VIDEO: Scariest Experiments Ever Conducted

In order for technology, civilization, medicine and everything else to evolve, various experiments must be conducted. You may think scientists take it too far sometimes, but you shouldn’t believe everything you see online.

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I’ve always been fascinated with the Russian Sleep Experiment – mostly because it sounded so… incredible and not physically possible. I eventually found out it wasn’t real, but it was still entertaining to read about.

According to ThoughtCo, it’s a given that human beings require a certain amount of sleep on a regular basis in order for our minds and bodies to function properly. Anyone who has experienced a night (or two, or three) of insomnia knows how critical even a few hours of refreshing sleep can be to one’s health and well-being.

What would happen if we went 15 or more days without the natural “downtime” virtually every sentient creature requires? Would we fall apart mentally and physically? Would we go insane? Would we die? It’s questions like these the Russian Sleep Experiment was supposedly designed to answer, with the horrifying, catastrophic results reported above.

Now for a dose of reality gas.

While the premise that keeping a group of people awake for 15 days straight would end in a cannibalistic bloodbath makes for a gripping fictional horror story, it’s not borne out by scientific evidence. The so-called Russian Sleep Experiment never took place.

In point of fact, no human experiments of the type and duration described above have ever been conducted (none that have been made public, at any rate), though we do have the results of a 1964 high school science fair project in which the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation were monitored by a bona fide sleep researcher from Stanford University and a professor of neuropsychiatric medicine. By default, it has come to be considered one of the seminal studies in the field.

Randy Gardner, a student at Point Loma High School in San Diego, California, went without sleep for 11 days in a bid for the Guinness World Record for continuous wakefulness.

He suffered bouts of dizziness, memory loss, slurred speech, hallucinations, and even paranoia over the course of the 264-hour experiment, but at no time did he exhibit anything resembling the extreme behaviors allegedly observed by the Russian researchers.

Gardner reportedly slept for 14 hours straight when the project was over and awoke feeling rested and alert. He suffered no lasting ill effects.

While Gardner did, in fact, beat the existing benchmark for days gone without sleep, his feat was never actually listed in the Guinness Book of World Records because he missed the submission deadline.

The most recent title holder in that category (before Guinness retired it for fear of encouraging risky behavior, that is) was Maureen Weston of Cambridgeshire, England, who stayed awake for 18 days and 17 hours during a rocking chair marathon in 1977. She neither ripped open her own abdomen nor ate her own flesh. Ms. Weston holds the Guinness World Record for sleep deprivation to this day.