of our ancestors first choices when it came to where to settle down. Hmm, where to live. Warm beach near so many delicious fish, yummy fruit and vegetables, an amazing soul nourishing weather that almost never kills us or makes our joints ache, or should we live in a rocky,

frozen, barren wasteland full of almost nothing but death and cold. Despite no actual remains being found yet, most historians agree that human habitation of the Andes began earlier than 12,000 years ago. It's especially hard to say with any real certainty, partially because modern documented history didn't begin until the 16th century. By the 1530s, when the Spanish arrived in the region,

the mountains were already widely populated and the indigenous people knew the land well. They'd long ago constructed a sophisticated system of cities and roads. When people stereotypically think of the Andes as bleak and economically destitute, people like this idiot right here, maybe we tend to forget that the Andes were what they were like when the land was conquered by the Aztec and Inca empires. It was full of thriving cultures, archaeology, city planning, advanced technology. All that continued to most areas until the damn naughty boy, naughty girl spanned your show up, mostly naughty boys, bringing new diseases.

And general policy of assimilate, be subjugated, or you know, fucking brutally die. The Spanish invasion led to a massive decline in the quality of life over the first several centuries following their arrival for the local people at least. The Spaniards did, you know, they did fucking great. They thrived, made a lot of money, sent a lot of gold back to the crown, and a lot of other people's expense. Oh, in the Spaniards conquered the area, they shifted industry from agriculture to the extraction of precious minerals, something that still dominates the economy today.

The Andes today are actually less populated, less urbanized than they were over five centuries ago in 1500 CE, and that is unusual. Not many other places on earth are less urban than they were over half a millennium ago. Historians agreed that human occupation likely began in parts of the Andes as far back as 20,000 years ago, and took over 10,000 years of transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agrarian-based cultures. The development of agriculture occurred around 8,000 years ago when humans in the Andes developed specialized tools and techniques for farming, you know, so they could gather better ingredients. You get it.

Two of the accomplishments made the mountains fully inhabitable. Adapting many crops to be better suited to the altitude and domesticated llamas and alpacas for help with packing goods, farming, and having a reliable and renewable source of protein year-round. I can't remember which one of those animals I ate. I was out of Peru.

I just remember Madeemiro, super sad. I think it was an alpaca. I think I had an alpaca steak and was delicious. There's one you're not supposed to eat and one you are supposed to eat. One incentive for settling in high altitudes was nutrient-rich pastures for livestock watered by glaciers. Now, pack is also able to thrive at around 13,000 feet.

Ancient Indian people evolved to own large herds of alpacas and also llamas and found space for them to graze in the Andes during part of the year, of course, at the higher altitudes. And we're grazing those woolly fuckers in the dead of winter, of course, the peaks have moved their herds up and down an altitude based on the seasons and snowfall. And eventually, they learned how to store food to last over the winter months as Andeans began to permanently settle high altitude areas. Because of the freezing temperatures, Andeans had to learn how to freeze dry food to make it last longer in order to survive the winter. What is that saying? Necessity is the mother of invention.

The harsh climate of the Andes led directly to a lot of innovation, invention, for anyone who figured out how to survive there. The Inca would figure out how to construct giant warehouses of freeze-dried foods that were used to feed government employees, engineers, armies, nobles, et cetera. They became ancient masters of food storage.

Food stores would keep their livestock and cities alive during the harsh winners. Andies are frosty, the majority of the year, even in the summer at a lot of different altitudes. Peasants would fill warehouses with food for times of poor crop yield or freezing temperatures. At one point, there were literally thousands of these warehouses, along some 15,000 miles of ancient road winding throughout the Andies. When the Spanish showed up,

they were fucking pumped to find those warehouses. It was like a bunch of primitive 7-elevents that locals have built for them, just unable to defend them. I mean imagine I imagine a show but a new world where you and your friends are the only people with guns and maybe Kevlar body armor.

The locals have no armor, no guns, but a lot of stuff that you want. And if you feel like taking their shit, you can. And that's what the Spaniards did. They're able to conquer Andean's part, because of all this food, stealing it as they moved along, using their designs to later build their own warehouses. How ironic, too, that these people's built these storehouses

for their own survival. And then at one point when the Spaniards came over those same storage facilities led directly to their downfall. Because they were able to just never have to worry about hunger for the conquistadors. So they just marched to the region, getting snack after snack at these places. The Inca State was the largest political unit in the Andes when the Spaniards showed up. Their state expanded across present day northern Ecuador, Argentina, and Chile. At the height of their power, the Inca controlled most of present day Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Chile. At the height of their power, the Inca controlled most present Ecuador, Peru,

Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, by 1532, these places were part of the Inca state known as Tawantan, oh boy, Tawantan to you. It's a tricky word. It translates to the realm of four parts. I can say that part, great. The Inca state didn't interfere with local villages, they conquered, which meant that the unique cultures, well, were well preserved until the age of exploration. And the people of these cultures, the people of the Andes learned how to live way the fuck up in the mountains. As the altitude that makes the Andes mountains more physiologically demanding to live in than most other areas of the world, ancient peoples routinely lived at over 10,000 feet.

For comparison, only one state in the United States has any incorporated community situated at over 10,000 feet. That's Colorado. The roughly 300 year-round residents of Alma, Colorado, in an elevation of approximately 10,578 feet, live in the highest town in the U.S. when considering only areas with permanent residents. It's post office, located at the highest elevation of any post office in the nation. I mean, there are homes where people live year round along the Rockies, you know, above 11,000 feet, but very rare.

Again, for comparison, there is a town of over 16,000 people in Peru, La Rin Kanada that sits at roughly 16,700 feet in elevation, more than a mile higher than the highest post office in the US. It's the highest current human settlement in the world. So high, it's above the tree line trees literally will not grow there. And there are small groups of people that live year round and even higher elevations in the Andes, which is insane. I stayed a few days in a Kusko Peru, almost half a million people live in it just over 11,000 feet, one time capital of the Incahampire, and I struggle with some altitude sickness. Lindsey and the kids did as well.

I might have struggled a little bit less because I chewed on a lot of coca leaves because it will help with altitude sickness. Also makes you feel a little high, because it's cocaine. Love to have an avalid medical reason to chew on those leaves. They would hand that shit out when you got off the plane at the airport.

It's fantastic. We stated that here, but, ha ha, fucking Nixon. I probably should explain altitude sickness before I move forward. Since all the crash survivors would have to deal with this on top of everything else, altitude sickness is caused by ascending too rapidly, right? You're going up an altitude too fast and that doesn't allow your body enough time to acclimate to adjust adjust, to reduce to oxygen levels, to changes in air pressure. Symptoms include headache, vomiting, insomnia, reduced performance, and coordination. You have, you know, trouble, more trouble, move, more trouble, thinking. It's often compared to feeling like you have a hangover. And that's what it was for me. Extreme altitude sickness can lead to high

altitude pulmonary edema, build up a fluid in the lungs. It can be dangerous and even life threatening. Most common cause of death from altitude sickness is pulmonary edema, build up a fluid in the lungs, it can be dangerous and even life-threatening. Most common cause of death from altitude sickness is pulmonary edema. You can also develop high altitude cerebral edema, severe rare form of altitude sickness that happens when there's too much fluid in the brain. It too is life-threatening. The best treatment is, you know, go to a lower altitude. That's the best way to feel better quick. Obviously, that was not an option, for the crash survivors who were fucking stranded and extreme weather. They didn't have the correct equipment to travel through.

You're also supposed to drink more water at higher altitudes. You need to consume more calories. It's harder on your body. If you can't get to a lower altitude, you need time to, you know, acclimate which can take days or weeks, depending on how much higher you now find yourself in your body is used to being at.

The rugby team ended up at a much higher altitude than they were used to. In addition, not having food, in addition to being wounded, they were weaker than normal. They didn't feel good, didn't think it's clearly so many fun things they had to deal with back to people now living way up in the Andes. This is fascinating to me. Shepherds and farmers primarily make up the population of people living at or above 17,000 feet. That is way up there. Occasionally shepherds will go as high as 19,000 feet for temporary work.

Miners from the Carosco mine in the Atacama desert in Chile would go to a roughly 19,500 feet for work. Excuse me before it closed in 1992. That's fucking bananas. If you go to Aspen, Colorado, they'll warn you there and take take it seriously, that you gotta drink more water than you used to because of the altitude, and don't drink as much alcohol as you should because your blood thinner and it will hit harder. And I have experienced that firsthand. And that sits at roughly 8,000 feet.

The miners, we're talking about, to the second, they'll be living over two and a half times that high. A 1986, four miners reportedly were living a year round at an elevation of 19,400 feet, making them the highest permanent residence on earth. No thank you. I would rather be homeless on a fucking beach somewhere.

I think I'd rather live in prison in a reasonable climate than live free at 19,400 feet. In the North of Bolivia and Columbia, there are the largest population concentrations of people in important cities in the Andes Mountains. In Peru and Bolivia, large percentage of the population still lives above 10,000 feet. Month of a day, Uruguay, with a rugby team aboard Flight 571 went to school. That's at sea level. Part of the town rises to about 150 feet, which is nothing in Al-Jud. I mean, those rugby dudes were low landers.

Uruguay not located in the Andes, the highest point and that entire nation is only 1686 feet, which is nothing. And those guys not used to high elevation at all, not adapted to survive in the mountains. The crash site where they would fight for their survival, fight for their lives, it said 11,710 feet. Those crash survivors had to fight more than just bitter cold to survive.

And they did have to fight bitter cold as well. Temperature would drop to roughly 22 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, not counting windchill. And we get really windy. All right. Now let's learn a bit more about the people of the Andes before moving on because, uh, you know what? Because we're already here. Why not? We will get to cannibalism and on spiring a tenacity

and will to survive soon enough. About half the population of Bolivia and Peru are the Imaura and Ketchua indigenous groups. The other portion of the population is Spanish speaking individuals of European and indigenous heritage. For Peru, mining is the most important industry above 11,500 feet elevation. Gold is golden in hills. And there is. And that's

how a lot of people have been lured to desolate God for sake and bits of country like the Andes, where even trees won't fucking grow. It's to find precious minerals. The majority of the prus population of prus population still works in agriculture or the animal livestock industry and the

modern age, more and more Proviens, moving towards other industries though. Many still live way up in the mountains. They've adapted well to live at the crazy altitudes I've just went over. Andians who have lived in high altitude areas like these for centuries have adapted to this climate literally at a cellular level.

In order to get the proper auction, it takes to thrive. They're fucking lizard people, clearly. This is where the humanoid reptilians are breeding. What David Ike has been bravely warning us for years now. JK of course, but they have adapted. Studies have shown that, you know, secret to long-term survival is in the heart muscles. Andians highland are, andian highlanders split genetically over 8,000 years ago from neighboring lowlanders, and their 8,000 years ago from neighboring lowlanders,

and their hearts change with that split. Andian people now have slightly larger hearts, higher blood pressure. The harvest oxygen and their blood more effectively have better blood circulation. Researchers have compared Andians to people who've lived on the Tibetan plateau for thousands of years. Tibetans have genetic variations

that reduce hemoglobin levels in their blood to make their bodies efficient at using oxygen. Researchers have not found this particular adaptation in Indian people. They have found adaptations on a gene called DST related to cardiovascular health and heart muscle development. The people who live in the Ecuadorian andes, they're mostly the Ketchua people, but there are small groups of canyaris and the southern andes of Ecuador and the Salasacas in the north. Agriculture the main industry of the Ecuadorian andes.

In Colombia, the largest part of the population lives between 5,000, 10,500 feet in elevation. Many in Colombia's coffee plantation zone from 3,000 to 6,500 feet. Agriculture raising livestock are important to the people who live in the Andes and general crop yields are low. There's inadequate water supply and a large part of the plateau is dry. Fertile valleys, few and far between, I said, so that's a plateau region. Fertile valleys are few and far between and most of the crops in the Andes have grown by, or grown by residents to eat themselves.

You got to be hardy, you got to be self-sufficient to live in most of these places. Some crops like coffee, tobacco, cocoa, cocoa, yeah, the source of cocaine, fuck you bro. Our, of course, exported out. Alpaca wool is another widely exported Indian product. Exporting a lot of Indian products is tricky because of how difficult transportation is in the area, how rural, and still, still is. Which you know, made it, uh, why it was so hard to find these guys.

