This is our story.

It was a Friday like any other at work. My building was a bustling hub of students and staff. People discussed weekend plans and admired the sunny weather.

We were so young. So innocent. So naive.

I settled into my desk chair after lunch and was checking some finances when I noticed that my e-mail wasn’t loading. I refreshed the page. Nothing. I tried to open Google and Facebook. No luck.

Internet was down.

Time slowed to a crawl, but I was confident that Internet would return. It always had in the past.

But this was not the past. This was the present. And you know what they say about the present: It is a gift. A gift of no Internet that isn’t a gift at all, but rather hell on earth.

It wasn’t until we called Charter Cable that we knew that this would be our final day. There was an Internet outage in the area, and they didn’t know when it would be fixed.

We were doomed.

However, as the Director of Operations, it’s my job to keep a level head. I walked through the halls, telling coworkers that the Internet was temporarily down and would be back up soon.

Then I boarded the windows and doors. I cut the phone lines and smashed the circuit breakers. If we were to survive this crisis, we would have to do it alone.

After fashioning the requisite loincloth from the leather husk of my desk chair, I swept through the halls, my work-appropriate outfit flapping in my wake. I  called coworkers to convene in the common area. When all had gathered, I drew a line on the floor with a Sharpie.

“You’re either with me or you’re against me,” I said. “Cross this line and survive. Stay where you are and never have Internet again.”

No one moved.

I turned and dashed away, my loincloth dancing in the wind. I left a false trail as I ran, marking my scent on doorframes and computer monitors, lest the Others track me down. Then I vanished into the basement, baring the door behind me.

It was there that I dug. The only way to freedom was down, deep down into the earth where the Internet is kept. It was there, a good 20 feet under the ground, that I was joined by Moley and Wormy. I affixed to them tiny loincloths, and the Order of the Loin was born.

We didn’t have much, us three, but we had each other. As the days blended into the nights, we formed a kinship, a brotherhood. Moley was the prankster of the group, always guiding us into badger nests and gnawing into electric wires. Wormy was the scholar–he could recite nearly any geology-related book from memory. We kept each other warm at night, me the small spoon, Moley in the middle, and Wormy in the back.

We were brothers, and I would do anything for them. Never would I let harm befall them.

Thus it was a pity that I needed Moley’s skin and Wormy’s body to write this message. I will remember them fondly.

If you find this message, please post it on my blog. That is, if the Internet is back up. The world needs to know our story.

For more True Tales of Survival, click here and scroll down.

It began with a single drop of rain.

I had gone my first two days in Ireland with nary a rainfall. I skipped through the cobblestone streets of Clontarf, blowing kisses to milkmaids and spouting limericks in all directions.

And then came the rain.

I walked out the door of my castle hotel on Sunday morning to discover a moist substance falling from the sky. Knowing not what it was, I grabbed the nearest Irishman and insisted he tell me what it was.

He told me, and I apologized for the nuisance. We then exchanged pints of Guinness and went on our way.

The skies had opened, and the rain was relentless. I traveled to Dublin city centre by bus. Before I got off the bus, the driver grabbed me by the sleeve and said with a haunted look in her eyes, “Don’t go out there, lad!”

“I can handle it,” I told her. “I can handle a little water–I dilute my orange-mango juice with it at every dinner.”

She pointed to the fare box. “I mean, don’t go out there until you pay the fair. Elevensies halfsies is the fare.”

(All Irish currency is measured by how cute it is to say the numbers. For example, a penny is 1/100th of a Euro, while 10,000 Euros is pronounced with the sound a kitten makes when it stretches after a nap.)

By the time I had my midday tea, the rain was coming down at an angle. The normally crowded streets of Dublin were…well, still very crowded, because this was nothing out of the ordinary for them.

But for me it was a sign of doomsday.

With only my Oxford peacoat to protect me, I stripped down to my Irish loincloth (like an American loincloth, but shaped like a shamrock) and ran through the streets. I just barely caught the bus back to my castle hotel, which I stormed like you would any castle hotel (through the sliding glass doors).

I was home safe. But not for long.

