Etymologically, this should be called White Torment. The word 'torture' literally means to 'twist the body' whereas 'torment' means 'to twist the mind.'

8:50 As an Iranian immigrant and former political prisoner I confirm what Simon says. I was in Evin and Karizak prisons 2008_2009 for what the government calls " disrespecting holy figures " and " risking national security", btw both of them are actually just defending basic human rights. I spent exactly 97 days in solitary and white torture was used frequently. There were also countless beating, sexual assault , electric shocks and fake executions. Sleep deprivation and even withholding of food and water is normal for them, I even remember times when they didn't provide women with pads or things like that! You lose the sense of time, place, even the sense of feeling alive. You try doing exercise and they can handcuff you in a window less 2m by 3m cell, you try talking with yourself and they close your mouth. Before I was arrested I was in a gathering where Basij attacked people and shot my boyfriend. He was gone in about a minute, while holding my hand... In the prison I sometimes saw his image in front of me, when I broke down in tears the guards watching me would laugh with joy. The only reason I didn't gave them any names of my student NGO members or gave them a written confession was that I was fully convinced whatever I do I wont leave this place alive! I just wanted to give the other time girls to flee the country. After 97 days of pure hell I came up with an infection and fell into a coma shortly after. When I woke up, still in hospital my mother gave a very big bribe to the doctors and police and managed to have me at home. Then I contacted a friend in Iraqi Kurdistan and he managed to smuggle me out of Iran and from there to USA. The people I tried to save are also in Germany and working with various opposition groups. This video was such a great and thorough description yet hard to watch. Thank you Simon for being a voice for the oppressed, yet one brave nation of Iran. When this dictatorship is over you will be a very welcome guest in Iran, for which we're a nation not to forget helping hands. I wish all politicians around the aisle cared about these stuff and not try to make deals with Islamic Republic terrorists, this is better for security and stability in ME and West too. Woman, Life Freedom! Best regards from Texas

Sad thing is this reminds me too much of elderly care homes. Plain, locked in, little interaction, no chance of release. Senses only getting worse. No wonder people die quick.

I hope you can get KZfaq to calm the eff down about this channel. It's actually really important information that needs to get out. It shouldn't be 20 30 50 years before people start to learn about the dirty secrets of the government.

I've experienced white solitary for a very small crime that didn't warrant it. I had to stay a bit longer than overnight for holding. But the cell walls were white, the floor light grey, the "bed" (plastic bench) light grey, and 5 lights beaming down harder than the sun. The lights made it hot, hard to sleep, and were never shut off or dimmed, with a camera over the toilet. I woke at 2 am and thought it was easily at least 8 am or later. Realizing you have no sense of time anymore, while thinking you did (took even less than 24 hours in a white cell for me) is more distressing than some of the most heinous things I've experienced prior. It sounds crazy, but it makes you feel very lost and unhuman. Not knowing something as little as the time, drove me crazy in those 16 hours, I'd rather opt for physical pain or a crowded smelly jail setting than a solitary white room again.

Having been through this myself I can confirm, that it is like a living torture. No clocks, no TV, no anything at all. The mind works in odd ways and I often found myself counting the lights on the ceiling for what felt like dozens of hours at a time. Just counting them and making patterns. Looking for anything at all to distract myself. It is seriously horrible and I'm glad I'm not in that place any longer What Simon describes is a level of depravity that I am lucky not to have experienced, but even approaching that kind of sensory deprivation is still something I'll never forget.

While watching this I began to think about the concept of generational punishment, such as is used in North Korea. An individual who otherwise has the determination to break a law or to escape from the country has to contend with the notion that everyone they love will be punished severely for the rest of their lives. It’s a brilliant strategy for behavioral modification. A successful escape will be impossible, because even if the body has relocated the mind will always be partially in North Korea. I don’t think that I could live a happy, comfortable life, free of the hell I escaped from, while I have such an awful feeling of guilt to contend with. That really is apex level evil, in my opinion.

Anyone else remembered Vsauce's isolation experiment video? I think it was part of the mind field series

I see a lot of this in society. People who have lost their self esteem and can't even leave the house. These tactics are used in everyday society.

I spent 45 days straight in solitary.. To this day, it still affects how I interact with the world.. Now I see. No human contact just food put thru a slot.. no sound, really.. but worst of all was the complete and total isolation. it was a milder form of white torture.

