Have you ever had nuclear war nightmares?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

I did -- only once in my entire life. Some time in the 80's, I dreamed I was watching the news and it said the USSR had just showered Norway with nukes. I don't have the foggiest idea why Norway.

It felt real, and clear. The USA was going to respond in kind. In fact the missiles were already flying. I felt the strange tranquility of the ultimate despair. We were all going to die. And then I woke up.

I hadn't even watched "The Dead Zone" either.

Yes, HypnoToad's Planet Of The Apes poll reminded me of that.

[ScreamingMeemie]

1. All the time when I was growing up. It did not help with T.V. movies

like "The Day After" and "Threads". They faded as I became an adult. Now I am a bit sad that this may well become part of my kids' lives as well. :(

I was napping on the couch when the Chernobyl accident happened, so that whole incident still has a surreal quality for me. I was hearing it and yet I was incorporating it into a dream as well.

[ProudGerman]

7. Chernobyl triggered my dreams of nuclear holocaust too

Except I was a mere boy living in Germany. They wouldn't let us outside after it happened. I remember talks about a radioactive cloud, but most of it I didn't pay too much attention. I do remember that very shortly after the incident, they removed all the sand from the sizable playground in the middle of our quarters, and replaced it after refinishing all the playground equipment. Everything metal got stripped and repainted, and the wood got blasted and refinished as well. Plastic bits were replaced.

Probably a bit of an overreaction, but then again we weren't all that far from Chernobyl and I do NOT have an arm growing out of my forehead.

[NicoleM]

13. "The Day After"

We had to watch that in 8th grade history class. It was 1990, so the Cold War was just about over. But it freaked me out so bad that it took almost ten years to quit having dreams about it.

[LTR]

20. "The Day After"

The scariest movie ever made.

I had nightmares for weeks after that.

I remember tuning in to a music-orinted radio station afterward where people were on the verge of tears. Very powerful movie.

I wish it was available on DVD. Looks like it can still be found on VHS:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index%3Dvhs%26field-keywords%3Dthe%252520day%252520after%26store-name%3Ddvd/102-3568052-9929703

It msut be out of stock, or out of print. Used copies are fetching a fortune.

"Threads" (a UK version of TDA) was also powerful. I also remember another one, "Testament". Neither are available on VHS or DVD.

[CanuckAmok]

35. "The Day After" was bullshit...

Such typical "We shall perservere" crapola. Might as well rent "Red Dawn" or "Amerika".

"Threads" and "When the Wind Blows" were far more effective in terms of expressing the reality of the results of a nuclear exchange.

Threads is absolutely chilling. I never want to see it again as long as I live.

[terrya]

15. Yes, realizing George W. Bush can order a nuclear first strike.

Of all the Presidents I've known, I believe Bush is seriously capable of ordering the use of nuclear weapons. And that scares the hell out of me.

Terry

[HuckleB]

2. Yes. A few different ones, with one repeating nightmare as a child.

[HereSince1628]

3. Every child of the cold war had them...

the consequence of too many "duck and cover" practice sessions.

As a grade schooler I dreaded annual field trips from the boonies into Chicago. I was convinced since Chicago "was a target" it would be incinerated on the day of our trip to the Art Institute. It's left me with a lingering anxiety about surrealism.

[VelmaD]

32. Nope, not all had them

I was little when the Cold War was still going on (born in 1970). I didn't have nuclear war dreams then for the same reason I don't have terrorism dreams now. Back then my parents refused to participate in a culture of fear. My momma told me not to be afraid - that the Russians didn't want to die any more than we did and they weren't going to start a nuclear war. That worked when I was very small because I believed my momma WAY more than som epolitician. Later on when I was 9 or 10 we had serious discussions about how they used the Cold War to keep people afraid and that I shouldn't fall for it.

I'm glad I had my momma's wisdom to guide me then and I've been even "gladder" since 9-11. :-)

[populistmom]

4. I have

No one's going to believe me (but my husband knows I woke up early that morning talking about it before anything happened), but the night of 9/10/01, I had very scary, vivid dreams in this regard. Then after what happened the next morning, it frankly, scared the shit out of me. I don't really talk about this much because it makes me sound a bit loopy, even if it is true. (Maybe I should be posting this answer in the Meeting Room or something).

