At the end of 1963 in San Diego (USA), three teenagers - Randy Garndner, Bruce McCallister and Joe Marciano - decided to break the record for the longest stay awake in the world. At that time, a record of 260 hours of wakefulness was recorded by a DJ from Honolulu.
The three young people explained the need for the experiment by saying that they came up with this project simply because they wanted to do something scientific.
“First we wanted to explore how insomnia affects paranormal abilities. “Then we realized we couldn’t do it, so we decided to find out how lack of sleep affects cognitive ability and performance on the basketball court,” said Bruce McAllister.
Randy Garndner became the guinea pig on whom the effects of prolonged insomnia were tested. He did not sleep for 264 hours, or more precisely – 11 days and 25 minutes.
- We were idiots. I stayed up too, keeping an eye on Randy. And after three sleepless nights, I woke up writing notes right on the wall,” says Bruce.
Randy and Bruce enlisted their friend Joe Marciano in the experiment, and then they were joined by sleep researcher William Dement from Stanford University. He read about the experiment from the newspaper and decided to help the schoolchildren, besides, Randy's parents were concerned about their son's condition and were afraid that he might die from lack of sleep. Dement admits that “he was the only person who was doing sleep research at that time.”
When the man arrived in San Diego for the experiment, he saw that Randy was optimistic. However, the more the guy did not sleep, the more deviations were noticed - for example, in tastes and smells. McAllister recalls that when Randy was tested on his ability to sense tastes, the guy said: “Don’t make me smell this, I can’t stand the smell.” Bruce himself claims that their experiment was not affected by chemicals - Randy sometimes drank cola, but did not use psychostimulants.
Randy's athletic skills also improved, although this could be attributed to the fact that he deliberately spent time on the basketball court in order to stay awake. William Dement and Randy's friends forced the guy to play basketball and bowling - "if he closed his eyes, he would immediately fall asleep."
The longer the experiment continued, the more press attention it received. The event became the third most important in the American press - after the assassination of President Kennedy and the arrival of The Beatles. According to Bruce McAllister, most often the experiment was treated as a prank, but the schoolchildren themselves were serious.
The experiment ended on January 8, 1964: 17-year-old Randy Gardner spent 11 days and 25 minutes without sleep. In theory, the young man needed to get some sleep, but he was immediately sent to a naval hospital to study his brain function.
“He slept for 14 hours, which is not surprising, and woke up because he wanted to go to the toilet. During the first night, his REM sleep lasted a very long time. Then it gradually began to decrease and became normal,” McAllister said.
“And then he got up and went to school.” It was amazing,” added William Dement.
The results of the experiment were studied by the Arizona Science Center. Scientists concluded that Randy's brain was constantly drifting in and out of sleep - some parts of the brain were asleep, others were awake.
“He was far from the first person who did not sleep for more than one night. Apparently, the human brain, in the process of evolution, has learned to cope with this by giving certain areas a rest. This explains why nothing bad happened to him,” McAllister explained.
Later, many other people tried to break this record, but the Guinness Book of Records refused to register these attempts, considering such experiments to be dangerous to health.
After the experiment was completed, Randy, Bruce and Joe held a press conference. Randy, who had not slept for 11 days, even philosophized:
- This is the victory of the spirit over the body.
However, the results of the experiment had a negative effect to some extent: Randy later admitted that he had suffered from insomnia for several years.
42-year-old Englishman Tony Wright from the city of Penzance in the south of Great Britain tried to set a wakefulness record - he did not sleep for 266 hours (more than 11 days in a row) from May 14 to 25, reports the BBC. But Wright's record will not be included in the Guinness Book of Records due to the fact that they considered that the experience was unsafe for his health.
The previous record for staying awake was set in 1964 by a student from San Diego, USA, Randy Gardner, who also did not sleep for 11 days in a row and “lasted” without sleep for 264 hours. Another attempt to surpass Gerber's record was made several years ago by a resident of Finland, Toimi Soini, who, according to some data, managed to stay awake for 276 hours in a row. However, representatives of the Guinness Book of Records also refused to register his achievement.
