Can you really survive without sleeping a year?

Yes. I relate to this movie allot because i did not sleep for an entire year. I was around 15 and going through an incredibly terrible time. Post traumatic stress and night terrors made sleep difficult, and i even developed a delusion that i would die if i fell asleep. I was not eating either. I basically went completely insane because of the deterioration. I could hardly think, or even form sentences. I started having nightmares while awake. I started having heart palpitations, i honestly thought my heart would stop. Eventually i was committed. I have been on sleeping meds since then, because it almost seems as though my ability to sleep on my own has vanished. It is possible, but it is absolute hell.

No. The world record, I believe, is 11 days.

Even after 3 days of no sleep, it takes a heavy toll on one's sanity.

nope, not medically possible... longest reliably recorded instance that I've ever seen in medical literature is 6 months... numerous people have died in less than 2 weeks... people with insomnia often think they haven't slept, but in fact the sleep deprivation screws with their sense of time and they've slept an hour or two overnight

I thought it was a miracle that he was able to keep his job for so long. I wouldn't last a week without sleep.

No, as others have stated, it is not possible to go without sleep for a year. It is possible however, for an individual to believe that one has been without sleep for a year. The individual's brain would shutdown periodically and go into rem sleep which the individual may not be conscious of.

A person cannot survive for a whole year with zero sleep. A body would shut down way before that. Now, that's not to say that a person can't have insomnia for a year and survive. The definition of insomnia is a difficulty falling and/or staying asleep, not necessarily getting absolutely no sleep. Most people start having micro naps and little snatches of sleep here and there without even realizing it. So they are getting sleep, just nowhere near what they need to function properly.
There is an extremely rare condition, call FFI (Fatal Familial Insomnia), that literally kills a person from lack of sleep. A person gets insomnia that become progressively worse until they get zero sleep, dementia sets in, and they die. It's pretty hellish. The average lifespan from onset to death is about 18 months, but the longest a person will live from no sleep to death, is about 9 months (there is 4 stages and zero sleep is stage 3). So the line in the movie, "nobody ever died from insomnia", is not entirely accurate...
But, like I said, FFI, is extremely rare. For most people their insomnia is transient, it comes and goes and is sometimes worse than other times.


"He made a brouchette. Mushrooms and cheeks."

See the patients with FFI. Link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia

You don't have to be good all the time.....only when it matters

This thread is laughable.

At most, you'll stay awake for a week.

Other than that you HAVE to log some hours into sleep.

A bright light can hollow the deepest of nothingness.