Mal Fletcher comments

A few of the men have talked about having had religious or spiritual experiences of one form or another. For some, this provided an important point of reference outside of the immediate situation. Yet even for the religious among them, the questions would remain: why me? Why now?

In the face of all this, those group members who especially encouraged and maintained camaraderie deserve a medal. They managed to focus a disparate group of strong-willed individuals on the larger task at hand, one that required all minds to be committed to the common good even in the darkest hours.

As a social commentator, this is part of what fascinates me about this drama: the power of the social group to shape our personal responses and therefore our individual and collective future.

For all the noise we make about the exponential pace of change where technology is concerned, the future is not shaped by technology. Nor is it shaped by events - not even wildcard events like the collapse of a mining shaft.

The future is primarily shaped by human reactions or choices, which are in turn impacted by emotions and cultures. But both emotion and culture are products of social interaction rather than individual ideation or activity.

In emergency situations, social norms can become more not less important to survival - even if those norms have to be redefined. And a sense of responsibility to others is vital to our own individual survival. It's the way we're wired.

Finally, for all their strength collectively and individually, these men would not have survived without the sense that people above ground - 'upstairs' as they called it - were willing them to live.

The men aboard Apollo 13 shared how important it was to their morale - at times, near as low as it could get - that people back home were rooting for them at every step.

Overt social support is vital to our emotional and mental wellbeing and to our performance within any group enterprise. We are social beings, who feed off the strength that comes from belonging and having our contribution affirmed by others.

There are important leadership lessons to be drawn here, for heads of businesses, political groups, civic authorities and organisations of all kinds.

People can only function at their best and will do so even against awful odds, if they're aware that what they do and who they are actually matter beyond their front door.

In any enterprise, a wise leader will draw sightlines from every individual's work to the broader goals of the enterprise - goals that take in more than company pie-charts. Every team member needs to feel that their work is helping to change something for the better beyond their workspace, on the wider stage of human affairs.

Even in the routine of the day-to-day, each of us longs to know that someone out there is rooting for us, willing us to succeed because what we do actually means something to them.

William Helmreich, quoted earlier, travelled across America studying the lives of 170 Holocaust survivors. His conclusion was clear: 'The survivors were ordinary individuals before the war, chosen by sheer accident of history to bear witness to one of its most awful periods.'

'The story of the survivors is one of courage and strength, of people who are living proof of the indomitable will of human beings to survive and of their tremendous capacity for hope.'

The survivors of the drama in the Atacama are testament to this, too. They remind us, in the face of the many global challenges ahead, that our greatest resource is the human resource.