I've done hard time in Texas in a youth prison in solitary we called it a bmp a behavioral management program. 30 to 100 days in solitary depending. The cells where painted white (everything was white but the stainless steel tolet). And where kept a cool 60 to prevent bacterial growth. It's also cold enough to be highly uncomfortable when only in 1950s gym shorts and a short sleeve shirt, the cell holds that way it stays 60.... I would hear muffled noises kids fighting for their blanket. After starving all day. If you refused to give up your blanket you where starved of two meals. Give up blanket or no food. Witch was slid to you threw a flap no open door... As children under the age of 18 we couldn't be allowed to starve our selfs or go on hunger strike so they would send in the goon squad aka The turtles ala riot control unit to wrestle the blanket from you and after whipping your ass leave a try of food they shaked up ( don't sound bad but it's the salt on the wound ain't ate all day your starving hungry literally already on a diet now your peach cobbler is soaked in bean juice from the beans or maybe your main dish now is mixed with pudding and it's some kind of fucking shitty mush pride keeps you hungry tell morning) and then they will give you a blanket at night have to legally. Only to again take it from you. Longest i seen a guy go fighting well hearing the muffled sounds of him fighting for his blanket is three days. Teens mind you.. Homie was 16 will never forget. Shit does something to you. Your not the same.... You either break or not. Only two options. I had older guys tell me in passing do push ups every three meals helps keep time.. Lights go on and off at random. And helps structure your mind. Escape in your head any way but In the back of your mind always be aware of it's a escape.... I would speak my thoughts out loud just to hear my own voice bounce off the walls. When i got out one time my buddy would sit with me and be like bro you doing it again your not in the can if you need to talk or want to I'm here you don't have to hear your own voice any more. I was 16 he was 17.... I seen kids never come out the same they had to get shipped to the psych unit and never came back.... Ever. Shits crazy in Texas. I know how effective this is because even if you survive you don't some human part of you has died. It's like killing someone. Your just not the same. Does something to you. Your now and for ever will be different and the only people who know are pows and other convicts. Who don't get broken.

I mean, I like Cream as much as the next guy but having to listen to “White Room” all day *would* be torture

Vsauce made an original KZfaq Red show called "Mindfield"' where he tries different social & psychological experiments. The very first episode, "isolation", is him going for 3 day in a so called white room. No idea of time, bright lights on all the time, no stimuli of any kind, just water and tasteless soy paste for subsistence. What he goes through psychologically and physiologically in only 3 days is horrible. I can't imagine the effect on people who had to suffer this for months. It's an incredible piece of documentary and it's now available on Vsauce without a subscription.

So what you're saying is my mother bassically tortured me as punishment. Extended boredom was mentally challenging, and the side effects matched what I experienced but not that extreme. I completely lost my social ability and thought I was going insane. I only ever hallucinated people in my perifrals once. Even today, I live in 24/7 derealization and convinced myself that i was overreacting. You learn more every day

One of my favourites on this channel Simon (why has KZfaq been pulling half of Into The Shadows?)

I really love the documentations!! Torture is horrible, doesn’t matter which way it will be taken out. White rooms- pretty sure they almost exist in every country. Torture is something that isn’t discussed openly.

I imagine if they combined that with an anechoic chamber they'd probably kill them. That room/device absorbs all radio and sound waves, within minutes you can usually hear your blood flowing through your ears, everything gets louder, you hear the slightest movement, your joints grind, you hear everything.

I also did a year in solitary conditions in county awaiting trial. They were trying to force a plea for something I didn't do, it eventually worked. I remember a drain fly flew in my room one day and I was so relieved to have company...

To make this worse, the technology exists (has for decades) to mute even the subject's own voice through noise cancelation. Meaning a person could scream as loud as they possibly can and if they hear anything at all it would be a barely audible whisper from the scream reverberating in the bones of your skull

Having struggled with moderate mental health issues that led into addiction and having that consume my life for so long I’d definitely rather take physical punishment over psychological punishment any day. Obviously there’s levels to this but white room torture sounds absolutely horrific

I told my friends in high school about this after seeing a room like this, and they thought I was crazy. Only spent a minute looking into the room, and it was disturbing.

Hard to believe stuff like this exists. Humans can be so cruel

They did this in Mental hospitals too. Did it to my daughter in early 2000's she was 8. Did it to my in the early 90's except they put me in a straight jacket. It doesn't help i will promise you that. Cant imagine a prison sentence like that. Promise you i would be Gone in mind and dangerous.

scary. think of elderly people, possibly isolated, mostly deaf and blind.... I worked in a nursing home; we know that isolation and sensory deprivation contributes to dementia. I feel sick.

