Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival (7 page)

This is a more important realization than you might think. It shows that, on some level, Nando understood that the danger was immediate. Such a
realization will keep a survivor on alert, either for an answer or for protection. The other option is not as pretty: survival victims who remain oblivious to danger are more likely to place themselves in even more danger by remaining passive and allowing the forces of the dangerous predicament to overtake them, instead of preparing and steeling against them.

Nando’s innate survival instinct should be considered legendary. Almost from the moment he regained consciousness, a voice in his head accompanied him, told him what to do to improve his chances of survival. When he first learned of his mother’s death, Nando’s instinct was to cry. Yet the voice told him not to cry, because to cry meant to waste precious salt. He recognized that he and his friends would only be able to survive if they could successfully react to the additional challenges and catastrophes that would soon be thrown their way. The only problem? None of them had any real outdoors or survival experience, and they really had no idea what was on its way.

Nevertheless, Nando and his friends were motivated, a crucial element in any survival situation. They were young, fit, and had everything to live for. Yet their motivation took several different forms. Marcelo’s was rooted in his own dark belief that he was somehow to blame for the crash. After all, he had been the one who organized the friendly match and booked the charter flight. Nando was fueled more by love—for his mother who had died, the dying sister he held in his arms, and the father and sister he left at home. In those first few days, he vowed that he would not die on that mountain, and repeated his mantra whenever things looked grim: “I will not die here. I will not die here.”

Though there had not yet been any sign of rescue, their fourth afternoon on the mountain was punctuated by the sound of a small prop-driven plane flying over the crash site. The survivors screamed and waved; one among the group was sure he had seen the plane briefly dip its wings. Rescue, they now believed, was imminent, though nobody could be sure they had actually been seen.

Did the plane see us?
This is a common refrain among lost victims who desperately want to believe that rescue is only a plane ride away. Unfortunately, it would have been very difficult to spot the wreckage of the Fairchild from high above. The plane itself was white, and the debris around it would have seemed like little more than specks in the snow. It’s a tragically ironic twist that, simply due to the color of the plane, it could not be spotted while it rested out in the open—quite the opposite of trying to spot Yossi Ghinsberg deep in the thick, green jungle foliage. In any case, it is highly unlikely that a plane has spotted you unless it makes a very obvious display to the contrary. No rescue pilot worth his or her salt who spots the victims will simply fly by with a slight dip of the wings. They will circle and dip wings at least twice, or until they are assured that you have seen them, too.

So, while many of the survivors prayed for rescue, Nando and a few others took a more pragmatic view of the situation and realized being saved might not be an option. In the end, the plane never came back and never dropped supplies. Nando was again advised by the voice in his head that would prove to be a constant companion in the many long weeks to come. Prepare yourself for the long haul, it told him.
This kind of phenomenon—such as hearing voices or being accompanied by an imaginary being—is a common occurrence among people at the edge of death in survival situations, and usually encourages them to make one final effort to survive. Yossi Ghinsberg, alone in the Amazon jungle, was on his last legs when a young lady appeared before him, apparently begging for help. Yossi vowed to protect her, and it led him to salvation. In Nando’s case, the voice was always with him, almost from the moment he regained consciousness.

Yet Nando was certainly not alone in his will to survive on that snowy mountainside. Not long after the crash, Arturo Nogueira, whose legs had been shattered in the crash and who was confined to a makeshift hammock in the fuselage, spent hours poring over the flight charts recovered from the cockpit. Using those, as well as information gleaned from the copilot before he died, the survivors determined they had crossed the Andes and were now somewhere in the western foothills of the great range. They became fixated on one fact: Chile was to the west. And while that knowledge would ultimately lead to their salvation, the survivors ran the risk of becoming
too
rigid and stubborn in their beliefs. Chile may have been to the west, but their attempts to scale the mountain that stood between them and their destination—instead of following its natural course down—nearly killed them several times over.

This is where gaining knowledge is tricky. For while knowledge is indeed power, it still needs to be tempered with reality. There is no place for stubbornness in a survival situation. There was no way of truly knowing for sure that Chile lay to the west, so alternative answers should never have been counted out.

As their fifth day on the mountain dawned, Nando and his friends realized they would have to take matters into their own hands if they were going to stand a chance of surviving. Four of the fittest among them decided to head out on a reconnaissance mission to the top of the mountain, to see what the horizon held. Carlitos Paez, Roberto Canessa, Fito Strauch, and Numa Turcatti were also seeking the plane’s wrecked tail section, which they believed held vital food and clothing, and batteries for the plane’s radio. They were aided by Fito’s stroke of sheer MacGyver genius: a few days earlier, he had fashioned snowshoes from the plane’s seat cushions and used bits of cable or seat-belt webbing to attach them to the hikers’ feet.

