History Main / CabinFever

This is a land-based trope, if it happens at sea that is OceanMadness. InSpace! it may be presented as SpaceMadness, even if it's actually due to confinement. See also GoMadFromTheIsolation which is about ''social'' isolation and does not require a small space, although there is overlap.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Justice}}'', Sinestro tricks Green Lantern Hal Jordan into a Boom Tube that drops him beyond the known universe. A desperate Jordan converts himself into energy so he can keep himself alive indefinitely within the ring without having to worry about charge, but rapidly realizes the process can only be undone from outside, and every simulation he comes up with requires his direct mental input. [[AndIMustScream It doesn't take him long to get absorbed in the memories]].

* This is the drive for part of the BlackComedy in ''FanFic/ReactWatchBelieveYikes''. Team WebAnimation/{{RWBY}} gets accidentally left behind after everyone leaves Becon Academy for summer vacation and they slowly drive one another insane through their antics.
* ''Fanfic/ImpenetrableWalls'' has Wei Wuxian being forced by his new status as a concubine to live locked up in the women's quarters, unable to speak with someone else than his husband or servants and deprived of his favorites hobbies (eating spicy food and esoteric research). He's also naturally restless and quick to feel bored, so a few weeks manage to make him stressed and unhappy and he reflects he would probably run away if he had nothing but this existence to look forward to.

* Creator/StephenKing's novel ''Literature/TheShining'' (and its [[Film/TheShining film adaptation]]) involves cabin fever accentuating the effect of the ghosts. The plot follows a family of three trapped in an isolated resort in the dead of winter.

* ''[[Literature/AuntDimity Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince]]'' opens with a February "curse" seeming to conspire to bring this about for Lori and her sons: a cold snap settles over the area, the heating system at the boys' school breaks down and the needed parts are in Helsinki, the pipes freeze and burst at Emma and Derek's riding school, and the boys' grandfather and schoolmates all come down with a severe head cold. Lori welcomes Bree's arrival on her doorstep to help her entertain her bored twins.
* {{Invoked|Trope}} in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': Lord Roose Bolton holds Winterfell, but his forces comprise a ''very'' tenuous alliance of Freys & Boltons with Manderlys and assorted other Northern lords. As King Stannis waits somewhere outside their walls and the whole castle is SnowedIn, ''someone'' begins murdering people one by one, heightening the tension between the various factions who are already freezing, hungry, and seething with resentment. Eventually it comes to blood when Hosteen Frey attacks Lord Wyman Manderly, and to prevent it escalating any further Bolton sends their forces out separately into the snow to find Stannis, which has been repeatedly described as a terrible idea.
* Outdoor humorist Creator/PatrickMcManus wrote a short story discussing this malady, along with its lesser-known variations Villa Fever (think a mild case of sniffles) and Two-Man-Tent Fever (think Ebola.)
* The sixth ''Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'' book is appropriately titled "Cabin Fever". It involves the entire Heffley family (minus Greg's father Frank) getting SnowedIn due to a snowstorm later in the book. Compounding this is that the power goes out ([[spoiler:Greg's little brother Manny was actually responsible for this [[DisproportionateRetribution because no one taught him how to tie his shoes]]]]), they are running out of food (Mrs. Heffley can't go out to get more because of the snow), and the basement flooded (which means that Greg's [[BigBrotherBully older brother Rodrick]] has to stay in his room).
* ''Literature/GoblinsInTheCastle'': Essentially what happened to the goblins during their long imprisonment, driven mad (both psychologically and emotionally, as they became ''very'' angry over being left alone in the dark for a hundred and twenty-one years) due to having no outlet for their wild energy.

* ''Series/ForAllMankind''. The Apollo 22 crew (Baldwin, Stevens, and Poole) gradually grow stir-crazy while stranded on the Jamestown Base due to constant delays in their relief launch. Stevens has the worst of it, defying orders to go walking on the Moon by himself and becoming obsessed with ''The Bob Newhart Show'' (the only show they have to watch on video). Eventually Poole deliberately injures herself so they have an excuse to stage a medical evacuation back to Earth for Stevens. Unfortunately this still leaves Baldwin on the Moonbase [[GoMadFromTheIsolation all by himself]].

