Other survivors described similar processes of deliberation and reframing. Several compared what they were doing to the Catholic Eucharist — the consumption of the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament of communion. This was not a rationalization designed for public consumption; it was a framework that several survivors reached independently, in private, as a way of reconciling what they needed to do with the values they held.
Not everyone reached the same resolution. Some survivors ate only the minimum. Numa Turcatti, who would be the last to die before the rescue, ate as little as possible throughout the entire ordeal; his reluctance to eat was one factor in his declining health and his death on December 11.
The survivors covered the bodies with snow to preserve them. They approached the task with what discipline they could manage. It was not done without revulsion, without grief, or without ongoing psychological cost. Multiple survivors have described the act as something they did with deep discomfort that never fully disappeared.
What they did not do was treat it as anything other than what it was: a terrible necessity, made in full awareness of its nature, by people who had no other choice.
—
## The Radio
On October 21, eight days after the crash, the Chilean authorities officially called off the search.
The survivors heard the announcement on their radio.
This moment — the specific experience of hearing a broadcast declare them dead while they were alive — is one of the most psychologically significant events of the entire ordeal. Several survivors have described what it meant to hear that the search had been abandoned: the confirmation that no rescue was coming, that the assumption of imminent rescue had been wrong, that they were alone in the mountains with no one coming to find them.