It's just, you know, the very, very rural section of the Andes. Many areas of the Andes being so sparsely populated, in addition to being so unforgiving, climate-wise, is, yeah, that's what would help hinder search parties for possible survivors. No one thought anyone would be able to survive in these areas. They did get lucky enough to live to the crash,

which was also deemed highly unlikely. Much of the region's so rugged and rural packed trails are still the primary mode of transportation in a lot of areas. People still using donkeys, horses, mules, oxen, llamas to transport themselves or products. Packas a little bit. There are numerous railways in the Andes, but mostly used to connect mines to cities. Peru has two large internal railways, Ecuador, Colombia, each have one. Since World War II, all countries along the, oh boy, Cordieras.

Cordieras. Cordieras. Oh, fucking, I don't know. It means ranges. Let's just go with the ranges. Along the ranges of the Indies, have expanded their road networks to the mountains, but not all parts are paved. Air transport development has been great for the region,

unless you're playing crashes, and you have to fucking eat people, of course. It's made travel transport of products much easier. Beyond the freezing temperatures, low oxygen, the Andes are also prone to natural disasters, which have been exacerbated by climate change, which is not real. Ha ha ha.

Only snowflakes and almost all scientists believe that. No earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, avalanches, just few of the problems. One might face the mountains. The Chilean portion of the Andes also part of the Pacific Ring of Fire and Active Group of volcanoes. So many fun things to deal with. Many of these high altitude volcanoes devoid of almost anything but rocks and ice and snow. Glaciers and wind have just stripped the soil.

The higher you go, the thinner and rockier the soil gets. And you you can go so high the andies have the highest peaks in the western hemisphere The highest is mount Akangawa located in Argentina. I think I nailed that one 22,831 feet over four miles well over four miles above sea level Well, I should say well a little bit higher you go not surprising the worst the weather gets from 11,500 to 14,800 feet the day and night temperature shift is drastic. Again, the crash site was 11,710 feet above 15,700 feet. The climate is officially polar with extremely low temperatures and strong winds. If the plane had crashed a bit higher than it did, if it didn't slide down the hill

the way that it did during the crash. Got stuck in the polar zone. All the pastors of 571 would have almost certainly died in just a few days, freezing to death. So I guess the survivors kind of got lucky. Okay, enough setup. Sorry for the additional knowledge. That was unnecessary. But the stage has been set enough now.

We've learned that not only did Flight 71 crash, not only would search efforts fail to find it, it also crashed one of the worst areas on earth, the plane could crash in. Outside of maybe the Arctic Circle or Antarctica or the middle of the ocean. Survivors were trapped up against freezing cold low oxygen blinding sun. Don't forget the blinding sun. No food trapped in a barren ice-covered wasteland. And most of this team had grown up on the coast of Uruguay, all of them lived in the coast of Uruguay before the crash, not adapted for life with low auction levels at high altitude, not adapted for life with low temperatures either. They'd never truly experienced this kind of cold they would face before.

But some of those fuckers lived despite all of this, quite a few of them actually. They kept up alive, they did whatever it took, they really, really wanted to continue to live, Nimrod's will was strong in them. Now, let's dive into a step-by-step telling of their story and today's Time-Suck timeline. Right after today's mid-show, sponsor break, thanks for sticking around. Now, let's get to that crash and survival timeline I was just talking about. Shrap on those boots, soldier.

We're marching down a time, time, time, line. On October 13th, 1972, you're a Hawaiian Air Force flight 571 crash into the Andes, killing several passengers upon impact. Why were they flying that day? The old Christian's club rugby team was going to play the old Grand Goni in rugby club in Santiago, Chile. Team captain Marcelo Perez had chartered

the Uruguayan Air Force plane to fly them over. It was the cheapest option to get there. So while the bad news would be that a lot of them would die and those who would live would have to go through help us revive and eat a lot of people. The good news is they did save a bit of money. Trying to find the bright side. Colonel Julio Cesar Ferrata's was the pilot.

He had 5,017 total flight hours. Pretty experienced guy. Copilot, Tenant, Colonel, Dante, Hector, Lug, Lugwer, Lugwer, Roura. His name is a tricky one for me. New pilot with not very much experience. After the team chartered the flight, there were still 10 extra seats.

So they invited some family members to go along with them. Then when one of the family members canceled last minute, oh man, how glad were they to do that? They sold that seat to a woman named Graziela Mariana, so she could attend her daughter's wedding. So sad. In total, there were 40 pastures, five crew members of the 45, only five were women. and none of those women would survive the ordeal

Hail, Nimrod! Woo! JK, no, that was completely necessary. Come on. Flight 571 departed from Carasco International Airport, Uruguay's primary international airport located in the Carasco neighborhood of Montevideo, Montevideo. On October 12, 1972, but then it ended up getting grounded due to bad weather in Medosa, Argentina for the night. Roughly 750 miles to the west. On the morning of the 13th, weather conditions had not improved, but it was expected that they would be much better by early afternoon. The pilots were still worried. Of course, they were worried.

These guys were no maverick, goose, ice man, or rooster. Yes, I finally saw Maverick and yes, it was glorious. The pilots had already been delayed for quite a while because, you know, they were seriously concerned about the dangerous weather. They continue to hear reports of severe turbulence along the designated flight path. Then they spoke to the pilot of a cargo plane that had just made the journey that they were going to go on, reluctantly determined, they reluctantly determined that their plane could handle it, that they could fly safely afternoon, even though in the Andes, the afternoon is the most dangerous time to fly. Warm air rising from the foothills reaches the cold air of the mountains and creates strong

turbulence and fog. I say reluctantly because they still might not have taken to the air if it wasn't for both some legal pressure and some social pressure. The pilots felt pressure to either fly onto the destination or take everyone back to Uruguay because Argentinian laws the time for bid foreign military aircraft to stay on Argentinia soil for more than 24 hours.

And technically the plane was considered a military aircraft. I mean, it was Air Force, even though it wasn't being used for military mission. Also, they were catching a lot of shit from the rugby team. Excuse me, Pastor Nando Parado stated that when it was all over, he believed that the team's poor behavior definitely influenced the decision to fly. They aggressively complained to the pilots, put a lot of pressure on them to take them to their game. I bet they did.

I mean, they're fucking rugby players. I don't know if you've known any rugby players. They're a crazy bunch. I dated a rugby girl in college for a semester at Gonzaga, went to a few rugby parties, with friends with some guys on Gonzaga's rugby team, and my brother-in-law was on the rugby team at a Boise State University, and then played a club rugby in Boise for years and years after that. And the rugby players I have been around in both Boise and Spokane, some of the most fucking insane wildest people I've ever party with, is like very much a macho, a tough guy culture, a lot of shit talking, a lot of ball busting, so much drinking, like so much.

And for some reason a lot of nudity, a lot of dicks being whipped out, a lot of streaking. Just just a bunch of general chaos, let's raise some hell activity. And I bet those Uruguayan rugby players tried to make those pilots feel like huge fucking crybabies for not wanting to fly. Probably said all kinds of shit to them that they later regretted.

The pilots, Ferrata's, La Guarara, caved into all this pressure, decided to fly when they weren't, you know, totally positive was a great idea. The direct routes of Santiago required the plane to fly at about 26,000 feet, which was tricky because that plane not built to fly higher than 28,000 feet. So that doesn't give them much room to maneuver if shit goes wrong. Very little room for error, especially with a big load of pastures and baggage.

And this flight was full of a lot of bigger athletic dudes. It'd be tricky to calculate fuel needs and navigate the mountains for those guys. So Ferratas and La Gorara, they decided to take a 90 minute alternate route, which was supposed to be much safer, only required them to fly at an altitude of 22,500 feet. The pilot's plan to southern course over Planchon pass that sits on the border of Chile

and Argentina, and they took off at 2.18 pm. The plane had twin engine fairchild FH 227D flown by the inexperienced co-pilot La Gorara on this flight. The plane was only four years old, had no known mechanical problems. Pilot Ferraris, sorry, there we go, was training La Gorara at the time and let him fly to gain more experience. He sure shit would soon come to regret that decision. At least for the short time between knowing he was going to die and dying. As they flew, clouds covered the mountains, La Gorara soon mistakenly thought that they were approaching Curico, Chile covered the mountains, La Gorara, soon mistakenly thought

that they were approaching Curico, Chile, 122 miles south of Santiago, but the instrument reading said otherwise. Due to stormy weather around them, dense cloud covered the pilots had no visual for where they were, started to, you know, had to rely on radio navigation. The aircraft's navigation displayed a digital reading of the distance to the next radio beacon in Curico when they reached Planch John pass and said the aircraft still had to travel 37 to 43 miles to reach the city. At 318 pm shortly after approaching the pass, LaGuara contacted Santiago, notified air traffic control. He expected to reach Curricot in less than four minutes, 322 pm, but the flight time normally 11 minutes from where they actually were the past. They didn't know where

they were. There was a big, you know, error. Only three minutes later, Lugarara told Air Traffic Controlers in Santiago that they were passing now, Curricot, and turning North. And he requested permission to descend since he thought he had made it past, you know, a rough stretch of mountains. The controller based on the information given to them authorized him to descend to 11,500 feet. This would be a critical fucking error. As Lagerara

descended, turbulence made the plane bounce suddenly air-controlled no longer able to make contact with them. The plane cross, plancheon pass, the pilots announced on the speaker, fastened your seat belts, we are going to enter some turbulence. Where they ever. Further turbulence then made the plane drop several hundred additional feet, which knocked them beneath the cloud cover. And the past years now saw that they were real, real fucking close to the mountains. And now these macho rugby players on board, I love this detail so much. They didn't want to appear afraid. And maybe some of them weren't afraid. They now start throwing around the rugby balls, singing some song I'd never heard of this

Konga, Konga, Konga, the plane is dancing Konga. Guessing that song makes more sense for your rugby player and your guy in the early 70s. Maybe they made it up, I don't know. Suddenly one of them then looks out their window and asks, is the plane supposed to be flying so close to the mountains? It was not. All right, Lugarara had made a deadly mistake.

He had turned North and began descending way too fucking early when the plane was still flying high in the Andes. They hadn't been where they thought they were when air traffic control authorized their descent. Lugarara now applied maximum power and an attempt to quickly gain altitude. It's sure a lot of profanity was being thrown around the cockpit. The plane went nearly vertical to try the steepest climb possible, shook violently. They're desperately trying to climb.

It was just a little too late to avoid disaster. Moment later, the plane did so sad. They almost made it. It clips the mountain ridge as they're trying to get over a 14,500 foot peak. Look, our managed to get the nose over the ridge of the mountain, but at 3.34 p.m., the tail clips the ridge. Holy shit, hopefully you're not listening to this episode

on a flight over some mountains right now. The impact tilts the plane forward, sending it into another collision with the side of the mountain now moment later, where the right wing is torn off. The impact now sends a plane tilting backwards and the tail cone gets ripped off the plane, which sends a few pastors flying out. Many of the remaining players, mostly rugby players, still tried to keep the mood light. They're insane. They kept tossing at Dam rugby ball around. They were singing. They still didn't want to appear scared. And I guess maybe some weren't. I mean, they're drunk. They're rugby players. They don't give a fuck. They're just singing

kanga, kanga, kanga. The plane is dancing. Kanga. Some guys just flew out and the wing broke off. But we're still gonna crush old grand gourd. Woo. Let's fucking go. JK. I've got a lot of picture than being that impervious to fear. Does that insane? The ultimate fearless rugby players. After the toe, tail cone is ripped off the plane. Few players fly out. The plane tilts back forward again for a few seconds. Now the left wing collides with the mountain.

One of the propellers slices through the fuselage as a left wing is now also torn off. Two more passengers fall out of a gaping hole in the plane. The remaining rugby team members continue to sing. Konga, Konga, Konga, the plane is dancing Konga. Some more guys just flew and the other wing broke off, but we still have enough people to fuck up old man going in. Woo, it's fucking go. No.

