Man who holds record for surviving longest with no food was forced to ingest condensation from walls

While many of us claim to be starving after skipping a meal, one man knows truly how terrible that feeling can be.

In 1979, Austrian man Andreas Mihavecz unfortunately found out how long the human body can go without food and water.

Reddit users have begun discussing the difficult experience Mihavecz must have faced as his story was shared on the 'todayIlearned' board. The post has so far been upvoted almost 7,000 times and has over 400 comments since being posted on Friday.

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“I grew up near to where this happened and am old enough to remember it. This was a huge story at the time but there are some details that have always stuck with me,” one Reddit user remarked.

“Probably a lot of damage done to the body after that long. Wouldn’t be surprised if it led to an early death,” another added.

Some users attempted to joke about the bizarre incident with one saying ‘who needs violence when neglect works just as well’.

Mihavecz currently holds the Guinness World Record for this feat, and the lengths he went to just to survive sound truly horrifying.

“The longest recorded case of survival without food and water is 18 days by Andreas Mihavecz (Austria), then aged 18,” the record-keeping company says on its website of Mihavecz’s feat.

“He was put into a holding cell on 1 April 1979 in a local government building in Höchst on Lake Constance, Austria, but was totally forgotten by police. On 18 April 1979, he was discovered close to death.”

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While in the basement cell, he was only able to survive by ingesting condensation water from the walls. This duration without both food and water saw him lose an estimated 24 kg in weight.

He was only found in an unlikely coincidence when a policemen, who had unrelated business in the basement, noticed a putrid smell coming from the cell. He then found Mihavecez who needed several weeks to regain his health.

The 18-year-old bricklayer’s apprentice was reportedly taken into custody mistakenly for being a passenger in a crashed car.

Markus Weber, Heinz Ceheter and Erwin Schneider were the three German officers who faced trial for gross negligence after Mihavecz was discovered. The trial did not clarify who was responsible for the blunder, however, each officer blamed the other.

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The three police officers who responsible for him each thought that the other two officers had already freed Mihavecz, leading to him be forgotten about.

A trial that followed showed that Mihavecz’s mother’s concerns had also been ignored by the police during these 18 days.