Yet despite their best efforts, the climbers were unable to attain the summit. The mountain was too high, the air too thin, and their experience too little. They concluded they would have to find another way off the mountain.

Nando spent nearly all his time at his sister’s side, holding her, whispering to her, encouraging her to fight to stay alive. But on the eighth day of their ordeal, Susy died in his arms. He spent the night hugging her now-lifeless body, desperately trying to maintain sanity in what seemed like an increasingly cold, cruel world. With his mother and sister now gone, depression became a real possibility for Nando. Unlike panic, which manifests itself as a sudden rush of debilitating emotion, depression is more insidious, but no less dangerous. Indeed, as time passes in a survival situation, loneliness, boredom, and apathy begin to creep in. Depression is never far behind.

Yet Nando’s instinct was strong. He didn’t allow himself the luxury
of tears or of sinking into depression over the loss of his friends, his mother, and his sister. Spurred on by the inner voice he often described as cold and unfeeling, Nando stayed in survival mode, suppressing more complex emotions and narrowing his focus to one thing: staying alive and returning to see his father and sister once again.

As driven as he was to survive, Nando was, on some level, convinced that it was only a matter of time before he died. At these moments, when panic drew uncomfortably close, Nando experienced a feeling that washes over many people in similar situations: a manic urge to flee, which is the “flight” part of the fight-or-flight response. In these moments, it can feel like there is a giant monster chasing you, forcing you to pick up the pace, perhaps even to start to run. Run away from your fear. Run away from your pain. Run away from the situation you are in. This is when panic hits full bloom—and takes over.

As dangerous as panic may be, and as instantaneous as it usually is, it doesn’t always happen right away. Panic can crop up later, long after you made your assessments and organized your situation into something survivable. This is why it is vitally important to never stop organizing your supplies, fixing your shelter, searching for food. Tasks such as these occupy the mind, and in a survival situation, an occupied mind is a good thing.

Nando certainly occupied his. With Susy gone, he became obsessed with the idea of affecting his own survival. He assumed all along that rescue would never arrive, so he began to run through various scenarios in his brain, all of which revolved around him setting out to find help. In making these considerations, Nando did the right thing and considered all the factors relevant to the decision: Did he have the strength to survive a trek in the mountains? How steep were the slopes? How cold was it at night? Was the footing stable? What path should he follow? What would happen if he fell? What lay to the west?

As part of his obsession with leaving, Nando began to visualize the journey in exacting detail: how he would claw his way up the mountain, what he would see from the top, what he would say when he met his rescuers, how his father would look, feel, and smell. Although often used in sports, visualization techniques are rarely mentioned in survival, but they’re highly useful. I’m sure there are lots of naysayers out there, but I think there’s a lot to be said for the idea that if you can visualize your objective, it will happen.

As the days went by without rescue, spirits began to drop. Some of the survivors began to sink into depression and became listless, apathetic. This certainly caused some tension between the remaining survivors, but if I had my choice, I’d take the tension of group survival over the loneliness of solo survival any day. Group survival can pose challenges. The danger of contagious panic is always present. There are more mouths to feed, and the many bodies that may require medical attention can be taxing on resources. But the advantages—the camaraderie, the various forms and sources of motivation, the effect of shared workloads—all outweigh such drawbacks as resentment and petty arguments.

For example, it was the ingenuity of one person that solved the problem of water for the entire group. Although the plane was lying on top of a snow-covered glacier, getting enough drinking water for the survivors was always a concern. At first, Nando and his friends simply ate snow, but after a few days at high altitude, their lips became so cracked and tender that it became a near-impossible task. So they turned to melting the snow in the sunshine, whether in wine bottles or on top of the silver fuselage.

Fito helped solve the water conundrum by fashioning a bowl and spout from a discarded piece of aluminum, filling it with snow and setting it out in the sunshine. The device melted snow so effectively that others quickly constructed similar ones, putting an end to the group’s collective concerns about dehydration. This is the type of inventiveness I would have hoped for in their situation. There was a real sense of urgency when it came to water, and for good reason. Humans can go several weeks without food, but deny us water for a few days and death is imminent. Dehydration is a real risk in any survival situation, but it becomes even more acute in cold weather and at high altitudes, when it sets in more quickly. What’s worse is that, while dehydration in a place like the desert is always on your mind, it may be overlooked in alpine environments.

But now there were other concerns with which to contend. As the last of the rations were doled out at the end of their first week on the mountain, starvation became a very real possibility. That night, as Nando lay freezing in the remains of the plane, trying to fall asleep, a grisly realization came to him. If he and his friends were going to survive long enough for rescue to arrive or for them to hike to safety, they would need food. And there was only one source of food available.