A Russian researcher enters a room where he
expects to see his human test subjects alive
and well.
Instead, he witnesses absolute pandemonium;
he hears the screams of the damned and in
front of him is a body that has been torn
apart and eviscerated.
It looks as though the anti-Christ himself
has been in the room.
Even the survivors have had chunks of flesh
ripped from their arms and legs.
The ends of their fingers show exposed bone;
their faces are sheared of skin.
“What is this inferno of madness?!,” thinks
that researcher.
“Err, this wasn’t exactly how the experiment
was supposed to turn out,” he thinks.
“Ok, the food wasn’t great, we might have
made those beds a bit more comfortable, but
tearing each other to shreds over a bit of
lost sleep…Come on guys- that’s not very
Comrade of you.”
That nightmare scenario is straight out of
the famous Russian Sleep Experiment, if you
believe it really happened.
Let’s start from the beginning of the story
and then we’ll tell you what our team of
world-class sleuths dug up on the truth behind
this horrific experiment.
So, it’s the late 1940s and Soviet-era researchers
have created a stimulant that they believe
can keep a person awake for a long time, which
is handy when you are fighting a war.
In the second world war, the Germans had their
version of such a stimulant, which was a formidable
methamphetamine called Pervitin.
The Americans and the British would dose their
troops with the amphetamine Benzedrine, which
was similar to your garden variety speed.
The Soviets are looking to up the ante and
use their own version of a drug which won’t
lead to a total wipe out after a three-day
binge.
They’ve made something special, but they
need to test it on humans first.
It’s not hard to find test subjects since
prisoners of war were aplenty in the 1940s,
and where prisoners were concerned, bypassing
ethical considerations wasn’t such a big
deal.
They set up a test area where five subjects
will stay.
It’s a sealed environment into which the
researchers can release the stimulant in gas
form and check if the levels of oxygen are
ok.
The subjects have been given dried food, each
a bed with no bedding, running water and a
toilet.
The researchers listen to the subjects through
a microphone and there are cameras through
which they can monitor the subjects.
The only portholes to the outside are five-inch
thick glass windows, which are barely good
enough to see a shadow from.
The scene is set and the five men seem in
good spirits for the first three days.
The gas is doing its job and the researchers
are pleased about that.
One researcher tells another, “Nazi meth,
what a joke, just wait until the world sees
what we’ve cooked up.
Comrade Stalin will be most pleased.”
The subjects have agreed to try and stay awake
for 30 days, and have been falsely informed
that if they can make the 30 days they will
get their freedom.
Such a deal seems fair to them.
Things turn slightly dark around the four-day
mark when the subjects start discussing war
and the horrors they have seen.
They speak of traumas, continual nightmares,
other ghastly things they witnessed.
Day 5 and things get worse.
The men start showing signs of psychosis,
talking to themselves and to things that are
not there.
They grow paranoid of each other and start
whispering into those microphones, telling
stories about the other subjects.
The researchers of course know all about sleep
deprivation.
After five days the mind can turn on a person;
hallucinations can seem real and horrifying.
But, they wondered, was it the loss of sleep
or the gas itself.
Suspicions about the gas effects were more
solid at day nine, when one guy just starting
screaming; howling like a banshee and running
up and down the room.
He screamed so much he seemed to tear his
vocal cords, because after a few hours he
squeaked like a children’s toy.
A few more days passed and there was an eerie
silence.
The men could not be seen from the cameras.
They were alive for sure, since the oxygen
levels indicated five breathing men.
But where were there?
The researchers hadn’t wanted to interrupt
the study but they felt they had no choice,
and so said into an intercom:
“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.”
They heard one voice respond.
It said, “We no longer want to be freed.”
What was this?
Had they been getting ripped on that gas and
were now addicted?
The researchers said there’s nothing we
can do but open the door.
They opened the vents and let fresh air displace
the residual stimulant.
What the researchers heard next was the men
screaming again, pleading for more of that
damn fine gas.
“W-t-f,” thought one of the Russians,
“those guys are seriously hooked.”
They opened the doors on Day 15 and to their
surprise saw one man was dead.
