Alive

On November 23, Bobby Francois turns 21. He is given an extra packet of cigarettes to celebrate. Canessa and Nando Parrado remove the radio from the plane so they can take it to the large batteries in the tail section. They hope they can contact a rescue team if the radio works. The extraction process takes days. Roy Harley is the closest they have to a radio expert but he does not believe enough in his own abilities to make the machine work. Eventually he relents under the social pressure and agrees to hike to the tail section with Vizintin, Canessa, and Parrado. Those left behind have the difficult task of locating more dead bodies. The bodies are buried beneath the snow and are the men’s only source of food. They dig wherever they think a body might be buried. Not all of the survivors can help and not all of them want to. An added problem is that the changing season begins to thaw the top layer of snow. Exposed and beginning to rot, the already harvested bodies must be reburied.

As food supplies dwindle, rationing becomes stricter. The bones of the bodies are broken so that the marrow inside can be consumed.