The physiological consequences of this level of malnutrition include muscle wasting — the body breaks down muscle tissue for energy when caloric intake is insufficient — cognitive impairment, immune suppression, and progressive weakness. The survivors who were weakest were the most vulnerable to cold: a body with less muscle mass generates less heat. This created a feedback loop in which the most malnourished survivors were also the most at risk from cold, and therefore the most likely to die.
Numa Turcatti, who died on December 11 — twelve days before the rescue — was described by other survivors as having consumed as little as possible throughout the survival period. His reluctance to eat contributed to his progressive malnutrition and his eventual death. He died in a situation where the rescue was already in motion, where help was already on its way. He died twelve days too early.
The mathematics of starvation — the precise daily accounting of calories and deficit that the survivors were living inside — is a cold framework for understanding what was also an experience of grief and community and extraordinary psychological intensity. But the mathematics was real. The bodies of the survivors were failing in documented, measurable ways. The question of whether they would survive long enough to be rescued was partly a question of how fast their bodies were failing and whether the rescue would arrive before too many bodies had failed completely.
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## What Leadership Looked Like
The question of leadership in the survival situation is worth examining carefully, because the accounts suggest something more complex than a simple story of one person taking charge.