Man Peed His Way Out of Avalanche

[Dave]

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

He said: "I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. 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."

Read the full story at Ananova

[nonova]

Does anyone else get the feeling that Ananova just makes up news on slow days?

[Dave]

Does anyone else get the feeling that Ananova just makes up news on slow days?

Yes, and we're not the only ones. When I posted this I was thinking "this can't possibly be true," but it was all over legitimate news sites.

Now this story has been listed in the Snopes.com archive as "undetermined:"

The story has so far proved difficult to verify because its attributions have been vague (e.g., "correspondents in Bratislava"), and it evidently originated in a part of the world (the Slovak Republic) where information sources are more difficult to track down (particularly because the language is unfamiliar to most westerners).

However, a correspondent who works for a Slovak news agency informed us that not only has the avalanche story (or any news story about an avalanche) not appeared in the news media there, but the very same tale (of Czech origin, told about an unnamed man caught in the Austrian Alps) was circulating in that country as an e-mail joke even before the heavy snows described in the article occurred.

If you live in a cave and don't know it, Snopes.com is the best place on the net to de-mystify urban legends and email shenanigans. You can follow up on this story here

Dave