Why The Russian Sleep Experiment Failed

like food and water sleep is essential to the human existence it's recommended that the average person get eight hours per day in order to function properly but what would happen if you decided to forego sleep entirely that's what the researchers behind the russian sleep experiment sought to explore by pushing the boundaries of human sleep deprivation in an experiment that has never been duplicated since stick with us and we'll tell you all the unbelievably shocking details of the experiment how the world found out about it and what we've learned about the effects of sleep deprivation on the human body and brain since just be warned after hearing about this experiment you might not be able to sleep for a week okay let's cut to the chase what exactly was the russian sleep experiment anyway well legend has it in soviet russia during the late 1940s a group of scientists tasked by the russian military acquired five political prisoners for the purposes of an extreme experiment the prisoners would be sealed in a gas chamber which would then be pumped with a constant supply of a newly developed airborne stimulant similar in effect to amphetamines with the goal of keeping the subjects awake for a month straight if the experiment was successful the prisoners were told they'd be given their freedom of course this was 40s area soviet russia so that was a lie aside from the whole no sleeping thing life inside the gas chamber seemed pretty sweet well at least compared to prison there were beds toilets running water a plethora of books and more dried food than you could shake a stick at sure the beds were a bit spartan as they came without any bedding but to be fair these guys weren't supposed to be doing any sleeping anyways to observe their subjects the examiners miced up the room and closely monitored their oxygen intake levels while it would have been nice to see them too this was the 40s and cctv cameras weren't exactly mainstream yet the best the docks could do was peep through a small 5-inch thick circular window they built in the gas chamber itself the first five days flew by as you might expect when five former prisoners get locked in a room with a constant air supply of mystery meth men were in high spirits having been promised their freedom and figured they'd get a chance to know each other a little bit since they were going to be spending a month in such close quarters however as time went on the experiment grew darker and darker the subjects while initially quite chatty began to grow paranoid and hostile they stopped talking to each other instead only whispering directly into the microphones and trying to act as informants for the examiners on their fellow subjects after nine days one of the subjects began to scream until his vocal cords blew out and his voice was reduced to a mere squeak then another subject started screaming it was at this point that the remaining prisoners banded together in unison and used the books in the room to paste over the porthole window so the scientists could no longer see them although the oxygen monitors were detecting heavy breathing the microphones were no longer picking up any sound which is pretty weird when you have five people in a room together so after much back and forth the scientists eventually decided to go in and check out the room with some military backup of course upon ordering the prisoners back and opening the door to the otherwise sealed gas chamber the scientists were shocked by what they saw the prisoners had covered the windows so they could secretly practice drake's twozy slide dance and surprise the scientists with a perfectly coordinated dance routine the prisoners laughed the scientists laughed everyone was happy the end okay fine that's what we wish happened the reality was more like a scene from a saw film than high school musical 2. one of the prisoners was no longer alive his body strewn across the middle of the floor the others had severely injured themselves by removing their own ribs and certain internal organs and despite these horrific injuries the prisoners refused to leave the room even going so far as to attack the soldiers with surprising strength considering their physical condition attempts to rehab the prisoners were unsuccessful as they had inexplicably developed an extreme resistance to sedatives and showed no desire to fall asleep ever again instead begging the scientists to lock them back in the room with the special gas the worst part is the prisoners no longer showed any semblance of their own personalities in fact right before the experiment was terminated it was discovered that the prisoners could no longer be considered themselves by staying awake for so long they had unleashed a dark primordial evil that lives deep within each human mind that is only kept in check by her ability to sleep crazy stuff right hold up mysterious airborne stimulants secret russian experiments primordial evil are you sure this really happened uh yeah no the russian sleep experiment is a story that's been circulating on the internet for a while now and tons of people believe it really happened to be fair it's very well written and it has a lot of details in it that are rooted in reality for example it is possible that the soviet military experimented with new drugs to keep its soldiers awake for days at a time after all the nazis gave their soldiers methamphetamines during world war ii for the same reason similarly unethical human experimentation was done by nazi germany and imperial japan in the 40s so it's not so far-fetched to believe that soviet russia could have been doing the same thing on a more personal level we all know that our brains are a bit loopy after missing just one night of sleep so it feels plausible that going without sleep for 15 days could cause some truly disturbing behavior however there was no genuine evidence that this experiment ever took place in fact the popular fact-checking website snopes has debunked the russian sleep experiment as a work of modern creepy fiction this is perhaps best proved by the fact that although it claims to be a historical scientific account from the 1940s the sleep experiment's earliest origin can be traced back to august 2009 on the popular online health forum bodybuilding.com which we can safely say isn't exactly the first place you'd expect to find a genuine soviet-era medical record of a bizarre experiment that essentially proved that paranormal evil forces exist within us also a picture that is commonly linked to the story a disturbing black and white image that was supposedly taken by one of the prisoners at the end of the experiment has been proven to be nothing more than an edited photo of a popular halloween prop plus towards the end of the story things get progressively more unbelievable and as a general rule of thumb if it sounds too good to be true it probably is that's not to say that whoever wrote the russian sleep experiment didn't get some things right though going without sleep for an extended period of time has a series of well-documented side effects including irritability delusion paranoia psychosis and reduced brain function so while the experiment didn't really happen it is feasible that subjects put in that situation could eventually turn on one another although whether they would escalate to murder self-harm and demonic possession remains up for debate while the russian sleep experiment probably didn't happen there are a number of well-documented sleep experiments that have gone almost as far albeit with less shocking results the most notable of these took place in 1964 when a 17 year old high school student by the name of randy gardner partnered with a stanford sleep researcher to try and set the world record for going without sleep lasting exactly 264 hours or 11 straight days all without the aid of any drugs for the first couple of days randy was surprisingly upbeat and functional however as time passed his cognitive abilities and senses were affected when given simple tasks like subtracting the number seven from 100 over and over again he would stop halfway through having forgotten what he was supposed to be doing upon breaking the world record randy was whisked away to a naval base where his brain waves were monitored as he finally slept randy slept for 14 hours straight the first day spending most of that time in rem sleep or what we call deep sleep waking up only because he had to go to the bathroom his neck sleep was a little shorter and less intense and the next shorter after that until eventually he was back to normal upon studying randy's medical tests researchers determined that he'd actually been sleeping throughout the entire experiment he just didn't know it you see his sleep deprivation sets in part of your brain starts cat-napping to restore itself while the rest of the body stays awake that way you can stay functional for the most part while still performing the important internal maintenance work that goes into existence while randy seemed perfectly healthy following his long sleep he did later claim to suffer from years of unbearable insomnia which is reasonable to assume it may be linked to an intense experiment people have tried to break randy's records since but unfortunately for them the guinness book of world records has stopped accepting sleep deprivation related feats due to the potential health side effects however the australian national sleep research project has the current world record listed at 18 days 21 hours and 40 minutes it's even longer than the russian sleep experiment so there you have it a sleep deprivation can have some worrying effects on your body pulling an all-nighter to write an essay or something shouldn't do you any long-term harm the more worrying symptoms are set in after several days spent a week and even then the cure is relatively simple just fall asleep while the russian sleep experiment makes for a great story and has elements of truth to it it ultimately is a work of fiction but while staying awake for 15 days probably won't cause you to succumb to demonic possession we'd highly recommend you stick to the doctor ordered recommended eight hours of shut eye a day it can only help if you like this video make sure to like and subscribe below then head on over to the brainiac youtube channel for more videos about creepy experiments [Music] you

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Keywords: Russian, Sleep deprivation, experiments, failed, unsolved, russian sleep experiment, brainiac

Id: wH4VFz9h65M

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2020