Last night I dreamt I survived a Nuclear detonation.
I dreamt that myself and a few other people had a plan to survive it. The plan involved connecting every metal object together, and to the ground, and ourselves to everything metal.
The time came for the explosion, I waited with fear, then at about 5 seconds to go I made a decision to wait with calm instead of with fear (A common-sense decision, that would probably be impossible to make IRL)
The detonation happened. The plan worked. We survived unhurt (we were well with the radius of the 500MPH firewind.
And then a dream disconnection. It’s the aftermath of the nuclear world ‘destruction’ and I’m at a large community place with a dancefloor/stage in the middle, and a bar at one end.
Will Smith is on the stage (it’s in ‘stage’ mode because nobody is dancing, Will Smith is doing a sort of hybrid of stand-up and being a compaire (‘compare’?,‘compere’?)
But the atmosphere and music is too loud. He shouts at the top of his voice to get me to come up and help him out. I tell him I have no idea how to do it. He says a bit of dutch courage and I should be fine.
But I don’t drink Will?
On second thoughts… We’ve just had nuclear war. One drink won’t hurt.
Cue about fourteen more little but very um, meaningful dreams.
I used to be rarther cynical of Dream interpretation as a practice. Not so now - I think there may be some truth in the idea that Dreams are our brains attempting to prepare for a future anticipated event, or deal with a past event, or to simply act out repressed desires.
For a good year or two now I’ve been worried about what will happen to me if the company I work for goes under. My skills in this place are not easily transferable (though they are more transferable than they were two years ago) and I psychologically not good (terrible in fact) at dealing with bad things happening.
By the way I rushed that OP out. I could elaborate on the whole night’s dreaming, and I may still do so.
Edit: One thing I did mean to say, but forgot to in the OP was that I was fairly happy in the post apocalyptic world. I had survived afterall, and the ‘new’ world seemed more interesting - Far less eutopic (if there is such a word) but interesting none the less. Like the kind of world a particularly talented computer game world/story writer might write. (Like Bioshock, but above ground, and without truly crazy people and little girls with syringes)
I was struck by the metallurgy theme – not only does your dream self fashion an armor (of sorts) for protection, but you are induced to come out of your shell by a celebrity whose name could be parsed to mean “will do some metal smithing”. Plus, there’s that whole music genre known as heavy metal… did you have a difficult adolescence or early adulthood in which heavy metal saved you [from despair, social isolation, whatever]?
More generally, though, your dream seems to be about trying to relinquish a source of comfort or protection in order to grow and reach out to others, perhaps with a new persona or talent, but finding it difficult to overcome your fears and inhibitions to do so.
This may be a stretch, but I wonder if the whole nuclear war angle is merely symbolic of the new world order and capitalist globalization, in which many old jobs are destroyed, while others are created. Is your current job threatened by competition with (or absorption by) an American corporation? And have you been mulling over the possibilities of working for a [perhaps different] American corporation, or even moving to, say, southern California?
This just occurred to me after posting, but in the metallurgical bit above, “Will Smith” is possibly just your own alter-ego! (“Will… Smith” and your own working with metals… geddit?) So this could be a subconscious aspect of your personality trying to make itself manifest to the rest of you, so that you will become the Master of Ceremonies of your own life and take it in a new direction. Either that, or he wants you to brush up on your jokes and party patter.
Another of last night’s dreams, heavilly summarized - was this.
Drove to a garden center. When leaving I am unable to find the car-park where I left the car. In a search for this car park I end up cutting a route through the local seaside town and I get quite lost. (I feel scared, but not desperate because I half know I’m dreaming) I see a ruin of a mansion, On the other side I see features that are familiar to the area where the car park might have been so I decide to cut through the mansion. It turns out to be HUUUGE and quite spooky… The more anxious I am to get out, the more hindered my progress is by the size of the place and my own body becoming less under my own control.
Well, there is some justification in being skeptical of dream analysis, in that as I have posted in other threads, it’s all Symbol and Metaphor, and symbols and metaphors vary from person to person. Therefore, we cannot always assume that such-and-such always means X.
In my own interpretations, my house is my life. Larger structures, for example a mall or an office building, tend to represent the larger world. In one dream, a swaying barn very clearly represented my professional life, the house in the dream being my personal life.
I’m curious as to what you do for a living. Metallurgy, metals could be symbolic of craftsmanship, or hard work, or just something solid and enduring. Putting them on the ground around you being symbolic of you making your skills more solid and able to endure the transformation, “all around”, as it would seem you have done.
Obviously the whole scenario is about having spent the last couple of years worrying about losing your job. That’s the “apocalypse”. You’ve made your skills more transferable and solid, as above. Now, on an unconscious level, you are much less worried about surviving the job loss and in fact, can see some positive and even hopeful outcomes should this take place. It might actually be a positive thing to move on! (To which I might suggest that it might be a good idea to start looking for another job, not out of fear, desperation or need, but as a positive outlook, a positive testing of the waters to see what is out there. You don’t necessarily have to change jobs. Just take a look and see what there is!)
Vehicles are symbols of Control, of directing our own destiny. The ‘losing the car’ dream is pretty common when you don’t feel that you have control of your life. I would suggest that losing control of your body is similar, but more worrysome in that you may be feeling like you don’t even have control over basic aspects of your personal life.
Ruins of a Mansion could represent things from your past. Are you contemplating looking at a past job, job path, past associations or even an old neighborhood? It would be “spooky” because of the Ghosts of the Past.
So again, I would recommend leaving those things behind and looking for a new job, one with growth potential. Again, you don’t need to do more than look, but I think you might find that it brings you a sense of greater control over your life.
I dreamed about an Earthquake for as far as I can remember the very first time the other week and when I got up there had been an Earthquake in Greece while I was dreaming it.
I was quite chuffed at my apparent inherent uncanny psychic power until a mate just now raised the point of how many myriad other dreams I’ve had about things that DIDN’t happen.