* "I Wanna Be Sedated" by Music/TheRamones is inspired by an incident during their tour of England where they were stuck in London on Christmas Eve. London ''shuts down'' on Christmas Eve, leaving them with "Nothing to do, nowhere to go".

* In the fanmade webcomic, "Devo in: Tired O Tourin'," Mark suffers from this in the beginning, which sets off a chain of events that just goes from bad to worse. [[http://kittysneezes.com/?cat=3239 Read it here.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Fangbone}},'' when a barbarian spends too long under a roof, they're afflicted with hovelfroth, which turns them into rabid forces of nature that will only calm down once they're outside. When Bill pressures Fangbone into spending the day inside with him watching movies, Drool takes advantage of Fangbone's rising need to go outside and turns all the doors into looping portals, trapping them inside, forcing Fangbone to lose his mind and become savagely violent towards Bill.

"Cabin Fever" is a term for a [[HollywoodPsych psychological]] reaction closely related to claustrophobia, that takes place when a person or group is confined to a small isolated space for an extended period of time (this might be a ship, a cabin in a storm, a space rocket etc.) Symptoms include restlessness, irritability, and distrust towards others and an urgent need to go outside, even if it is physically impossible. In fiction, these symptoms are usually even more exaggerated, to the point of the character becoming a raving lunatic who is a danger to both themself and others.

* In ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'', after the Lost Light is [[spoiler:stolen by Getaway]], the crew is forced to temporarily use Skip, a ''much'' smaller ship with only two or three rooms. They're a VitriolicBestBuds at best when under ''normal'' conditions, so naturally the addition of weeks of travel in a cramped space leads to everyone going stir crazy. Eventually this escalates into arguments, prank wars, and fistfights.

* ''Fanfic/ImpenetrableWalls'' has Wei Wuxian being forced by his new status as a concubine to live locked up in the women's quarters, unable to speak with someone else than his husband or servants and deprived of his favorites hobbies (eating spicy food and esoteric research). He's also naturally restless and quick to feel bored, so a few weeks manage to make him stressed and unhappy and he reflects he would probably run away if he had nothing but this existence to look forwards.

** In ''[[Recap/WarriorCatsBluestarsProphecy Bluestar's Prophecy]]'', Rosetail comments that Snowfur seems to have den fever after spending so much time in the nursery after the birth of her kit, and that getting out of the camp for a bit will do her some good.

* {{Invoked|Trope}} in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': Lord Roose Bolton holds Winterfell, but his forces comprise a ''very'' tenuous alliance of Freys & Boltons with Manderlys and assorted other Northern lords. As King Stannis waits somewhere outside their walls and the whole castle is SnowedIn, ''someone'' begins murdering people one by one, heightening the tension between the various factions who are already freezing, hungry and seething with resentment. Eventually it comes to blood when Hosteen Frey attacks Lord Wyman Manderly, and to prevent it escalating any further Bolton sends their forces out separately into the snow to find Stannis, which has been repeatedly described as a terrible idea.

* The sixth ''Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'' book is appropriately titled "Cabin Fever". It involves the entire Heffley family (minus Greg's father, Frank) getting SnowedIn due to a snowstorm later in the book. Compounding this is that the power goes out ([[spoiler:Greg's little brother Manny was a actually responsible for this [[DisproportionateRetribution because no one taught him how to tie his shoes]]]]), they are running out of food (Mrs. Heffley can't go out to get more because of the snow), and the basement flooded (which means that Greg's [[BigBrotherBully older brother Rodrick]] has to stay in his room).

* In ''VideoGame/RimWorld'', this is one of the drawbacks of building an UndergroundCity. Tunneling into a mountain to build your colony means it will have strong natural defenses, and a year-round moderate temperature. But colonists have an "Outdoors" meter alongside their list of needs like food and recreation, so too many days without seeing the sun will lead to increasing mood penalties.

* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'': Happens to John while he's stuck on a space ship with only Jade, Davesprite, and his Nanna for company for three years, causing his normally [[ThePollyanna Pollyanna-esque]] personality to take a dive straight into the pessimistic and jerky. Jade, who had lived on an island on her own for all her life anyway, isn't really affected.

