Here’s a real puzzler. You’re on your way to a relaxing winter vacation, with a car full of beer and provisions. Suddenly, as you are winding along a mountain road, an avalanche buries your car. You open your window and try to dig your way out, but you have nowhere to put the snow and it starts to fill your car. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?
Well, if you are a sharp Slovakian named Richard Kral, you take note of the fact that you have 60 half liters of beer. You drink a little, scoop a little snow from above your window, and pack it below your window. Then…you pee on it. It melts. You drink a little more beer, pack a little more snow, and pee again. And you keep repeating the cycle until you have packed and melted enough snow to burrow your way out. “It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I’m glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there,” said Kral, after he was found drunk and staggering on a mountain path four days after the avalanche hit.
I can’t even begin to imagine what the snow outside his car door looked like by the time he escaped. But I suspect there was a bit of serendipity involved. Why? My guess is that he was stuck in his car and just started drinking the beer, because why wouldn’t you? And when he started peeing out his window…EUREKA!
After his escape, Kral still had a surplus, so…
The Earthist Chronicles 