You know what the scene looked like because
we laid that out for you in the intro, but
we didn’t tell you what happened shortly
after the gruesome discovery of the half-eaten
man and the wounded survivors.
On closer inspection the researchers saw that
the wounds on the men were very bad.
They looked as if they might have been self-inflicted,
too.
They had torn the skin and muscles from their
own chests, which revealed the horrific sight
of the men’s lungs.
Each man it seemed had performed this macabre
surgery on himself.
Blood vessels that were still working, had
been removed.
Other internal organs were seen laid out on
the floor like a piece of art, and the men
were going to eat those morsels.
They were dining on their own bodies, and
doing it with enthusiasm.
The researchers called for back-up, not daring
to go near those poor wretches.
They closed the door to howls of the men pleading
for that gas to come back.
When soldiers arrived to help remove the subjects,
the extrication process wasn’t exactly fun.
One of the subjects ripped a man’s throat
right out, while another soldier had his balls
removed.
Five soldiers lost their lives in total, but
some of the victims took their own lives after
the event.
Once the subjects were out, the doctors injected
enough morphine into them to sedate a Canadian
moose, but the men still fought like wild
beasts.
One subject bled out and his heart stopped
beating, but he still carried on screaming,
“Give me gas, I need gas.”
A doctor had some bones broken during that
grim spectacle.
The three others were eventually sedated and
strapped and moved to a secure facility.
The researchers talked to each other saying
things like, “That wasn’t meant to happen,
was it?”
They hated to admit it, but maybe the Nazis,
the Brits and the Americans had done the right
thing in just plying their troops with top-notch
crank.
The surgeons got to work on putting the missing
organs and bits of viscera back in one man,
but this guy almost broke through his restraints.
When the docs finally got the anesthetic into
him, the man’s heart stopped and he died
right on the spot.
The autopsy showed he had broken nine bones
and his muscles were torn all over his body.
When they tried to fix up the next man they
decided two deaths were enough and didn’t
use an anesthetic.
They patched him up nice, sewing up his ruptured
organs and laying skins graphs on him.
The head surgeon said this man should not
be alive after what he has gone through, but
he admired his own work.
A nurse commented that during the surgery
the beast had been smiling at her.
She did wonder how male carnal instincts can
remain functional during the worst of times.
Maybe with death, comes the need to create
something new, she philosophized, but quickly
shook herself out of her reverie.
The man suddenly started making a wheezing
sound, as if he wanted to say something.
The nurse, quick to catch on, handed him a
pen and held a pad below it.
The man wrote, “Keep cutting.”
Wow, she thought, what a maniac.
She was glad she had not reciprocated his
flirty smile.
As for the other maniac, he laughed like a
hyena during his bodily reconstruction.
He said he wanted that gas, the good stuff,
and when asked why, he just said he needed
it to stay awake.
The surgeon mused, if these guys weren’t
so hellbent on eating themselves they’d
make excellent night shift custodians.
Cleaners perhaps, or maybe security, but he
knew all too well they couldn’t be trusted
to wash their hands.
Then a former KGB agent had an excellent idea,
something that had amazingly escaped everyone
else’s thoughts.
Why not put these poor suckers back on that
gas.
He said, “It seems the problems all start
when they go into withdrawal.
High they’re ok, if not a bit hyper and
paranoid.
We can work with that.”
Once back on the gas they were fine and dandy.
But then something strange happened.
The EEG monitor showed crazy brain activity,
but then it just died down.
One man flatlined.
Finally, he just died.
His last boost of that junk had done him in…
or at least it seemed so.
The last guy ended up back in the study room
with the other guy seemingly dead on the bed,
but three researchers were in there, too.
Suddenly, one of the researchers shot the
commander and then shot the subject.
He then shouted out loud, “I won't be locked
in here with these things!
Not with you!
WHAT ARE YOU?
I must know!"
The subject that was shot but evidently was
not dead replied, “Have you forgotten so
easily?
We are you.
We are the madness that lurks within you all,
begging to be free at every moment in your
deepest animal mind.
We are what you hide from in your beds every
night.
We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis
when you go to the nocturnal haven where we
cannot tread.”
