The story that shocked the world: The plane crashed on top, became cannibals, ate each other alive.

As we looked out the plane window, something was wrong. We were sure we were too low. The wings of the plane were just a few yards from the snow - covered peaks of the Andes.

What was the pilot thinking? The atmosphere aboard was fantastic - my football team friends and I was traveling to Chile for a match.

We were laughing, singing, joking, as the young people do.

But things took a terrible turn. I felt like the plane fell into a pocket of turbulence.

Then in another pocket. He tried to get up and win altitude.

But even though he was straining his engines, they had no power. A minute later we heard a loud noise.

The plane had lost one arm. Then came a powerful explosion.

We were flying around like we were in a hurricane.

I was immediately overwhelmed with the idea that I would die.

I held on so tight that I tore it up with my own hands. I looked forward to the final blow, the one that would lead me to the next world.

But it didn't. The plane's body came to a halt. My seat flew to the front.

Still breathing. I was alive!

I heard groaning and weeping all around me. The plane's body was open, and its tail was missing.

There were only snowy mountains around us. A storm was leaving while her tail lashed us cold. Like the shadows of another world, the first humans began to appear.

Following me was Gustavo Zebino, a friend of mine, a medical student. He saw me as if he wanted to say: You're alive too. Without speaking, we wondered: Now where do we start?

We started walking through the ruins of the plane. Some had lost their lives. Others were severely injured.

There was no time for doubt, the cold was unimaginable.

We opened a trunk and started looking for T - shirts and jackets.

Gustavo and I started treating the wounded.

Oh, God, I'm so tired, I can barely breathe. The air is so rare up here.

Then I asked myself: How come a fuel jet hit the mountain and didn't explode? It's dark. Within minutes it had become a black well. We fired a lighter in fear of causing an explosion. I had blood on my hands.

At the time of the fatal accident Friday, October 13, 1972, I was in my second year of medicine in Montevideo, Uruguay. I was a fanatic of regbi and the lover of the beautiful daughter of a doctor, Laurie Surraco.

Until then, my friends and I had lived in a privileged universe - preparing to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects.

Our regbi team was off for a fight in Chile. We were young, healthy, and happy.

But in one second, all our expectations fell. Our world had collapsed.

The first night seemed to last forever. Then I woke up thinking I was in the middle of a nightmare.

But it was real. Despite the shock, we didn't fall into despair. Although we had no radio or phone, we believed we would be saved. Chilean authorities knew they had lost contact with us 100 miles from where we fell. We made food as much as we could.

Though we had little, we shared it equally, and we shared our clothes with each other.

And We left behind the evil, and We said to ourselves. We should not panic, we must resist.

With our empty luggage we formed a cross in the snow, and with our feet we created the letters SOS, which could be seen by air. To our surprise, however, no plane was passing by.

The next morning we heard a plane above us. Everyone swore that the plane had seen our message.

We leaped and wept with joy.

But help came neither that day nor tomorrow nor the day after tomorrow...

We still believed it was a difficult rescue mission, so they'd come with helicopters.

It was just a matter of time.

Up in the sky, a commercial jet was leaving a trail - part of a world moving without us.

Of the 45 people on board, 12 had died of the crash. 6 others died in the days that followed.

The other 27 of us crouched in the plane's body.

But we were no longer part of this world. We were creatures of another planet.

Our goal was to survive, but we lacked food.

After a few days, we felt our bodies being consumed from within to stay alive.

We knew the answer, but that was terrible.

Our friends ' bodies were well preserved in ice and snow, containing vital proteins for our existence.

But could we?

For a long time we were in agony.

We went out into the snow and prayed to God to guide us.

Without his consent, we felt like we would steal the spirit from our friends.

Javier Methol, 35, was the oldest of us.

He said he prayed to God and he quoted New Tessa.

He who eats of my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life. Take him and eat him. This is my body.

The words I said that day still haunt me. Even if we died, others would eat our bodies to survive.

We were the first to break the taboo.

We all had our minds matured slowly.

After that, the irreversible came: Last goodbye to innocence.

We were never like before.

Four of us took several razor blades and first began cutting clothes and then pieces of meat.

We confiscated our pieces.

One day later, on October 23, we heard from a small radio with transistors that after 100 attempts to find us, the search had been interrupted.

On December 8 we heard on the radio that the search for us had resumed. It was actually a mission to find our bodies.

With the best weather they could have a chance to find us.

Three days later Gustavo came and said privately: Numa is dead. Roy's on that road too. Soon we'll all die.

Numa was the best of us.

I couldn't sleep that night.

I just thought terrible things.

What walls of ice stood between us and our salvation?

* These are from Dr. Roberto Casey “Canessa was a passenger on a charter plane that crashed in 1972. At the time, he was a 19-year-old student. Of 45 people aboard, only 16 survived. Catherine and the others were forced to eat the dead.