Part 1
Russian researchers in the late 1940s kept five
people awake for fifteen days using an experimental
gas based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed
environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake
so the gas didn't kill them, since it was toxic in high
concentrations. This was before closed circuit
cameras so they had only microphones and 5 inch
thick glass porthole sized windows into the chamber
to monitor them. The chamber was stocked with
books, cots to sleep on but no bedding, running
water and toilet, and enough dried food to last all
five for over a month.
The test subjects were political prisoners deemed
enemies of the state during World War II.
Everything was fine for the first five days; the
subjects hardly complained having been promised
(falsely) that they would be freed if they submitted
to the test and did not sleep for 30 days. Their
conversations and activities were monitored and it
was noted that they continued to talk about
increasingly traumatic incidents in their past, and the
general tone of their conversations took on a darker
aspect after the 4 day mark.
After five days they started to complain about the
circumstances and events that lead them to where
they were and started to demonstrate severe
paranoia. They stopped talking to each other and
began alternately whispering to the microphones and
one way mirrored portholes. Oddly they all seemed
to think they could win the trust of the
experimenters by turning over their comrades, the
other subjects in captivity with them. At first the
researchers suspected this was an effect of the gas
itself...
After nine days the first of them started screaming.
He ran the length of the chamber repeatedly yelling
at the top of his lungs for 3 hours straight, he
continued attempting to scream but was only able
to produce occasional squeaks. The researchers
postulated that he had physically torn his vocal
cords. The most surprising thing about this behavior
is how the other captives reacted to it... or rather
didn't react to it. They continued whispering to the
microphones until the second of the captives started
to scream. The 2 non-screaming captives took the
books apart, smeared page after page with their own
feces and pasted them calmly over the glass
portholes. The screaming promptly stopped.
So did the whispering to the microphones.
After 3 more days passed. The researchers checked
the microphones hourly to make sure they were
working, since they thought it impossible that no
sound could be coming with 5 people inside. The
oxygen consumption in the chamber indicated that
all 5 must still be alive. In fact it was the amount of
oxygen 5 people would consume at a very heavy
level of strenuous exercise. On the morning of the
14th day the researchers did something they said
they would not do to get a reaction from the
captives, they used the intercom inside the chamber,
hoping to provoke any response from the captives
they were afraid were either dead or vegetables.
