I haven't had many intense dreams, fortunately. Most of the unpleasant dreams I've had, I wouldn't even call nightmares. They were gut-wrenchingly
awkward situational things, like being at university with finals approaching and realizing I'd never even attended the lectures for a certain
class...and now the time had come to pay the piper. Nothing abstract or symbolic that I can recall.
The single dream I've had that I'd describe as a nightmare involved nuclear war. Supposedly, most people dream in back & white most of the time.
Most of the dreams I remember were in color. This one certainly was.
In the dream, I was in Sacramento, California (a familiar place because I'd been stationed a few years earlier as a member of the U.S. Coast Guard).
I was driving through a nondescript light-industrial neighborhood in my vehicle of the time, a Toyota pickup with a camper shell on the back.
There was no preamble or preliminary plot. I was driving, and suddenly there was an unbelievably intense flash of light. My truck was knocked over
onto its right side and blown over the curb, across a parking lot, and up against the front wall of one of the low, one-story brick buildings along
the street. I had a sense that the camper shell was the only thing that prevented the cab from being crushed by the force of the impact.
At that point, the dream ended. There was no aftermath of climbing out of the wreckage, walking through a ruined city, or anything like that. It
just stopped.
What made this dream interesting to me was the detail. I could see the truck's steering wheel, the plastic faux wood of the instrument panel, the
brushed-aluminum radio knobs and so forth with complete accuracy.
It's frustrating that I can't remember when I had the dream. It may have been influenced by "The Day After," a made-for-TV nuclear war film that had
been broadcast at around that time. Or maybe not.
edit on 8-5-2013 by Pikadon because: (no reason given)
edit on 8-5-2013 by Pikadon because: Edited for clarity.