UKH

From today's Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/04/nando-parrado-andes-plane-cra...

And don’t forget the old film - https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0106246/

I seem to remember those who didn't nosh on their fellow passengers also survived.

Really? I've read several books written about the incident (including by Canessa and Parrado, the two survivors who got out to get help). I don't recall any of the survivors not resorting to cannibalism since, once they'd run out of what little food they had, there was nothing else available for the time they were stuck there. I know they had great problems about it especially as they were mostly from Catholic backgrounds.

I read Alive by Piers Paul Read in 1974, an excellent book on a sensitive subject.

I took my then girlfried to see that - we were so romantic in those days!

What I didn't quite understand is that after a while just sitting round, nibbling each other, two of them decided this wasn't getting them very far so they got up and walked down the mountain to get help.  That didn't seem very difficult, so why hadn't they done it earlier?

If the film didn't make it look very difficult, then it must have undersold it. From the Guardian article above, it sounds like it was fairly intense mountaineering in serious terrain and weather with no appropriate kit, without any of them having any background in the skills needed and with them all ill or injured to varying degrees. I can easily see how staying put and hoping for rescue might have seemed like the most sensible plan, even without the unimaginable additional stress of actually being there enduring the ordeal while trying to make the right decision.

Ages since I read the book, but IIRC there was one guy who couldn't bring himself to eat human flesh, and died of starvation as a result.