Describe the story of "The Russian Sleep Experiment".
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Answer:
The story recounts an experiment set in the late–1940s Soviet test facility. In a military-sanctioned scientific experiment, five political prisoners were kept in a sealed gas chamber, with an airborne stimulant continually administered in order to keep the subjects awake for 30 consecutive days. The prisoners were falsely promised that they would be set free from the prison if they completed the experiment.
The subjects behaved as usual during the initial days, talking to each other and whispering to the researchers through the one-way glass, though it was noted that their discussions gradually became darker in the subject matter. After nine days, one subject began screaming uncontrollably for hours while the others had no reaction to his outburst. The man screamed for so long that he tore his vocal cords. The man didn’t know why he was screaming. He was eventually paralyzed. When the second one started screaming, the others prevented the researchers from looking inside by pasting torn book pages and their own feces on the porthole windows. A few days passed without the researchers being able to look inside, during which the chamber was completely silent. The researchers used the intercom to test if the subjects were still alive, and got a short response of a subject expressing compliance.
On the 15th day, the researchers decided to turn off the stimulating gas and reopen the chamber. The subjects did not want the gas to turn off, for fear they would fall asleep. Upon looking inside, they discovered that the four surviving subjects had performed lethal and severe mutilation and disembowelment on themselves during the past days, including tearing off flesh and muscles, removing multiple abdominal internal organs, practicing self-cannibalism, and allowing 10 cm (4 inches) of blood and water to accumulate on the floor by jamming pieces of flesh from the first subject into the drain, who was found dead on the floor as soon as the chamber was opened. The subjects also violently refuse to leave the chamber and begged the scientists to continue administering the stimulant, murdering one soldier and severely injuring another that attempted to remove them. After eventually being removed from the chamber, all subjects were shown to exhibit extreme strength, unprecedented resistance to drugs and sedatives, the ability to remain alive despite lethal injuries, and a desperate desire to stay awake and be given the stimulant. It was also found that if any one of the subjects fell asleep, they would die.
After being somewhat treated for their severe injuries, the surviving three subjects were prepared to return to the gas chamber with the stimulant by the orders of the military officials (though against the will of the researchers), with EKG monitors showing short recurring moments of brain death. Before the chamber was sealed, one of the subjects fell asleep and died, and the only subject that could speak screamed to be immediately sealed in the chamber. The military commander ordered for three other researchers to be closed inside the chamber alongside the two remaining subjects. One researcher immediately drew his gun and killed the commander and the mute subject by shooting both of them in the head, causing the other person to flee the room. With only one surviving subject, the terrified researcher explained that he would not allow himself to be locked in a room with monsters that could no longer be called people. He desperately asked what the subject was, to which the subject smiled and identified himself and the other fallen subjects as an inherent evil inside the human mind that is kept in check by the act of sleeping. After a brief pause, the researcher shot the prisoner in the heart, and with his dying breath on the floor, the subject muttered his final words; "So...nearly...free..
Answer:
What would happen if someone were to go without sleep for nearly 30 days? That’s what a group of researchers set to find out in 1940s Soviet. In this scientific experiment sanctioned by the military, a group of researchers took five political prisoners and locked them for 15 days in a sealed gas chamber. The subjects were continually administered an airborne stimulant for keeping them awake for at least 30 days. They were told that they’d be set free if they could remain awake for 30 days.
For the first few days, everything seemed normal. The subjects continued to talk to each other as well as a whisper to the researchers who kept monitoring them from outside the chamber. The conversations were electronically monitored while their behavior was monitored with the help of secret two-way mirrors.
It was from the fifth day that things began to change. The prisoners started to show signs of stress and paranoia. They stopped talking to one another and only whispered into the microphone sometimes. From the ninth day, things became worse. Two of the inmates started to run around the chamber and scream so hard that their vocal cords could break.
The screaming, however, stopped suddenly, and then there was eerie silence. The researchers feared the worst and announced their decision to open the chamber. But they heard a voice from inside that said they no longer wanted to be free.
On the fifteenth day, the chamber was opened, but the results were horrific. One of the prisoners was dead. All of them were severely mutilated, with their flesh torn off and abdomens ripped open. They also seemed to have eaten their own flesh.
They refused to leave the chamber and fought back with a force and aggression they did not have before being put in the chamber. They were almost superhuman in their power and even tore off their muscles and bones during the struggle to resist being removed from the chamber and anesthetized. When they were asked why they had done that to themselves, each of them gave the same response: “I must remain awake.”