The Russian Sleep Experiment: Urban Legend About Soviet Scientists

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Russian Sleep Experiment Russian sleep experiment is an urban legend about Soviet scientists who in the late 1940s were studying effects of an unnamed gas that deprived five people of sleep for fifteen days (“The Russian Sleep Experiment”). They were locked in a room filled with the experimental gas. While the inmates could send messages via microphones, they did not receive any feedback. During the first five days everything seemed fine, yet afterward the patients started to show similar signs of depression. After nine days in the room, two of them started screaming, while others did not pay any attention to them. Suddenly, all of them went quiet, while the level of oxygen indicated that they were alive. On the fifteenth day, researchers