God, that'd be so great though. There are probably else just screaming. Anyone who is still alive and conscious at this point is just screaming in terror. Finally, the plane starts rapidly sliding down the mountain like a giant Bob sled. This is like out of a movie for crashing into a snowbank. When it crashed, it kills Faradah's the most experienced of the two pilots upon impact. It is from panels shoved into his chest before crashing that plane. It's slid down three thousand feet. Reach an estimated speed of 225 miles an hour,

possibly allowing a chance of survival also due to the temperature drop of a lower altitude when they stopped. While it's slid, I do like to imagine one of the rugby players, right? He still doesn't want to seem afraid. I imagine him just like unbuckling himself out of his seat and just fucking taking his clothes off

and just running, streaking down the aisle. Just to show that he's that tough. Let's fucking go, woo! The fuselage slams to a stop in a valley between Chile and Argentina. Didn't have a name at the time. Would be, no, would be name, not rename, excuse me. The Valley of Tears because of what these guys

would go through. Nando Parado described the valley in his book. The ridges formed a ragged semicircle that ringed the crash site, like the walls of a monstrous amphitheater, with the wreckage of the fair child lying at center stage. Five people already died from falling off a plane in the initial impacts. Lieutenant Ramones Saul Martinez, the flight navigator flight attendant Joaquin Ramirez, Gaston, Castamale, a law student, Alejo, a Huni, a veterinarian student,

a veterinary student, and a Guido Magri, a Papa Johns pizza product developer. No, he didn't do that. He was an agronomy student. I just heard Guido. I heard an Italian name, at least to me, and better ingredients, better pizza flooded into my mind again. The two of the fell off a few seconds later,

when the left wing was torn off, where Daniel Shaw, cattle rancher, and Carlos Velleta, a student who hadn't declared yet what their best he was. Five people then died upon impact with a snowbank, team physician Dr. Francisco Nicola, his wife Esther Nicola, Eugenia Pirato, Fernando Pirato's mother, Fernando Vasquez, Occupation Not Listed Enzorces, and Pilot Pirates, mentioned him earlier. Final impact of the crash ripped all the seeds from our anchors, pushed them to the front of the plane, causing severe injuries for the pastures who were still alive. Co-pilot La Gorara still alive but critically wounded and now trapped in the cockpit.

Passing your Roberta Kinesa held onto a seat so hard he ripped out chunks of fabric with his bare hands before being thrown forward and hit in his head. He then remembers thinking he was dead, reciting a Hail Mary. Someone cried out, please God help me. Help me. Another man screaming, I'm blind. Roberto Salad is friend Nando Pirado had a severe injury to his head, part of his brain is exposed. Next someone shout out, the pilot is alive. The pilot is alive. They find Pirados dead, but La Guara alive trapped in the cockpit, not in good shape. He asked them to get a pistol and shooting, but they refused. They tried to use the radio, the batteries, or in the tail, which had broken off, and they didn't know where the fuck it was. 33 people are somehow still alive, but many badly

injured. What a nightmare. I just can't imagine to begin how you'd feel in that situation. Right, just a few minutes earlier, they've been thinking about their upcoming rugby match, flying to the crowd like a minute or two or a little, singing a song, now the plane laying ruins around them, but doesn't are dead. Many of those who still have badly injured so much shock and adrenaline, so much panic. Roberto Canessa, Gustavo, Sabrina, both first year med students did not panic. They went into crisis mode, start moving around treating the injured. Past your non-deparado, right, with a severe skull fracture, he falls into a coma,

and then he somehow does not die. Both of Arturo Naguerra's legs were broken and Rico Plotero had a piece of metal stuck into his abdomen. This is nuts. Gustavo removed the metal, accidentally taking out part of Enrique's intestine as he did so, and then somehow that tough fucker,

not only survived, he just got quickly bandage up and immediately started helping other survivors so must not have been a super important piece of intestine. Roberto Gustavo, team captain Marcelo Perez, continuous testing survivors trying to figure out who can still play in the big fucking game. I mean come on. There's plenty of time to go whoop oh grand goneses. Let's fucking go. They start singing songs, toss around that little piece of Enrique's There's plenty of time to go whoop old grand gondian's ass. Let's fucking go They start singing songs talks around that little piece of Enrique's testin in testin since they lost her rugby balls Konga Konga Konga the plane was dancing Konga a lot of guys are dead Nando's brain is barely in his head But we're still the best fucking rugby team in South America. Whoo

That's crazy talk As soon as Lugarara and Ferraris failed to make contact with their destination, a rescue team is sent out, but they soon realized the location they thought the plane was in with the last made contact was incorrect. Right? So that mistake of navigation screws them over twice. The Chilean air search and rescue service SARS notified within the hours that the flight was missing. Four planes will go out and search for it until dark.

At 6 p.m. news of the missing flight reaches Ur Ureguine media officers of SARS listened to the radio transmission concluded the aircraft had landed had crashed in one of the most remote and inaccessible areas of the and he says of all the andies. And they strongly assume there would be no survivors between impact and and harsh conditions. But they call on the and his rescue group of Chile CSA for additional rescue efforts as evening approaches team captain Marcelo Perez quickly takes on a leadership role, using all of my willpower to not act like they're still trying to get ready for the rugby match

right now. For real, now Marcelo kept out, people call made plans, delegating tasks so everyone could survive the first few days. Marcel insisted that he sleep in the coldest section of the plane, asked anyone who wasn't injured to do the same. He forced people to keep busy when they wanted to lay down in misery, he was also in charge of rashing the food. Nando Parado later wrote about their meager rations,

and these are seriously meager. Each meal was nothing more than a small square of chocolate, or a dab of jam, washed down with a sip of wine from the cap of an aerosol can. I'm still trying to keep people spirits up, I sure, and then the God wouldn't put them through that suffering only to turn his back on them. Well, they had a lot of suffering in front of them.

Later that night, copilot of the war, rugby players, Francisco Abal, Felipe, Macurian, and Julio Martinez-Lamas, and wedding guests, Graziolla and Mariani all die from their various injuries. Another down to 28 survivors from the original 45. They were down to 29 as they went to sleep, one would die during the night, or late into the night. There are many pastors who remove the seats

inside the fuselage to make a shelter. Juicillage is just the body of a plane, while the seats are almost 30 people slept in an eight by 10 foot space surrounded by dead bodies. They use luggage and seats to close up the hole from where the tailored ripped off. Survivor Eduardo Strouch would describe the first night saying, we have a very small space. We were 29 people at the first. We have no warm clothes, no water.

We have to melt snow. It was very difficult because the weather was very cold. And the snow was all over the caracene of the engines of the plane. We are surrounded with our friends who died, and that first night was really impossible to describe. Not to also describe what the other passengers experienced. Because night had fallen so quickly, there hadn't been time to remove all the bodies. And the survivors were forced to hunker down among the dead, shoving and prodding the corpses

of friends for a few more inches of space. It was a scene from a nightmare, but the fear and physical suffering the survivors were enduring overshadowed their horror. And he was still in a coma when this happens. They told him this after he wakes up. And yeah, man, what an absolute nightmare, perhaps before Lugarard died, he told the group that the Chileans knew that they had passed Kiriko and were in the foothills of the indies. The ultimate or altimeter read 7,000 feet, but you know, that's not true. That was an error caused by the plane crash. They were much higher up as I said earlier, almost 12,000 feet 11,710 feet. October 14, 1972, first full day on the mountain. Moral is low. The guys were really, really worried that they

would not be able to make it in time to Santiago for that fucking rugby match. No, sorry, can't help myself. Moral was low because they were in a frozen hell. The first task of day two is moving the bodies from the fuselage into the snow. Marcelo Perez rounded up men to gather food and useful items. He and his group arranged luggage into a giant cross to be seen from above. The survivors trying to paint SOS on the plane with red lipstick, but didn't have enough. Later that day, 11 aircraft from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, they searched for the lost plane, and the survivors did see a helicopter fly by

but couldn't get their attention. My god, that'll be devastating. The white fuselage, they're playing too small to be seen from so far away, camouflage by the snow. They hope the helicopters will return again the next day. There was already almost no food for them to eat. I mean, the fly was only supposed to be roughly two hours. No one packed anything besides a few little airplane snacks.

They just had a little bit of wine, candy bars, one tin of muscles, toothpaste, a few chocolate peanuts, and some jam. They finished those very meager rations in about a week, never once eating anywhere near a satisfying amount. And very soon, they were facing starvation. Early on, team member Eduardo Strauss' cousin, Adolfo, told the group that they were gonna have to eat the bodies. And the overall response to this was relief.

Many of the others were glad he said what they've been thinking, but we're too afraid to say. Before figuring out if they'd be capable or not of eating people, they first had a more pressing problem to deal with, hydration. Although they were surrounded by snow, they couldn't eat enough of it to actually stay hydrated. It was so frozen, so icy, it also cut their mouths, irritate their gums, make their tongues, throat, swell.

There were a few days of extreme worry. When many of them thought that they were going to die of thirst very soon, but then passenger of fetus trouch came up with a creative solution. He melted snow on a sheet of metal, collected the drippings into a wine bottle, fucking genius. And then they would rotate this across a couple other little storage devices they were able to find and come up with a way to stay hydrated. Water now no longer a problem. And so they

wouldn't have to worry about suffering from snow blindness when they went out in the snow. Fido also made sunglasses using the sun visors and the pilots cabin. The same crafty son of a bitch also turns seat covers into blankets, cushions and the snow shoes to make it easier to go outside to use the bathroom and whatnot. Can't be shit in what's left of the plane. If only Stereo Killer and Fese's and urine lover Albert Fish would have been on this plane. Right, and crashed with them and then somehow lived, he could have been like a human toilet

for them. You bet you bottom down already for some old peanut ball bottom, hot apple cider, back hats and beer bowls. That's how you do it in Hollywood. How you doing in the Andes? Also before moving forward, since I mentioned it a few times, I should explain what snow blindness is.

Snow blindness is eye pain and discomfort caused by overexposure to the sun's ultraviolet rays. It's like in a sunburn on your eyeballs. Usually you don't have to worry about that. You just don't stare at the sun. You need a poop. But in a sunny, icy snow-covered area, the UV rays can bounce off the snow up into your eyes,

also in high altitude areas with atmosphere and thinner, there are more UV rays making it to the Earth's surface and hence making it to your eyeballs. Now back to these rugby players, getting crafty in their efforts to survive. Medical student Roberto Canessa, fashion hamics for the injured people to sleep on. He became this motley cruise kind of main doctor that is best to take care of infections, stabilize fractures, remove dead bodies. He used women's perfume as disinfectant, just basically razor blades as scalples,

and rugby jerseys as bandages. Kinda makes me cringe, just to think about what kind of surgery she ended up having to carry out. I just want to think about getting operated on in an abandoned plane by a first-year metal student with a razor blade. All the survivors agreed to join together to do what was necessary.

They shared chores, switch sleeping positions so everyone could have a chance in the warm spot, tried their best to keep spirits up. Gustavo Nigelich and Fido Strouch rebuilt the cross signal at a luggage that the rescue aircraft might see each and every morning. Alivarro, Mangino, Arturo, Niguera, Managed Water Production. Roberto was the physician, as I said, Daniel Fernandez, massage people's feet. So they wouldn't freeze. Okay, interesting role. Maybe also at a foot fetish, you know.

Cucay and Ciarthe told stories to keep everyone spirits up. Roy Harley organized, cleaned the fuselage. Gustavos Urbino organized a suitcase for the documents, medallions, crucifixes, watches of the dead, hoping to, you know, return them to their families later. Seems like Gustav has a pretty easy job there. Everyone else is doing these things that require, you know, stuff to do every day, and he just like, you know, puts people shit into a suitcase one time. Important note, Roberto contributes a lot of information to this story because he's one of the first people willing

to do interviews and write about this in depth from the start. And he really painted himself as the hero. However, according to Nando and some of the other survivors, yeah, Roberto was heroic, but like, only like the rest of them were. And apparently he could be a bit of an asshole. He was supposedly arrogant, overbearing, cruel at times, often ignored group decisions,

and randomly sometimes stepped on injured people inside the plane when they got his way. That last part seems pretty messed up. But you know what, also, if you're normally, you know, maybe like a little cranky, you know, that's your temperament. I can see how this situation would exacerbate that as it wears on day after day,

might make you one of the crankiest mother fuckers in the history of the earth. Maybe normally he wouldn't be mashing on people who are crippled. Overall it seems like Roberto does a lot of good in this story. So I'm going to say he's a pretty good dude, but again, you know, he wrote a lot of the story. As more time passed, tension started to rise between survivors who were actively working and then the so-called lost boys, those who had fallen into deep depression and refused to work get up.

People working understandably grew pretty frustrated and resentful of them and had arguments often. So I'll come on Ramon, no way. You didn't help make any water. You didn't bury shit. Didn't organize anything in a suitcase even. So you don't get a slice of Felipe. You definitely don't get the chest meat.

Maybe they didn't say anything that dark in arguments, but you know, maybe they did. I don't know. October 15th, 1972, passenger Nanda Parado wakes up from his coma after recovering from a cerebral edema. He was only out for two days, but still fucking crazy. He was able to heal it all in this situation. He was surrounded by faces telling him, Nando, can you hear me?

