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Scientists are struggling to understand the cause of
a 'sleeping epidemic' among the few remaining residents of a Russian
Soviet-era 'ghost town' and a nearby village in Kazakhstan.
Dozens of locals in Krasnogorsk, Russia, and Kalachi, Kazakhstan, have
been hit by the mystery condition which causes them to doze off for up
to six days.
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There are even fears one sufferer - an elderly man - was buried alive
before the epidemic was diagnosed.
The illness has come in a number of waves, for example May 2013, New
Year 2014, and this month.
Some residents even keep bags packed in case they need to be whisked to
hospital.
It is believed to be caused by a disused uranium mine nearby - but
experts cannot find evidence to make the connection.
Almost 7,000 experiments have been conducted into the mystery slumbers,
with everything tested from local vodka to radiation, and including
analyses of soil, water, air, blood, hair, and nails.
So far, all have come back inconclusive.
Children affected by the illness suffered serious and frightening
hallucinations while weakness, drowsiness, dizziness and memory loss are
also symptoms.
Adults simply blacked out.
'I was milking cows, as usual, early in the morning, and fell asleep,'
Marina Felk, 50, a milkmaid in Kalachi, told The Siberian Times.
'I remember nothing at all, only that when I came round I was in a
hospital ward, and the nurses smiled and me, and said: "Welcome back
sleeping princess, you've finally woken up".
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'What else do I remember? Nothing. I slept for two days and two nights.
'The women in my ward said that I several times tried to wake up saying
I needed to urgently milk my cows.'
Alexey Gom, 30, was struck down with the sleep plague when he visited
relatives in Kalachi.
'I came with my wife to visit my mother-in-law,' he explained.
'I switched on my laptop, opened the pages that I needed to finish
reading - and that was it.
'It felt like somebody pressed a button to switch me off. I woke up in
hospital, with my wife and mother-in-law by my bedside. The doctor found
nothing wrong with me after a series of tests he performed.
'I slept for more than 30 hours.'
In the USSR era, Krasnogorsk was a secret and 'closed' uranium mining
town run directly from Moscow.
The town was once home to 6,500 - now a mere 130 people live here,
struggling to make ends meet.
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Local community council head Alexander Rats said: 'You could find
everything in our shops: meat, condensed milk, boots made in Yugoslavia
- a miner could buy three new cars every year. We had two children's
nurseries, both with swimming pools.'
Locals speculate that the problem arises after a sudden rise in
temperature, but again this has not been corroborated.
While some scientists claim uranium gas evaporates from the mine, others
claim it has seeped into local rivers.
It could be similar to the 'Bin Laden itch' in the USA when people found
rashes on their skin because they were scared of possible
bacteriological attack.
'Something like this often happens in closed communities,' he claimed.
Doctor-in-chief in nearby Esil, Kabdrashit Almagambetov, said: 'When the
patient wakes up, he will remember nothing. The story is one and the
same each time - weakness, slow reactions, then fast asleep.
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'Sadly, the nature of this condition is still not known. We have
excluded infections, we checked blood and spine liquid, nothing is
there. We categorised it as toxic encephalopathy, but 'toxic' is just a
guess here, and encephalopathy is just the title of the set of brain
diseases.'
Radon gas is seen as a possible cause, but he is sceptical.
'I am an anaesthesiologist myself and we use similar gases for
anaesthesia but the patients wake up a maximum in one hour after
surgery,' he said.
'These people sleep for two to six days, so what is the concentration of
this gas then? And why does one person fall asleep and somebody who
lives with him does not?'
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