I write here in this section of Dreamviews because I keep having a recurrent and horrifying nightmare involving a nuclear detonation, the locus of which is immediately above the downtown area of a major metropolitan city. What scares me about this dream is the fact that I have it night after night, and that the imagery involved is consistent with accounts of what would actually occur should such a detonation take place -- accounts which I only researched after having this dream for the first few times.
I fully understand that this dream may be influenced by movies I have seen, or books that I have read -- but the consistency of the content of this dream, and certain peculiarities involved therein, cause me great concern.
Firstly, I dream that the nuclear detonation in question is thermonuclear in nature -- that is to say, it involves the detonation of a sophisticated, staged fusion device as opposed to the detonation of crude, improvided fission device such as the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this dream, the detonation takes the form of an airburst occurring several hundred feet above the skyline of the city (which I do not recognize). There is an instant of brilliant white light, so bright that it bleaches everything in sight to the extent that I can barely make out massive skyscrapers, buses, cars, and people. Within less than a second of the detonation, I see people's clothing catch fire, and then I hear shrieks of pain that die away almost instantly as the thermal pulse quite literally vaporizes the people. The light fades, but is still incredibly bright -- and then I see skyscrapers quite literally blown to pieces as a blast wave rips them from their foundations as though they were made of paper. Then there is no sound -- absolutely no sound whatsoever from the moment the blast wave hits to the moment that I awaken. The light starts to fade, but as it does so, the blast wave ripples outwards, consuming smaller buildings, homes, and other structures...
I am aware, having witnessed the evil of 9/11 from a few blocks away, that this dream could be the product of my imagination having been primed by the events that impacted me on that date. However, no terrorists would be able to detonate a thermonuclear device above a major city -- the most likely nightmarish scenario that could play out in real life would involve the detonation of a relatively small device, taking the form of a groundburst as opposed to an airburst. I do not make light of this scenario -- I contrast it, however, with the contents of my dream. I don't dream of a terrorist attack. I dream of wholesale slaughter on a scale that we all feared could occur in the 1980s, when there was the very real possibility that we could have blown ourselves into the arms of our ancestors.
I wake up with the sheets soaked in sweat, heart racing, and am sometimes reluctant to go to bed for fear of what the night will bring.
Why this, and why now? Why do I dream of such carnage with such monotonous regularity?
Comments would be greatly appreciated.....
Philip
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