Nando, we crashed. After the crash, they thought he was dying and put his body with the others at the end of the fuselage. One of the healthiest people, or only the healthiest people, were put in the warmest spot. So his head was in the coldest part of the plane, which actually kept him alive, kept his brain from swelling. Diego stormed another med student, pulled him out during the first night,

which prevented him from completely freezing to death, and they kind of would rotate him. Little bit warmer than most he called. One thing that was beneficial to all the injured passengers was the snow and ice. They kept a, kept bacteria from growing, spreading deadly infections and offered numbing pain relief. I wouldn't have thought that, but it makes the perfect sense. Nando asked about his family, the survivors told his mother, Eugenia, had died and there's

little sister Susana was badly injured. So Nando then took on the role of attempting to nurse Susie back to health. The survivors have found a damaged transistor radio, passenger Roy Harley, an engineering student was able to make an antenna using an electrical cable from the plane, and they were actually able to hear the news of their crash and how everyone thought they were dead. So that's fun. They tried to find a way to communicate to the radio, but there wasn't enough of the signal. And how just unimaginably frustrating to be able to hear the outside world, but have

no means of reaching anyone in the outside world. On October 16, 1972, four survivors decided to take an exploratory hike. To see the land get used to the environment. Fido Strouch, Numa, Tukati, Carlitos Pias, and Roberto Canessa set out. They were able to learn just enough to feel worse about the predicament. They learned that they are way the fuck up in the mountains and far away from any possibility of help, and they feel hopeless. Nondelator wrote his thoughts in his book Mir Miracle in the Endy, 72 days in the mountain,

and my long trek published in 2006. The four who had climbed with the strongest and healthiest among us, and the mountain had defeated them with ease, but I did not accept this defeat, that we could not escape this place, that we were already dead, and instead I told myself that they were soft. They were afraid. They had quit too easily. The mountain did not seem so treacherous to me. Dude gave himself hope, a purpose, a challenge to push himself.

I'm sure it helped keep him alive. Nando is my favorite character in the story, by the way. October 21st, 1972, after 142 hours of flying, the rescue teams call off the search. They announced plans search for bodies in December when some of the snow will have melted. Remember December, part of the summer in the Andes, beginning of summer. According to the survivor Eduardo Strauch, here in the news was absolutely devastating. So we felt abandoned and we felt so angry with everybody, even with our families, with

the world, with God, with nature, with everything. We were absolutely angry, but very fast, very quick. We realized that the only way to get out would be by doing it ourselves. Roberto recalled a fellow survivor, then telling him, I have good news. We no longer have to wait for someone to rescue us. We'll get out ourselves. Roberto did not think anything about this news was good. I mean, I'm all for looking for this overlining, but that's a stretch. Great news, everybody. No one's gonna help us. But I see what you say, right?

No point wasting time taking their gonna be helped. Roberto remembers feeling like they were trapped in a prison, but then he thought, no, a prison is like a five-star hotel. You have water, you have food, you have a bed. We were living in the graveyard, surrounded by dead friends. This is the worst place you can imagine in life or in death. Also on the 21st, eight days into the shit, Nando's little sister Suzy dies from injuries.

October 22nd, day nine, the survivors commit their first act of cannibalism, they're beginning to starve to death. All of their food, you know, they started with very little had run out that first week. After the food ran out pastures, attempted to eat the leather, some cotton from the seats to eat the leather, some cotton from the seats, but the chemicals in them made them sick. Everyone was growing angry, frustrated, days without food, after days without food passed. Nando Parado would occasionally start standing up and shouting, there's nothing in this fucking place to eat. He later wrote, but of course there was food in the mountain. There was meat, plenty of it, and an easy reach. It was as near as the bodies of the dead line outside. It puzzles me, that despite my compulsive drive to find

anything edible, I ignored for so long the obvious presence of the only edible objects within a hundred miles. There are some lines, I suppose, that the mind is very slow to cross. And Roberto later wrote, or common goal was to survive, but what we lacked was food. We had long since run out of the maker pickings we'd found on the plane, and there was no vegetation or animal life to be found. After just a few days we were feeling the sensation of our own bodies consuming themselves just to remain alive. Before long we'd become too weak to recover from starvation. We knew the answer, but it was too terrible to contemplate. The bodies of our friends and teammates preserved outside of the snow and ice contained vital,

life-giving protein that could help us survive. But could we do it? For a long time we agonized. I went out in the snow and prayed to God for guidance. Without his consent, I felt I would be violating the memory of my friends that I would be stealing their souls. Over the course of the first week, many of them had secretly tried to mentally prepare themselves to eat human meat. Some of their belts began to shrink by a full notch each day because of how rapidly they were now losing weight. All of the survivors in the end would lose anywhere from 50 to 70 pounds over the 72

days between the wreck and the rescue. And no one had a lot of extra weight to begin with. They were all fairly slim and in shape. Most of them, you know, young athletes. So most of that weight they lost was muscle mass. When the decision to eat the bodies was made, Roberto, Fido, Gustavo, Daniel, my spoons, stood over the bodies of La Guara and Ferratas.

Fucking pilots, of course. They said they chose them because they didn't know them that well. Thought it'd be easiest to eat them first. I'm sure that factored a lot into it, but I bet also a little pissed at them for crashing. I mean their most important job was to not crash when they fucked it up pretty badly. And now everyone's real hungry and they want someone to blame. I would have been surprised if they picked anyone other than the pilots to eat first. Survivors stood over the pilots' bodies

with razor blades and shards of glass. Yee! Roberto just 19 19 years old, was the first one to make a cut into human flesh. He later told the independent, we laid the thin strips of frozen flesh aside on a piece of sheet metal. Each of us finally consumed our peace when we could bear to. Each of us came to our own decision and our own time. And once we had done so, it was irreversible. It was our final goodbye to innocence. Roberto was also the first one to take a bite of human flesh

He later said that what gave him the strength to do so was thoughts of his mother How fucking tasty she would be He had always wanted to eat mama Especially your back and her sweet sweet bottom and her breasts. No, that's not quite what he meant No, he said his mom's once told him that if you know her children died before her she would die too Well, I'm sure more than once sold him that. So he justified cannibalism order to have a better chance to stay alive so he couldn't,

so he wouldn't break Mama's heart. So, you know, good son. Once you ate the meat, nothing happened. He felt better. He later compared it to a first sexual experience. Yeah, these expectations, all this build up, and then the reality is not what you thought it would be. He said the taste was like any other raw meat.

None would agree to eat the flesh as well, but he insisted on protecting his mother and sister's bodies. No one eats mama. No, no one. And I feel spare. He wrote, even the flesh did not satisfy my hunger, but it calmed my mind.

I knew that my body would use the protein to strengthen itself and slow the process of starvation. Roberto later gave National Geographic more of his thoughts on the situation, saying cannibalism is when you kill someone. So technically, this is what is known as anthropophagy. I've had these discussions for 40 years. There might be anthropophagy. There we go, anthropophagy.

I've had these discussions for 40 years. I don't care. We had to eat these dead bodies and that was it. The flesh had protein in fat, which we needed like cow meat. I was also used to medical procedures. So it was easier for me to make the first cut. The decision to accept intellectually is only one step though. The next step is to actually do it. And that was very tough. Your mouth doesn't want to open because you feel so miserable and sad about what you have to do. My main issue is that I was invading the privacy of my

friends, raping their dignity by invading their bodies. But then I thought, if I were killed, I would feel proud that my body could be used for others to survive. I feel that I shared a piece of my friends not only materially, but spiritually, because their will to live was transmitted to us through their flesh. We made a pact that if we died,

we would be happy to put our bodies to the service of the rest of the team. Holy fuck. Everything he said does make sense to me with, damn, that is a strange, crazy place to go to in your head. I wonder if he still feels that like spiritual nourishment, like the connection to people he eats. Like I wonder if he crossed that line like,

everyone's to have he, if he wants to eat a little bit of a loved one, just to get a little bit of their power. I don't know. I also wonder what body parts exactly would they end up eating? Because there are multiple reports that they ate like, basically everything off some of the bodies. Like all the muscles, many of the organs, including the heart and brains,

but did they eat any weeners? I can't be the only person to think this. Did they eat any boobs? I mean, right? They needed fat, helps survive, get a fatty boob, what about balls? What about buttholes? How hungry would you have to be

to eat your friends' raw butthole? Do not judge me for these thoughts. I'm just a very curious person. I carry off the S.F. boundaries. Also, I don't remember ever coming across the term anthropology before. It's simply defined as the eating of human flesh by human beings. Some consider this term synonymous with cannibalism. Others consider it different in the way Roberto just described. We're not killing someone, eating someone who happens to be dead. But a lot of people say that tomato tomato. Eduardo Strauch made himself eat by thinking of it. Only is the only way to survive.

Physically, at first, he found it very difficult to eat the meat, but in time, he said he got used to it, and it eventually became disconnected, absolutely, with the origin of the food. Makes sense. According to him, the meat had no taste. He just tried to swallow it whole. Probably wasn't talking about eating butthole there. I feel like that would have some taste.

Many of the survivors, if not all, found it humiliating to have to degrade themselves to this level of eating their friends to survive. Can't imagine. All the pastors were Catholic, and they feared going to hell for doing this. They were worried that eating human flesh could somehow damn their souls ended up justifying their actions by referencing the last supper. Javier Methol, Lillianna Methol, his wife and the last female survivor were the final passengers to eat human flesh. They were strict Catholics. Had to really align their spiritual beliefs with being able to do this, just make the two

feel okay with each other. Javier said he prayed and prayed and prayed. Read a Bible they had. then finally quoted John 654, he who eats of my flesh and drinks of my blood will have eternal life. And I will resurrect him on the last day, take and eat, this is my body. So now he's like, okay, all right,

says in Bible, I can do it. Roberto later wrote in his book, there was the God of the outside world and one of the 10 commandments who ordered that we not steal or lie, but my God of the mountain was different. The God of the mountain witnessed the groaning of my insides. So while I promised to honor him, he saw me and knew I had lost the ability to lie or to conceal my overwhelming starvation. So I prayed to my mountain God about whether I could eat my friends.

And the mountain God was like, fuck yeah, bro. Fucking eat it. Mmm, go for the sum of that backstrap. Get those, get those like fuck yeah bro fucking eat it. Mmm go for the sum of that back strap. Get those get those ribs. Get those strips. Come on get some of that bicep steak. Get some of that forearm gristle. Eat those nuts or something like that. I think the mountain god might have been Nimrod. Healed them. I do our own his two cousins took over the Butcher Eder and put in charge the terrible task of prepping the meat, so other survivors didn't have

to see where it was coming from. They would cut it into thin strips, dried in the sun, and yakes. And all this meat talk, human meat talk. Obviously pretty disturbing. And it also leads us directly into our next sponsor. Hey, pizza lovers. It's all this talk of so much meat,

making your mouth water. Papa Johns is now introducing two new pizzas for you to love. The hell yeah there's a hair on your food pizza, and the focus on the sauce and don't ask too many questions pizza. The hell yeah there's a hair on your food pizza has human hair on every slice. Of course it does. We left a skin on and we prepped that people pepperoni and Canadian bacon that is literally fatty meat cut from a heavy dude from Canada. Trials with some self-grust, only $15 for an extra large. And add an extra large,

don't ask too many questions pizza for only $5 because well, you just don't want to know. Let's just say that once we've used up all the good people meat for our hell of hell yeah there's a hair on your food pizza We use whatever the fuck is left for the dough and ask too many questions pizza Add an order of cheesy bread and a two-liter bottle of A&W root beer for just another $1.99 Better ingredients better pizza Papa John's Eat your friends Focus on the sauce

Papa John's Yeah, that's here drink it out some root beer Papa John's. Yeah, that's here. Drink it out some root beer. Papa John's. Eat your fucking friends. Don't be a fucking crime, baby. Papa John's. I know that was really fucked up. I personally cannot believe that Papa John's would insist from corporate headquarters that I read that ad that their sales team definitely wrote word for word. I found it insensitive. If you remember, the public on the legal team don't understand comedy. The previously right commercial was a parody, not real, better ingredients, better pizza,

go fuck yourself. October 23rd, 1972, day 11. I had to break it up there. Three men head out in the second trek. Gustavos or Bino, Numa Tercotti and Daniel Mass bones set out. They discovered more of the remains of the playing crash and five bodies of other passengers. They also miscalculated the time.

It would take them to hike and end up half and asleep outside with no protection. And nearly freeze to death. To make matters worse, Gustavos has, he goes snow blind. His eyes are swollen and red. Said he felt like there were sand and needles in his eyes. Also got so cold and shit was so hard. I don't even know if I knew this was possible. He knocked some of his teeth loose from chattering his eyes. I also got so cold and shivered so hard. I don't even know if I knew this was possible.

