It is a dark day for gamers. Microsoft has taken Xbox Live down for a scheduled maintenance in preparation for future system updates. This process is scheduled to take 24 painful hours, meaning there are over 10-million people staring blankly at their monitors or high-def televisions, perhaps fondling the controller as if it were rosary beads, wishing, praying for divine intervention.

We are all faced with the cruel reality of finding something to do for the next 24-hours. We all share in the same pain, though for different reasons. Perhaps you are a hardcore Call of Duty player suddenly deprived of your new World at War map-pack. Perhaps, like me, you were looking forward to the 4-song Spinal Tap track-pack for Rock Band that is now delayed until tomorrow. Maybe you’re asking yourself trivia questions to fill that 1 Versus 100 void in your heart.

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What are we to do? Where do we go? Only two minutes have passed since you began reading this article. Time is ticking slow. Is it up yet? Is it up yet? Maybe Microsoft finished early, you tell yourself. You attempt a sign-in. Error. Nothing. You’re adrift on a sea of uncertainty and boredom.

Before you resort to suicide, here are some potentially helpful tips to get you through this disastrous day.

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If I were to stick your head underwater and hold it there, you’d be dead within several minutes, depending upon your lung capacity. I’d then be sent to prison for murder, so this example has problems, but the point is, your survival skills suck compared to the marsh-dwelling wolf spider.

As reported in the journal Biology Letters, scientists have discovered that the wolf spider can enter a self-induced coma and survive underwater for up to 24-hours, with 16-hours being the average time of survival.

From Discovery News:

Spiders are known for their resilience to being underwater, so it was no surprise to him that the dozens of Arctosa Fulvolineata in the experiment took almost 24 hours to grow still. What did surprise him is the dead-still spiders then came back to life.

As they lay drying in Petillion’s laboratory at the University of Rennes in France, something odd happened: the ‘dead’ spiders began to twitch. First one small movement, then another — before long the salt marsh spiders were skittering about as though nothing had happened.

“It was really a surprise,” Petillon said. “We did not suspect the spiders could go into a coma.”