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HughPickens.com [hughpickens.com] writes:

Ryan O'Hare writes in the Daily Mail that a business in China is offering people the chance to be virtually cremated before being reborn through a latex womb. The Samadhi Death Simulator allows visitors to be "killed off" by their peers [dailymail.co.uk], before they are "cremated" in an oven, and then "resurrected" - experiencing birth through a giant latex "womb" chute. The virtual crematorium opening in Shanghai asks people to discuss a life and death scenario before deciding if they would put one of their fellow philosophers forward for death, or if they would sacrifice their own life. The person with the worst explanation is selected for death, climbs inside the giant simulator and is fed through the machine feet first, with screens all around projecting images of rolling flames. After the virtual cremation, the person moves from the slab and crawls through a latex womb on their hands and knees, simulating their rebirth.

"When we do not fully understand and take in [death], saying goodbye is really quite a complicated and difficult task [mirror.co.uk]," says the attraction's founder, Ding Rui. "So I thought of how to be able to come up with a premise on how to educate people on life, so as one approaches the moment just before they they face death, they don't have to think about these problems constantly." Ding and his partner Huang Wei-ping went to great lengths researching their game, investigating the cremation process that typically awaits 50% of Chinese people after death. The pair visited a real crematorium and asked to be sent through the furnace with the flames turned off [cnn.com]. When it came to Huang's turn, he found it unbearable. "It was getting really hot. I couldn't breathe and I thought my life was over."

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