Amazing Story of Human Will To Survive

I finally found this movie on video locally, & I bought it today. Ive seen it many times. Great story . But I was also reading some of the threads on this board and I just finished watching that History Channel documentary called "I'm alive" that one of you nice posters posted on another thread and I thank you for that. What an amazing amazing amazing story. It absolutely blows my mind the ability of Nando Parrado to do the things that he did and survive the way that he did along with the others, but in particular Nando. That man actually went from a frozen corpse with a brain injury, cold and comatose to trekking through the Andes to get word out to save his buddies. It's absolutely incredible.

The movie was absolutely amazing, but the documentary was a very good at filling in some details. Specifically, when the neurologist talked about how him being in a coma at the very beginning and suffering hypothermia with his brain injury and that's exactly what kept him alive. I had no idea that they actually place brain injured people in hypothermia in order to reduce the swelling of the brain to prevent brain injury as an actual treatment these days. So apparently that's what saved his life. The guys thought he was dead so they put him back in the back with all the dead people and so he was freezing back there and that's actually what saved his life, and that's exactly what saved the lives of the other ones too because if they would not have put him back in the back with all the dead bodies freezing to death, he would never come out of his coma, and then he would not have seen his mother and sister died and then would not have had that will to get out of there so he could return to his father and save the rest of them. It's interesting how the circle of life works as well as the human spirit and the will to survive. The doctor called it serendipity.

Then apparently, the Avalanche which took eight more members of the trip, was a terrible tragedy but was a blessing for the remaining survivors because not only did it give them more bodies to eat but it also served as a sort of an insulation during the three blizzards that happened. It insulated them from the elements and they would have possibly died from the blizzards. Once again God working in mysterious ways. The other thing that wasn't very clear in the movie but was clear from the documentary was when Canessa said that he saw a road at the top of the mountain to the East in Argentina and Nando said no its not a road and then they chose to go West instead of East and in fact they were 18 miles from a hotel and it was actually a road that they were looking at that they had no idea that it was a road.

And then apparently they trekked 37 miles through Mountains that were 14,000 feet high. That's amazing after wasting away for 60 days in the sub zero temperatures. Another thing that they didn't say in the movie "Alive" was when they hit Chile they spotted the rancher and they couldn't communicate with him because of the river was so loud so the rancher threw a stone with paper wrapped around it across the river and Nando apparently wrote a note on it telling him what had happened and then the guy throws over some bread and cheese which is the first bit of food that they had had in 71 days other than human flesh.

But my favorite part of the documentary was when people started asking questions about what they were eating and they were reluctant to tell anybody. And then that controversy started. But at the hospital they invited a priest to come in and talk to them and the priest actually told them that it was okay for them to eat the remains of their loved ones and then the Catholic Church also said that it was the right thing to do. Honestly, I think it is a no brainer that it was the right thing for them to eat the flesh of their loved ones. And quite frankly it's a waste of life for them to have just let those bodies decay without making use of them and trying to survive. I honestly don't know what the big deal is after your love ones are gone for you to do what you have to as survivors to try to survive. I honestly wouldn't mind someone eating me if I was dead in a plane crash and there were other people that needed to survive but that's just me. I guess that's a discussion for another day.

Anyway just love this movie. It's one of the most unique and interesting modern stories of survival I've ever heard. And I understand why people find it so intriguing and amazing. You just can't make this stuff up it is just such a compelling story of human survival and love actually.

Lena
"Lena is high and mighty" IMDB-- posters 10/13