MovieChat Forums > Alive (1993) Discussion > They were less than 20 miles from a hote...

They were less than 20 miles from a hotel...

posted 4 months ago by jcdugger (372)
7 replies | jump to latest

...I've watched the movies and read a lot about this story over the years but just recently learned that they were just 18 miles from a scenic hotel in the mountains! And that hotel was downhill from where they crash-landed...they could have hiked there in a day or two if they just knew it was there.

So the co-pilot, who was still barely alive after the crash, stated they reached a certain point that is West of the Andes, then they headed North (they were nowhere near this point, the pilot was confused, they actually barely entered the mountains from the East before they went North)…The passengers felt, based on this information, that Chile was just to the West of them. So, despite West being uphill, they headed West up the mountain (after waiting 2 months for the weather to clear and to make a sleeping bag). After 3 days of scaling this initial mountain, they turned around and looked back East...one of the men, Nando, was almost certain he can see a road in the distance. He feels they should turn around and go East. He gets out-voted...the other two men feel that's not a road in the distance, and they would be wasting 3 days of climbing if they turned around and were wrong, so they (2 of the 3 men) continue West (and another man heads back to the plane). Turns out, it was a road.

That had to be a difficult call. Three impossibly strenuous days of uphill climbing heading West. Turning around and seeing what could be a road. If you turn back and it's not a road...you have to turn around again and re-scale the same mountain you just climbed for another three strenuous days. Still, tough call. Nothing but mountains in your view to the West. A potential road to the East. But you're almost certain you need to head West. It's hard to say they "made the wrong call" seeing they got out...maybe something unforeseen would have befell them if they went East. But the decision turned a one-day downhill excursion to the road into a 10-day impossibly difficult and dangerous uphill climb. Ouch.

I wonder what I would have done in such a situation. Personally I think it would have been difficult heading East after doing a grueling 3-day climb West. I'm almost sure I would have tried to soldier on, like they did.

[–] Tam87 (1173) 4 months ago

It was also strange the aerial search couldn't locate the plane. Did they just give up? The whole world was looking for that Malaysian plane.

They also played down the cannibalism aspect in the film. They used people's skulls as bowls and seemed to be having a whale of a time doing it.

[–] jcdugger (372) 4 months ago

Yep the search area actually included the area they were in...the planes the passengers thought they heard overheard really were the planes looking for them. But the fuselage was white and matched the snow and they just weren't spotted. After a week or so, it was felt that nobody could have survived that long and the search was called off. It's difficult to fly in those mountains in the Winter so it was deemed they could wait until Summer for a wreckage search.

Yeah I wonder what they were going through mentally having to eat humans to survive and thinking you were surely going to die. There was a photo where a few guys were smiling/laughing while sitting right next to a spine that was picked clean. There was probably a comedy aspect that crept in to deal with the impossible situation. It is said that impossible situations, you find the comedy in it eventually. They might even have felt they were down to their last days on Earth, might as well try to not be miserable, try as best you could to enjoy yourself one last time, to smile and laugh with friends one last time, even for a minute here and there.

[–] DoctorThirteen (13920) 4 months ago

'It is said that impossible situations, you find the comedy in it'

One of the big keys to survival.

[–] Tam87 (1173) 4 months ago

If they couldn't locate the plane by air, i wonder why they never elected to send out multiple ground search parties? Had it been the USA that the plane crashed in, they wouldn't have cared about conditions, they'd have everyone and their brother in those mountains. They'd have thought "fuck leaving people on a mountain all winter". The possibility that there could be survivors is what would drive them on, you can't just assume everyone is lost.

Yes, I remember seeing the photo of the spine licked clean and smiling faces sitting next to it. Fucking morbid shit and changed my perspective of this film. They did what they had to do, that's fair enough in those conditions, but the film didn't show them revelling in it like they did.

ps I remember when this movie came out to rent on VHS, my family rented it from our local video store along with Toy Soldiers. We voted over what to watch and I lost (I wanted to watch Toy Soldiers), so I had to battle to convince my elder siblings that Toy Soldiers would be better and also because I didn't want to spend my saturday night watching fuckin cannibals in the mountains. I think they got 20 mins into Alive until they thankfully gave up (I think what did it was that asshole yelling stfu at that poor woman stuck under the seats who was dying).

[–] jcdugger (372) 4 months ago

It was just a complete unknown where they were in the mountains. You can't send out searchers to blindly cover 100-Million square miles of mountainous terrain. They had no idea if the wreckage was even in the search area, much less where it was in the search area. So there was really nowhere to send anybody on a ground search. Only an aerial search would have been feasible...and with low cloud cover in the winter and heavy snow, it was terribly dangerous to conduct even that search. The USA has some big mountains, but nothing like the Andes in the Winter.

The film had more of a religious angle that it should have...they were trying to market it to the Christian crowd at the time...so there was no way the filmmakers were going to get into the murky details of the cannibalism. It was meant to be a uplifting story, not really a documentary. A lot of the things in the movie didn't even happen (like the eating of the food rations because they thought a plane spotted them)...they added a lot of things to make it a more exciting, less morbid movie. Also the co-pilot survived and asked for the gun, not the main pilot as shown in the movie. Like I say, not a documentary.

[–] moviechatter2526 (147) 3 months ago

I mean, they just didn't know. They didn't have handheld smartphones with GPS on them at the time. They were starving and frozen and likely traumatized and had no idea where they were or what they could do day to day beyond trying to get enough to eat and not succumb to the cold. It's easy to say, in retrospect, that they should have done this or gone there, but in the moment, they had no idea, and neither would you or me or anyone else in a similar position. You do what you can to stay alive, try to make good decisions based on the information you have, and hope for the best.

They got extremely, extremely lucky, which is why their story is so famous. History is full of similar tragedies that didn't end up quite so happy, most of which we'll never know about because there was no one left to tell the tale.

[–] jcdugger (372) 3 months ago

Ok, I agree with all that...but I never said they "should have" done this or that...I simply said they "could have" done this or that. I even wrote "It's hard to say they made the wrong call, seeing they got out."

But yeah, this has to be one of the most amazing survival stories of all time. I think the hiker Aaron Ralston who cut off his own arm also belongs in the conversation of most amazing survival story.