Five true tales of beer saving the day

Remember the legend about the baker on the Titanic who survived freezing cold waters because he got plastered on brandy, and it made him impervious to hypothermia? Well, that’s mostly bullshit. While it’s true that a chef named Charles Joughin survived the sinking, the “plastered on brandy” part of his legend is more myth than reality.

Regardless, his song remains the same — a subversive fairy-tale expounding the potential life-saving powers of alcohol that fathers can tell to sons, and drunks can tell themselves to justify going home condomless with a girl they can’t help but notice has a strange blister on her lip. Ah, frick it. It’s probably nothing.

It’s pretty sweet to think that beer can occasionally save the day — as in turn hairy situations right-side-up just by existing. Even sweeter to know that — oh really? — beer has saved the day. Multiple times, in fact.

Man gets trapped in his car under an avalanche, drinks beer, pisses his way to freedom

Around these parts, it’s called breaking the seal — the point in which you first piss after a round of drinks, and thereafter are pissing every 15 minutes the rest of the night like it’s your job. Typically, it’s a real pain in the ass — the exact process one would never, ever expect to end up saving a dude’s life.

But, lo and behold, a Slavic gentleman named Richard Kral was driving through the Tatra mountains five years ago when his Audi was swallowed up by an oncoming avalanche. Kral, realizing that digging his way out required more room for snow than his car offered, made use of all the beer he had stocked in his back seat by binging the shit out of it and pissing on the snow piles he packed under his windows to melt them.

After a long, arduous, woozy dig and piss session, Kral eventually tunneled his way to freedom. Rescuers managed to find him on the same mountain four days later, kidneys hurting, still drunk off his ass.

Former British PM Alec Douglas-Home dissuades potential kidnappers…with beer

Being a politician is a job with some obvious occupational hazards, not the least of which involves the prospect of being kidnapped by left-wing lunatics. In 1964 — an election year — Alec Douglas-Home, who was the prime minister of Britain at the time, was staying with a couple who had no room in their house for his personal bodyguard, and had some errands to run that day.

Thinking nothing of it, Douglas-Home stayed in their house completely alone, presumably drinking tea, not brushing his teeth, and doing other British stuff until he heard a knock on the door and answered it. Standing outside was a group of left-wing students from nearby Aberdeen University, who planned on kidnapping him and restoring the Plantaganet throne, or something.

In between asking for some time to pack an overnight bag for his kidnapping journey, Douglas-Home offered the students some beer, which they accepted. The beer kept the group buzzed and pacified until Douglas-Home’s hosts returned, and the students left quietly.

Homeless guy saves three people on his morning run…to get beer

Once a person turns homeless, they tend to resign themselves to a simple life of going crazy and sometimes asking for money so they can get high and/or drunk and go even crazier. It’s really all an honest hobo can hope for. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Because of this neverending circumstance of needing to drink to forget about how much his life sucked, one particular hobo became a hero back in 2008. While walking through Brooklyn one morning on a beer run, Andre Nash ran into a small boy asking to help his family, who were trapped in an apartment building that was on fire. Using his wits, and heroically not wanting to waste the beer, Nash doused a rag with the two cans he had just bought, put it over his face, and dashed into the building.

Moments later, he came back out with a father and two of his sons, guiding them through thick smoke. Nash tried to make another run into the building, but by that time it had gotten too hot. Thankfully, though, firefighters showed up shortly afterwards. Even more heart-rendering is the fact that, arguably, three lives would not have been saved if not for one man being blessed by the beer Gods.

Man with a three-inch knife vs. man with formidable beer gut — formidable beer gut wins

Next time you watch Fight Club and curse Brad Pitt and his 28-pack for making the rest of us look like flabby losers, remember this story. British (those guys, again) bartender Snaz Martin was working at the Britannia Inn when he had to throw out a disorderly patron for pulling a knife after arguing with another customer.

A few minutes later, the same patron returned to the bar with the three-inch knife and stabbed Martin in the belly. After noticing blood pumping out, Martin was rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors told him that he was saved by — wait for it…his beer gut! That’s right, that same doughy mass of distilled carbonation we waste beau-coop dollars on ab machines to get rid of protected Martin’s spleen from being impaled.

If this were a Bud Light radio spot, we would salute you, Mr. reinforced-beer-paunch man. Because who needs Kevlar, or a lame self-defense class, when you have your own personal invincibility cloak?

Man uses beer to coerce home-invader to get the frick out

It’s one of those nightmare scenarios everybody ponders over from time to time. Man breaks into your home in the middle of the night — what do you do? Call the cops? Grab a bat/gun/frying pan and confront the prick? Hide in your closet and hope he doesn’t take anything important? If you’re the guy whose house Scott Cote broke into, you choose none of the above, because you know the power of beer. Allow us to explain.

After being woken up by Cote after he had broken into his house around 4 a.m., the Maine homeowner in question decided there was no better way to convince the already-inebriated potential burglar to leave his house than to offer him free beer if he did so.

Cote accepted, and shortly after leaving the residence peacefully, the homeowner called the cops, who apprehended him a short time later.

The best part? Unbeknownst to Drunky Mcdrunkerson, the beer...was non-alcoholic. Suck on the watered-down, metallic taste of irony.