You can’t sleep. For the second night in a
row, you’re tossing and turning until you finally give up and get out of bed. You don’t
know why your sleep cycle is so disrupted, but you were exhausted today and you know
tomorrow is going to be even worse as sleep deprivation affects your mind. But you can
tell you’re not getting to sleep any time soon, so you figure you might as well spend some time
on the internet. Maybe it can tell you a little more about why you can’t sleep. A quick google of
sleep deprivation shows you there are many causes, including insomnia, sleep apnea, and stress.
They suggest some cures, but you’ve tried most of them and they aren’t working. You wonder
- how long can a person go without sleep? Well, it turns out many people
have tried to answer just that. Sleep experiments are more common than you
thought, with scientists researching the long-term effects of no sleep on people
and animals. Some of them have shocking and disturbing results - including one that makes
you even more sure you’re not going to sleep now. But you can’t stop reading as you find stories
of the most shocking sleep experiments ever. #10. You’re not getting paid for sleep
deprivation, but that wasn’t the case for the lucky contestants on Awake: The Million
Dollar Game. This Netflix game show tested the effects of twenty-four hours of sleep deprivation
on contestants, by making them spend an entire day in a room counting endless piles of coins without
sleeping. When the full day was over, they were quizzed on how much they had counted, with the
contestants who counted the least and were the least accurate being eliminated. The remaining
contestants then participated in games of wits and dexterity while being exhausted, and it was
obvious how much the lack of sleep was getting to them! Movements that should have been second
nature resulted in them sliding all over the place. The last contestant standing had to guess
the exact sum they had counted, and had the chance of winning a million dollars if they were close
enough. With only a day of sleep deprivation, no one suffered any ill effects - but none of the
contestants seemed ready to push it any further. Sleep deprivation in game shows is
nothing new, but what happens when you fill an entire house with people
who haven’t slept for a week straight? #9. Over in the United Kingdom, another TV
producer decided to take a televised sleep experiment much further. Shattered took the format
of popular shows like Big Brother - isolating strangers in a house together - and added the
element of sleep deprivation by keeping people awake for a full week while they were tested in
challenges. The contestants were competing for a prize pot of 100,000 pounds, but there was a nasty
wrinkle - any time one of the contestants closed their eyes for more than ten seconds, the pot lost
1,000 pounds. That’s an expensive moment of rest! They faced memory tests and other mental games, as
well as being tempted to fall asleep by relaxing challenges like getting a massage, counting sheep,
and watching paint dry. Six were eliminated, one quit, and ultimately Clare Southern won
the show - but the prize was down to 97,000 pounds due to all the money lost. Although
many people said the show was dangerous, none of the contestants reported
any health issues after the game. Luckily the game show contestants were found to
have no lasting effects, but our next lab rat’s brain would be so altered that he would live the
rest of his life with a major identity crisis… #8. Radio presenter Peter Tripp put on one of the
most famous sleep deprivation experiments ever for a children’s charity. The host of a popular music
countdown show, he announced that he would stay awake and broadcast his radio show for 201 hours
straight - over eight days! On the first two days, he had a lot of energy and seemed to be having
fun. But on day three, things started getting odd. He was monitored by scientists and doctors,
and they quickly started noticing weird behavior. At one point, he jumped up from his desk because
he believed it was on fire - but no one else could see so much as a wisp of smoke. Later, he ripped
off his shoes in a panic because he was convinced they were full of spiders. Again, not a single
spider was found. Observers speculated that he was hallucinating when his mind was supposed to
be in its dream state. During the last three days, he was given drugs to help him stay
awake. When he concluded his experiment, raising a large sum for charity, he immediately
slept for thirteen hours straight. But his friends and family say he was never the same,
even believing he wasn’t the real Peter Tripp. But this was far from the most extreme
attempt to push the limits of human endurance. #7. Sleep deprivation experiments done on
humans abide by strict ethical standards, because scientists want to make sure their
charges don’t suffer ill effects - or sue them for everything they’re worth and
turn their lab into a family restaurant. But scientists experimenting on animals don’t have
the same standards, and experiments on rats showed that long-term sleep deprivation can have deadly
effects. Humans have a fail-safe in that we’re able to microsleep, getting seconds of sleep
at a time while we struggle to stay awake. Rats’ more primitive brains don’t have that
ability, and a pair of experiments in 1983 and 1995 that kept rats from falling
asleep through constant stimulation showed that their brains could only microsleep
in one tiny part. The sleep-addled rodents all invariably died anywhere from eleven to thirty-two
days after the experiment began. This proved that while the brain can survive sleep deprivation
longer than most people will try, it has a limit. But that’s nothing compared to what another
scientist did with animal experimentation. #6. The year was 1984, and Russian doctor
Maria Manaceina wanted to determine what was more important to survival - sleep, or food. She
decided to test the theory by taking four puppies, making sure they were well fed, but keeping
them from sleeping by constantly handling them and taking them for walks. The results
were disturbing. Within four days, the first puppy was dead, and the other four soon followed.
