"If it wasn't, I wouldn't be here," Asch says, bluntly. "Effectively dying was better than taking the risk of winding up in that situation again."

He both regrets and doesn't regret that decision, but it's his. Sure, some drivers were decent, but it was still always a roll of the dice. A sleep you never wake up from might as well be death.

"But it changed something that had been a fundamental fact of the world for as far back as history goes, and people are still adjusting to it." He's still adjusting to it.