The Russian sleep experiement

The story recounts an experiment set in the late–1940s at a covert Soviet test facility. In a military-sanctioned scientific experiment, five political prisoners were kept in a sealed gas chamber, with an airborne ######### continually administered in order to keep the subjects awake for 30 consecutive days. The prisoners were falsely promised that they would be set free from the prison if they completed the experiment. The subjects behaved as usual during the initial days, talking to each other and whispering to the researchers through the one-way glass, though it was noted that their discussions gradually became darker in the subject matter. After nine days, one subject began screaming uncontrollably for hours while the others had no reaction to his outburst. The man screamed for so long that he tore his vocal cords, and was rendered mute as a result. When the second one started screaming, the others prevented the researchers from looking inside by pasting torn book pages and their.