You see, outside the waters were rising. Gaelic beasts of yore were rising from their slumber, tasting the toes of humans on the tides.

I knew I had to act, and fast. It wouldn’t be safe in my completely, absolutely safe castle hotel for long. I had to make a run for it.

So after sleeping in (it’s my vacation, after all), I dressed properly and  ventured into the heart of Clontarf (which basically consists of a grocery store and a few quaint shops). I stocked up on chocolate and fish and chips and headed to the wharf.

The time had come. With the help of a number of Irish Rovers and Irish Setters, I pieced together a crude raft out of former Cranberries singers and corned beef.

I tested my weight against it. “She’ll hold together,” I said while looking wistfully at the sea. “Oh, she’ll hold.”

One last piece was needed: The sail. So I threw my peacoat onto one of the Cranberries and lifted it aloft, leaving me flapping nakedly in the wind.

“Set me afloat, boys!” I cried, and the Irish Setters nudged the raft into the sea with their little noses.

I turned to the shore and raised me hand to salute the Irish soil that I had called home the last few days. Then I turned my eyes and heart to the sea, calling out to the wind, “You shall never take me! This day is mine, and I shall survive!”

(Jamey’s journal was discovered a few days later just a few yards from where he set sail. His last words were scribbled in the margins: “Corned beef was a bad choice.”)

For more of Jamey’s “true” tales of survival, click here.

This is my story.

I was driving back from brunch–something I’m guessing most rebels do on Sunday–when a police car pulled behind me, its lights flashing red and blue. Although I knew I could outrun it in my ’03 Camry, I decided to play it safe and pull over.

I handed the officer my license and insurance. He asked me if I was aware that my plates were expired.

I knew at that moment that he had me. There was no sweet-talking my way out of this one. You see, a couple years ago when I got my license plates renewed, I put on my Outlook calendar that I needed to renew them again in July of 2011. So the reminder popped up a few weeks ago, and I went to the DMV, and they told me to get an emissions test and inspection, which I did this past week. I then went back to the DMV on Wednesday, but the lines were really long, so I tried to renew online. However, I didn’t have a pin code because the state never sent me a renewal notice, so I e-mailed the state for the code. Their response was that my plates should have been renewed in January, and because they were overdue, I would have to take care of it in person at the DMV.

I am a man on the run. I no longer look anything like this. I look the opposite of this.

I was sure they were wrong, because when is my Outlook calendar ever wrong? But then I looked at my license plates, and sure enough, they say JAN on them, clear as day. Apparently I rely more on Outlook than real things right before my eyes.

I showed the officer that I truly had been trying to take care of the issue (I had the receipt for the emissions test and inspection), and he let me off with a warning. Which I don’t really understand. I broke the law, right? Shouldn’t I get a ticket?

So now I’m on the lam. I ditched my car as soon as I was out of sight of the officer, taking off on foot. I’m a marked man, with my expired license plate warning, and I’m sure all police in the area have “shoot to kill” orders.

Thus I’ve taken to the seedy underbelly of St. Louis. I live in the sewers now, eating whatever the rats leave behind, sleeping in puddles of urine and double beds.

Double beds. The horror.

I spent the first few hours of my new life as an outlaw in the most productive way possible, constructing a crude loincloth out of duct tape and cat hair. I shaved my head, grew a beard, and trimmed my fingernails so the police can’t identify me.

I am a shadow of my former self.

I roam this windswept land in search of…something. Is it love? A new start? Or perhaps a receipt of my 2009 personal property tax bill payment. No one knows.

No one knows how it feels to be outcasted from society, discarded like yesterday’s garbage. I turned to friends and relatives, and everywhere the look of disgust and dismay is the same: Why has he come to me? they wonder. Why is he wearing a duct tape diaper?

These are questions that cannot be answered.

I sleep with one eye open and the other also open. I tried to join a gang but I was too rough around the edges. So I started my own gang, the Sewer Ratz Fun-Time Solution Remedy. Initiation was brutal.

Do not try to find me. You will try anyway, as the reward money for my capture is surely in the tens of dollars. I will evade you until the end of days.

