h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Any idea how long you can go for without sleep? Iv'e been awake now for 52ish hours im gonna try do the whole week, is there any world record for staking awake and is it true you can't die from insomnia?

Without drugs I believe the record is something like 92 hours, however the hallucinations that set in after 3 days makes it one of those records that you can't claim an official world record for. Most people who claim to have been awake, or sleepless, for long periods have been found by doctors to doze lightly for about 3 minutes in every hour.

Doing without sleep is reckoned to be one of the most dangerous things you can do with your body. The Guinness Books of Records won't record any such record. Cruel experiments on animals in which they were deprived of sleep show that the animals go slowly insane. Whether they ever recover is not clear.

I think I can stay awake for about...five.....more.......secondszzzz

There was a bunch of people posting in Ask h2g2 a while ago who tried to stay up for a week. I think it was a psychology experiment. I seem to remember that they didn't last very long in the preliminary test and they never posted about the actual one.

36-40 hours. Then I collapse into a dead sleep for about 3 hours and I'm okay and back on a normal sleep schedule.

In truth, I don't know how long I can stay up for, but I don't want to find out. What I do know is that I spent about three months last lear losing at least one nights sleeep a week (not through choice, I assure you), and not only did I feel crap a lot of the time, bit it took me a long while to recover from the cumulative effects of it all.

Last semester at uni I ended up sleeping no more than about 4 hours a night on average for about 15 weeks straight... and then this past summer I only got about 6 hours on average with a few too many sleepless nights... I'm still trying to make up for it.

Oops - , I thought it said "How long can you go without ?"...

yeah i only managed to stay awake 4 about another hour or so after my post, so i recon i did about 53 hours, but i did notice that time was going really quickly juring the last hour so was proberbly dozing for short periods.

I can go for about 2 days without sleep...but then I feel really tired and act like the living dead...

I saw a programme about a guy who couldn't sleep. The part of his brain that LETS you go to sleep had developed a tumour or something. He just wasted away to a skeleton and died. Awful.

I can go almost fifty minutes without sleeping.

Found This:

The world record for time without sleep is 264 hours (11 days) by Randy Gardner in 1965. Note: In Biopsychology (by J.P.J. Pinel, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000, p. 322), the record for time awake is attributed to Mrs. Maureen Weston. She apparently spent 449 hours (18 days, 17 hours) awake in a rocking chair. The Guinness Book of World Records [1990] has the record belonging to Robert McDonald who spent 453 hours, 40 min in a rocking chair.

Bet he wasn't very randy after 11 days

"Not now love, I've got a zzzzzzzzz"



Probably wasn't up for doing the weeding, either.

B

Is that Randy chappie the American DJ? I mean, cos I heard (on here, maybe?) there was this Am DJ who went about 200 hours without sleep as a stunt for his show. By the end he thought everything was bursting into flames around him...

Here are the exploits of the last lot who tried to stay awake for a week. They didn't make it very far, but discussing how they might be doing was quite good fun

F19585?thread=150437

I read that wrong about the World record - I thought it said Ronald McDonald! I was going to say it must have been all the burgers - I always get insomnia if I eat a big Mac - I lay awake wondering how long it will be before the food poisoning will kick in!

(Just for the record this is not a libelous statement as the last time I ate a Big Mac (8 years ago) I got severe food poisoning so )

Actually I think you are allowed to say that McDonalds burgers are detrimental to health.

* to find the McLibel website*

Nope sorry I was wrong. You can't say that McDonalds burgers are bad for you.

But you can say that the company exploits children, denies worker's rights and is involved in animal cruelty.