** Reynir, who's normally quite friendly and tries to not be too demanding, ends up grabbing Lalli (who doesn't even speak his language) and yelling at him upon getting the impression that he's doing nothing about a bad situation they both know about. The reason this trope is a likely factor in the outburst and the reason Reynir himself is unable to do something about the situation are one and the same: by that that point of the story, [[spoiler:Reynir hasn't been allowed to leave the tank in other circumstances than supervised walks for several days due to having to be isolated from Tuuri]].

-->I can't stand it! It's getting to me! I'm going stir crazy! Bastille batty! Cooler cuckoo! Look at my prison pallor! I'm black as a sheet!

* ''[[WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow Ren and Stimpy]]'' both get trapped in a cabin when it gets covered in snow by an avalanche. Both get severe signs of cabin fever as they've been tapped there for a long time. The snow on the cabin doesn't even melt, when it's bright and sunny outside.

* A ''WesternAnimation/TimeSquad'' episode appropriately titled "Cabin Fever". The squad stops getting missions and end up stuck together in their space station for weeks and eventually go mad. (well, [[OnlySaneMan except Otto]])

* Likely the origin of the SpaceMadness trope. In the 1950's experiments were held to test the effects of working alone in a cramped, low-oxygen environment. This lead to hallucinations and other signs of mental stress. As no-one had gone up into space yet this wasn't encouraging.
** Of course much of the problem stemmed from the torture-like regimen for the people in the test chamber. The researchers locked up a half-dozen of people in a room no larger than a train compartment, kept it low on oxygen, and forced various tasks requiring full concentration for 16 hours a day on them. Understandably, people soon started breaking from sheer exhaustion. As it turns out, the test conditions ''greatly'' exaggerated the rigors of a typical spaceflight: as rumored, UsefulNotes/YuriGagarin, after familiarizing himself with his heavily-automated capsule, asked (referring to the use of dogs as a test subjects in the Soviet space program):

** This continues to be one of the obstacles to a theoretical manned mission to Mars. We have the technology to do it, but the trip would take six months to get there at a minimum, with another six month minimum to get back. The longest continuous time anyone has spent in space is 14 months (cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov), so it is at least possible, but dealing with cabin fever is still pretty high on everyone's checklist. The most recent series of trials has shown some encouraging results, however; the key to preventing SpaceMadness might be as simple and relatively cheap as buying each astronaut a laptop and an external hard drive.

* Lampshaded in ''Film/TheSpoilers'' (1941). Creator/JohnWayne and his friend note that when two men spend a winter frozen in in a cabin in Alaska, they either walk out good friends... "or one man walks out alone."

"Cabin Fever" is a term for a [[HollywoodPsych psychological]] reaction closely related to claustrophobia, that takes place when a person or group is confined to a small isolated space for an extended period of time (this might be a ship, a cabin in a storm, a space rocket etc.) Symptoms include restlessness, irritability, and distrust towards others and an urgent need to go outside, even if it is physically impossible. In fiction, these symptoms are usually even more exaggerated, to the point of the character becoming a raving lunatic who is a danger to both himself and others.

* ''[[WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow Ren and Stimpy]]'' both get trapped in a cabin when its gets covered in snow by an avalanche. Both get severe signs of cabin fever as they've been tapped there for a long time. The snow on the cabin doesn't even melt, when its bright and sunny outside.

* Lighthouse keepers have historically been very prone to this trope: Just imagine living in a tower, usually on a secluded rock or tiny island. You hear the sounds of the waves on the rocks constantly. You have to do repetitive tasks on a regular basis, and if you fail to do them people can die. It's always humid, and probably cold. You've been eating stale bread for a week. And then Bob starts playing that stupid accordion again. [[FlippingTheTable That's it]]. Alice is [[AxCrazy getting the ax]]. She doesn't care if its [[OffingTheAnnoyance Bob or the accordion, one of them is getting chopped up]].

* In the intro for ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot4ItsAboutTime'', Doctors Neo Cortex and N. Tropy have gotten fed up with each other from being trapped in the past with Uka Uka for decades (specifically, while Tropy generally remained sane, Cortex's mania degenerated enough to resort to making a doll of [[ArchEnemy Crash]] to beat up). It's likely that the arguments would have gotten violent if Uka Uka didn't finally manage to open a way out.

* Lampshaded in ''The Spoilers'' (1941). Creator/JohnWayne and his friend note that when two men spend a winter frozen in in a cabin in Alaska, they either walk out good friends... "or one man walks out alone."