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

9. So did I on the night of 9/10/2001 !

I dreamed that I saw my mother , my litte brother , and my little cousins walking down our street slowly carry a white casket ( honest to God ! ) and in the dream I was hurrying trying to catch up with them . And for some odd reason I looked down at my feet and I was wearing a pair of shoes that I wore only as a child whenever I went to church with a pair of white socks that kids wear on Sunday . Freaky dream ... and then the next day everything happened , I have been creeped out ever since then ...

[liberalmuse]

10. I'd be interested in reading about it...

if you were comfortable enough to post. I believe a lot of people had a 'premonition' about 9-11. I had had a dream that this huge tornado hit the largest building I've ever seen and destroyed it, though some of the people working with me in this building were unharmed. A couple months later, we had moved our work offices and as I looked out the window, the scene looked so similar to my dream I got the chills. That was on 9-10-01. Not very close to actual events, but the feeling of foreboding was there and had been since Bush stole the election, and also, I had had this urgency to get out of the country and had planned to go to Europe in the first week of September. As it was, I ended up moving back to Salt Lake City.

[VelmaD]

33. Don't feel like a flake or anything

I woke up very early the morning of 9/11 from bad dreams all night with the worst headache I've had in my entire life. I called in sick and tried to go back to sleep. Then my best friend called. She had called in sick for exactly the same reason only she had the tv on in her bedroom and called to tell me what had happened.

[liberalmuse]

5. Only one dream...

I dreamed I was watching this large white, red-tipped missle slowly come in towards our capitol building here in Salt lake City (our capitol building is designed after the one in D.C.). When it hit, I saw a flash and as waves of explosion finally hit where I was in a matter of seconds, I was disintegrated, though my consciousness was floating in space and still thinking. It was a pretty weird dream.

[MuseRider]

6. Yup, during the 50's and 60's

mostly after our practice runs at school where we had to do the duck and cover and tell our teachers how we planned to get back together with our parents (we had written out our plans). It was very scary. My dreams have not started to come back yet but my husbands have.

[bicentennial_baby]

8. Not since the 80s

but yes, I have.

[ramapo]

11. Quite a few

Haven't had one in awhile. I'm another cold-war kid with early memories of the cuban crisis, air-raid drills, fallout shelters, etc.

I've always had a morbid fascination with the subject.

The whole terra-ist stuff of today doesn't phase me much. I figure I made it through the cold war where we could've been vaporized at any moment, so what's a few terra-ists.

[hobbes159]

12. After reading "Alas, Babylon" for the first time...

I remember as a kid going to the basement, looking at how much food we had stored, and realizing how short a time it would last....

"The Day After" and "Threads" aired about the same time, that didn't help much....

[ewagner]

22. Yes..."Alas, Babylon" had a profound impact on me

I lived in Florida (where the story was set) and I lived less than 300 yards from the gates of a Naval Air Station during the Cuban Missle Crisis.

During the Crisis, we had evacuation drills at school. I knew I wouldn't want to go home if there was an attack because I'd only be closer to the base (target). So I found a culvert with a lot of dirt over it on one of the roads to the school that I would use as my own personal fall out shelter. Never told anybody else about it. Played with the thought of telling the best-looking girl in school to come with me....:evilgrin:

Every waking thought was about "what if"? And it infiltrated my dreams too.

[lpbk2713]

14. Yes. It was after I had read "Alas, Babylon".

Back in the 60's when the Cold War was "dangerously warm".

[kalian]

16. Not about a nuke war but....

post-nuclear exchange... Frightening.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

17. I saw a movie when I was really little, 6 or 7...

And there were like eight people left after some kind of event...And the were driving around in this yellow school bus. There were a couple of kids, some teenagers and a few adults, I think, and they were still hearing echoes of the people who parished. They had to loot what they could to survive. It was really sad...Anyone remember that movie? It gave me the heebee jeebees. I had nightmares about the end of the world for months. If any of you remember the name of that movie, let me know, k? Or if I dreamed it, let me know that too. hehe.
Duckie

[lpbk2713]

21. That might be "The Omega Man"

If I recall correctly there was a part at the end where they all rode in a school bus. "Cold Dead Hands" Heston was in it.

