The Russian Sleep Experiment

Russian Researchers in the late 1940s kept five people awake for 15 days using an experimental gas-based stimulant.

They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so

the gas didn't kill them, since it was toxic in high concentrations. This was before closed

circuit cameras, so they had only microphones in five-inch-thick glass porthole-sized windows into the

chamber to monitor them. The chamber was stocked with books and cots to sleep on,

but not betting, as well as running water, a toilet, and enough dried food to last all five for over a

month. The test subjects were political prisoners deemed enemies of the state during World War II.

Everything was fine for the first five days. The subjects

hardly complained, having been promised falsely that they would be freed if they submitted to the

test and did not sleep for 30 days. Their conversations and activities were monitored,

and it was noted that they continued to talk about increasingly traumatic incidents in their past.

The general tone of their conversations took a darker aspect after the four-day mark.

After five days, they started to complain about the circumstances and events that led them to where they were

and started to demonstrate severe paranoia.

They stopped talking to each other and began alternately whispering into the microphones

in one-way mirrored portholes.

Oddly, they seemed to think they could win the trust of the experimenters by turning over

their comrades, the other subjects in captivity with them. At first, the researchers suspected this was an effect of the gas itself.

After nine days, the first of them started screaming.

He ran the length of the chamber repeatedly, yelling at the top of his lungs for three hours

straight, at which point he continued attempting

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