Director Juan Antonio Bayona begins ‘The Snow Society’, the winning film at the Goya with 12 statuettes, with a question: “What happens when the world abandons you? When you have no clothes and you are freezing, when you have no food and you are dying.” It has been half a century since Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Andes mountain range and it is still disconcerting how of the 45 people who were on board, 16 survived a frozen hell of 72 days. They were not specialized mountaineers, medical experts or advanced engineers. They were young people of barely 20 years old who were (mostly) part of a rugby team.
They spent nights in temperatures of 30 degrees below zero, they resisted an avalanche that left them buried under snow for four days and, due to lack of food, they had to face the decision of having to eat the bodies of their dead friends to survive. “Reality overwhelmed us, but I didn’t want to die; “I wanted to get home and tell my parents ‘I’m alive,'” said Roy Harley, one of the survivors, in an interview. Where did the survival instinct that saved these young people in the mountains come from?
“We have an archaic brain that has kept us alive since the beginning of humanity,” explains psychologist and university tutor Marta Sajnovick Di Leo, director of the center specialized in trauma recovery (CERT). The term “archaic brain” refers to the most primitive and ancient part of the human brain. It is responsible for basic and automatic functions such as regulating heart rate, breathing, body temperature and involuntary reflexes.
Although modern society has modified the expression of the survival instinct in humans, it remains a fundamental component of our biology and can arise instinctively in times of need or danger. “Doing what is necessary to survive is something we share with animals; they do not consider whether it is moral, ethical or religious to eat another animal when they are hungry and there is nothing to eat.”
After ten days, when the young people heard on the radio that the rescue efforts had ceased and that the world had left them for dead, they understood that from that moment on their destiny was in their hands. They had discovered how to melt the snow so they could drink water without burning their lips on the ice and how to protect themselves from the cold at night inside the remains of the fuselage. But if they didn’t eat anything, they would die.
As the film reflects, “of course morality plays a powerful role in human beings and there are those who even choose to die rather than betray their values,” explains the psychologist. However, the survival instinct emerged as the dominant force to move forward. “Her enemy was ice and the love of seeing her family again was stronger than everything else.”
The words of the survivors unanimously highlight that another of the determining factors for their return was the collaboration and solidarity of the group. One of the connections that strengthened this bond was their shared experience in rugby. This sports practice not only provided them with physical skills, but also instilled values ??of teamwork and mutual support that were fundamental in their fight to survive.
Health and sports psychologist Francesc Porta explains that “the neural system is programmed for survival, but it is true that these instincts are rooted in previous experiences.” In this case, his experience in sports helped the group cohesive. “Athletes are used to stress and pressure management that helps when facing extreme situations.” The ability to act decisively at critical moments was crucial to their survival.
“When a situation like this happens, we realize that human beings are spectacular,” says Albert Vila Bacardi, an expert survival mountaineer, as well as an instructor and partner of PlayD, the only survival and bushcraft school in Catalonia. According to the expert, “human beings need five things to guarantee their survival: oxygen, temperature, water, food and rest.”
Instinctively, the survivors of the Andes managed to secure each of them. Which shows that “everyone is capable of surviving and we can all develop instinct.” As a mountaineer, Bacardi has had to overcome various adverse situations. From an unexpected heavy rain in the middle of the forest that caused him hypothermia, to an intense storm that left him buried under a meter and a half of snow in Cerdanya. “It is unlikely that an instructor will ever experience something like what happened in the Andes, but that is why we study cases like that, we analyze what happened, the actions taken and how to apply it in our courses to learn from them.” PlayD school courses are attended by everyone from firefighters and police officers to families with children. “We want survival not to be just for one sector and for everyone to be able to reconnect with nature.”
The survival instinct is a primordial force that drives individuals to adapt and resist in extreme situations, such as those faced by the survivors of the Andes. However, “if the intensity of what was experienced is not worked on within the first 24 hours, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorders) will develop,” explains psychologist Marta Sajnovick Di Leo.
Symptoms may include flashbacks or involuntary memories of the event, nightmares, avoidance of trauma-related situations, mood changes, hypervigilance, and intense physical reactions. One way to prevent post-traumatic stress disorders, Sajnovick suggests, is through the EMDR technique. This technique consists of bilateral sensory stimulation, either through eye movement, sounds, or touch, while focusing on the memory of the traumatic event, which facilitates its processing and reducing the associated emotional impact.