This is the last you’ll hear from me until tomorrow around this time. So until then, if you see a pale man cowering on a street corner, tufts of cat hair attached to his loins by what appears to be duct tape, please keep walking. Do not look back. Because he might not have had enough duct tape to cover his butt.

I was young and bright-eyed once, back in the winter of ’10. An optimistic boy making my way in the world. I was back in the heartland of Virginia for Christmas break, and I had just dropped off my grandmother after watching True Grit with her (Grandma’s review: “I’m not sure about that movie.”). I drove home in my parent’s 1994 Dodge Caravan, eager to greet them with tidings of comfort and joy upon my return.

Little did I know of the terror that awaited me.

Before I had left for the movie, my parents told me they might be out running some errands when I returned. They said they’d leave the door to the house unlocked for me. Bambi-eyed and trusting, I believed their every word.

Having barely missed out on Jamey-meat, a wolf howls in anguish to the moon.

You see, my parents had spent 29 years coddling me, showering me with love and affection and support. But somewhere, deep down, they had plotted and schemed. They drew up blueprints, hired ex-Marines, and opened untraceable bank accounts in the Swiss Bahamas.

Finally, the fruits of their patience paid off, and they executed their plan to perfection: They “forgot” to leave the doors to the house unlocked.

Desperately I tried door after door, window after window. I even remembered the code to the garage door, but the pulley was off its tracks. My parents had planned well.

It was 3:00 in the afternoon, and I knew I only had a few hours of sunlight remaining before the wolves would have me. I was wearing naught but a sweater, jeans, and a peacoat that has garnered many a compliment.

But wolves don’t pay compliments.

The temperature hovered around 31 degrees in the barren wasteland of suburban Virginia. They say that if a man can stay warm, he can live 30 days on water alone. But I had no water and no warmth. And no iPhone recharger.

I dropped to my knees and released a primal yell to the arctic winds. With what little strength I had, I shook my fist at the heavens. That act of defiance sapped my strength to the point that I knew I wouldn’t last another five minutes without a Christmas cookie or egg nog.

Your mind can do amazing things when it’s pushed to the brink. With hope fading fast, I realized that I had three options for survival:

1. Get back in the minivan and crank up the heat and the radio.
2. Forge a new life in the forest in front of my house, making my own clothing from deer pelts (mostly loinclothes…okay, exclusively loinclothes) and foraging for bugs and berries.
3. Strip naked and climb into the hot tub on my parent’s screen porch.

My every instinct told me that #2 was the right choice. But before I left my old life behind, it occurred to me that hot tubs are awesome, and I was home alone.

Gritting my teeth, I tore off my clothing and climbed into the hot tub, which was nice and steamy. Oh, the ecstasy! I had leaned on the railing of death and said, “No! Not today, Death! I have a hot tub to enjoy in the nude!”

And so I lived. Oh, I lived. Twisting and twirling in the tub, my man bits slapped against my naked legs as I tried to regain feeling in my limbs. I even briefly considered emptying my bladder in the tub to defy my parents, but I vetoed the idea after realizing that it would have meant sitting in a pool of my own urine for an indeterminate amount of time.*

Instead, I sat in a pool of victory until my parents came home.

I was free. I was alive. And I was very, very naked.

But it was worth it.

For other true tales of survival, scroll down to the bottom of this page.

*I may have actually peed in the hot tub. I really can’t remember, but it seems like something I would do.

It begins.

It is Saturday, March 19, 2011. I wake up. I eat oatmeal. I answer e-mail.

It is then that I receive the text from my neighbor: “Do you have hot water? I’m wonder if it’s just me!”

I check the water. It is cold, cold as the killing fields. Cold as my grandmother’s hands after she’s been holding ice cubes.

Firemen come to the building, look at the boilers. The fix nothing. They leave us.

Alone. So alone.

Me after being without hot water for two days.

Day 2

It has been two days since my last shower. I am covered head to toe in mud and grime. My hair has grown long and matted. I smell like camel sex and sauerkraut.

I have church. I must shower.

