After the heart stopped beating and the brain starts experiencing irreversible damage. The lungs stopped inhaling, and other organs ceased to function.
Wwhat would that person see or hear? If they ever see or hear anything, what would that person feel or experience?
Some people have had near-death experienced, and some others may have 'died' but only clinically, and only for a few seconds if not hours, before reviving. Others may also had out-of-body experience.
While all living things would die sooner or later, nobody ever returned from the dead, after they're really dead.
Because of this, death is a sensitive subject, and can be a disturbing topic for some people.
Regardless, doctors and researchers have always wondered what lies ahead.
What would happen when someone is flatlining?
Based on the information gathered from people who had near-death experienced, which usually involve seeing a light at the end of a dark tunnel, hearing the voices of loved ones and even screams of the damned, a person has come up with an idea to create a virtual reality "death simulator."
After all, since humans who still live cannot really answer what death feels like, they can only imagine what is life after death.
This technology wants to help put people's fears of the afterlife to rest.
The creation is the brainchild of an artist named Shaun Gladwell, who developed an immersive near-death experience that guides participants through the de-escalation of life, from cardiac arrest to brain death, giving them a glimpse of what may happen in their final moments.
The simulation also features an out-of-body experience, allowing users to look down on their dead bodies as they float above.
One user who went through the experience explained how he was laid down on a replica hospital bed, and that through the VR, where the vision and hearing are blocked, the person experienced what would happen during flatlining.
The person recalled seeing doctors failing, and how people were in shock.
Then, as death welcomed him, the person was shown an out-of-body experience, transcending life and planet Earth.
While the experience can be "meditative," the experience can also be described as "unsettling", and difficult to process.
And this could give induce anxiety to some people.
Fortunately, the technology is only a VR, meaning that people who wish to experience death through the simulator, can quit anytime.
In the exhibit that is part of the Melbourne Now event, participants are hooked up to a heart rate monitor and can exit the simulation at any time by raising their hand if they find it overwhelming.
Or, they can simply remove the headset altogether, and return to the land of the living.
Gladwell hopes that his creation can help people come to terms with the inevitable fact that they would die someday.
By simulating death, Gladwell wants to show them the feeling of death.
But still, Gladwell's creation is only a simulation.
Nobody knows what would really happen after death, and no one can never be sure what awaits ahead.
Gladwell's creation is not the only creation that focuses on death.
Before this, a controversial VR headset with the same theme, was created by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey.
But instead of simulating death, his VR headset is meant to kill its user when they die in a game.
Called the NerveGear, the innovation uses three "explosive charge modules" pointed at the user's skull, in order to instantly "destroys the brain" when the person loses.
"The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me – you instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it," he shared.
"Pumped up graphics might make a game look more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game."
It's similar to The Matrix films, where the people going into the virtual world and die there, would also die in real life.
Somehow, it also resembles the 1990s cartoon Jonny Quest, which sees its characters entering a virtual world using a futuristic contraption, and can also experience bodily harm if their avatar is harmed in the virtual world.
But Luckey's intention is to create something that is more like what's found in the comic Sword Art Online, where people are dropped into a world where they have to fight to the death, and those who dies in the virtual world, also dies in the real world.
Read: Oculus Founder Created A Virtual Reality Headset That Can Kill Its User In Real Life