He knocked some of his teeth loose from chattering his teeth. When they returned, Roberto had to chew up his meat before feeding to him like a fucking baby bird. Gustavus, we've been told Nando, the cold up on those slopes is indescribable. It rips the life from you. It's as painful as fire. I never thought we would live until morning. Nando was not discouraged.

Well, maybe he's a little bit discouraged, but he still thought there was a way to get off the mountain. October 29th, day 17. Right when this crew probably thought that shit could not get worse, shit gets so much worse. Another massive tragedy strikes the group.

Huge avalanche, berries, a portion of the plane they're living in. Eight more people die. Enrique Platero, Lle in reek ape, letero, Lillana, methyl, Gustavo, Nikoilich, Daniel, mospons, Juan Menendez, Diego Storm, Carlos Rook, and Marcelo Perez. The plane of 45, now down to 19.

The team devastated by the loss of their captain, especially and the loss of Lillana. She'd become a mother figure to the group and quote, nurse the survivors like a mother in a saint. Let's look at how this happened in more detail or when I guess four PM on the 29th the group went into the fuselage for the night because of the cold and snow.

The sun was setting it at four PM. They'd be hearing avalanches off in the distance all day, but according to Roberto, the idea of being caught in an avalanche was as alien as it had once been to believe we could be involved in a plane crash. It was something that would happen somewhere else because we'd already had our share of bad luck. They later slept a little bit for the night, early in the evening, and then the plane is buried

by the initial avalanche. And then the three feet of snow roughly get into the fuselage, and a bunch of the the survivors quickly notice their suffocating. Roy Harley woken up by the roar of snow descending upon them, initially was three feet, more comes after. He jumped up, immediately buried up to his hips. He sees everyone is laying down, laying down his buried, starts frantically digging for bodies. He's terrified. He'll be stranded all alone. Nando wrote, I woke, frightened and disoriented as a huge and heavy force thumped against my chest.

Something was terribly wrong. I felt an icy wet in this, pressing against my face and a crushing weight bore down on me so hard it forced the air for my chest After a moment of confusion I realized what happened an avalanche had rolled down the mountain and filled the fuselage with snow Roberto was buried next to his friend He recalls feeling suffocated couldn't breathe couldn't see couldn't hear They'll someone push the snow office face and then he quickly freed himself and helped dig for others. Roberto tried to dig out Daniel Moss-Bones, but was too late.

Daniel had already suffocated. Nando Parado found a metal pole managed to poke a hole in the fuselage to provide some ventilation, you know, so they didn't run out of fucking oxygen. Survivors now truly felt like they were in hell. Barry to live alongside the freshly deceased. Roberto later said this was the first time he ever felt envy for a dead person. A second avalanche actually happened later that night, but the plane was already buried

deep enough that the snow just rolled off and didn't cause further damage. F**k him and these man. What an unforgiving terrible place for them to be stranded. On Halloween, October 31st, two days after two days of being trapped in the fuselage, their 19th day on the mountain, the survivors dig a hole from the cockpit to the surface, finally escaping the plane. They got out by sitting in the captain's chair, taking turns kicking at the windshield. One man finally managed to break it and then they had to dig through the snow to get out. After all they'd been through and now this and they still have 53 days left to go. Eeeh. Outside they were met with a harsh blizzard, their shitstorm continues, their forced return to their icy prison, for three days now they're trapped buried in snow surrounded by corpses.

They had no choice but to eat them. Rebeater told the independent, we had no food, even the frozen bodies we were relying on outside to stay alive and been swept away. Everyone was waiting for someone to do something, or for no one to do anything, and just let the end come. That's when I steal myself to do what needed to be done, to use one of the bodies of the newly dead. And so we took yet another step in the descent towards our ultimate indignity, to eat the body of the person lying next to us.

Each of us would have to be stained with this blood if we were able to keep the seat of life from withering. I mean, this is just horror movie stuff. No time to dry the meat. Just rip in raw flesh from people they had been talking to, a day or even just hours earlier, covering themselves in blood. This is them walking dead shit. Really, really wanna say something else

about Papa John's right now, but I'm not, I'm not going to. For the record, I'm not saying anything about better greetings, fresher friends, Papa John's. After my cellos to death, I know it's those two, but I can't. It's not myself. Eduardo Strouch, Fido Strouch, Daniel Fernandez, take on group leadership roles. They approve group decisions, people look to them

for guidance for a while. Over the next few weeks, few survivors here and there make small excursions trying pinpoint their location, but not of them make it very far, and they come back, you know, they get too sick, too weak. Nando meanwhile continues to hold out hope that they can still make it out alive. He's constantly daydreaming, scheming about how

he could maybe escape all of this. Thoughts of overcoming the incredible they get too sick, too weak. Nandomin while continues to hold out hope that they can still make it out alive. He's constantly daydreaming, scheming about how he could maybe escape all of this. Thoughts of overcoming the incredible tragedy is what get him through the times of suffering on the mountain. He plans his assent, his supplies, who he's gonna take with him,

his climbing techniques over and over in his head. He later wrote, I would be the engine that pulled us to the mountains. Roberto's container of spirit would be the clutch that prevented me from revving out of control. I knew Roberto would make me stronger and better on the journey. He was the one I needed by my side.

Eventually he will share his plan with the rest of the group and this plan will become their last hope. After nearly 60 fucking days of wasting away, over 50 days of feast on their friends, Nando and Roberto would either make it to help or die trying. Way before then, everyone agreed to help prepare these two men and three others for another journey to try and save everyone. Nando promises he'll have everyone home by Christmas.

And he would. The group chooses Roberto Canessa, Numa Takati, Antonio Tin Tin, the sentan, Nando Peraldo and Fido Strouch to be the original big escape expedition members. These men got the largest portions of food, the warmest clothes, didn't have to do any manual labor so they could build their strength. None of those guys had e-bottle, not a one, right? Not when you were one of the expeditionaries. Roberto urged the group to wait to let the temperatures rise before heading out.

The original team of five would soon be cut to four. Fido developed painful hemorrhoids. That was a liminator from the expedition. Numa was doing that eliminated because someone stepped on his leg and the bruise became septic, fucking Roberto probably did that. He'd like to mash people sometimes when he was in a hurry. I guess Numa never ate enough and his body had no strength to fight out the infection. It followed, became very depressed after they kicked him out of the expedition and then started refusing to eat. Once the three were ready to leave, they decided to head east.

Economic student Arturo Nguerra told Roberto how lucky you are that you can walk for us. No pressure. November 17th, 1972, day 36. Nando Roberto, 1010, head out on the first day of this expedition. They leave at 8 a.m. Initially, they thought that the entire hike out of the mountains would only take three, four days. After a few hours of hiking, they find the tail of the aircraft and are surprised.

They thought it was much further away. Inside, some luggage, they find chocolates. Oh, man, how happy were they? Old empanadas, rum, cigarettes, clothes, comic books, medicine, and a camera, which is how they took some of the pictures of themselves on the mountain that you can now find online. And then it took the camera because quote, I thought that if we didn't make it out alive, someone might find the camera and develop the film. And they would know that we had lived, at least for a while.

They also found radio batteries, undamaged and intact. The campus had the tail, ate some of the food, read comic books. Actually, I think they might have eaten all the food, Enjoy the warmth to finally be able to build a fire. Later that day, poor passenger, Arturo Niguera passes away back at the fuselage camp. Probably should have made this clear way earlier, but the, oh yeah, I think I did. The fuselage is the main body of the plane. I already said that. November 18th, day 37. The group of three hikes out for day two of their expedition. They misjudge their timing

and are forced to camp outside and nearly freeze the death. They take a big trench in the snow, not enough to protect them from the cold though. They sleep as close together as they can, constantly hit their arms and legs to keep blood flowing. Roberto insists that they go back to the... So stupid. This is just hitting me right now. I probably should just keep this inside, but when they're trying to sleep as close as possible, as they can, I picture them just rationalizing

just like big spoons, medium spoons, smaller spoon, but like so close, it has to be like, there's literally nothing sexual about it, but they have to go penis inside of the next guy, just to be like that tight together. Like that somehow keeps the line. I have those thoughts. Roberto insists that they go back

to the tail, remove the batteries, head back to the fuselage so they can power up the radio and call for help. So that's what they do. On November 19, they return to the tail, find that the batteries that are too heavy to take back, fuck, they decided to return to the fuselage, disconnect the radio, carry that back to the tail. When the men returned to the fuselage, they tell the group they had found more coats cigarettes rum half eaten empanadas Batteries chocolate, but you know all that stuff was too heavy to bring back And they decided to take the radio to the batteries That was a ridden in some of the sources

I'm sure the fuselage group was super excited to hear about all the cool shit they found that they weren't bringing back to them Oh, oh my god you, we've had so much cool shit. Rum, soda, crackers, cheese, coats, blankets, empanadas, rotisserie chickens, bread, peanut butter, jelly, space heaters, Captain Cronserial, milk, coffee maker, microwave, hot tub, sexy women, restaurant, hospital, casino, so much stuff. And we can't bring it back. We decided not to bring any of it fucking back. So you won't touch a single piece of any of that Just thought that you want to know oh my god. We had such a great time when you guys were laying here

We can diving and just dying and starving Or returning to the tail the expedition group brought engineering student Roy Harley with him What they didn't know was that the batteries not enough voltage and their plan was gonna fail Also on November 19th passenger Rafael S. Ch, as Javaran, a dairy farming student, dies from gang green. Well, at least he died, known that there was a lot of cool shit, you know, close by that he would never touch.

Group of 45, now down to 17. November 23rd, Roy Nando, Tintin, Roberto, dislodged the radio from the fuselage as cockpit. This pointless task takes them the entire day. November 24th, the four men take the shattered pieces of the radio, put them on a sled, hike towards the tail. They work from the 24th to the 27th to try and fix the radio,

but can't make it work. They do manage to broadcast a shortwave signal, but can't get a super VHF signal to actually communicate with any planes. All they hear is static. Feeling defeated, they decide to march home. November 29th, day 48. The men's last night, sleep in the tail section. They find insulating fabric that they'll later use to make a sleeping bag. And they will make a later trek off the mountain. And that will make a later trek off of the mountain possible. So, you know, the trip back to the tail, not totally in vain. November 30th, the men back began to hike back to

the fuselage. On the way back, Nando, Roy, Roberto, Tintin, trapped in another blizzard. Oh, sweet. Roy is just fucking had it. He literally just lays down to die. He's done. Roy and Nando had gotten left behind in the blizzard while Roberto and Tintin walked ahead of them.

Roy was, you know, just felt he was too weak to walk, told Nando to just leave me. Nando started to, starts to walk away at first, then he gets very angry, comes back, lands on Roy starts punching him and screams, you son of a whore, you filthy bastard. Get on your fucking feet, you miserable motherfucker. Stand up or I'll kill you. That really isn't exact quote. And the screaming worked and they made it back alive. I got to say, I like Nando's leadership style. I like a lot. Nando now insists the group needed to send him

and a few others to hike out to get help, but no one wanted to go with him a second time. He kept that a though and eventually persuaded Roberto and Tintin to go with him. The remaining survivors created a sleeping bag so the men could survive sleeping outside. They used insulation from that tail, right? Copper wire, waterproof fabric to make one giant sleeping bag for three guys to sleep in as I talked about earlier super spoon tight

Or something Corlitos pias started to sew it taught coachy and car and siarte Gustavo's or bino and fido's trouch to sew along with him December 8th 1972 day 50 fucking seven. The group heard on a transistor radio, on their transistor radio, the Uruguayan Air Force was going to start searching for them again

with helicopters, December 10th at 7 a.m. It's caused a lot of debate amongst the group. So they wait, or so they attempt another hike out. Roberto and Nando getting a big fight over this, Roberto wants to wait for the rescue teams, but Nando tells him, I'm leaving on the morning of December 12th. If you aren't ready, I will go without you.

Roberto told Nando, you can't leave without me. You stupid bastard. Nando responded. You heard me. I'm leaving on the 12th with it without you. Nando would get not only Roberto to agree to venture out with him, but also tintin. December 11th, 1972, day 60, law student, Numa Takati dies from starvation. He had begun to refuse to eat human flesh. The survivors of 16 that remain devastated the loss. He was one of their best friends. The source of positivity for them all. He'd been with them for so long throughout all of this. And for Numa's deaths, Roberto and 1010 reluctant to head out. Right. They're still considering waiting for like a plane, a helicopter, but many of the members of the group are just a few weeks at most away from definitely dying.