Now imagine the VR torture of the future

It’s crazy to me that some of the most brutal torture sounds like it’s not that bad. Like on paper “locked in a white room” or “pour water on a towel that’s on someone’s face” and “drip water on someone’s forehead for a really long time”. None sound nearly as awful as it is

I've never been in prison, but I lived in a situation with incessant, cacophonous noise that caused me to melt down (I'm autistic and have an audio sensitivity) fairly regularly. Asking for the tv to be turned down? What are you, insane? It has to be heard by the owner over his tinnitus.

If I was ever put in a white room I would probably be singing until I was let out just to keep my mind distracted and hope I would be able to stay sane

my undoubtably toxic trait is thinking that I could actually find this peaceful… my neurodivergent ass would love a room with the absolute minimum amount of stimulus. but I also know that I have NEVER experienced anything close to this & even if I was in complete control of my environment, I wouldn’t be surprised if white exposure wrecked me… so I’m torn between wanting to experience it and seeing if it’s calming, or being terrified of ending up in a room like that. but then again, my mind is all kinds of fvcked up so I’m used to these sorts of conundrums…

Watch the movie Murder in the First; it portrays a form of what prolonged isolation from solitary confinement can cause. But just wait until you hear what he was originally imprisoned for. Kevin Bacon did an amazing job at playing the prisoner. Among many others, it's an all-star cast movie, including Gary Oldman, Christian Slater, R. Lee Ermey, William H. Macy, and Kyra Sedgwick. Just to name (quite) a few! This movie was heartbreaking to my 18-year-old self, circa 1995. 💔😭 Edit: The movie is also based on a true story!

YAY! ITS BACK! Interesting and disturbing simultaneously. 🙁

I was literally talking to my coworker about this video and wasn't able to find it. Then 2 minutes later, it reuploaded. Perfect timing lol

Sounds like the working week, the old 9 till 5 bares some resemblance to torture 😅

Interesting video, thank you Simon.

I took someone of a brake from watching. You are videos but here I am and I forgot just how enjoyable it is

Please label reuploads lol makes me feel insane

Looking forward to a Mr. Beast episode where whoever lasts a month in a white room gets $100,000 and free psychotherapy for a year.

I have significant reservations about the efficacy of torture as a means of extracting useful information., A determined subject will hold out as long as possible and then give out information that is of minimal value. US service personnel are actually taught to do this. Most of the time, if you hold out long enough, anything you know won't be useful anymore. During the GWOT, far more valuable information was obtained through human intelligence methods than through enhanced interrogation.

As autistic person, this almost sounds peaceful. Though on the long term this would also break me.

I have a military background. My advice? Practice a game. Practice to the point where you can enter a hypnogogic state and play against nobody. You will hallucinate. Embrace it.

This type of stuff happens every day in prison cells across the US and the world.

Well written, delivered, & oh so terrifying. 👍

This is also an argument for why imortality would be torment.

I’d use this to practice meditation and astral projection. Might succeed

Absolutely Brilliant

When you said white torture the first, horrifying thing that came to mind was being forced to watch grease over and over and over again.

Well that was stupendously unsettling

This is exactly what modern psych wards are like. I was in a psych ward for five days, and it felt like ten years because there were no clocks. None. No analog clocks, no digital clocks. Nothing. The windows were tinted. The food was bland and uninteresting. We were left by ourselves in silent rooms all day except for food. There were bathrooms inside the rooms. No breaks for outdoor time. Nothing. For days on end. I don’t understand how that sort of environment is supposed to *improve* anyone’s mental health.

I've got the chills from your intro, because I feel the difficulty to talk about that awful topic!

Reminds me of the Azeal video where he interviews a guy that subjected to almost 6 months of white torture at the age of 11. He said that after the first month or so he started to hallucinate that he was in a forest and it took months after he finally got to stop seeing the forest.

A large enough sample size and some freaks will come out unperturbed and unscathed long term

Thanks for that Simon. I was wondering why my evil ex made me whitewash the walls of our ( once ) pretty apartment, then left me very shortly afterwards. It is most uncomfortable living indeed.

I always thought white torture was forcing someone to watch Frasier reruns on loop.

I did a sleep study once on shift work. It was about a week long in a white/beige room. I could even leave for a certain amount of time each day. The lack of anything outside of that bland environment was still even at that small a dose a terrible experience.

wow this video man just something else.

