Your body doesn't know that it's suffocating, afaik. It only senses a high CO2 level which won't exist if you use an exit bag, where the nitrogen displaces oxygen and carries away the CO2.
I've watched industry videos that explain the dangers of low oxygen environments, and from what it seems, you go completely limp and unconscious in just a few seconds. Your body needs oxygen to produce energy and, without it, is basically an engine with no fuel. The process of brain death begins at 3 minutes I think, so even if you got to only 7–8 minutes of nitrogen flow lets say, you'll be a vegetable until your body succumbs to a still failing brain. I doubt much oxygen would penetrate the exit bag either, even after the flow of nitrogen ceases. Your breathing should become more of a messy shuddering motion in this state, so you won't be breathing correctly anyway. And if we assume the bag comes off, and you are exposed to oxygen, then I would still guess you'll be unconscious and be alive for a while longer until succumbing to your partially dead brain.
Also, don't forget that your entire body needs oxygen. So you'll also have partially dead organs in this state as well.
All in all, just make sure the bag doesn't come off and no one will find you. It's a method that requires a bit of planning, so don't rush it.
Yes, I know that oxygen deprivation doesn't evoke that suffocation feeling in the classical sense, but that's it's carbon dioxide if rebreathed.
That's why the process till fainting is considered being similar to getting very drunk.
Anyway I had a bad experience while trying carbonmonixide with a barbacue in a bathroom 7 years ago. The concenration was first high enough to kind of faint but then regained some parts of conciousness. The things I experienced were so bad that it's hard to describe it with words. I didn't know where I was, that I am, I just was full of the feeling of running out of oxygen from within (carbon monoxide is blocking oxygen in the Red blood cells). It also feels like suffocation although not in your lungs but in the whole body.
Although I know that it's just not possible to regain conciousnes with the exit bag method - if carried out correctly - there is still the fear that I will be in a dream like state and experience the symptoms of my body, even if I don't experience the outer world.
In dream states, it's definatly possible for the brain to integrated both stimuli from the outer world (for example if someone is talking, or a Song is playing while you are dreaming) and stimuli from the body (for example if parts of your body hurt and you dream of it - a friend dreamed having a leg horribly cut of because the leg was lying on some kind of wood and therefore was hurting).
So knowing this happens in dream states, we also know that people sometimes experience things from the outer world or from their body when they are in a coma after heavy brain damage.
In the exitbag process the brain dies in around 15 minutes. The dying process happens succesivly, not all at once. The brain consist of several parts. It is known that the most primitive part (fight or flight mechanism) is one of the last ones or THE last part to die. This might still make stress. I just don't want to have an experience of my heartbeat accelaration or anything else unplesant.
P.s.: I am far from rushing. Been in this forum since 2020 and I have the exit bag, nitrogen tank and everything else since 2021.
My time is long overdue
. I hope it's like the near death experiences where you see a light and find peace at the end.
