00:00Between 1915 and 1926, something moved through the human population that science has never
00:06fully explained. Doctors watched as patients fell into a state that was neither sleep nor waking,
00:12eyes open, heart beating, but completely unreachable. They called it encephalitis lethargica,
00:19and in 10 years, it touched nearly 5 million people across every continent on Earth.
00:24Some slept for months, some for years, and when they woke, decades had been stolen from them in
00:31total stillness. Survivors were still found in the 1960s, locked in frozen postures from the moment
00:38the illness first claimed them. Some researchers pointed to the 1918 influenza pandemic, a mutated
00:44strain that may have turned the immune system against the brain itself. The disease did not
00:49slow down. It systematically silenced the brain region by region, like a city losing its lights
00:55one by one. Then, without warning, without cure, without explanation, it simply vanished. 5 million
01:03people for 10 years, and then silence.
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