The oxygen consumption in the chamber indicated that all five must still be alive. The researchers checked the microphones hourly to make sure they were working, since they thought it impossible that no sound could be coming with five people inside. So did the whispering to the microphones.Īfter three more days passed. The two non-screaming captives took the books apart, smeared page after page with their own feces and pasted them calmly over the glass portholes. They continued whispering to the microphones until the second of the captives started to scream. The most surprising thing about this behavior is how the other captives reacted to it. The researchers postulated that he had physically torn his vocal cords. He ran the length of the chamber repeatedly yelling at the top of his lungs for three hours straight, he continued attempting to scream but was only able to produce occasional squeaks. At first the researchers suspected this was an effect of the gas itself.Īfter nine days the first of them started screaming. 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. They stopped talking to each other and began alternately whispering to the microphones and one way mirrored portholes. 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 four day mark.Īfter five days they started to complain about the circumstances and events that lead them to where they were and started to demonstrate severe paranoia. The test subjects were political prisoners deemed enemies of the state during World War II.Įverything 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. 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.
This was before closed circuit cameras so they had only microphones and five inch thick glass porthole sized windows into the chamber to monitor them. 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. Russian researchers in the late 1940s kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas based stimulant.