Thanks to China, you can now simulate your own death

Now that you know all about escape rooms, how about a room from which there is no escape? Taking it to a morbid new level, China is about to launch a death room, of sorts.

The Samadhi - 4D Experience of Death, set to open in Shanghai next month, will use special effects to allow visitors to simulate their own death, or, at the very least, kill some time. The exhibit raised $67,000 in three months on the Chinese version of Kickstarter, proving that people will fund anything. Also, that pretend dying isn't nearly as popular as a cooler with a built-in blender.

Like all escape rooms, players are given a series of puzzles to solve in order to get out. Only in this case, escape means not dying. Here, the door doesn’t simply open after an hour of failure; instead guests are loaded onto a conveyor belt en route to a fake crematorium, where hot air and other undisclosed special effects mimic the horrible pain/feeling of getting burned alive. No, we're not making this up. Yes, we wish we were.

And the winners? Well, they gotta die too, because that’s life. But don’t worry -- because Buddhism is prevalent in China (and incorporates the idea of rebirth), all the players are sent to a womb-like pod after cremation where they'll no doubt experience the sensation of being fake born again.