American Chernobyl

Date: 6/13/2019

In my dream I “woke up” in a crowded line of people. I couldn’t remember anything about how I got there. I tried to ask the people around me what was going on but no one would say. I was able to piece together that we were somewhere in New York, lining up for buses to take us back to the city. I got on one of the buses and was still trying to figure out what was going on, where and if there was anyone there that I knew, but there wasn’t. When I got back to the city I was still alone. I went to a bar to try to unwind, my nerves were tight and high strung. I still couldn’t remember anything about how I wound up in that line, where those buses came from or where I had been headed. I left the bar. I was sitting outside when some people started to argue and their arguing made me have a panic attack, the noise and anger and upset. I clutched my bag to myself as hard as I could because I felt like I was losing my mind. I left the table where I was sitting and found someone who I didn’t know but I asked her if she could help me please, to try to remember what had happened. She said she knew what happened, but that I should only really try to find out if I was ready to. She just said, “Chernobyl”- but obviously she wasn’t referencing the true Chernobyl. I asked her to clarify and she just shook her head and walked away. I had my phone with me so I tried Googling Chernobyl but at first all I got were articles about the old Chernobyl and what she said didn’t make sense. Then I tried looking up “American Chernobyl” and there were the articles that she had directed me towards. Apparently I had been on a bus, one of three, that had left New York City and was passing through Springfield, Missouri. The government “accidentally” set off 21 nuclear “mines”- for some reason the bus I had been on had gone to do something else, or had left earlier or slightly later than the other two. The other two buses had been completely annihilated, while the bus I had been on experienced some of the physical violence from the fall out but didn’t get hit directly by the radiation. As soon as I began reading about what happened I could see these golden nuclear rods in the ground, like I was there again. I still couldn’t remember any of it directly, but it was clear that the government had tried to “hush” the incident and suppress any real coverage of it, and that people weren’t supposed to talk about it. In my dream just learning about what had happened basically caused me to break down, lose my mind. I think I woke up after the dream went on for a little bit longer- I think I travelled out of the city towards upstate New York, where there was a river that I had been to before in another dream. I am pretty sure in my dream I could not handle the weight of what had happened and wanted to get out of the city and away from the density of people. My heart had broken all over because of what happened. Anyways. This is why I don’t watch or read fucked up shit. I used to have “apocalyptic” dreams all the time, and they’re somewhat exhausting.