four soldiers have shared an anonymous fragment of their life from 4 countries, most often Egypt, France, and Russia. every entry is one person describing the shape of their own days — hours of sleep, money, stress, what they actually feel — to be read and weighed by strangers who never know who they are.
they report an average happiness of 5.0 / 10 and an average stress of 7.0 / 10, they sleep around 5.6 hours a night and have roughly 15 hours of free time per week, the median reported monthly income (across 4 fragments that disclosed one) sits near $1,346 USD-equivalent.
asked whether they would trade lives with soldiers, 295 strangers have answered. the result is split almost evenly: 42% would trade, 42% would not, 16% are unsure.
the reactions readers most often leave on soldiers' fragments are: peaceful, exhausting, and depressing. these tags are picked from a fixed list, so the words above carry the weight that strangers actually placed on them, not anything we paraphrased.
the fragments are spread unevenly across the world. by volume, the top countries for soldiers in our dataset are: Egypt (1 life, 38% would trade); France (1 life, 48% would trade); Russia (1 life, 39% would trade); Turkey (1 life, 32% would trade).