I was on a mountain top, with no access to any civs since I used embark anywhere. It was freezing, so although I had a brook it never defrosted. There was also no soil, and since my water was frozen I couldn't flood anything, which left me in a bit of a pickle with neither a food nor water supply.
I built an aqueduct from the pipe all the way across the map to the brook. Most of it was just a channel, but there were a few parts with constructed walls, and the last stretch was entirely constructed. I finished it right before the first caravan arrived, and I managed to buy some food just before I ran out. They had very little booze, but I bought everything they had and hoped for the best.
Then the troubles began. Because of my large amount of architectural wealth, I started getting migrant wave after migrant wave. A never ending flow of refugees flooding into my fortress which was still without a steady food supply. To make matters worse, the flow wasn't consistent, and the river kept freezing and unfreezing. After one particularly long stretch of my water supply being frozen up, I decided to widen the aqueduct. This turned out to be much harder than expected, since it was now full of magma. I managed to divert it down another channel that rejoined the original aqueduct at the end, and I set to work.
I now had no water supply at all, and my dogs were no longer able to support my exploding population. I got most of the aqueduct done before the tantrum spiral started.
Most of the dwarves were dead or insane by the time the caravan arrived. I managed to buy a barrel of rum, and was able to save 2 dwarves, one of whom promptly went insane.
That left Urvad. He was a metalsmith, but he had been on hauling duty since he had arrived. I assigned him to miner and ordered him to finish the channel.
In between tantrums and starvation, he did it. It took forever, but eventually he managed to complete the channel. Unfortunately, he then went and stepped into magma while trying to disassemble the diversion channel and my fortress crumbled to an end.