Wright has already tried to live the “sleepless life”: in 1988, during an experiment at Manchester Metropolitan University, he stayed awake for five days, recalls ThisinLondon. The current test, according to him, in addition to setting a record, also had a specific goal: to find out the effect of sleep on individual parts of the body, in particular on physical strength, coordination, and so on. “I’m making this entry on purpose to show that the brain does not become less efficient from fatigue,” he wrote in his diary shortly before falling asleep.
For 11 days, Wright, a gardener and father of three children, was closely monitored using CCTV and web cameras while he was awake. According to the Englishman, during the entire experiment he put himself on a “stone age diet”: he ate only raw vegetables, fruits and nuts, and drank a lot of tea. “This kind of food makes it much easier to switch the brain from one hemisphere to the other,” he says. And therefore, if humanity is able to create a similar diet, then people will have the opportunity to “turn off” the tired hemisphere and continue to work with the help of one. And therefore, in general, sleep less and get more done.
Also, to stay awake, Wright played a lot of billiards.
Scientists are skeptical about Wright's experiments and conclusions. Dr Chris Idzikowski, from the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, told the BBC that such a diet "won't work". “Dolphins’ brains are really designed in such a way that they are able to “fall asleep” with one half of it and think with the other. But the human brain is structured differently,” he emphasizes.
“I feel quite normal. It was, of course, difficult, but I’m glad that I succeeded in my plans,” said the Englishman after the end of the experiment. According to ITV, he even plans to conduct another experiment of this kind and try to survive without sleep for 12 days.
A resident of the Pskov region conducted an experiment, trying to stay awake as much as possible. The blogger lasted 63 hours. She described her feelings in the Telegram channel. In two weeks, she says, she intends to surpass her own achievement. However, doctors strongly recommended that she abstain. After all, after five to seven days of wakefulness, almost all living beings die.
The first day without sleep
The idea to conduct an experiment came to a blogger with the nickname garmr in March. Then the administrator of the BLESS Telegram channel remembered the record for the duration of wakefulness.
“As always, I didn’t sleep all night and now I’m wondering, why isn’t anyone trying to break the record of that dude who lasted 11 days without sleep? Although, of course, what am I saying, people are trying, but why doesn’t anyone want to run a channel online? Let's say, write a report to people every half hour or hour. Damn, I’ll try to start this marathon in the summer,” he wrote.
After that, one of the subscribers experimented on himself and lasted 43 hours. Garmr decided to outdo him and stay awake even longer. After 12 hours, she began to describe her feelings in her Telegram channel “Untitled for now.”
She filled her waking hours with stories about the life of residents of the Pskov region, their traditions and way of life, and watching films.
After 14 hours, a message about the experiment appeared in BLESS and many new subscribers appeared in the blogger’s channel. While passing the time, the girl told them stories from village life. Another hour later, around three in the morning, the young lady took a walk on the street, and then began telling stories again, noting that she felt very cheerful. Later the first problems appeared.
After 20 hours, the blogger wrote that she “got a second wind” and decided to eat. And then she promised to write “something about our dog. Or about the neighbors. Or the reason why I never have money." But instead, I was distracted by looking at old photos from “drinking parties” and just black and white photos.
After 22 hours, garmr's perception of rumors was dulled. And an hour later she finally ate and wrote that she did not remember what she had been doing for the last three hours.
Second day without sleep
The girl continued telling stories and posting stills from films, took a walk, cleaned the room and decided to watch a movie again.
Then she walked again, drank tea and thought about what to do next. At the 34th hour, she did fall into a “micro-sleep,” but since it lasted only a few seconds, she did not stop the experiment. But after an hour, the girl experienced, in her words, incredible vigor, although the burning sensation in her eyes reappeared. And also “bruises and bags on half of the face.” Another night came and boredom became the main problem. Between six and seven in the morning she had a second “micro-sleep”. It became difficult for her to read texts, including her own, they stuck together “into one mess.”
Third day
After 51 hours without sleep, garmr stopped listening to music. All the melodies began to seem soothing to her. A little later, the young lady wrote about the slowdown in mental activity. Her notes became short.
However, then she pulled herself together and again began to tell stories from the lives of her neighbors. Then came a blurring of the sense of time.
Garmr's emotions became very heightened. Talking about the events of her childhood life, she herself, according to her, did not expect that she would react so sharply to memories.
