Pizza before bed. What was I thinking?
In the dream I was away from my house, and trying to get back to it. For some reason I didn’t have my vehicle and, for an equally unexplained reason, my Bag O’ Tricks was in that missing vehicle. So..there I am…trying to walk back to my house which, in this dream, is a good distance away and requires me to walk through a city.
In the dream, people are kicking in doors to other peoples houses to steal food, nowhere is safe, and there’s a general feeling of ‘every man for himself’. There’s one particularly nailbiting scene where I have to traverse a tunnel under a river as people drive through it at hellish speed, hauling trailers of belongings, and swerving all over the place.
The whole time I’m thinking that if I can get back to the house I’ll have everything I need. But…I have to get there first. I also recall thinking “why didnt I hide a gun and ammo somewhere out here?”
I finally get to a roadblock manned by someone I know. They let me pass, and then I wake up.
This is the first dream like this I’ve had in a while. But, it follows the trend of how these things usually go. I’m not inclined to believe that dreams are prescient , but I do believe that our unconscious mind can observe details in our day-to-day that our conscious mind doesn’t pick up and puts them together….thus giving us that ‘funny feeling’ we have about something.
So, first thing, I need to go through my Bag Of Tricks and make sure everything is cool. It would be a bit of a stretch to call it a GHB or something equally corny. It’s basically just a buncha gear that would come in handy in pretty much any unpleasant circumstance….everything from zip ties and batteries to multitool and Glock. It’s just something to tilt the odds back in my favor a little bit. But, it has come in handy a time or two.
No idea what the particular apocalypse was that kicked off the dream…there was one scene where a local power plant exploded in a cloud of black smoke and dust so I’m guessing it was something a little man-made but , really, it doesn’t matter.
Whats interesting is that, being a dream, the same emotions are instilled in you because you think whats happening is real. (Dreams are, after all, the first virtual reality environment ever made.) So if you wonder what that frantic, panicked feeling as you realize its The End will feel like…well, there you go.
I dont regret these kinds of dreams, they usually serve as a swift kick in the khakis to get me off my butt on preparedness things I may have been putting off. In fact, that may be why I had the dream…my subconscious may have been worrying about my lack of activity in that regard.
Any moral of the story for me to be aware of? Hmm..probably that if I think my Bag Of Tricks is useful enough to keep nearby it’s probably useful enough to clone and keep at an offsite location on one of my major travel pathways. I’ll have to think about that, but that really just falls into what another blogger would call ‘an operational cache’… which might be worth thinking about.
Also, no pizza after 9pm.
I’m not sure about how much news you watch/listen/read but it sounds like you may want to cut back.
Before the day of 24/7 news, social media, blogs etc we saw/read/listened to a story once in a given day in a newspaper or on the TV or radio. This was a time when the news was delivered by people like Walter Cronkite who just read the news with no editorializing. This gave the people watching the option of making up their own conclusions.
Today with 24/7 news, the problem is market share with the quest by the media to forever increase viewer/readers/listeners. This has forced the news media to transform from just being the purveyors of news into the story telling entertainment realm. Where before a news story was just that, now after the media adds in the embellishment so you are bombarded by the same story time and again so it takes on a life of its own. For example, catch a story about a shooting in a big city once and it’s a curiosity. See that story repeated on TV, in blogs (with their spin), on Twitter, over the radio, and in the newspapers and you go from the story being a curiosity to there is a serious threat to be afraid of, never mind that it was once incident involving 2 people in a city of several million.
The secret is to dealing with this information overload is to start turning things down. Cut back on the news and the doom-watch blogs, and all the other forms of media and enjoy that late night snack. Remember, you are already prepared for the worst so if SHTF then SHTF.
A string bag with some supplies would blend in well with the office environment. Tucked in an odd corner of the supplies closet or knee space of your desk, it would supply peace of mind. A poncho, small tarp, cordage, knife and/or multi-tool, BIC lighter for crossing the rurals. An adjustable crescent wrench – sillcock key for accessing water, pry-bar for the urbans. A quantity of small bills no larger than $20s – 10s – 5s. Well, maybe a 100 and a 50 for just in case.
The only thing I would worried about leaving that alone for long periods of time – a firearm. That takes special thought.
Maybe a ceiling tile near a wall edge that is only accessible by a ladder and known by the person to be there would work ? A take-down long arm suspended on a cord inside a wall, accessed from same area ? A riot pump shotgun ?
Possibilities.
How would Pizza after you go to bed be any better?
You’re worried that you “missed something.” Trouble is, there’s no such thing as “I’ve got everything.” The dream is saying that things aren’t going to go as planned, but you’ll work around the unexpected, and ultimately succeed. You won’t, however, succeed without help. The guy at the roadblock is symbolism for that.
…I gotta get offa my ass with the preps myself… The hardest part of preparedness is STAYING prepared…
Pray, prepare, and live…
Well, thanks to your post, which was because you had a weird dream, which was because you ate pizza before bed, I went through my own Bag O’Tricks and checked that not only I have all the basic supplies I meant to pack there, but I also know where in the bag they are and can find it all. (My bag has approximately three zillion different pockets and compartments, so this is a significantly more important issue than what it may sound like.) This is something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but kept forgetting or putting off.
So, what have we learned? Yay for pizza! Pizza makes everything better! 🙂
Do not dismiss the prescience of dreams,I have survived several incidences that would of been fatal if I had not had dreams of them. I now know that if I have a feeling of des a vue and the spidey sense goes off like a tornado siren it’s time to duck and cover/run like hell. Found out from my Mother my Grandfather had the same experiences and had saved him multiple times,maybe a deeply hidden genetic trick.
This reminds me to pull the bag of holding from the truck and review it for colder times. And edit the snackage. Lord only knows the status of those Lara Bars. Like you, I also consider options for fuel can and provisions en route. Just so hard to know what will be safely accessible and yet easily missed by the casual eye.
I wound up just putting thoe Mainstay ration bars in mine. More calories, longer life.
I had a pretty weird dream last night. It was triggered by some pain meds. I overdid it yesterday out shooting (gotta keep that battle rifle limber!) Anyhow, every time I tkae this med I get the most screwy of dreams.
The bits I remember were I somehow had a 3D printed full auto lower on an AR and was about to be caught by the FBI after a shoot out. In the dream I was trying to destroy the plastic lower to avoid getting in trouble for an NFA weapon. Never mind I was just in a fire fight with the FBI…
At some point my brain told me it was just a dream and I drifted off to something else.
That may be a frightening dream to you but people are making cash by selling those nightmares as novels.