And that's a big risk. If it doesn't see them, they're all going to die. The hike is the only thing that they could control and became the group's only hope. December 12, 1972, Nando, Roberto Tintin set out on their hike. As I said, get help or die trying. They have no map, no real supplies, no climbing experience, but they're determined and also terrified. According to Roberto, the decision to leave their new home was more difficult than the decision to eat human flesh had been. They leave at 7 a.m. so they can use the frozen snow to their advantage. They're wearing several layers of clothes, homemade snowshoes, metal walking sticks, and rope. Nando wears three pairs of jeans,

three sweaters, polo shirt, four socks wrapped in plastic bags. The hike until approximately noon when they have to stop to put on their snowshoes, due to the icy snow beginning to soften a bit. And then the continue all day until the icy winds make them feel nearly frozen and decide to stop and set up camp, which really isn't much. Camp is basically just getting that big homemade sleeping bag ready, digging down a little bit to sink it into the snow

The three men anxiously tested out waiting to see if it will keep them warm enough to survive the night And it works like a fucking champ those three guys were as snug and protected as I don't know random example Three tasty quality pepperoni slices stuffed into a Papa John's epic pepperoni stuffed crust pizza. Better ingredients, less frozen death, Papa John's. I know that is so stupid, but it just makes me laugh. The men would have to climb from 11,710 feet up to an over a 15,320 foot peak and over the next few days to send into the valleys below. This is going to work. This initial part of the hike nearly a straight vertical slope that will stop every few yards catch the breath.

Climbing experts recommend that climbers do not ascend more than a thousand feet per day to give their bodies time to adjust. Roberto Nando tinted and climbed twice as far as that one morning and continued to push their starving bodies despite exhaustion and altitude sickness. Nando later wrote, I knew we were walking ourselves to death, but I couldn't make myself stop. Time was running out for us, and the weaker I grew, the more frantic I became

to keep moving, my pain, my body didn't matter anymore. It was just a vehicle now. I would burn myself to ashes if that was what it took to get home. God, I fucking love this determination. The hike was extremely physically difficult before he left the survivor, told Roberto, your legs belonged to the group, not to yourself,

and that would inspire him to keep going because you knew he had 13 people waiting on him. When he felt like he couldn't take another step, he would ask himself, what are you going to do? Die in the snow. This would make him continue on. The only reason the men were able to do so to continue on is because just pure willpower. They were freezing starving, exhausted. Now in the midst of a grueling hike, capable of killing season mountaineers with proper equipment who were not starving. What these guys were doing was fucking miraculous.

But at so many points, it seemed like there were miraculous Hail Mary was doomed to fail. The only brought a three day supply of meat wrapped in a sock because they thought they were so much closer to Curricold than they actually were. They also weren't able to stay on top of the snow that they'd hoped with their homemade snowshoes,

not consistently. All the men would end up walking up to their hips and snow with Nando leading the way. Man, that energy that would take every night of their hike, you know, there's, excuse me, every night of the hike. They're sleeping back and serve just enough warmth to keep them from freezing to death, backing up to the second day of this hike now really quick. December 13th, 1972, Roberto wants to head east because he thinks he sees a road. You will not find out until much later that he actually does see a

road. He and Nando have an argument about which way to go are unable to make a decision. They split up for part of the day. December 14th, Roberto stays behind a camp for a bit to contemplate his decision. Nando and Tintin head up and reach the base of a 300 foot vertical wall. Nando decides he's going to climb the wall or die trying this tough tenacious motherfucker uses a stick to carve steps in the wall and reach the peak before tinted, a little metal walking stick. Nando thinks he's going to be overlooking the green valleys of Chile now, but instead all you can see in every direction, more mountains,

more snow, extremely discouraging and depressing. December 15th, the three men reach the summit. They've been hiking up. What the men don't know is that they had just hiked up part of Mount Akin, oh man, Akin Kaguah, the highest mountain in the Andes that I mentioned earlier, without any hiking equipment or proper clothing, that mountain at its peak, at its highest peak, 22,831 feet. Roberto's first thought when he sees the endless mountains

stretching out beyond them is we are dead He later wrote his book. I had I had to survive How a plane crash in the andies inspired my calling to save lives published in 2016 Nanda was standing off to the side staring silently into the distance I've taken a few steps. I could see why we were at the true summit and what lay before us to the west was an infinite number of Gigantic snowy peaks disappearing into the horizon. Too much for our diminishing strength. I turned around and saw the same landscape for 360 degrees. I felt an unbearable weight on my shoulders.

Nando spotted two smaller peaks in the west, not covered with snow, and it valued the base of those mountains. He knew this was their way out and refused to give up hope and refused to, you know, march in any other direction. On the somebody tells Roberto we may be walking to our deaths but I would rather walk to meet my death than wait for it to come to me. I mean fuck yeah, this guy's quote, hell, hell Nando. Roberto responded with you and I are friends Nando we have been through so much.

Now let's go die together. I don't know if they actually said these things but this is what they wrote later because this is, I mean, this is some like, you know, hero movie shit, but you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hope that they did say those things. It's crazy. The men realized the hike was gonna take much longer than they planned initially.

They now send 1010 back, the slowest member, so that the food they brought could last a little bit longer. 1010 uses a seat cushion as a sled, returns downhill to the crash site in roughly an hour. It had taken him three days to hike up at this point, took an hour for him to slide back, which shows how steep the climb was. And this all sounds like hell. Except for maybe the sledding part. That sounds pretty fun, comparatively at least. I hope at least for a second, on the way down, just to get a little bit of joy, he just let out a little whee just, you know, just something fun. December 16th, 1972, Nando Roberto began descending the slope now. They decided

to sled down on their own seat cushions. Love that they brought those for this reason. On the first run with them, they almost die. Small avalanche sends them falling down about 600 feet. Thankfully, neither man is injured. That night, they sleep on a ledge with a 20 degree incline, both men feared falling off the entire night and dying. But they don't. December 17th, day 66, my God. The men continue their hike. At 10 a.m., they hear a helicopter.

We can't see it. So, I have no idea if their hike is pointless or if their friends are about to be rescued. Just keep on marching. Roberto and Ando finally reach the end of the snow on this day. See drinkable water for the first time in months. Roberto wrote, on the six day hiking across the mountains, I learned that when you're tiptoeing the line between life and death, you don't despair. You either live or die.

You quit or you fight on. When you decide you won't resign yourself to dying, you find a strength you never knew you had. And you push beyond the limits of what you thought was possible. That's how I survived the six day. Something came alive inside me, something that went beyond will. Fucking love this story. I mean, I mean, these parts of it, not so much the parts of Dine and Edin you know, friends and stuff. December 18th, the men reached that green valley that they'd seen from the top of the summit. They find the source of the Rio San Jose and Argentina,

a river that joins another river than another eventually leading to a village in Chile. They follow the river and see signs of life for the first time since the crash. That night they find an abandoned campsite, first sign of any human activity. Can imagine how good that felt. Well, normally it would feel great, but by this point, both Nando and Roberto's bodies are really starting to shut down from lack of food and just exhaustion. Their legs are numb, toes are turning black, hearts constantly pounding from exertion, skin turning a greenish white color. Up on the mountain, the sun had been setting at 4pm, now at 4.30, sun's still out. This meant no longer blocked by the mountains anymore, they're heading in the right direction.

They keep going. December 19th, they come across some river rapids, decided to follow it southwest to see if the water will be low enough to cross. It's still cold, but there's no more snow. Roberto notices how much more oxygen there is at this altitude. His mind feels clearer. He also sees a lizard. First animal he had seen in two months.

They eventually crossed the river, losing a bottle of rum they'd brought and getting soaked. But with wood around now, they're able to make a substantial fire. For the first time in two months, they get warm at night. There's number 20th, day 69. The two men start their day by waking up with red bumps all over their bodies. They've been bitten by mysterious bugs in the night. Shit, just keeps getting better.

These poor bastards, Roberto finds a stoop can. Nando insists it must have just fallen out of a plane. But then Roberto finds a horseshoe, argues with Nando. Horseshoe don't fall out of planes. Civilization is close. They both then spot cows, assign the shepherd to be nearby. Nando's still reluctant though He's got, now he's got McGill's pop to worry about on top of everything else. He's very weak. The two men are sitting there having a debate on if they should be able to get a job. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do.

He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do.

He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot of work to do. He's got a lot dysentery from drinking river water. Now he's got now he's got McGill's pop to worry about on top of everything else He's very weak The two men are sitting there having a debate on if they should kill one of the cows for food or not when they see a man riding a horse

300 yards away on the other side of the river Roberto tells Nando to run after him and he does exactly that as best he can He jogs down calls for help sees not one as he gets closer, but three men Nando tries to shout at them from across the river, but no one can hear him. He tries his best to show he needs help, and then one of the men finally seems like he understands. And then this man incredibly recognizes him. He's the open side flanker for the old Grand Gronganian rugby team.

Holy shit! Game on, motherfuckers! Nando immediately breaks into a song. Konga, Konga, Konga. Most of our guys are dead. I'm very hungry. The other guy is near But he shit his brains out, but we still have enough fight to fuck you up. Wow Let's go. Let's fucking go match breaks out in minutes Nando Roberto take out three of these son of bitches and the rest of the old Grand going squad

27 to 24 boom then they take off their clothes streak victorious down the valley into town Pound some beers before putting together a rescue team. They know their teammates will understand, they've done it. And you know, damn well, they didn't happen. Now, one of the men across the river, reels tomorrow, Nando and Roberto just have to make it one more night on their own. This man, Sergio Catalan,

then throws Nando some loaves of bread across the river. Oh, must have felt so good. He proceeds to ride an eight hour straight on horseback to contact local police. On the road he meets another shepherd, asked him to go get the men, bring them back to the village of Los Matignas. Sergio follows the river to a bridge

that links the village of Pente Negro to the holiday resort of Termas de Flaco. He stops a truck, they drive to the local police station at Pente Negro. The police send news to the army command in San Fernando, Chile, who then contact the Army in Santiago. December 21st, 1972, day 70. Early that morning, Sergio sends two of his friends to meet with Roberto and Nando while he rides back after making contact with Army Command in Santiago. Judged before sunrise, Roberto

sees a flicker of light. The horseman and little fires they could see him. Roberto still feels weak and paralyzed. Nando approaches the fire. See three figures sitting on boulders, two men and a boy. Nando tries to talk to them, but he's still, they can't hear him over the river. His voice is just too weak. So the man throw him some paper and pencil that they tied to a rock. Smart. Nando wrote, I come from a plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for 10 days. Oh my God, after all that. I have a wound friend up there. In the plane, there are still 14 injured people.

We have to get out from here quickly and we don't know how. We don't have any food. We are weak. When are you going to come fetches? Please, we cannot even walk. Where are we? The man read it, then gave them a signal that he understood.

Two hours later, a writer came into the clearing on his horse. He was a farmer. A Mapuche man, a member of a group of indigenous inhabitants of present-day South Central Chile and Southwestern Argentina, named Armando Serra. Sergio had sent him after, yeah, Sergio had sent him after he rode to the police station. Armando took them to some cabins by a pasture. They meet another farmer named Enrique Gonzalez. They learned that they were in at Los Motenias. Enrique gave them a bowl of soup with beans, noodles and beef, first

hot meal, hot meal, in 70 fucking days. At 6 p.m. Sergio and 10 men from the police station arrived. Roberto Nando, speak with Sergeant Orlando Minaris, who asked them to show them on the map where the survivors were. They spent most of the night answering questions, talking about everything, you know, but the cannibalism. They had agreed previously as a group to never discuss it, but then the police found out anyway. Nando absent mind and lead, took an old teammate's finger out of his back pocket, chewed on it nervously. It was a nasty habit he picked up in the mountains.

J.K., come on. When Nando tried to show the police where the survivors were, they didn't believe that he had crossed the Andes. They insisted that he and Roberto, they were crazy from starvation. That wasn't possible. What are you trying to tell them? Took him a few hours to convince them that he was telling the truth. And I get it.

This whole story is unbelievable. It feels more like a movie than real life. Nando and Roberto then taken to the village of Los Montenores on horseback. I think I'll say it wrong earlier, but the Chilean Air Force sent out helicopters to Los Montenores to interview Roberto and Nando and Nando agreed to take them to the mountain. And on the way there, the fucking helicopter crashes. That motherfucker now had to spend another 30 days

living in the wreckage of that copter had to eat a couple of Air Force dudes to survive. No, can you imagine though? I wonder if he was worried about that crash and on the way up. I probably would be. I'd be so nervous about something else going wrong. Or maybe he's just too tired and beat up to care about anything other than saving his

friends and just being done with all this. Eduardo Strouch recalls hearing on the radio news that Nandil and Roberto had been rescued. He said life flooded back into everyone. It was the resurrection of the dead. Hail Nimrod! December 22nd, 1972, day 71. Six survivors are rescued from the crash site. The helicopters too small to take all 14 damn weather still dangerous.

