The Red Alert Alarm features a 3 pronged attack on your unconsciousness. First a 1000W flood light will turn on to help simulate sunlight. Shortly there after a 120db siren will go off for 2-3 seconds. This is enough to scare the bejesus out of a lot of people and wake them up fully. 

For me, it's enough to get me out of REM sleep. The final phase is a "do not pass" time. Everyone needs a little snooze after an alarm from time to time so I've implemented a snooze free time that will analyze weather I'm still in bed or not. After say 8:30, if I am not out of bed, the alarm will not stop until it senses that I am up and out.

Right now it's working off an electric imp and triggered by a cron job on my NAS however shortly I will be moving over to something like a pi or a BBB