After 62 hours, auditory hallucinations began.
Photo source: TV channel “360” 
The blogger couldn’t stand it and fell asleep, the experiment ended. However, in two weeks the girl intends to repeat it and last longer.
“Lucky to be alive”
The head of the Lomonosov Moscow State University Center for Sleep Medicine, Alexander Kalinkin, explained to “360” that previously similar experiments were carried out on animals. During them, it turned out that if you don’t sleep for about five to seven days, then any living creature, including a person, dies and “the girl was lucky that she remained alive.”
“The girl was lucky that she didn’t make it to this point because the threat of death is very high. Although the Guinness Book of Records recorded a case where a person did not sleep for 11 days, there were still episodes of microsleep. And so, many people have conducted similar experiments,” the doctor said.
But, according to the expert, a much greater danger for the body is chronic lack of sleep, even for a short period of time. If a person does not get at least an hour of sleep from his norm for several days, then not only his physiological indicators change, but also the activity of his genome. And this is one of the main reasons for the accelerated development of cardiovascular, oncological, endocrine diseases and immune disorders.
“Lack of sleep itself, even if it is small but chronic, leads to serious consequences. But if a person experiments on himself and does not sleep for days, this can lead to his death,” Kalinkin clarified.
At the same time, the consequences of lack of sleep are usually delayed and appear after several years. Living beings sleep not only because they rest. During sleep, processes that are very important from a health point of view occur, restoring mental and somatic functions and the functioning of internal organs. And if you deprive the body of sleep, then the work of both internal organs and the brain is correspondingly disrupted.
Guinness Record
In 2007, 42-year-old American Tony Wright set a world record for the longest duration of wakefulness. He lasted just over 11 days - 266 hours. According to Kalinkin, the record holder miraculously escaped death.
“One of the main consequences of depriving the body of sleep is a sharp breakdown of the immune system. Interaction with the environment is disrupted. No heart attacks or strokes occur, and oncological processes do not have time to develop. But the decline in immunity leads to the fact that microorganisms enter the body as if through an open gate and the person literally dies from intoxication,” he said.
In 2015, a 17-year-old gamer from Bashkiria died after 22 nights of playing Dota. As it turned out, the cause of his death was a blood clot stuck in the pulmonary artery. The young man suffered a leg injury, but instead of seeing doctors, he spent nights in front of the computer. At one point he got up from his chair, lost consciousness and died. In January of the same year, a 32-year-old Taiwanese man died after three days of continuous shooting games. The cause of death was given as heart failure due to fatigue.
“The period that a person can stay awake is individual for everyone. But if a person not only does not sleep, but also experiences emotional stress, as, for example, in a game, then naturally this further aggravates the functioning of the body’s systems. The risk here, too, is individual for everyone. For some it may be two days, but for others this period can be fatal,” he emphasized.
Kalinkin strongly did not recommend repeating the experiment either to the resident of the Pskov region or to anyone who learned about it. Instead, the doctor said, it is better to read literature and articles on this topic. With their help, both the girl herself and any other person will understand how this could end for them.
Tony Wright is a Briton from the English county of Cornwall, at the time of his record he was 42 years old. In 2007, he decided to break the Guinness Book of Records record for continuous wakefulness, set in 1964 by American Randy Gardner. So, Randy managed to stay awake for 264 hours.
Tony Wright was very optimistic - after eleven long days and nights of wakefulness, he added a couple of hours to Gardner's record and stretched out on his bed with a sense of accomplishment.
Alas, representatives of the Guinness Book greatly disappointed him - it turns out that such experiments on the human body were considered harmful, and the famous Guinness Book refused to register them in the future. Thus, Tony Wright, who lay awake for 11 days and nights, alas, never received the coveted certificate.
However, Tony himself, as well as everyone who helped him, know that, although not recorded, he still set a record - 266 hours without sleep.
To fall asleep, Tony, who was under surveillance all this time, drank a lot of tea, played billiards, and also wrote on his Internet blog.
A diet of raw foods also helped him, and the most difficult thing for Tony was not the lack of sleep, but the need to stay in the same room all the time.
