Trevor Collins

I had friends out in the sticks, and you know, you put your brights on just so you could see what's coming.

Usually you're expecting a deer, not an entire family.

Ugh, okay.

Well shake it off, because we're about to step into a classic.

I'm very interested to see what you think, Fredo.

And Task Force, this is a longer one, so we will be having a small intermission, kind of like a small break in the story, so it's not going to interfere with anything.

I want to keep the flow, but

I also want to piecemeal it a little bit as we experiment with this new format.

Okay, this one's called the Russian Sleep Experiment.

Russian researchers in the late 1940s kept five people awake for 15 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 only had microphones and 5-inch thick glass porthole-sized windows into the chamber to monitor them.

The chamber was stocked with books and cots to sleep on but no bedding, as well as running water, a 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.

The general tone of their conversations took on a darker aspect after the four-day mark.

After five days, they started to complain about the circumstances and events that led them to where they were and started to demonstrate severe paranoia.

They stopped talking to each other and began alternately whispering into the microphones and one-way mirrored portholes.