Mist is kind of the exact opposite of what their bodies turned into. Compression does really, really interesting things to meat and bone sacks with lots and lots of tiny airspaces. They wouldn’t have been conscious of anything, but they would have been more mince / paste / goo / frothy clot than anything as clean and homogenous sounding as mist.
tbh I think I prefer the 10 ms death over dying of old age. The months leading up to a death-by-old-age are still usually pretty unpleasant. Agreed that the toll on the family is rough though
I'm angling to die in bed of old age, but at full cognition and perfect awareness of what lies ahead I'm sure a lot of people would pick the Titan over the toll slow death and it's related miseries takes on a family (this is a very weird sentence to type about the Titan, lol)
It takes the brain 13 milliseconds to register an image.
It takes the brain 100-200 milliseconds to register pain.
They could have heard some cracks but most likely had no knowledge of the implosion. Their bodies just turned into mist.