The worst dream I ever had was my bomb dream. I'm not sure whether I had this dream just once or many times, but it was so vivid that I remember it clearly, although the dream dates from about the time of the Cuban missile crisis.
I was standing on a perfectly flat plain near the sea shore. There was nothing at all on the plain except widely spaced small groups of people which I took to be families. No trees or houses, no bushes, not a blade of grass. Literally no place to hide. Overhead was a perfectly clear blue sky. Every one was looking up. Directly overhead almost invisibly high in the sky a little silver airplane was slowly circling. I knew that this plane contained 'the bomb', that it was going to fall, that it was just a matter of when.
This dream wasn't heart-stoppingly terrifying in the way dreams of being chased by some kind of monster or falling off a cliff can be. It was overwhelmingly fatalistic, perhaps that first realization of the inevitability of death.