Manaceina wasn’t sure if this was a fluke, so she immediately gathered six more puppies and repeated
her experiment. The results were the same, with all six of her puppy subjects meeting their
end soon. No one is sure if the brains of young animals are more vulnerable to sleep deprivation
because their brains are still developing, but the experiment proved Manaceina’s theory that sleep is
critical to the brain and animals can’t function without it. But she’s definitely not winning any
awards from the kennel club for her research. Soon though, people started thinking about
trying the same experiment on humans... #5. Only a year after Maria Manaceina’s
experiment, the first similar experiment was conducted on humans at the University of
Iowa. Three men volunteered, with the plan being for them to stay awake for ninety hours straight
while being observed by scientists. That’s almost four days, and during the first day all seemed
normal. The men seemed groggy, a bit confused, but could function and answer questions. After
the second day, things started to get disturbing. They reported hallucinations in the room, with
one insisting that there was a greasy layer of molecular particles covering the floor. They
stumbled around, trying to avoid the phantom grease on the floor. This was the first controlled
study, and scientists watched to make sure no one hurt themselves or others before it was over.
When the 90 hours were up, the men were allowed to sleep - but the scientists wanted to see just how
soundly they would sleep after that experience. They hit all three men with an electric shock,
but none of them woke up. Their body’s need to sleep overruled the pain. Sleeping so deeply you
can stand an electric shock is starting to sound good right now. But this was far from the longest
stretch people stayed awake for an experiment. Governments would soon get involved in sleep
deprivation, for very sinister purposes… #4. Most sleep deprivation experiments are
designed to test the endurance of the human body for research. But what if the intention
wasn’t to see how much people could endure while staying healthy, but to break them down
so they’d do whatever you wanted? That’s what the CIA was found to be doing in 2005, when they
admitted to sleep deprivation as a form of torture when interrogating high-level detainees. Common
in the early 2000s as the US attempted to get information from captured militants, this method
of torture involved keeping inmates from sleeping by constantly moving them around, making them
change cells, or waiting for them to fall asleep and then waking them up immediately with a
start. The inmates became increasingly disoriented and fatigued, and more likely to slip up in
interrogations and give away vital information. The maximum length that this torture was carried
out? Over 180 hours, more than a week without sleep! Where did the US learn this tactic? The
Soviets had been carrying it out for decades, and US spies were trained in how to resist
it - and use it for their own purposes. Some people aren’t content experimenting
with animals or other humans. Some researchers find that the only
suitable test subject is themselves… #3. There are limits to organized
sleep deprivation experiments, but how far will people push themselves in search
of testing the limits? In 1938, two researchers, Nathaniel Kleitman and Bruce Richardson,
decided to turn themselves into human guinea pigs by removing themselves from the natural sleep
cycle. They moved into Kentucky’s Mammoth Caves, a massive network of underground caverns, for
a full thirty-two days. No access to the sun, no sense of time, and no way to regulate their
sleep cycle meant that their bodies would have to adapt quickly or they might go mad. While
their results were inconclusive, they inspired sleep researcher Jurgen Aschoff to repeat the
experiment two decades later in a more controlled environment. He studied the body temperatures of
his subjects and determined that humans have a natural circadian rhythm that doesn’t depend
upon tracking the movement of the sun and natural light. But what if someone was inspired
by this experiment and decided to take it further? Our next sleep deprivation experiment
would change a man so profoundly, he would no longer operate on
the same time as the rest of us… #2. It was 1962, in the height of the Cold
War, and the threat of nuclear war was enough to make getting away from it all seem pretty
appealing. But for French geologist Michel Siffre, he was about to take social distancing
further than anyone ever had voluntarily. He decided to isolate himself in a frozen
cave beneath a glacier for two whole months, to figure out the effects of long-term solitary
confinement on the human mind and the sleep cycle. Like the Mammoth Caves experiment, Siffre
would be completely cut off from the sun and his body would have no way to tell time. He
would have no contact with another human besides a research assistant who would be notified
of Siffre’s sleep schedule to keep track. Siffre completed his experiment and managed
to maintain a regular sleep schedule, but when he was debriefed after he emerged,
scientists discovered something very strange. Siffre no longer had a normal perception of
time. As part of the questions, he was asked to count to 120, one number per second. It took a
whole five minutes for him to complete the count. Siffre’s experiment went on so long he no
longer ran on the same clock as everyone else, but that’s nothing compared
to what one young man did in an attempt to break the world
record for sleep deprivation. #1. The year was 1964, and a high school student
named Randy Gardner wanted to see just how far he could push the limits of human endurance. He
wanted to break the record for the longest anyone had ever stayed awake. Wanting to make sure his
feat was well-documented for the history books, Gardner assembled a team of professionals
to monitor his run to the record, including a Stanford sleep researcher. As the days
wore on, Randy seemed to be weathering the sleep deprivation better than most. But as one day
turned into another, he started becoming moody and paranoid. He reported hallucinations, and
found it hard to concentrate and remember things. One thing he didn’t lose? His energy, as on day
ten he beat one of the researchers in a game of ping-pong. By the time the experiment ended at
a whopping eleven days and twenty-four minutes, Randy was still alert enough to hold a press
conference and was found to be in good health. To no one’s surprise, he fell asleep very quickly and
slept the longest he had ever slept in his life, followed by another marathon session the next
night. Randy Gardner was young, healthy, fully rested and recovered - and the documented record
holder for the longest anyone has stayed awake. You’re feeling pretty tired now, and it
might be time to try to fall asleep again. But you keep on hearing rumors about an even
crazier sleep experiment conducted halfway around the world. What is this mysterious “Russian
Sleep Experiment”, and is it fact or fiction? To find out, why not watch “Russian Sleep Experiment
- EXPLAINED”, or check out this video instead.