However, when the clock ticked the cherished 266 hours, he was still cheerful and looked quite happy.
And then Tony Wright learned two bad news at once - in addition to the refusal from the Guinness Book, he was quite annoyed by rumors about a certain person named Toimi Soini from Finland (Hamina, Finland), who had already broken the existing Guinness record once. So, the cheerful Finn managed to last 276 hours without sleep, which quite seriously, by as much as 10 hours, beats Tony’s own record.
Best of the day
The news about the Finnish record holder turned out to be almost a bigger blow for Tony than the inability to receive a certificate. The surprising thing was that this information was not particularly publicized anywhere, and, going to his record, Tony did not know at all about such a formidable opponent from Finland.
Regardless, 266 hours without sleep is a powerful result. Tony said then that after 70 hours without sleep, his eyes simply refused to see, and he had to put on glasses to use the computer.
In general, it was not for nothing that the Guinness Book refused to register records for continuous wakefulness - no matter what the “sleepless” record holders say, such experiments are pretty bad for your health. Depression, dizziness, hallucinations, irritability, nausea and even memory loss are just some of the negative effects that lie in wait for record hunters.
In 2007, 42-year-old Englishman Tony Wright from Penzance (UK) tried to set a wakefulness record - he did not sleep for 266 hours (more than 11 days in a row), from May 14 to 25. But Wright’s record was not included in the Guinness Book of Records: due to harm to health, this category had by that time been excluded from the collection by the organizers. The previous wakefulness record was officially registered by 17-year-old Randy Gardner from San Diego (California) back in 1963. He also did not sleep for 11 days in a row, but two hours less - 264 hours.
What happened to Randy while he was awake? According to him, at first he felt very tired and irritable. From the fifth day he developed syndromes that are typical of dementia. He then began to experience hallucinations and paranoia. He believed that the road sign was a person, and also believed that the radio station presenter wanted to kill him. Then Randy’s motor functions began to decline, finger tremors appeared, his speech became slurred, the student could not complete the simplest mathematical problems, and he simply forgot what the task actually was. Randy finally fell asleep, slept for 14 hours, stayed awake for another day, then fell asleep for another 8 hours, and the normal sleep cycle continued uninterrupted after that.
DO WITHOUT FOOD FOR 44 DAYS, WITHOUT WATER - 7 DAYS...
Famous illusionist David Blaine spent 44 days in a transparent plastic box hanging from the Tower of London in 2003 in London. He did not eat, but only drank water, without any added nutrients. During the stunt, Blaine lost almost a third of his weight, dropping from 96 to 70.5 kg. It took him five days to regain his strength under the supervision of doctors, for whom his stunt became a valuable medical experiment.
The theory was that death from starvation could occur when the body was deprived of fat, protein and carbohydrates, says Professor Jeremy Powell-Tuck, one of the UK's leading nutritionists. - But Blaine's experiment showed that this is not so. For the breakdown and absorption of fats in the human body, as a rule, there is not a sufficient amount of water-soluble vitamins, such as B1 and B2. Therefore, fats accumulate in excess. Moreover, in such excess that a person can die of hunger, but at the same time remain, figuratively speaking, “with fat.”
According to experts, with large excess fats a person can go without food for 70 days.
The longest period of human fasting was recorded in 1981. Irishman Kieran Doherty, who decided to set a record, lasted 73 days without food, but soon died.
If starving people receive water and vitamins, they can survive for almost a year without food.
This diet was fashionable 30 years ago, recalls Professor Powell-Tuck.
With vitamins, but without water, survival time decreases sharply - from several days to a week.
It depends on the rate of water loss, explains Michael Soka, a research scientist at the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Massachusetts. - Without water, the blood volume in your body drops, and so does your blood pressure. The blood becomes thick and viscous, making it more difficult for the heart to pump it throughout the body, so the heart rate increases. Even in a cool environment, a person's life without water will not last more than a week.
David Blaine didn't breathe or eat, but he survived!
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AND WITHOUT AIR - 17 MINUTES
If you have tried to hold your breath while inhaling or exhaling, you are probably convinced that you can do without air for two or three minutes at best. True, this time can be increased if, before holding your breath, you breathe deeply and often, especially with pure oxygen.
