The Andes Tragedy: 50 Years Later

On Friday the 13^th of October 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed in a remote area of the Argentinian Andes during the heart of the snowy season. A search was abandoned after only ten days and all aboard were presumed dead. But of the forty-five passengers and crew, thirty-two had survived the initial impact. For seventy-two unimaginable days and nights they endured starvation, sub-zero temperatures, even an avalanche. Then, just before Christmas, the world was stunned when two emaciated men emerged from the mountains, having traveled on foot for ten days and leaving fourteen more survivors back at the crash site. Now, on it’s 50^th anniversary, an expedition that includes one of the survivors returns to the remote crash site in summer, where glacial melting and the effects of climate change have stripped the area of snow and ice. With this dramatic transformation, the site has begun revealing long-hidden secrets. From buried wreckage, to personal items, to preserved human remains, the means by which sixteen men survived the impossible have never been more clearly revealed. Featuring exclusive interviews with survivors, expeditionaries and climate experts, this is a totally new and unique telling of the greatest survival epic of all time.