Whether this distinction — between hope and decision, between waiting for circumstances to improve and resolving to act regardless of circumstances — is psychologically meaningful or simply a retrospective framing of a more complicated internal state is a question that the survivor accounts cannot fully resolve. What is clear is that Parrado’s psychological state during the November waiting period was different from despair and that it manifested as the planning and preparation for the December trek.
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## The Night Before They Left
On December 11, 1972 — the day before Parrado, Canessa, and Vizintín departed — Numa Turcatti died.
Turcatti had been deteriorating for weeks. He was 25 years old, one of the non-rugby passengers on the flight, a friend of one of the team members who had been invited along on what was supposed to be a holiday. He had spent 60 days watching people die and working to contribute to the group’s survival while consuming as little as possible of the available nutrition. His health had declined steadily as his refusal to eat enough pushed him further into malnutrition.
The survivors who were with him in his final days describe a man who maintained consciousness and participated in conversation until near the end. He knew that the trekking party was preparing to depart. He knew that rescue might be coming. He did not live to see the helicopters.
His death on the eve of the final departure carries a particular weight in the accounts of the survival. He was the last to die. After him, the sixteen who survived all made it to the rescue on December 22 and 23. If the helicopters had come twelve days earlier, seventeen people might have survived instead of sixteen.