Nuclear War: A Warning, Hopefully, And Not A Prophecy

 

Dreamt, last night, that WW3 started.

Well, can't say for sure if it was a world war, since the dream ended after the detonation of the (first?) rather large device.  Somewhere very far away, due west (I live in Oakland, CA).

The love of my life was not with me; for some reason he had made his farewells (until, it was assumed, next we met) sometime during the dénouement of the dream.

He would for some reason - no doubt closely guarded - be accompanying, or escorting, the mission. I remember the explanation he gave: "It really will be the safest place for me to be."

In the dream, I did not understand him at the time.  Until, right around dusk (still in the dream), I was walking home, almost there, headed approximately northward, and crossing the final intersection before my building. 

I heard a >pop< -- more like a sharp cracking sound, very far away.  It is one of those telescoping dream effects, that I knew it was very far away, but still heard it, and, turning to my left, saw what I saw.

 

Between the buildings, where, in the years I have lived there, I had enjoyed beholding countless beautiful sunsets,  far off, ocean in between, its unfathomably hot, incredibly dense lethality zeroed to a  center not on the ground but some distance above, an orange and white fireball rapidly unfolding, incredibly bright.  Doing that thing that some nuclear bombs do, where it looks like a video that has skipped frames, because too much is going on at once.

I forget which bomb test it reminded me of.

I realized what mission my love was critical to, and woke to full consciousness, abruptly.

Figured out the direction, etc, as I lay there.

It has been about twenty seven years since I dreamt on this topic.  

I used to have incredibly realistic nightmares, all five senses included, at least once a month and sometimes once or twice a week, starting when I was maybe six or seven and only subsiding in my early twenties.

I have experienced, first hand, the effect of all manner of bombs.  Enumerated them.  Feared sleep from them.  Been at ground zero, where my last thought (Stupid, stupid, senseless waste) persists from a kind of inertia an infinitely long nanosecond after my body has been vaporized into hot dense wet light.

Been far enough away that it takes two weeks or more to die, and you feel your mind disintegrating along with your body, grateful for moments not spent in agony.

Been farther out, having to cope with the despair, and the panic, and the sheer impossibility of keeping fallout out of your house and your food and your body.  My cat got out, I remember once, and was crying to be let back in, and I looked through the peephole, and she was covered in what looked like big ashy snowflakes.  Her long black fur, no longer glossy, had already begun to fall out in patches, but she was sitting straight-backed with her tail curled around her feet; it had not yet sunk in that the incomprehensible, happening around her, had happened to her as well.

I have lived through -- well mostly not lived through -- all manner of devices, high and low yield, tactical, air-burst, underwater, neutron, lithium, ICBM, rogue, you name it.  It got to the point where I set a small goal for myself, one I thought I might be, should be, able to accomplish.  A simple thing, I thought, a habit that to me would be easy to acquire, a lesson I felt I, a gifted student, should be able to learn, especially with so many opportunities to practice.

I just wanted not to look.

I think I managed it once, near the end, in my early twenties.  Before that, for years before that, the last thing I thought as I died was Shit.  You looked.

One final note:

This morning, after waking, my honey pointed out that none of these nightmares had yet come true.  This made me feel a little better, but not much.  

Notably, there were two types of nuclear scenarios with which The Powers That Be in my dreamworld  had not seen fit to torture me, and with which I therefore had not had the misfortune to have had any familiarity.  One was death by the effects of Cobalt-60.

The other was the aftereffects, environmental and political, of a First Strike by the United States.

I realize there could be other circumstances that could serve as causes as a result of which the effects of last nights dream might seem plausible.  I would like to hear what they are, it would make me feel less uneasy.

Please, feel free to comment.



Be seeing you.