Society of the Snow: The Definitive Account of the World’s Greatest Survival Story
NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX FILM It was 13 October 1972. Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, carrying a team of young rugby players, their families and friends, took off for the very last time. A deadly miscalculation saw F571 crash directly into the Andean mountains to devastating consequences: the body of the plane broke violently into two, its floor torn to smithereens; seats flew out of the air taking passengers with them. In the weeks that followed, the remaining people who were on board - the society of the snow - emerged to fight a dire, gruelling battle for survival. Waiting for a rescue team that didn't arrive, the survivors became fewer and fewer in numbers. Stranded alone on a glacier, they had to face brutal temperatures, lethal avalanches and the loss of friends and family with no access to supplies, food or water. In order to survive, they had to do the unthinkable . . . It wasn't until seventy-two days later that they were able to reach safety. Alarmingly gritty, moving and powerfully told, journalist Pablo Vierci recounts the unsettling stories of the sixteen survivors in intimate detail. Drawing on exclusive interviews, Society of the Snow delves into the tragedy of the crash and how it radically redefined the rest of the survivors' lives. Ultimately, however, the book is a touching testament to the strength of faith, friendship, and the resilience of the human spirit.
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Community Reviews
On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 carrying 45 passengers crashed directly into the Andean mountains. While the outside world believed everyone had been killed, 16 people actually survived for 72 days in the freezing mountains. They were not rescued until a three person team decided to walk out of the mountains in the hope of finding help. On December 22-23, 1972, two and a half months after the crash, the remaining 14 survivors were rescued.
As someone who has never heard of this event and knew nothing about it, this book was both informative, but also frustrating. I expected this to start with the crash and what happened so the reader can understand this event, instead it starts with a 50 year reflection on the event which, while interesting, was also confusing because I didn’t know what was being referenced or who these people being talked about were. Eventually, you do get the sequence of events that happens with this crash but it is piecemealed throughout the book being told by the various survivors' experiences.
This book comprises sixteen chapters told from the survivors perspective, with several speaking about it for the first time, with some chapters with further information included. These chapters were extremely emotional and gut wrenching to read. While I loved that we got these perspectives and saw all the different sides of the event, it did get a bit repetitive because each person is recounting very similar events, just their feelings on it were different.
Honestly, what these people survived was astounding. It takes a lot of strength to make a pact to give up your body to be eaten if you die, and these men showed so much strength during this experience. I was also so surprised to learn that there wasn’t really any fighting or hoarding of supplies. They just took care of each other and hoped for the best, which is all anyone can ask for in this kind of situation.
Overall, this was a really emotional account of this disaster and I did learn a lot about it, I just really struggled with the organization of it and the repetitiveness of it. I might look into reading some of the other books that were written about this event.
TW: death; cannibalism; starvation; hypothermia; injuries; drug addiction; alcoholism; death of friends and family; grief;
