Drowning sim means you’ll never go near the water without a life jacket again

Chitra Singh | May 1, 2014 | 0 Comments

You’ve heard of flight simulators and combat simulators, but now a drowning simulator is afloat online. Sortie En Mer-A Trip Out To Sea takes you to the sea, tips you over, and then leaves you with the task to struggle and stay afloat, even though no matter what, you’ll drown sooner or later.

Hope you like the taste of saltwater, because this sim doesn’t go anywhere pretty. From Fastcocreate.

The simulator designed for a French marine clothing and safety-equipment company, Guy Cotten, aims to promote the use of life jacket while at sea. And with the stress it creates, it has us sold!

An actual video rather than an animation lends the simulation realism and gets your adrenaline pumping as you get a first-person perspective on this life-threatening situation. Ocean waves crash against the camera, duplicating the experience of being adrift.

After the video starts running, a person – whose face you cannot see – falls off a sailboat left struggling to keep his head above water. The viewer is told to “…Scroll without stopping to stay on the surface.” Survival instincts kick in. While you scroll to keep the head above the sea, you even hear the character’s voice yelling out in vain. If you fail to scroll, the drowning happens in a matter of seconds. However, even if you put your whole might scrolling for a long time, you’re bound to get tired.

That’s when the POV character drowns after his futile attempt at survival. We watch him take off his shoes to swim better, and his fingernails come off due to the freezing sea temperature, but ultimately, no matter what, the man drowns.

One gets the sense of sinking deeper in the sea as the sun seen through the water gets farther. In what look like the last moments of his life, the man imagines holding on to a girl on the shore, nevertheless slipping away. He is finally pulled into the sea.

The morbid video ends with a simple safety message on a black screen: “At sea, you tire faster than you think. Whenever you go out to sea, wear your life jacket.”

What a creepy way to drive home a point!