Members of Chilean rescue team spend the night with the remaining survivors at the crash site. December 23rd, final eight survivors are rescued bringing an end to 72 days on the mountain. 16 of the original 45 it survived the plane crash, starvation, extreme weather, a gigantic avalanche, daily mental battle of surviving on a frozen barren mountain completely cut off from the outside world, having no idea if anyone would ever find you. The final survivors were Roberto Canessa, Nando Pirado, Carlos Pias, Rodriguez, Jose Pedro Aguerta, Alfredo Delgado, Daniel Fernandez, Roberto Francois, Roy Harley, Jose Luis Enciarte, Alvaro Mangino, Javier Mezal, Ramón Svela, Sevilla, Adolfo Strouch, Eduardo

Strouch, Antonio Vicentin, Tintin, and Gustavo Serbino. The same day news reports of cannibalism are published worldwide, except for in Uruguay. Journalists found those poor and lucky, but lucky bastards as soon as they returned. At first, the survivors said they ate cheese, airplane food, plants and herbs, but no one was buying that because plants and herbs don't grow with that altitude.

The truth quickly comes out. Guessing those rescue team members also probably noticed, you know, eating dead bodies near the wreckage. The night they stayed there. And when Roberto returned home, he thought it was his duty to visit the parents of the dead and tell them exactly what had happened. Can you imagine that conversation? I loved your son.

He was one of my best friends. And to be totally honest, probably the tastiest passenger on the entire flight. Better ingredients, tastier friends, Papa Johnson. I know I'm a fucking idiot. And also about them letters written by his friends that had their last thoughts. I mean, good on him again. December 26, 1972, pictures taken by the Andean relief corps of a half-eaten leg are printed in two Chilean newspapers, leading to public outrage accusations now of murder.

Two days later, December 28, the survivors hold a press conference at Stella Marie's College in Montevideo, Montevideo, Montevideo. My God, you're a guy. More and more headlines are stating that the men had murdered their friends for food and they want to correct those rumors. Alfredo Zogado speaks for them, says their actions were like the last supper. He also explained the pact the men made. And after this, and after people began to really understand the living hell these guys

have gone through Public backlash goes away. Thank God. Catholic Church also publicly absolves them of any guilt January 18th 1973 12 officers and priests are transported to the crash site to make a common grave for the dead there Families not allowed to attend a blessing of the site. It's too dangerous to bring too many people They don't want to risk more death in the Valley of Tears The inscription on the plaque at their grave site reads the world to its Uruguayan brothers close. Oh God to you I've read that probably ten times. I have no fucking idea what it means I haven't checked a few sites to make sure I wasn't you know, miss quoting it

Feels to me a little bit like something there is loss and translation, but maybe I'm just being done with that. The authorities then destroyed the remains of the fuselage. October 13th, 2012 now. Fortieth anniversary of the crash, the old Christians played the old Grand Gonian, the team they were supposed to play back in 1972. And the game ended in a one-one tie. So everything they went through, including surviving, was for fucking nothing. Konga, Konga, Konga, we should have never got that plane because we don't have what a fucking takes to win.

The game really was played and they really did tie. Guessing they weren't going all out and kind of fucked up that old Grand Donian didn't let the survivors win, right? I mean, that does seem actually super weird to me. One of those old Grand Donian guys, what an asshole for scoring. Good thing they're playing Crash Puzzies. We would have mopped the fucking floor with you. Survivor Daniel Fernandez told a guard in your port at the game. If I had been told I'm going to leave you in a mountain, 4,000 meters high. 20 degrees Celsius below zero in

shirts leaves. I would have said I last 10 minutes. Instead, I lasted 72 days. I mean, that shit is crazy. What a tale of survival against all odds. Let's wrap it up and get out of our timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. So do you think you could live through something like that? I'm not sure I could.

I would like to say I could, but this sure seems like a case of you just never going to know unless you're tested. And I really don't want to be tested like that. No one on board that plane had any training in survivalism. No one was adjusted to life at extremely high altitude. No one was adjusted for winter survival. Uruguay rarely gets any snow. Montevideo, where they went to school,

very mild climate. June is the coldest month, and the average low for that month only 47 degrees Fahrenheit. They had youth, had athleticism on their side, but not much else. I completely understand why this disaster is called the miracle of the Andes. I mean, it really does seem miraculous.

They should not have survived, but they were so determined to live. They fought so damn hard, pushed their bodies past what should be possible, very inspiring to me. I can't imagine how tempting it would be just to just to give up, right? Just lay down, let the cold, rob you of first your consciousness, you know, in the pain, you're feeling from starvation, et cetera, and then your life. But they didn't do that. They lived and many went on to live incredible lives. And a pirata went on to become a popular motivational speaker, author, TV host, Roberto Canessa became a noted physician, a pediatric cardiologist, an author, also a motivational

speaker, 1994, even ran for president of Uruguay Let's look back on this story one more time Share something new as well in today's top five takeaways Number one flight 571 crashed on October 13, 1972 because of a combination of bad weather, pilot and experience and failed instrument readings. After co-pilot La Guara, La Guarara, and correctly read their altitude, he descended, then was unable to pull up high fast enough to make it over the mountain in front of him. The plane clipped the mountain leading to the fatal crash to lead to the 72 day ordeal. The pilot, Ferrata, has been flying. The more experienced pilot,

would he have read the instruments correctly, could he have avoided the crash possibly? The plane also crashed. I didn't state this earlier on Friday the 13th. The group had even joked about flying on an unlucky day before they went on the flight. Shortly before because it was delayed by that day. manned they turned out to be right. Number two, the group was forced to resort to cannibalism to survive beginning on day nine. Because caloric needs are increased in high altitudes, they felt the effects of starvation

much sooner than they would have if they've been stranded at a lower altitude. Roberto Canessa made the first cut into a human body and set the example by eating the first piece of human flesh. Over time, the pastor eventually got used to eating human meat. They understood that it was the only way to survive. Many of the men made a pact that if they died, their friends could eat their bodies to survive. Number three, the Strouch Cousins, some of the unsung heroes of this group, they took over

as leaders out of the avalanche. Fido Strouch's inventiveness saved the survivors from dying of thirst. He made them snowshoes, sunglasses, he and his cousins took over his butchers to prevent the others from having to see where their meat came from. Number four, I cannot apologize enough for the tasteless Papa Johns commercial in today's episode. They literally had someone point a gun in my head. And if I would not have read that, they would have killed me.

Better ingredients, taste your podcast host, Papa Johnson. No, two men made a 10 day hike out of the mountains to find help Roberto Canessa and ando pirato. They hike straight, basically a vertical climb for the first three days with no protective gear, no climbing equipment, only a homemade sleeping bag to keep them warm and night took around the professional climbers would have blocked that would have not dared to hike. And if I can made it, when they're trying to show the police officers where the group was and where they had hiked from, it seemed so completely impossible that they did not believe them. They thought they were insane from starvation.

Number five, new info. I first heard about the story when I watched the 1993 movie Alive. Based on the book Alive, the story of the Andy Survivors written by Pierce Paul Reed, first published in 1974. Film was shot in British Columbia, narrated by John Malkovich. Ethan Hawke played Nando Parado, and the real Nando served as a technical advisor for the film. Josh Hamilton played Roberto Canessa.

The film portrayed the events fairly factually, but did not receive critical acclaim. One of the biggest knocks against the movie was that the actors didn't look starved enough by the end. But come on, the story is so fucking horrific. It feels like asking a huge ensemble cast to starve themselves for a couple months and become horrifically amaciated by the end of the filming. Pretty ridiculous ask. Pretty big expectation.

The film, a lot of people don't know this, was produced by Papa John's Pizza. The company got a lot of kickback for using the movie to heavily promote a new meat lover's stuff crust that also debuted in 1993. And I'm done now with the Papa John Sourcet. Let's get out of here. Time to suck tough, right takeaway. Alive, the 1972 Andy Slight Disaster has been sucked. Hope you found that tale as gripping his eye to. Now time for some thanks. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team.

Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lizzie Cummins, thanks to Joe Paisley and Logan Keith for production today. Thanks to Bill Lixer for upkeep on the Time Suck app, Yard Warlock, creating the merch at BadMagicMurch.com, and running socials with Liz, the Enchantress Hernandez. Things again to Olivia Lee for initial research this week and she came out to the Suck dungeon and hopefully not too horrified by seeing all the ridiculous shit here in person.

I think she's had a good time. Also thanks to the all-seeing eyes moderating the Colt and Curious private Facebook page. Finally thanks to Becky, Jesse, and the mod squad for making sure Discord keeps running through. And actually not finally, because I keep going back to the time suck subreddit, a lot of fun in there.

Next week, the spaces are to have chosen to suck on some mysterious disappearances. They've also chosen to suck on some mysterious reappearances, a two for the price of one, enigmatic superdeal. And a superdeal that includes some not-so mysterious cases of people seriously fucking up their plans to vanish into thin air.

Look at these puzzling cases, the people both ancient and modern, who have disappeared only to reappear, under strained circumstances, we will journey into the worlds of crime, insurance fraud, professional disappearing services, and amnesia. We'll look at recent cases that have made waves

like the disappearance and reappearance of a California woman, Sherry Papino, as well as historical cases that continue to be unexplained, like the 11-day disappearance of famed mystery writer Agatha Christie. Also look at the disappearances of some infamous Nazis in South America and some modern-day war criminals who are still in the run. This will truly be a pastiche of some of humanity's craziest tendencies, a tendency to leave it all behind, to start it in life, to fake a kidnapping, or assault, to commit identity theft,

to pay back a cheating husband, or ungrateful kid in the most insane ways possible. All of this and more next week's here one day, Vanishing the other secret life is my dad, even truly, who he says he is, episode of Time Suck. And now we're gonna head on over to this week's Time Sucker Updates. A bunch of DC Sniper's updates came in over the past few days.

First update coming in from Super Sucker Jack Irlenbaugh. I thought my longtime agent and friend had written in under a pseudonym at first. His name is Joe Eschenbach. Jack Irlenbach feels like Bizarre World version of Joe Eschenbach. Anyway, Jack Not Joe wrote, Hey, master of suck and all the awesome meat sacks of the suck dungeon and behind the scenes of time suck. I listen religiously, although I'm not stupid religious anymore, unless you count worship of Nimrod may his name be praised. Sorry for the length, but I have a connection to the sniper attacks I had to share.

My wife of four years actually grew up just outside of DC and the Northern Virginia town of Alexandria. She doesn't listen to suck, but I wanted to write it until you guys about her perspective, having lived through the 9-11 attacks and then also having to deal with DC sniper attacks. Side note, but Alexandria is the home of George Mason and has got the original Freemason Lodge first established in the US. It has weird geometric designs in the city planning, tons of monuments old and new, not to mention being named for the ancient city of Egypt, and a lot of wacky details think it's a new world order, it has new world order level of significance.

It's not. Just a super cool little town on the Potomac, not far from DC proper. Anyways, my wife and her family lived five miles from the Pentagon, Alexandria, and described to me how they had friends that worked in the Pentagon the day of the September 11th attacks. My wife says she remembers playing inside with friends when they heard the plane hit the Pentagon. It was a massive crash that she said was unlike anything she'd heard before. A lot of her friends described the same things, not known if their parents and family members

who worked for the Department of Defense, were living her dead and the absolute chaos that followed. Imagine living an innocent life up until that point. Going on walks with your family on the National Mall, 20 minutes away by car, going on a hike to Roosevelt Island, 25 minutes away or so, a massive and gorgeous natural island in the Potomac that Teddy protected during his presidency or even just going to church and live in a normal life. Suddenly, a place that many friends and

family lived and worked near, and a city she loved her entire life was completely unsafe, not just unsafe, deadly and unpredictable. Fast forward a year, things started calming down, people are getting back to normal, felt safe to be a citizen of DC again, and then suddenly some asshole with the gun decides to start shooting at people. It was madness. Another side note, but DC is one of the only metropolitan areas that has a height restriction on buildings inside the district itself. The lawmakers wanted the Washington Monument

to stand out as a tall saying around. Some other towns in the vicinity of Maryland and Virginia passed similar laws. This led to a very distinctive downtown area with beautiful but short buildings. Perfect, absolutely perfect for a riflemen to shoot from. My wife was one of the schools that had recessed inside for almost two months during and following the attacks.

