Imagine waking up to the text message “Ballistic Missile Threat Inbound. Seek Immediate Shelter. This is not a drill.”

With your life flashing before your eyes, realistically, what would you do?

The Morning You Wake (to the end of the world) Meta Quest VR app is based on a true story. That above text message was the reality for the 1.4 million Hawaiians living in Hawaii on January 13, 2018.

At the time, genuine tensions were happening between the USA and North Korea. A year early, North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile theoretically capable of striking the United States. The “not a drill” aspect was terrifying when met with an air raid siren, and the phone network went down.

The gameplay style of this app is you’re transported within a story being told, which includes different types of visual experiences, from realistic to larger-than-life visualizations of audio waveforms. I sat during the whole thing, but you can also experience it standing and walking around your play space. The three-part story experience takes about 38 minutes, the same amount of time it took for Hawaii citizens to find out that the alert was a false alarm. In terms of navigation, you won’t have to do any, and you don’t have any controls

Check out the trailer here. I’ve also taken a short recording to give you an idea of what it’s like:

On The Morning You Wake in VR

Yes. One resident of Hawaii that received the message shares how they got into their car to escape, only to be turned away at the closest bomb shelter cause it was too full.

Another shares a flashback from her childhood. “Flesh was falling from their faces. It was impossible to know if it was a man or woman,” she explains as a Hiroshima bomb survivor, and that if it did happen there, she didn’t want to survive.

This experience contains real stories and emotions that may very well make you emotional. This is a life-changing experience. Once you've seen it or heard it, it will always be with you. Even if the worst-case scenario doesn’t happen because we all know it’s plausible.

Virtual reality isn’t just about smacking glowing orbs with haptic-enabled lightsabers. Sometimes it’s nice to use VR as a tool for mind-altering experiences. Do the things we can’t do in real life. Like, experiencing the end of the world from multiple angles and perspectives.

You don’t have to take my word for it either. This app has been touted at Sundance Film Festival and SXSW, among others. Once you have had a chance to watch it, please share your experience with me on Twitter Ashley Huffman.

Learn more — Created by Archer’s Mark and Atlas V, creators of Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness. The app has an official website here and the Meta Quest website, which is still Oculus.com (just to be super confusing!?) is here.

End of the World Simulator in VR was originally published in AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.