# Who said 'Gassings' were all fiction??? How do you explain two people sleeping 16 hours?? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 19, 2010, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987 "2010-03-19T07:40:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/101 "2010-03-19T18:54:19Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I don’t get how you wouldn’t notice if somebody had raped you. Can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that all rapes are noticeable? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/102 "2010-03-19T19:34:34Z")
> [@Welltravelled](#): > > Its one thing for one person to have a specific sleeping pattern. But two people, to behave in the exact same fashion, not likely! You don’t wake up at exactly the same time. Actually, that logic applies far more to using gas to influence the body than to normal jet lag. As any of the real medical dopers will tell you, using any chemical substance to influence the human body will have unexpected side effects or results when you meet an oddity instead of the standard. With regards to gassing, it is \*\*far less likely \*\*that two different people being gassed wake up at the same time because it affects them both exactly the same, \*\*than it is \*\*for two people who both suffer from jet-lag and are over-tired to sleep roughly the same length. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/103 "2010-03-19T19:54:52Z")
> [@Welltravelled](#): > > First of all, I’d like to say, the place we stayed at on the night of question wasn’t you typical hotel – that most are thinking about, with lots of rooms, bell boys, restaurants, and lots of people indiscriminately going about in the foyer and other common areas doing their activities without bringing attention to themselves. It was a chateau type residence with only 11 rooms. Much more important to this question would be: which country was this? A major city? > [@](#): > > However, there was no deadlock to the door or chain and bolt – none at all – just the electronic slip card system. It was easy for anyone with access to a master slip card to have accessed the room and leave no trace of it, whatsoever (important to understand here that if you have done the chain and bolt, people can’t get in, if they do, it leaves a sign of tampering the next day!!). So to answer your question no, there was no sign of tampering or door left open the following day; hence, if anyone came through that night it was an inside job or someone who found their way to the master slip card. The point here I want to stress for you is that it was more than possible for someone to have entered our room, without leaving such evidence of its occurrence, in the absence of better security measures. I know, because it’s been demonstrated by police, journalists and so on, that electronic keycards present a problem and can be mis-used. However, I wonder in what kind of hotels you used to stay with deadbolts on the inside of the room door? Moreover, old-fashioned hotels also have master keys, and keys to the deadbolt, too. (You think they want to break the door down in case of medical emergency?) So your paranoia is not evidence. > [@](#): > > Let this be a lesson to you all, to only sleep in hotel rooms with better security. Then you know what happened and what didn’t happen. What kind of better security do you mean? Cops patrolling in the corridors? How do you know - since you insist on it being an inside job ! - that those rent-a-cop private companies aren’t on the take, too? Really, if I walk into a hotel, whether grand or small, and see uniformed security, or whatever else you are thinking off, I wonder what crime problems they have that this is necessary. I don’t feel reassured or safer at all. > [@](#): > > Therefore, all the logistics of the situation point to someone who clearly has an interest in not leaving any signs or evidence of their activities. Actually, that points to any intelligent criminal, beyond the level of dumb thugs who rob a 7-11. > [@](#): > > The same has been noted in many gassings throughout Europe, they leave things that can be traced and only take cash and jewellery. You don’t have any reliable - that is, serious newspapers or police reports, not FOAF stories - of these widely spread gassings in Europe, do you? Because I have never heard of them. Really, it does sound like paranoia, esp. if you are only afraid in Europe, not in the US (of course, traveling back to the US, the jetlag is far less!) > [@](#): > > Maybe there was a carbon monoxide leak? That is just as plausible, I’m just not sold on the fact that its only jet lag, given our previous sleeping habits and travel. Did you have very heavy headaches? Sore throat? Pinkish fingernails? Those are surefire signs of CO poisioning. However, what sources of CO where in your room - coal oven? Coal-powered water boiler? Because most hotels in Western Europe would have central heating and boiling, standard and easier. As for the motives: unless the hotel was run by some kind of Mafia, a hotel manager does not usually think of going around stealing money from his guests. And jewelry is traceable. The normal guest, if he noticed money missing, would call the police, which would be bad for the hotel. (Normal people also put their valuables in the thing called safe, either at the reception counter, or in each room. I’ve seen some room safes in pricier hotels in the last few years.) So anybody in that business would know that smart people don’t have a lot lying around worth the risk. If you think of the passports, then why bother breaking in? You have to show your passports at the front desk when checking in anyway, enough time for a good forger to take digital fotos for later in 1 minute. Of course, that applies to the general idea of an inside