My wife began being afraid to go to school, to play outside, to stop with her parents, to get gassed her groceries on the way to and from different places in DC. Everyone she knew avoided downtown proper, and even stopped traveling in general, taking time off work and Preferring instead to hoard groceries like it was in the first days of the pandemic rather than risk a trip to the grocery store When it was clear that multiple people were arrested and the police caught multiple snipers DC had a hard time trusting being out in public again to this day my wife still has trouble with an anxiety in the city because of those attacks Luckily DC is a resilient and welcoming community silly bounce back.

However, the entire city culturally and dramatically was completely changed as a result. Once again, I apologize for the length incidentally, I'm moving to Alexander this next month. So I'm trying to stockpile bad magic podcasts in order to pass the time packing. Thank you so much for reading time. So it's great. Wouldn't change a thing three to five stars Nimrod may his name be praised Jack. Well, thank you for sending that in Jack. Damn man.

Yeah, so much widespread and long lasting terror spread by two guys. Spread because one guy wanted to get back to his ex-wife in the craziest of ways. Feel bad for your wife. Yeah, that is gonna push an unusual, atypical amount of fear and paranoia into one's childhood. You know, right after a plane crash into the Pentagon to have this random fucking roving snipers.

Man, what John Wilhamed and Lee Boyd Mavo did. It really is just such a crazy story. Thank you for adding a human touch to it. Now, another DC sniper's related message coming in from Silly Sack, Adam Getemire. Adam wrote, so your last talk about the DC sniper actually had me starting to feel bad for the guy too. So much so that I was thinking the exact same thing you said right before you said it. I actually asked myself, do I really feel sorry for this kid?

Not that I would ever condone or excuse his ultimate behavior. Now for something that really shows why I must feel crazy. My best for or why I must be crazy. My best friend since I was a kid, my uncle Steve, who passed away a few years back, could truthfully say smoking a cigarette saved his life. He was drafted in Vietnam. While serving at one point was in Germany, I had stepped out of the building he was in to have a smoke by the dumpster. While having said smoke that day, bomb went off, blowing up the building he

was just in moments before. As a preposterous. Well, the same uncle went on to become a barge captain and for a good while living in Virginia, commuted a lot through DC all the way to Texas was driving down that fame beltway. And yet you guessed it was shot at by the DC sniper. The shot ended up getting his back window blown out. The man had a few lives to say the least. My best friend, we were always close yet somehow after that story. I actually still feel bad for that kid. And honestly, he would have too if he would have known. Just thought I'd leave that here for you to stick in your pipe and suck on it. Oh, and as far as your infamous fakeouts, my neighbor could give you a run for your money. Damn, he's good at it too. Of course, it's true. It's so worse than the fake outs do, uh, you do, do to serve in an Afghanistan.

Suck on and as my uncle would often say, no good everyday sunfish motherfucker piece. Well, Adam, your uncle said some weird shit. And I like it. I bet it was a lot of fun. Sorry to hear you pass, but it sounds like he let a long life. Multiple lives, man, too very close brushes with unusual deaths. Sources don't exactly say how many people in total those two guys shot at.

I mean, I doubt anybody knows. I wonder how many people in total those two guys shot at I mean I doubt anybody knows I wonder how many others like your uncle had close brushes with death from a snipers you know random boat like that. Hail Nimrod and thank you for sharing. One more DC snipers update from DC area meet sack Andrew Balderson. Andrew wrote hey Dan I just listened to the episode on DC snipers. I live in the area was a sophomore in high school the time of their spree. I remember all too well the terror they invoked on the area and school We weren't allowed to be near windows. We were supposed to run to the buses or cars before and after so that's crazy People were generally afraid to pump gas people were in general afraid to be anywhere outside where you were exposed

I remember specifically while in history class a girl being called to the office She came back crying and sobbing uncontrollably. As it turned out, the gentleman that was killed while mowing grass was a very close family friend of hers. It was incredibly sad. Made the chaos we were seeing on the news really hit home. I'll never understand the senseless tragedies. I also remember that after the snipers were arrested, local newspaper had an article explaining

the snipers were planning on targeting the outbacked stay-cows in Frederick, Maryland next. Allegedly, they had a target in mind, someone who worked there. I always found it incredibly uneasy to think that they were scoping out places, whomever the employee at Outback was, is incredibly lucky. I just wanted to share a few things from perspective of someone who lives in the area. Also, if I chance you read this, I would love to give a shout out to my sister Amy and her fiance, Larry. They're a big fan of the podcast, something we talk about and share a laugh with together. They're getting married in about a month.

I would love to share my well wishes and happiness for them both. I hope you, I hope you two have a lifetime of happiness. I just hope they enjoy some whipple and make the wedding night crazy. Also, I'd be keeping an eye on our father the day of our wedding, much like yourself. I have no idea of his whereabouts most of the time. And if I'm being honest, I don't trust him. I feel responsible for quite a few of your sucks. It's only a matter of time until the old man gets lazy and I'll be there to catch him.

I'm shocked he's gotten away with it this long, but not anymore. Deadwatch will put an end to his life of crime, updates to come. Anyway, sorry not sorry for the length of the message. Three out of five stars wouldn't change a thing. Hill Nimrod, thank you Dan and the entire time sucked team. Andrew Balderson. Well, thank you Andrew. I don't understand these sense of tragedies either. So many people hurt for the dumbest reasons. And I hope you catch that some of the bitch. Hope a dad watch comes through with you. And hello Amy and Larry. Thanks for listening

to this insanity every week and gradson getting married. I have some advice too. Be sure to suck each other's dicks a lot. It's gonna help with happiness, it's gonna reduce a lot of tension, or suck each other's clits, or clit dicks, or dicks and clits, whenever you're rocking, you know, suck it. And talk everything out as well, and don't keep secrets. Hail Luciferina, and actually I lied.

I said last DC related message earlier, we have one more. This is touches on something I mentioned in the DC sniper suck, sniper suck from military veteran meat sack John Parker, who writes, good afternoon or morning or whenever the fuck your brain holds intercept this message. I'm a service member in a long time listener, have listened to most of your stuff several times over as it helps get me through the long passing hours of my job. Thank you for your commitment to nurturing our brain fields with nutritious head soil. We kept after week, I wanted to reach out while listing to your latest episode about the DC snipers. I've been waiting for this episode for a while now,

since it was one of the first major news stories I remember growing up. 9-11 introduced me to the 24-7 news cycle in the real world. This one happened as I started to develop my critical thinking skills and has always stayed with me. I wanted to provide some possible insight on John Wilhamed's claims of abuse and ridicule while serving in Operation Desert Storms last shield. I agree that much of what he said was exaggerated, but not entirely far-fetched are his claims. Had his unit had a rather relaxed group

of NCOs or command structure that enabled his behavior to either poor leadership or lazy leadership, I totally see soldiers fucking around like this. Through my time in the army, I have seen and heard about shit getting out of hand in several instances where it may seem hard to believe that this in this day and age, this sort of thing can happen, but it does. Like everything, military personnel fall on a bell curve. Some are great, some are trash,

most are average. Yeah, fair. Unfortunately, sometimes those dumb fuck ass shit mouth readers. On the bottom of the well get promoted and Put in charge of other soldiers. It's life the military is still an organization of people and when those people are a little soft-brained Love the way you're right, man. Then dumb shit happens now. I wasn't in the army that John Muhammad was in But I have been deployed and in combat zones with the line units and I can totally see this happening today,

let alone 30 years ago. Old timers call it new army for a reason. I've also seen plenty of soldiers entirely exaggerate claims, so not saying he didn't do that, however, I listed that story and here at least some truth that's something like he described happened. Anyway, I could go into way more detail, but I don't wanna give service members a bad name

because I love being in the military and the people I served with. I'm not naive to more detail, but I don't want to give service members a bad name because I love being in the military and the people I served with. I'm not naive to its faults, however, but there definitely is, you know, more good than bad. Keep sucking, sucked, I'm as prime as third. Well, John, nutritious head soil, one of many phrases in there. I love. Thank you. And thanks for your, your service there. Yeah, you're right. Just because the guy was delusional and lied about other shit doesn't mean that he for sure lied about being abused in military. Well, it's a good reminder, right? Not to fuck with, uh, with certain people. I mean, really not to fuck with anybody in certain ways, but if you're going to maybe, maybe fuck with your good friends, if you're going to play crazy jokes.

You know, maybe not do it with somebody yet. You don't know that well, because they just might be very mentally fragile. You don't know what's going on in their, in their noggin. You know, it might push him over some mental cliff, send them down a dark road. You know, you just never really know what's going on in their, in their noggin. You know, my push him over some mental cliff, send him down a dark road. You know, you just never really know what's going on in other people's heads. And sometimes you don't want to know. And you don't want to find out. And you don't want to push him too hard. All right, one more this week. Gonna end on something light.

Sometimes a random joke. Not even a great joke. Papa John's can hit really hard. Hard enough to literally knock someone over like marvelous meat sack Adam Grisham. I love the scene. Adam paints for us here. He writes, greetings, Duke Suck nasty Supreme nasty supreme Dan profit of Nimrod Cummins. I fell over laughing man. I was listening to Chicago Ripper's episode doing some yard work

in my lawn this morning. I have those I have the hose in one hand water in my new grass patches. My Sateva pen in the other hand the Tony Danza bit comes on really caught me off guard for some reason. I went weak in the knees, actually fell sideways, laugh and mid fall. When I hit the ground, I was laughing even harder. I actually curled up into a ball to finish a few loud, exhale laughing screams. I don't know what I was laughing at harder.

You screaming at Tony Danza about where are the bodies? Or me realizing how absurd it was in the moment that I literally fell over laughing. I'm a teacher in this town. I can't be looking crazy in my backyard. Hope you find this story well. Thanks to the laughs. By the way, my wife Courtney and I were able to see you

at the Blue Room comedy room and Springfield, yeah, comedy club this, this at the late Saturday show. You shouted my wife out in my last email. I nicknamed for her as polka dots. And when you were on the way to the green room before the show, you waved at the crowd, but at her, she thought she was wearing a cowboy-ish hat looking super fine I might say.

I don't know if you actually made eye contact, but she's been bragging about it ever since. We haven't stopped talking about the show since, especially the stone face lady in the back corner that would have been your left face facing the crowd that sat there and judged all of us. She would not laugh at all, man. I wondered if you noticed that. It was an awesome show. Had a great time.

Can't wait to see you again if you ever are around the buckle again. Thanks for the laughs. I'm almost sorry if it lengthened the email, but I'll get over it. Keep on sucking Adam. Well Adam, I am so happy to look like a complete maniac in your yard. I mean, it is so fun to laugh that hard for whatever reason. It's so cathartic. And I think I do remember seeing your wife. Yeah, super fine. So good for you. Good for you both. And And I think I do remember seeing your wife. Yeah, super fine. So good for you, good for you both. And I'm not sure if I know the lady you're talking about, the stone face, but I do remember, and I think it was the late show Saturday,

because I remember talking out with Doug Miller, my buddy of mine, that opened up for me on those shows. This lady, she was the next to a guy, and I could not stop looking at her because she did not fucking even smile once. Just like hate stared me at the entire show. Holy shit did you hate my guts. You know, you can't win them all. I just remember thinking that like she must not have known what she was getting into. Like the person she went with must have been coming to the show and she

got brought along and then not what she enjoyed. Glad many of you seem to enjoy this. Have a great week, Adam, and Polkadots, and everyone else, hell, name, ride to you all. Thanks, time, suckers. I need a net. We all did. Another bad magic production's podcast is complete for better force. If you're playing Clashes in the Mountains this week's

and you survive the impact, don't wait. Start eating your fellow passengers immediately. Not only will it give you your best chance for continuous survival, but it'll also hopefully help you continue to keep on sucking. Oh! And magic productions! I forgot to thank one entity, if you all want to thank background music videos

for putting on a three hour video on YouTube, literally just called pizza music, music while eating pizza. What a world! We live in. I just love that someone was like, you know what we need on the internet? Three straight hours of music, specifically made for eating pizza. And they added visuals of people making and eating pizzas in the background. So, you know, if you need some music for an upcoming pizza party, well, just go to YouTube. Oh, it's not over. Little break in between pizza songs.

This is like a, this is a, I don't know, different vibe in pizza song. I don't think that first song was like a, you know, like a standard, just a pepperon. It's not real simple. This got some fat on it. This is some fat, maybe some artichoke hearts. Maybe some kind of motto, olives. I don't know. It's fucking gourd, this gourmet, this prosciutto on this pizza.

Join your pizza, everybody. Better ingredients. Better podcasts. Papa, who gives a fuck?