I can't help but wonder what kind of effect a mind palace kind of internal world might have on a person's ability to endure this kind of heinous deprivation. Would it shore them up enough to prevent the worst effects? Or would the mind remain latched onto that external deprivation? Overall, it's just disgusting how humans always find new ways to make each other suffer.

i feel like i would take longer to break than most because of autism and the fact that my brain can easily keep itself very stimulated by worldbuilding. but yea id succumb eventually, im still human. ._.

It seems like there’s been a lot of reuploads. KZfaq advertising restrictions are hammering you guys pretty hard, eh Simon?

It is amazing just how fragile and malleable the human mind is.

Sounds really peaceful. I’m a heavy sleeper and can sleep in brightly lit rooms. I think this would be nice for awhile.

i have been in solitary confinement in united states jail before and just having a book or a cell mate near enough to yell to is all you've got. it makes a big difference i imagine to have nothing.

This one scared me the most

Modern decor often features washed out or all white rooms.

My adhd-autism has me convinced I would be just fine for at least a month or two

Torture does not work as a means to gain credible information. This has long been known. Napoleon knew it and he was not shy about the use of force: “The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know.” The only use of torture is to gain false confessions.

I was in the Air Force in Alaska, there is an air base next to an army post and the post did at the time have prison. If an A.F. guy messed up enough they were sent to the army prison. I had an extra detail of escorting the AF guys around to the doctor or lawyer or wherever. Easy job, no violent guys, all medium or less security. The prison wasn't like any US civilian prison. They lived in barracks style rooms. All of their very few personal belongs they were allowed to have had to be on the bed after a certain hour. They were not allowed to lay down until after evening mail. They could sit or stand. Nor could they read novels or fiction. The only reading was military books and religious books. One hour exercise outdoors when weather permitted. All they really had to do was clean and that place was clean! I asked one guy what they did if you didn't cooperate. He replied, "They threaten to send you to the county jail or put you on a prison plane to Fort Leavenworth military prison and you are there with the real bad boys." "But mostly they just put us in solitary. Solitary is a room with a 7 foot ceiling and the bunk is against the wall. The toilet is at the head of the bed and there is just enough room to stand up and turn. The end of the bed is two feet from the door. You have two choices, lay down or stand up and pace in the little area. You get one hour of exercise a day, alone." "You eat alone in your cell, whenever they bring you food." "You are in there a day or two and you get cooperative real fast.""

I wonder if that's the reason why all of us patients asked the nurses for the time at least 5 times a day when we were in the psych ward. There weren't any clocks, so that was the only way to know. The nurses thought it was funny that we asked so much but we were really trying to meet our basic human need for chronology.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." Friedrich Nietzsche People who condone torture have this to fear.

There is no depth so deep that human wickedness and depravity can’t go lower.

I've been training to endure this my entire life

Man. You are prolific.

You should do Alexis St Martin/William Beaumont and the digestion experiments.

7:30-8:05 That's what social media services try to induce in their users, by manipulating what the user can do on the screen, suddenly removing content, deleting what the user was writing before they even tried to post it, or at least hiding it after the user did post it, and many other measures--.

Pretty sure "In The White Room" by Cream, was about this and breaking down. 🤘

Sucks that youtube deletes videos like this and force you to baby things up to they're standards

Rhett and Link would like a word. Gooooooood-mythical-morning!

I had a rough patch years ago that resulted in my mum calling the police who detained me for my own safety (even tho by the time I was taken by the cops, I had been for a 2hr walk in the forest and got my shit together). I was then taken to the local hospital and put in a white room with just a chair in the middle and a mattress on the ground. I was made sit in there for 5hrs alone before a doctor finally came in and assessed if I was mentally fit to leave... I was addicted to cigarettes at the time too. If I didn't meditate and count breaths the whole time- there is no way I would've been able to leave. I asked the doctor why it was like that and that it seemed counter productive and the dr said it's to minimize stimulus to help calm people down. It wasn't even low stimulus all the time tho, every time the door was opened and someone looked in, Id be suddenly stimulated by people yelling, screaming or being tackled right outside the door bcuz they tried running from the cops. Even just 5hrs in that kind of mostly low stimulus environment alone with nothing to do- it's stayed with me and still terrifies me. I got thru cus of the meditation and conscious breathing- but it was definitely shakey at times and I slipped into like a vivid daydream memory hallucination of walking along a beautiful creek with an ex partner, it was lovely but also scary... I never want to be in that kind of situation again, where keeping grounded takes intense effort.

Afflicting pain is easy. It’s a matter of how creative you can be

It's interesting how similar these torture techinques are to a lot of modern childhood experiences.

8:28 that pronunciation of Guantanamo bay has me dyinnnnggg

The great thing about isolation, once you're broken they can never break you again.

