Drink both Beers, with Pure Water you Absorb 70%, with a Diuretic (Coffee, Beer etc.) its 50%

Water Balance Article Caffeinated Beverages like Alcohol are Diuretics but they do not cause Dehydration, they just don't allow us to absorb as much Water as Pure Water. Beer also has at least 10% Carbos, so you will loose a little more to digestion, but get back some calories in exchange.

So Drink BOTH BEERS!

Carbs like alcohol break down into energy and water, For example, eating most fruits give you a net gain in water after digestion. Fats are about a tie, proteins take water to digest.

There also can be a lot said for the slight mental lift a single beer might give you.
On the other hand alcohol's vasodilating properties may not be a good idea if suffering from heat or cold maladies. Cold fingers good, hypothermia bad.

Faced with the possibility of significant physical stress, I don't think I would want alcohol in my system - boiling seems like a good idea if water is scarce.

Just for the record, I haven't always held this opinion.....

I was thinking that too ... settling down at the end of the day with a fire going and having a beer would make an otherwise stressful situation seem much more bearable.

Unless of course you have just been released from jail, under the condition that you don't drink. In that case your rescuers might send you right back to jail!

Troopers rescue snowmachiner near Fairbanks, then bust him

Reminds me of my favorite Less Stroud quote:
"Just like a weekend at the cottage, but with no food, no friends... and no beer."

So, does anybody here think that if you were locked in a room for a week with just 5 cases of beer that you would die of dehydration because of beer's diuretic properties? In other words, does anybody think they would pea out more water than their body absorbs?

The answer is "no" for me. I'm thinking you'd find me well hydrated at the end of the week. I probably would have gotten in a couple of workouts too. A diuretic may cause you to urinate a bit more, but you also absorb a lot of the water in the beer too. Hard alcohol is something else.

Sounds like a viable field experiment. Surely someone will volunteer, strictly in the interest of Science, to acquire data on this issue.......

"it seems to me, that this show is too often becoming quite misleading"

like maybe because the producer tossed an old backpack and two beers onto the dirt - before they started filming??

Pete2

If it was 5 cases of PBR they'd find my skeleton in the corner opposite the dusty unopened cans of beer! Death by thirst is preferable to PBR...