If you find yourself attending an event longer than your normal waking time, you generally have two options. The preferred choice is to just duck out for a quick nap. A 20- or 30-minute nap is not usually a big problem. If that's not practical, then I think I recall Steve saying that he could occasionally stretch waking time by about an extra 50% if necessary. Not something you'd want to do regularly, but I doubt it's a problem once you've finished adaptation, as long as it's done sparingly.
Since neither of these are really great options, the best solution to the problem is to think about what kind of events you'll have to attend before you choose a sleep schedule. If your social events are regularly longer than the normal waking time for the given sleep schedule, and you can't duck out of those events for naps, then that schedule just isn't going to work. And if no polyphasic schedule works for you, there's nothing wrong with finding that polyphasic sleep simply doesn't work in your current situation (as Steve did).
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