system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How is it that sleep depravation can actually kill you? What is the human reaction that leads to death?
gpt
No one knows for certain.  In a study involving rats, all of the sleep-deprived rats died in about a month.  The specific cause of death in each case was unknown.  Various suggestions were posited, but nothing was agreed upon.  There was evidence of brain damage in some, but not all.  

So, in short, the specific causes of death would likely vary by case, but the ultimate result of death from prolonged sleep deprivation is certain - at least in rats.  For ethical reasons, no such study could be performed on humans (I’ll let others debate the ethics for rats).