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.