Assuming that FFI is not a factor, is it possible to voluntarily keep yourself awake to such a point?
IIRC, no.
After a few days awake you start to take involuntary “micro-sleeps” where you black out momentarily.
Eventually, instead of micro-sleeps, you get involuntary full-blown sleep.
If you are kept awake externally through this (e.g. in a torture situation), these involuntary sleep attempts become very frequent, and the amount of stimuli it takes to wake you increases. But of course it is nonetheless possible to kill someone through sleep deprivation.
When a werewolfis riding on the back of a sea monster, it can be very hard for him to get a good night’s sleep. Especially if the shoreline is littered with man eating plants, it would be very difficult to come ashore for some rest. I can imagine in such a situation, that werewolf just may get over-exhausted and could die of sleep deprivation. I would be more concerned however that the bites from the man eating plants would cause stigmata level bleeding, which could lead to a loss of immunity to all manner of biological diseases. Even if the werewolf were smart enough to avoid the shoreline, and not get bitten, he might simply be convincedthat he was in fact bleeding to death, (or that he should stop breathing, despite being on TOP of the sea monster, above water) and I’m sure the nocebo effect would take over and put him out of his fantastical sleepless misery.
It would make for one hell of an autopsy though. I’m sure the big hairy bags under his eyes would be the dead-giveaway.
If your voluntary sleep deprivation causes you to get your microsleep while you’re driving, then yes, you can die. And so can others around you due to your lack of sleep.
What a poor attempt at comedy.
My post is my cite.
Hopefully you’ll get better with more practice.
There have been a few cases of ‘death by continuous video game playing’.
The video game may have kept the adrenalin,etc, flowing and that prevented those micro-sleeps…
Perhaps it was deep vein thrombosis, from sitting still for so long, that was their actual cause of death.
The stress hormones, and caffiene , make the heart pound fast and hard, So when sleep is wardeded off by some chemical, the heart will suffer… so it is possible that someone with a 2nd fault (a viral infection of the heart, or more permanent heart disease ) could die of a heart attack when combined with the insomnia…
Oh, I thought I was going to add somethng, but it was excepted already, but not clearly stated as to why … FFI = fatal familial insomnia, in which insomnia is just a symptom.