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.

Info on cccp project