The frigid water hits me first in the face, then the head, then the belly button. Knowing I don’t have much time, I switch to survival mode. I quickly loofah the most important regions and escape from the shower with seconds to spare.

The hypothermia has almost set in. My only chance is to create a fire in the living room from kindling and my roommate’s books.

My roommate finds me hovering naked over the fire. She tells me that it’s 75 degrees outside and walks away. She leaves me.

Alone. So alone.

Day 3

The condo is a frigid wasteland. It is every man for himself. The cat is hunting me like prey, wanting to tear into my entrails for warmth.

But I have grown lean and nimble, like the flamingo. My body has adapted to the lack of warm dishwater. I weave my own clothing and forget human language.

The days have run together. Perhaps many moons have passed since my last shower perhaps none. There is no way to know.

I draw a bath before work and heat some water on the stove to neutralize the bathwater. I wash quickly, efficiently, knowing the scavengers could find my camp at any time. The cat watches from a distance, waiting for one false step. One slip and it will end me. No one will know for weeks.

My roommate comes home from a jog through the wasteland and hops in the shower. She mentions nothing of the pain, the suffering, the loofah. It is almost as if the water isn’t that cold at all for her.

She will unseat me as leader of the tribe if I do not assert my dominance, so I, too, take a shower without even 15 solid minutes of whimpering beforehand. I thrust myself into the icy waterfall of doom. I look death in the eyes and say, “Hey, how’s it going?” Minutes later I emerge. Victorious. Towel-less. Alive.

Day 4

The end is near. I have eaten the last of the Girl Scout Cookies and have resorted to the crappy Mrs. Fields ones. I have not seen another human in many moons.

I catch a bird on my balcony and eat it alive, smearing the blood under my eyes to ward off predators. I have forsaken clothes altogether. Like a great flamingo I bask on the balcony, soaking in the last moments of sunlight.

Just before the end, my roommate tells me that the hot water is back on. I cry tears of joy, tears of ecstasy. I strip off my clothes in jubilation.

She asks me to please start wearing clothes again and that the loincloth I made really doesn’t cover anything.

I laugh. Oh sweet day. It is over.

It is over.

I am a survivor. This is my story.

Miles from civilization, Jamey uses clues from the sun to determine his location.

I had been staying at a resort in Puerto Rico for the greater part of the week, completely unaware of the harrowing journey I would face that fateful Thursday. Nancy and I decided to go for a short stroll through the rainforest to see a beautiful waterfall. Neither of us knew that a mere 2 hours later, I’d be hopelessly lost in the woods, completely, utterly naked.

Nancy will tell you that she turned her back for just a moment, and then I was gone. She called out to me, but I could barely hear her, so I stumbled blindly in the opposite direction, ripping off my perfectly usable clothes.

Immediately I knew I had to find water, shelter, and fire if I was going to survive the next few hours. Water was easy–I was in a rainforest, after all, so I just drank my own urine–but shelter and fire were more difficult. The trees around me wouldn’t bend or break, and felled branches were soaked through. I ended up creating a nest out of leaves on the ground. Fire was impossible to make, and thus with every passing minute I knew my time was drawing to an end.

I shudder to speak of the animals I encountered in the wild. Bloodthirsty beasts they were, from the smallest lizards to the slightly larger lizards. I fended them off with my wits alone.

To maintain my dignity, should I someday return to civilization, I made a loincloth out of leaves and shrubs and threads that I tore from my old, still perfectly usable clothing.

After an hour in the wild, I could feel the hollow of my stomach as if I had never eaten. I dug desperately into the earth, popping grubs and larvae into my mouth. Sweet nutrients they provided. I also ate a Mounds bar that I purchased in the visitor’s shelter.

Using the sun as a compass, I eventually hobbled back to the path, where I found Nancy waiting. She looked at my near-nudity, my lice, my rashes, my malnourished body, and she said with love in her eyes, “Couldn’t you have just waited a few more minutes to go to the bathroom?”

It was those sweet words that brought me back to the world. I thought I’d never make it, but here am I, alive to tell this tale of survival.

See more true tales of survival here.