Álvaro Mangino survived a plane crash by eating his companions

The first bite was the hardest. They had laid the meat—it was whitish, cut in slivers as thin as matchsticks—on a makeshift aluminium tray. Later, the boys would find that if they cooked it, it tasted better: like beef, but softer. But on that first day they just ate it raw, almost frozen. Some swallowed it like medicine. One ate it with snow, to mask the taste. He still gagged. One joked that it was like a fine delicatessen ham. Álvaro could not eat it at all. He wanted to: they all knew that eating it was their only hope of living. They also all knew that to eat it they had to die a little, first.