Kennedy: How to start a fire with a condom

Andrew Stone, of Tunnel Hill, Ga., has some advice for anyone preparing for doomsday: Hoard toilet paper.

Stone, an industrial equipment painter who appears on a new Weather Channel reality series called “Fat Guys in the Woods,” said his week in survival mode in the Smoky Mountains last fall proved one thing conclusively. “There’s a lot to be said for two-ply,” he said, noting that dried leaves are a poor substitute for the charms of Charmin.

Stone, who weighed about 325 pounds before his week in the woods, said he wanted to prove to himself that he has the right stuff to survive on his own if the world comes unglued.

“What motivated me was (finding out) if the lights went out and the water quit running, could I survive?” he said.

During his week-long adventure Stone said he learned how to eat chickweed as if it were lettuce, build a shelter out of sticks and leaves, and spark a fire using a condom. (Hint for you do-it-yourselfers: Starting a fire with a condom does not involve actual human intimacy.)

“Fat Guys in the Woods” features Weather Channel survival expert Creek Stewart and bills itself as a show that “brings three average Joes into the woods to survive for a week with only one objective: to teach them the skills that make a man, a man.”

Or something like that. The show has elements of reality hits such as “The Biggest Loser” (striving obese people), “Duck Dynasty” (small-game hunting) and “Doomsday Preppers” (off-the-grid survival skills).

Stone’s episode debuted on Sunday night but will re-air on the Weather Channel at 5 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. on Sunday. Our area is apparently fertile ground for casting “Fat Guys.” Also on Sunday at 10 p.m., 20-year-old Chattanoogan Dane Bryson will learn to make a fire with a gum wrapper and a battery.

Seriously? What’s next: Creek Stewart removes an appendix using tobacco juice and a Popsicle stick? Or: Coming soon, building a dirigible from a Blow Pop?

But, we digress.

Stone said he saw an ad on Craigslist recruiting overweight men who wanted to learn survival skills.

“Hey, I’m a pretty fat guy,” Stone thought to himself, why not me?

He responded to the ad and soon the show’s producers sent him an iPad to make an audition video. They liked what they saw: A bearded good-ol’-boy with a self-deprecating sense of humor. Stone said he was promptly invited to appear on an episode of the show.

Stone showed up last November for his week in the Smoky Mountains with two other “fat guys.” For the record, Stone said he doesn’t mind being called fat. “We live in a PC world where people get offended too easily,” he said. “I’ve been called fat my whole life. That’s part of me: I’m fat.”

Stone said that after a day of moderate temperatures things turned dicey.

“The second day it rained and sucked every bit of heat out of the air,” he said. “The second night the wind chill got down to like 5 degrees. It was flippin’ co-old!”

To make a fire, Stone and his cohorts were taught how to fill a condom with water and use it like a magnifying glass to concentrate sunlight on a dry leaf.

“When we originally tried to do it, I was the one holding the condom and it busted,” he said. “That’s always a bad situation when you bust a condom.”

Even after the men started a fire and built a shelter, they were overtaken by a deep, gnawing hunger. Stone said at times he was so weak from hunger that he could barely walk, and so hungry that he thought about peeling bark off a tree just to answer his howling stomach. The only meat the four men had for a week consisted of a snake and a duck.

“In the past I thought I’d been hungry,” Stone said. “But this was a different ball game. Walking 10 feet seemed like a mile. My feet felt like they were stuck in the mud all the time.”

While he didn’t weigh himself before and after the adventure, Stone says his pants didn’t fit when he got home.

We won’t reveal any more of the plot of the show in case you want to tune in this weekend.

Meanwhile, Stone says he is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame around Tunnel Hill.

“I’m almost as famous down here as Marla Maples,” he boasts.

Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.