The same American magician David Blaine, who did not eat for 44 days, broke the world record for holding his breath in May 2008. The illusionist spent 17 minutes 4 seconds underwater without breathing. The previous record of 16 minutes 32 seconds was set earlier that year in Switzerland by Peter Kolat. New record holder Blaine admitted his heart beat was irregular at the end of the stunt. Therefore, he was unable to stay underwater for 23 minutes, as he had originally planned.
And if you believe the report of the English travel doctor Gorer Geoffrey, then some divers from the Wolf tribe in Senegal are able to stay under water for up to half an hour. They are even called water people.
REMEMBER 67,890 DIGITS
Remembering an 11-digit phone number is quite difficult for most of us. But 24-year-old Chinese graduate student Lu Chao, in almost a day - 24 hours and 4 minutes - accurately named the number pi from memory to the 67,890th decimal place. And with this achievement he entered the Guinness Book of Records.
Lü Chao recited all the digits of pi for 24 hours.
Scientist Thomas Landauer from Bell Laboratory (USA) measured the functional capacity of human memory. And he found out that the speed of memorization in a person under any circumstances and in any state is two bits per second. Over the course of a lifetime, a person is able to remember from one to two gigabytes of information (giga - 10 to the 9th power), which significantly exceeds the memory of a conventional computer.
Experts have calculated: someone who decides to train their memory and starts memorizing numbers at age 20, spending 12 hours a day on it, will be able to remember about 8,760,000 numbers by their 70th birthday. That is, he will break Lü Chao’s record by more than 100 times.
WITHSTAND A MAXIMUM ACCELERATION OF 48 g
While riding a roller coaster, many of us begin to experience nausea, dizziness, and squeezing of the temples. And these are just “childish” overloads of up to 5g (g is the acceleration of free fall). What is g? All objects on our planet are attracted towards the center of the Earth with an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second. This means that in the first second the falling object gains a speed of 9.8 meters per second and then accelerates by the same amount each subsequent second. We experience this as gravity, which is why an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second is referred to as one unit of gravity, or 1 g.
The fastest man on the planet is John Stapp.
Perhaps the strongest accelerations we experience are when driving in cars. A normal car under emergency braking will cause you to experience about 1g of acceleration directed forward relative to you. Even a powerful car, in first gear and with the pedal to the floor, rarely reaches 0.7g acceleration. Overloads on special centrifuges for pilot training can reach up to 15g. What can you say about a person who had to endure a load almost three times greater?
On June 1, 1951, US Air Force Colonel John Paul Stapp boarded a jet sled positioned at the top of a 2,000-foot (610-meter) track for acceleration and braking. After a few seconds, the rocket accelerator rushed him almost to the end of the path - to the point where the braking began. For a brief moment, Stapp was hit by an overload 48 times stronger than normal Earth gravity, or, in other words, 48g. Since then, the colonel, who played the role of a volunteer in the experiment he himself organized, has become known as “the fastest man on the planet.” He lived to old age and died in 1999 at the age of 89.
LIFT 457.5 KILOGRAMS FROM THE FLOOR
British weightlifter Andy Bolton deadlifted - on straight legs from floor to hip - 1010 pounds - 457.5 kilograms. American Zhenya Rychlyak squeezed out the same amount while lying on his back. The record for lifting the barbell overhead is 263.5 kilograms.
People like Bolton and Rychlyak are perhaps five or six times stronger than the average person, who can lift about 100 pounds overhead, says Dan Wathen, a fitness trainer at Youngstown State University in Ohio.
Andy Bolton doesn't need help lifting a barbell weighing almost half a ton.
The body has natural braking mechanisms designed to hold us back so we don't hurt ourselves by trying to lift a load that's too heavy. These mechanisms control the firing of a certain number of muscle fibers at any given time. Weightlifters have learned to suppress these mechanisms, which gives them the opportunity to use a larger proportion of potential muscles when lifting the barbell.
It seems that people have either already reached or are very close to the limit of their strength capabilities, says sports physician Todd Schroeder. - If you look at the statistics of world achievements, there is no growth. Even for those athletes who take anabolic steroids. And there are no reserves for further growth.
Prepared by: Sergey Koval
