Regarding "Darkness", Lord Byron HAD experienced a somewhat apocalyptic event then: the 1816 Year Without a Summer, a volcanic winter from a major eruption the year before (Mt Tambora 1815 in Indonesia). Crops failed all over eastern North America and western Europe due to cold and/or wet weather, monsoons were disrupted and late in India and southeast Asia, China had major floods on the Yangtze River system, Brazil had a major drought, and different parts of tropical Africa had significantly wetter or drier weather than usual.
And in Switzerland, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley, John William Polidori, and some of their friends had rented a villa for the summer. But continual cold and wet weather kept them indoors, and inspired storytelling among these creative people. Not only did Byron's "Darkness" come out of it, but so did much of Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_ (especially the chases through cold and mists in the Arctic), and a Lord Byron "Fragment" that later inspired Polidori's _The Vampyre_.
A couple of years ago, when I just started getting into "nuclear studies", I had a dream where we had to be evacuated from my city because a nuclear attack was expected within a few hours. Lined up in traffic with my family with fighter jets whizzing overhead, it was a fairly realistic setting. The weird thing is that the attack wasn't actually expected in my city (Mexicali, Mexico, next to El Centro), but in LA or San Diego. Also, I consider it a nightmare because we weren't allowed to bring our pets!
Have you ever played Project Zomboid? It has a good sleep system: the more fatigued your character is the slower your controls are and the harder it is to fight zombies. If your character is in pain or frightened they can’t sleep. If your character is anxious there is a chance their sleep is interrupted by a nightmare.
I've never had the nuclear explosion dream/nightmare, which is odd considering I began my career in this field hand drawing simple blast maps (this was before NukeMap and even before the blast map generator we made for Graham Allison's book) and calculating population density within the various damage radii. But when I first moved to DC, every time I looked at a Metro "you are here" map outside of a station I could only think of blast maps.
Reading the comment unlocked an old memory. I grew up in Northern Canada, and our town was a major transportation hub. We knew it would be one of the first places hit in an all-out nuclear war. My friends and I had a "game" where we'd workshop various plans on how to survive a nuclear war. We'd take turns proposing situations and then inventing solutions to them--a creative way to turn the real anxiety of nuclear war into a game.
This is very cool. It's interesting to think about how our dreams influence the creative work we do. Every now and then I'll wake up from a dream with an idea for a drawing. Several of these found there way into a coloring book project I'm currently getting ready to publish.
That first image is oddly reminiscent of the scene from "Panic In The Year Zero" that has Ray Miland and his family looking down a valley towards the mushroom cloud forming over LA,...
Perhaps dreams could be matched to the player's specific situation by emotional atmosphere rather than in content; e.g., during delays in the trip the dreams are of the "running in place" variety (regardless of the details), claustrophobic scenarios as safe zones disappear, etc.
I'm sure someone has suggested the "intensity" of the dream scaling with the magnitude of sleep deprivation? Leaving a residual stat drain until normal sleep patterns are restored could be a fun challenge mode. Speaking as someone who has experienced plenty of insomnia.
My apocalyptic dreams always managed to see a nuclear attack as kind of a meh, scenario. Waaaay more worried about zombies. Another rural-urban difference, I suppose.
How about an extended dream sequence of an intact warm house in which you are preparing to eat Thanksgiving dinner while watching football and you focus on some small side dish that is "now" unobtainable which then turns to ash
Regarding "Darkness", Lord Byron HAD experienced a somewhat apocalyptic event then: the 1816 Year Without a Summer, a volcanic winter from a major eruption the year before (Mt Tambora 1815 in Indonesia). Crops failed all over eastern North America and western Europe due to cold and/or wet weather, monsoons were disrupted and late in India and southeast Asia, China had major floods on the Yangtze River system, Brazil had a major drought, and different parts of tropical Africa had significantly wetter or drier weather than usual.
And in Switzerland, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley, John William Polidori, and some of their friends had rented a villa for the summer. But continual cold and wet weather kept them indoors, and inspired storytelling among these creative people. Not only did Byron's "Darkness" come out of it, but so did much of Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_ (especially the chases through cold and mists in the Arctic), and a Lord Byron "Fragment" that later inspired Polidori's _The Vampyre_.
A couple of years ago, when I just started getting into "nuclear studies", I had a dream where we had to be evacuated from my city because a nuclear attack was expected within a few hours. Lined up in traffic with my family with fighter jets whizzing overhead, it was a fairly realistic setting. The weird thing is that the attack wasn't actually expected in my city (Mexicali, Mexico, next to El Centro), but in LA or San Diego. Also, I consider it a nightmare because we weren't allowed to bring our pets!
Have you ever played Project Zomboid? It has a good sleep system: the more fatigued your character is the slower your controls are and the harder it is to fight zombies. If your character is in pain or frightened they can’t sleep. If your character is anxious there is a chance their sleep is interrupted by a nightmare.
I've never had the nuclear explosion dream/nightmare, which is odd considering I began my career in this field hand drawing simple blast maps (this was before NukeMap and even before the blast map generator we made for Graham Allison's book) and calculating population density within the various damage radii. But when I first moved to DC, every time I looked at a Metro "you are here" map outside of a station I could only think of blast maps.
Reading the comment unlocked an old memory. I grew up in Northern Canada, and our town was a major transportation hub. We knew it would be one of the first places hit in an all-out nuclear war. My friends and I had a "game" where we'd workshop various plans on how to survive a nuclear war. We'd take turns proposing situations and then inventing solutions to them--a creative way to turn the real anxiety of nuclear war into a game.
This is very cool. It's interesting to think about how our dreams influence the creative work we do. Every now and then I'll wake up from a dream with an idea for a drawing. Several of these found there way into a coloring book project I'm currently getting ready to publish.
That first image is oddly reminiscent of the scene from "Panic In The Year Zero" that has Ray Miland and his family looking down a valley towards the mushroom cloud forming over LA,...
Perhaps dreams could be matched to the player's specific situation by emotional atmosphere rather than in content; e.g., during delays in the trip the dreams are of the "running in place" variety (regardless of the details), claustrophobic scenarios as safe zones disappear, etc.
I'm sure someone has suggested the "intensity" of the dream scaling with the magnitude of sleep deprivation? Leaving a residual stat drain until normal sleep patterns are restored could be a fun challenge mode. Speaking as someone who has experienced plenty of insomnia.
My apocalyptic dreams always managed to see a nuclear attack as kind of a meh, scenario. Waaaay more worried about zombies. Another rural-urban difference, I suppose.
How about an extended dream sequence of an intact warm house in which you are preparing to eat Thanksgiving dinner while watching football and you focus on some small side dish that is "now" unobtainable which then turns to ash
I started with the footnotes, and I have no regrets.