Hello Internet - and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, your source for slightly
dicey speculative questioning - where we throw a great big syntaxical paradox against a brick
wall, purely to see if it will stick.
As always, I’ll be your host Jack Finch, as we poke the Pasta-verse and ask the slightly
perplexing question, Was The Russian Sleep Experiment Real?
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Also - why don’t you go ahead and share this video with a friend - perhaps they’re
having trouble sleeping, and need a dose of dulcet tones to sort them out.
Well, let’s begin.
So - supposedly, The Russian Sleep Experiment is a … well, let’s set the scene.
It’s the 1940’s, a group of Russian researchers sealed five prison inmates into an airtight
chamber.
The participants, or in this case test subjects - were political prisoners that were deemed
enemies of the state during World War II.
Over the course of 15 days, the experiment would deliver the lofty task of keeping these
prisoners awake for as long as they could.
This was well before the days of CCTV - so the experiment was conducted purely with microphones
and five inch thick porthole windows to monitor the effects.
Their test room was stocked with books, cots to sleep on, a toilet and running water - and
enough food to last all five subjects for over a month.
Sounds pretty tame right?
Wrong.
The prisoners were dosed with experimental gas that would prevent them from sleeping,
and the observers would supposedly watch them descend into madness.
For the first couple of days everything was grand - but after the fifth day their montage
sequence of plummeting sanity would begin to roll.
As the pasta goes - nine days in, the screaming began.
Two of the sleepless prisoners just started running around the chamber, yelling so hard
their vocal chords nearly broke.
The researchers later announced, “we are opening the chamber to test the microphones;
step away from the door and lie flat on the floor or you will be shot.
Compliance will earn one of you your immediate freedom.”
Their reply was a single phrase in a calm voice, “we no longer want to be freed.”
Yeah - pretty death metal stuff.
And then it gets worse and worse, abdomens are mutilated, human flesh is consumed, commanding
officers are shot and the whole thing is covered up and swept under the rug.
Job done.
It’s terrifyingly convincing - but no, it’s not real.
Or - if you want to slip on your conspiracy hat, then maybe it’s real - or something
like it has occured in the shadowy sections of scientific society, but as logical, evidence
based human beings - The Russian Sleep Experiment is nothing more than the Creepiest of Creepy
Pasta’s.
The oldest version of which can be traced back to a particular pasta posted to the Creepypasta
Wiki on August 10, 2010.
The user who originally posted the tale was named Orange Soda, but - as is commonplace
on the internet, their real name is /mysteriously/ unknown.
Now, people absolutely love debating the authenticity of The Russian Sleep Experiment - and despite
the fact that the evidence is staring them in the face, they refuse to acknowledge the
fact that this fictional piece of work was posted to an online fan forum.
Who knows?
Maybe it was real, and an entire Russian government division was tasked with a new policy to admit
liability on real experiments they’d conducted, under the guise of Creepy Pasta, in an attempt
to blur the lines of reality.
Well - no, that’s a little bit silly.
But who knows, governments have done sillier things than that.
Sleep deprivation is serious business though - and in most medical cases, it results in
a long and manic period of suffering.
In 2002, the University of California found that non-rapid eye movement sleep was essential
for turning off our neurotransmitters and giving receptors a chance to rest, regaining
sensitivity to further allow hormones like serotonin to be effective at naturally produced
levels.
It also found that REM deprivation could potentially alleviate clinical depression, because it
mimics particular serotonin inhibitors.
Does all of this sound confusing?
Yeah - because it is, and the truth of the matter is that the science of sleep is a relatively
unexplored scientific frontier.
Despite more than 60 years of intense study, we still don’t really know anything about
it.
The fact of the matter is, human beings lie down at night and turn off their brains - and
we have no idea why.
Sleep has many functions, we know that.
But that’s about it.
You want to know something that the The Russian Sleep Experiment pales in comparison to?
Fatal Familial Insomnia.
An extremely rare sleep disorder, so rare that only about 100 people on the planet are
affected with it at any one time.
It is an incurable prion disease of the brain, that doesn’t allow your brain to turn off,
ever, and leads to hallucinations, delirium and eventually death.
It is so baffling to science, that even when a medical coma is induced to replicate sleep
- the poor person afflicted with this disease still can’t switch off their brain.
It’s horrific, and I hope science can one day find a cure.
Creepy Pasta?
Yeah, that’s a walk in the park compared to this.
Well - let us know what you guys think in the comments, do you still think The Russian
Sleep Experiment is Real?
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As always, you’ve been watching Life’s Biggest Questions, I’ve been your host Jack
Finch - and remember, there’s no such thing as a stupid question.