Not everyone is susceptible to this tho. Some introverts are perfectly content with being alone with no stimuli. I can generate ideas, computer programs, physics experiments, plans, etc based on my memories indefinitely and even simulate them.

This reminds me of the time I was crazy. I was locked in a room. A rubber room. A rubber room with rats. The rats made me crazy

subbed well redoed

I remember one of the things the juvenile care system would do is put us in a room that's painted the same color on each wall and the floor and ceiling, saying it had a calming effect, and keep us in there for days at a time.

It’s like that episode of SpongeBob where squidward was locked in his own mind and echoed “forever” where then he lost his mind 😳

I had to get a few MRI's some people are super claustrophobic. I open my eyes, and I stare into the static, I feel like I'm in a giant space as large as the sky is high.

Crazy? I was crazy once! They locked me in a room, a white room, a white room with rats. The rats weren't real. (It made me crazy-) Crazy? I was crazy once!

As long as I get fed and has a bathroom, as a introvert this is heaven, better than put in a bar and force me to social.

Actually, "white noise" does indeed refer to the color. It's an equal distribution of sound energy across all audible bands, just like "white light" is an equal distribution of light energy across all visible bands (although with a slight difference in that white light follows the visible spectrum of a "black body" source like the sun or a hot light bulb filament wire).

The pandemic lockdown gave me a glimpse of how this works. I am an introvert and being alone was always comfortable for me. After about a year and a half of lockdown, peaceful quiet started to turn into deafening silence. I began to wake up at night, alone in the dark and silence, and have anxiety attacks. I felt claustrophobic in my own home. I never felt like that before. I wouldn't wish that kind of imprisonment on anyone.

That people devise and implement such things exposes the reality of pervasive evil, especially in state and religious authorities. God help us.

Putin's siloviki are doing very similar things to Navalny for more than 1000 days. Nearly constant solitairy confinement, sleep deprivation, other prisoners are ordered to turn and not see him when he is moved. Differences are that the small cell where he is isolated isn't white and there is constant noise: a mentally ill person is howling in the next cell pretty much all the time. Also once in a while they add a "neighbor" to Navalny's cell, a man who doesn't wash at all. And it's either too hot and hard to breath or too cold. So unlike their Iranian buddies these people don't use complete sensory deprivation, rather they attack senses constantly with most unpleasant stimuli. I don't know if it's better or worse...

Sounds to me like a perfect environment to catch up on sleep and meditation.

I saw a programme before about someone having red torture.. red ceilings and walls in a room so small they couldn't lay down on the floor so forced to stand in heat until drives them mad

You know things are bad when the highlight of your day is your taking a poop and looking into the toilet in order to keep your sanity.

My middle school (about 20 years ago) had "the white room" it was just a closet like room attached ot the main office. All white with a celing light, a desk and chair. If you got in serious trouble you were sent there. I can't remeber how long one was in there, maybe an hour, but IDK. I heard second hand of people going crazy in it. They stopped using the room my last year. It's kind of trippy that they were even doing that

The need for social interaction cannot be understated. I work from home but my roommate doesn't, meaning that on days I don't have meetings I go the whole day without physically speaking to anyone. I'm a very introverted person; I like working from home, I like having a lot of alone time, I don't have many friends and that works for me. Yet when my roommate gets home, I always find myself leaving my room to talk to her. Consciously, I couldn't tell you why, it's just something I feel like doing. But subconsciously, I know it's because even my introverted brain is craving human connection. And that's after less than a day without speaking to anyone, with ample access to light, food, comfort, and distractions. Even an introvert like me wouldn't last a week under White Torture.

The worst white room torture I heard of was the one that had black curtains, near the station. If you wanna know where it is, look for the black roof country. There were no gold pavements however and I vaguely remember seeing a few tired starlings.

Having been in British police cells I recognize some of the techniques mentioned here. The all white cells and they leave this really bright light on 24 hours a day, they often never switch it off. The cells are always such a distance or have just the amount of doors that you can hear the voices of the pigs in their office but not loud enough to be able to make out a single word, its just distant chatter constantly with the often sound of laughter. its like you can't help but not hear it yet you can't really hear it and its pretty much constant. You can only lay on a hard wooden bench with the thinnest mattress made of PVC that you can't get comfortable on at all. Sleep is near impossible and pretty much the only human contact you have the whole time is when they interrogate you. Its very obviously purposefully done just enough that they know they can get away with it, obvious that they are purposefully and clearly trying their hardest to put you into a very stressful state.