That was almost the end, but for good measure
the researcher put a bullet in the man’s
chest, which might have breached the Hippocratic
Oath somewhat, but hey, harsh times call for
harsh measures.
The End
So, a lot of people seem to think this all
actually happened.
Now, without much investigation one can easily
tell by reading this catastrophic flash fiction
that it’s written by someone whose grammatical
skills need improving.
Not only that, though, the story simply doesn’t
make sense at times.
Quite a few times someone dies, and then comes
back to life, and we don’t think it’s
on purpose by the storyteller.
He just forgets what he’s said, or her.
In another part, the writer says the oxygen
levels indicated the men were alive and the
researchers knew that, and then in the next
part he says the researchers were not sure
if they had all died.
But there’s more than bad writing that gives
this away.
Hmm, where do we start.
Well, we might not need to tell you that you
cannot rip out vital organs and lay them on
the floor like a bunch of textbooks.
That is pure fiction.
Those men would have died from blood loss
or shock.
Remember that they were discovered like this
and left for some time before the soldiers
came.
Ok, you say, but that was the gas working.
This was a secret experiment that went wrong.
High on that wicked drug maybe men could routinely
come back from the dead and rip out their
own organs and even do a bit of flirting when
the mood took them.
How do we know that isn’t true?
Well, there is the matter of recorded history
and plausible science.
No gas has ever been discovered that can keep
a person awake for 15 days, never mind turn
a person into a self-loathing zombie.
There is no history of the experiment anywhere
but on a website that is known for its scary,
fictional- read again- fictional tales.
It would be astounding if one author alone,
writing badly from his or her bedroom, had
access to more secret information than the
CIA and the British Secret Services.
As we said in the story, and we embellished
this part ourselves, many soldiers on all
sides of the war broke bad so they could stay
awake longer.
The officers were handing out that stuff like
candy, but not even the most dedicated ice
fiend could stay awake for 15 days, and those
badly buzzed soldiers would have likely only
done 24 to possibly 36 hours awake.
The Pentagon has even done studies on this,
and even if men are forced to stay awake for
more than 48 hours they will become pretty
slow and pretty much useless as soldiers.
They’ll make tons of mistakes, which is
not ideal in war when you have to be constantly
alert.
Sure, the speed helped the Germans with their
Blitzkrieg attacks, but the drugs had to be
taken with some precautions.
With this in mind, the Russians would not
have even tried this experiment.
There is something called Morvan's Syndrome
that can cause severe delirium and very bad
insomnia, and sufferers can go into a dreamlike
state.
We say dreamlike, because even if they don’t
sleep, they will have micro-sleeps.
Plus, no one with this disease has ever started
eating themselves.
Sure, perhaps a noxious agent spayed into
a room full of guys can kill someone, but
It’s very unlikely it could turn them into
gas-addicted zombies.
There’s nothing in scientific literature
that supports anything in this experiment.
There’s another thing that can cause massive
sleep loss and that’s called Fatal Familial
Insomnia.
But that is passed down through genes, and
isn’t caused by environmental agents.
And again, it doesn’t and will never make
someone want to rip their own organs out and
eat them.
There’s just nothing that exists in this
world that aligns with the story, and if it
did, we would expect it to have appeared in
medical journals before it became an Internet
meme.
Then again, many of you have been asking in
the comments how we manage to put out so many
episodes per day.
Maybe the entire staff of The Infographics
Show is a crank-addicted zombie with an undying
lust for human flesh after all.
Of course that’s preposterous… but isn’t
that exactly what a team of crank-addicted
zombies with an undying lust for human flesh
would want you to think…?
The Russian Sleep Experiment isn’t a bad
story, but could have been better.
Sleep deprivation is actually a torture that
has been used by militaries, and that itself
can drive a person half-crazy.
Still, in this story when you add the addictive
gas and the organ rug and the reanimation
it just isn’t believable.
But if you like scary stories, then we suggest
you watch some of these insanely creepy shows,
“Do These Horrifying Internet Stories Scare
You - TRY NOT TO BE SCARED CHALLENGE” and
“Most Terrifying Ghost Stories.”