[Birthmark]

18. Only one.

I dreamed that I was out with my family when there was a bright flash behind me. I quickly realized what had happened. Then I threw my son down behind a car and dove on him. I could feel the hot metal from the melting car on my back. That's when I woke up.

Pretty unusual, since I seldom have nightmares of any description.

[Dogmudgeon]

19. Many

First, half the people in my family -- all from my mother's side -- have REM sleep disorders that lead to things like sleep paralysis, unusually vivid dreams, etc.

Second, my Dad was a nuclear weapons technician from 1954 until 1975.

Third ... I was growing up in the 1960s, and although the Nuclear War panic had subsided, there were still a lot of "incidents" that usually didn't get much publicity, except inside the Defense establishment.

Not a recipe for untroubled sleep.

Most nightmare-inducing nuke opera: Miracle Mile.

--bkl

[slackmaster]

23. Yes, last night after I watched The Terminator

The original.

I dreamed I was on a crew of people who were picking up pieces of corpses, all the while singing the refrain from the Johnny Cash tune Daddy Sang Bass over and over:

No, the circle won't be broken.
By and by, Lord, by and by.

I still have the song stuck in my head. This will take at least two cups of coffee and one computer system emergency to clear.

[RebelOne]

24. Often. I see a black mushroom cloud and I'm always running

and trying to find my family.

[twistedliberal]

25. I do quite often,

but they have all been since the chimp invaded Iraq.

[ConcernedCanuk]

26. Never had dreams per se; but many times a hapless empty feeling

.
.
.
the sort of ache you get in your stomach when you know you are gonna get sh_t coming home from that "late" date as a young teen.

My first recollection of that feeling was in '62, in the reading of "On The Beach" by Nevil Chute

right - you got it, a young teen, reading an "apocalyptic" book during the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis

To make matters worse, I actually did research and a class presentation in Junior High (grade 8 up here) on that Cuban Missile Crisis - overwhelming for a person at that age

Many "events" have fostered that "empty stomach" ache of hopelessness since.

None was so powerful as I sat here, in front of my 'puter, as I watched the first bombs fall on Baghdad on CNN's "production" of Shock 'n Awe

Little things like Black-Hawks patrolling our border now don't help - -

(sigh)

[TrogL]

27. Whadya mean "had" it's more like "have"

Same nightmare over and over. I wake up and there's two suns rising.

One is Sol. The other is a nuclear explosion.

[jimbo fett]

28. Bush has nuclear wet dreams. Does that count?

[Cannikin]

30. Another good movie I havent seen mentioned....

'By Dawn's Early Light'

I think it was originally made for Showtime. I highly recommend it if you can find it.

[arwalden]

29. Nope... But I Often Dream Of Seeing A Jet Fall From The Sky And Crash...

or of being a PASSENGER in a jet that's falling from the sky in a fiery blaze.

-- Allen

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

31. Hey, I get those too!

But never as a passenger. Was that you screaming hysterically from the window?

[cmf]

34. Yes, still do.

Unfortunately nuclear weapons are a very real part of my life, so I can't ignore them. I have a nightmare about war every 6 months or so. Unfortunately with Bush in the White House, shifting our nuclear strategy, we are closer to nuclear war now than at any time within the last decade.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

36. I had them in the early 1960s

right before the Cuban missile crisis and during a time period when all those "duck and cover" ads and infomercials were playing on TV. It was also the period when they began to show a lot of WWII documentaries on TV.

(I remember one in which a woman and her child are driving out of town--the husband is in the fallout shelter at his workplace--when the bomb hits. They duck down in the front seat, wait a few minutes, and drive on. Yeah, right.)

I used to have nightmares about bombs falling, especially when we visited my grandparents, who lived right under an approach to the Mpls-St. Paul airport. Those low-flying planes found their way into my dreams in some very unpleasant ways.