job: you leave your room with your luggage during the whole day for sightseeing, or when you go eating, and the maids enter the room to clean it. So why not use that as opportunity? You haven’t satisfactorily explained how the supposed gas got into the room in the first place - you locked it, you claim, and have “enough knowledge” (I personally doubt this) that the gas didn’t come in from the vents (makes sense, since not all hotels have air condition vents in Europe). So how did this “evildoer” get the gas inside in the first place? He couldn’t come in with the master key card and apply the gas as you where lying there because he didn’t know if the two of you were already sleeping. Or do you also suppose a secret camera watching you? Do you think somebody stood outside in the corridor applying gas from a tank through the door crack? This doesn’t make any sense outside conspiracy / paranoia. Moreover, if you know so much about biochemistry to be sure that it wasn’t modern anesthic gas, since your sleep was only deepened, then what gas do you think was used? In what country? Because old-fashioned gases - ether, laughing gas and so on- will be controlled, too. Your average evildoer doesn’t simply walk into the next drugstore and buy a tank full of ether or similar to gas tourists in small hotels. Why would he target small hotels where people with small budget go instead of the big rich hotels? ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/104 "2010-03-19T20:02:15Z")
> [@Welltravelled](#): > > P.S. You still didn’t answer my point about two people sleeping, uninterrupted to the exact same minute??? No waking, no tossing, no turning. What actually does that? Just ask yourself for two minutes? No tossing no turning is caused by ignorance and subjectiveness. Ask a hundred people on the street how they slept last night, and all those who slept good, without waking up, or turning around, take into a sleep lab with cameras and EEG and monitor for the next night. They will turn around in the course of a normal night 20 to 30 times, because every healthy normal person does that. They will also go from REM to non-REM sleep, from deep to light. When in the light phase of the cycle, a small sound or other disturbance can wake them far easier, but if they don’t wake, they will go back. In sleep studies, many people could be woken during the night at the right phase and not remember it at all during the next day. So I call bullshit on your unnatural sleep, because your memory is faulty and subjective, and would be a medical impossibility. (People in hospitals are moved every few hours, because otherwise they would develop bedsores. If you didn’t move _at all_ for 16 hours, you would have noticed something - hurting bones, cramped muscles, red skin. Since you didn’t, you moved.) ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/105 "2010-03-19T20:58:12Z")
The Russians tried to gas out a hostage situation one time. Out of about nine hundred people, 162 people died from the gas. Those must be some pretty advanced hotel criminals to be able to reliably do what one of the most advanced military/police forces in the world couldn’t do. Unless, the hotel guests regularly leave in body bags, that’s pretty much what being gassed out in your hotel room amounts to. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/106 "2010-03-19T21:05:14Z")
Well to offer the OP at least _some_ moral support, there have been stories in eastern Europe for at least 20 years of tourists being gassed and robbed in sleeping cars on trains. I read such stories in a travel guide (Lonely Planet, maybe?) before I went to Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania in 1992. (The guide warned particularly about Romania, IIRC.) I didn’t believe it, and even the tone of the guidebook was skeptical. However, I _did_ believe that theft on a train was a real possibility, so my girlfriend and I were very careful to conceal our valuables before we went to sleep on a train from Romania to Hungary. I slept with my wallet concealed in a very, ahem, personal place, and in addition I was covered by a blanket. Sure enough, the next morning, the wallet was gone. After an hour or so of panic, the conductor came by with my wallet, and said it had been found by a passenger in the bathroom. It was emptied of cash, but everything else was there. (Luckily, I only had about $30 worth of cash.) I am a very light sleeper. The slightest noise or disturbance normally wakes me up. Yet I apparently slept straight through someone pulling off my covers and exploring my sleeping body. So while I won’t claim I was gassed, I can see how someone might jump to such a conclusion in such circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![Dahu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dahu/32/3416_2.png) [@Dahu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahu)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/107 "2010-03-19T21:49:07Z")
I too have heard the stories about being robbed on trains. But, I think the normal method is not gas but to drug food and drink. Much more plausible. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/108 "2010-03-19T21:54:24Z")
Maybe you got up to use the bathroom during the night and your wallet slipped out? ---
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/109 "2010-03-19T21:59:16Z")
Note that even if you are inclined to be skeptical about whether **spoke-** was drugged or gassed or lost all of his money playing cards, at least he describes a scenario that contains elements that could be construed as evidence that his sleep might have been “assisted”. More than I can say for the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/110 "2010-03-19T22:03:19Z")
