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Comment by barbariangrunge | Hacker News Reader

As a horror writer, I can’t help but wonder what sorts of stories this leads to, and what you might get wrong while writing about it…

By conscious, do they mean “aware”, or do they also mean “actively thinking about what they are experiencing” ? How often do they come out of it? Do they have clear memories of it?

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People have been through it and later recovered enough functionality to write books about their experience. Surprisingly, they report feeling pretty normal and even hopeful for the most part. Most people, when hearing about this, imagine it'd be all feelings of terror and wanting to be dead. But in reality people get used to it pretty quickly and their mental world adapts.

I am very surprised by this given how extremely traumatic solitary confinement is for prisoners, even for just a few days.

Is the power of acceptance something that saves people in these situations? I guess it's like when you want to stay awake, to watch a movie, but you're just so tired you accept your situation and fall asleep. My experience when I do this I have a really good sleep.

I'm not saying that it's going to be a nice thing, I just mean, that calm feeling of acceptance probably helps people out and as others have said, the mind adapts to the situation. At some point one would have nothing to lose I guess, so they just go along with whatever they have.

Solitary confinement on the other hand is probably harder to accept, because I guess one would feel like "something can be done" about the situation, your torturer, prison guard or whatever could let you out, but they're choosing not too. Sunlight is just behind a door which cannot be opened.

This one terrified me as a kid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma_(1978_film)

This kind of thing could never happen, right?

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/serial-infector-gets-39-yea...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/army-nurse-suspected-of-hepatit...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/washington-nurse-linked-to-hepa...

They mean “shows brain activity that appears to be specifically triggered by the semantic content of outside input”. Not even aware, necessarily - that level of response can be shown while asleep, for example. And it says that patients have never remembered this, to date.

Takes from the Crypt had an episode along this plot line in the ‘90’s

This messed me up, back in the day…

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0716824/

Stephen King wrote a short story on the subject, Autopsy Room 4.

Check out the Canadian children's TV show called 'The Odyssey', it's about this topic.

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