> [@Crotalus](#): > > Note that even if you are inclined to be skeptical about whether **spoke-** was drugged or gassed or lost all of his money playing cards, at least he describes a scenario that contains elements that could be construed as evidence that his sleep might have been “assisted”. More than I can say for the OP. Yeah…“I didn’t get much sleep on a long flight, and when we woke up, nothing was disturbed/missing” doesn’t translate into a gassing for me. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/111 "2010-03-19T22:09:37Z")
> [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > Maybe you got up to use the bathroom during the night and your wallet slipped out? Nah. I don’t sleepwalk. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/112 "2010-03-19T22:09:52Z")
But we can all agree that Jumpin’ Jack Flash is a gas gas gas? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/113 "2010-03-19T22:12:12Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Your average evildoer doesn’t simply walk into the next drugstore and buy a tank full of ether or similar to gas tourists in small hotels. Why would he target small hotels where people with small budget go instead of the big rich hotels? Because that’s what you’d _expect_ him to do. Ha! Our Labrador retriever used to gas us, until we put her on lower residue food. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/114 "2010-03-19T22:13:22Z")
> [@Dahu](#): > > I too have heard the stories about being robbed on trains. But, I think the normal method is not gas but to drug food and drink. Much more plausible. Our food was a loaf of bread and a bottle of water we brought onto the train. So I don’t think that was it either. ---
**Author:** ![Meyer6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@Meyer6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meyer6)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/115 "2010-03-20T00:26:20Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > Well to offer the OP at least _some_ moral support, there have been stories in eastern Europe for at least 20 years of tourists being gassed and robbed in sleeping cars on trains. I read such stories in a travel guide (Lonely Planet, maybe?) before I went to Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania in 1992. (The guide warned particularly about Romania, IIRC.) I didn’t believe it, and even the tone of the guidebook was skeptical. Yeah, when I went to Eastern Europe in 2003/2004 I heard about the train car gassings too - my conclusion was pretty much the same as yours. People get stuff stolen on trains, and feel that they must have been gassed or tricked in some way for that to happen. It does seem odd that it would be possible to steal someones wallet or whatnot like that, but to be fair trains in that part of the world can be pretty noisy, and there are some damn skilled pickpockets in those parts too. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/116 "2010-03-20T00:35:21Z")
The more closely I’ve followed your replies the more you have convinced me. I apologize for the mockers here and all those who automatically assume “gassings” are all fiction. Whatever you do, don’t give up your fight to convince people. If you do, the problem is just going to stay out there, unsolved, and the criminals will have won. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/117 "2010-03-20T00:36:31Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > Nah. I don’t sleepwalk. Freaky, then! ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/118 "2010-03-20T01:08:06Z")
> [@Meyer6](#): > > Yeah, when I went to Eastern Europe in 2003/2004 I heard about the train car gassings too - my conclusion was pretty much the same as yours. People get stuff stolen on trains, and feel that they must have been gassed or tricked in some way for that to happen. It does seem odd that it would be possible to steal someones wallet or whatnot like that, but to be fair trains in that part of the world can be pretty noisy, and there are some damn skilled pickpockets in those parts too. I’d suspect the “damn, there are some skilled pickpockets in that part of the world” combined with “Trains make me sleepy” and “you’re already sleeping through a lot of noise” long before the “I’ve been poisoned!” idea. I almost slept through a bunch of armed, uniformed Hungarian teenagers carefully and very armedly inspecting all our passports once. I mean, jeez, night trains make you sleepy. ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/119 "2010-03-20T01:18:38Z")
Just by your posts you sound quite paranoid, so I am not surprised you would think that you got gassed for no reason than overslept on an intercontinental flight. ---
**Author:** ![Meyer6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@Meyer6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meyer6)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987/120 "2010-03-20T02:34:18Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I’d suspect the “damn, there are some skilled pickpockets in that part of the world” combined with “Trains make me sleepy” and “you’re already sleeping through a lot of noise” long before the “I’ve been poisoned!” idea. > > I almost slept through a bunch of armed, uniformed Hungarian teenagers carefully and very armedly inspecting all our passports once. I mean, jeez, night trains make you sleepy. Just to be clear - this is what I meant. In no way did I want to imply that gassing is something that actually happens on trains, just that it is a story that I have also heard. I’ve never heard of gassings happening in hotel rooms though. And I strongly suspect that casual gassing of tourists is a complete myth no matter what part of the world you’re in. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-gassings-were-all-fiction-how-do-you-explain-two-people-sleeping-16-hours/532987.md?page=7)