This is how it begins, although it ends very quickly: I’m with my wife, standing in a shared greenspace in a coastal region. We’re very close to our house (which is not our real house) and we live on what looks like a newbuild estate.
There are multiple people around us, returning from the beach or watching their children play. (Our daughter isn’t one of these children – mercifully, she appears neither in the dream nor in my brief and frenzied thoughts.)
This pleasant normality is interrupted when a noise begins to impinge on my consciousness. An insistent electronic tone. It quickly cuts through the diminishing chatter of our neighbours and visitors.
I realise that the noise is emanating from every palm and pocket around me. All our smartphones are making the same sound.
It isn’t the klaxon noise the government would normally use in a UK-wide emergency. It’s different: more like the busy tone on a landline phone – it sounds like something from another era.
The fact this is happening on every single mobile phone takes a moment to register, but I catch onto the implication quicker than most: there is going to be a nuclear attack. This is the four-minute warning.
Seconds from disaster
I seize my wife’s wrist and drag her toward our house. She’s still confused and hasn’t quite realised what’s about to happen.
My brain is already processing both the surprise and the sheer unlikeliness of the attack. Would Russia really do this? Or is it North Korea? We’ll never know the cause, be it a technological misunderstanding or an instance of monomaniacal opportunism.
Then, in the distance, the horrifying moment of confirmation. A gigantic cloud begins to mushroom – a vast grey dome, dominating the horizon even at a distance of 20 miles or more. There is a monumental concussion as the vibration hits us.
We stare for a moment in awe and terror but, almost immediately, a second fact registers: the explosion is expanding very rapidly towards us. In fact, it’s going to hit us unbelievably soon, in fewer than 10 seconds. There is no time to take any precautions.
I’m dragging my wife in the direction of our house, as the blast races towards us like the shockwave in Independence Day.
My thoughts are racing frantically. There is nowhere to hide and no way to be safe.
I’m more prone to morbid nuclear paranoia than the average person, so I feel like I have some knowhow here, something that might help us survive.
For a brief moment, I think I might be like one of those people who realised that a mega tsunami was on the way in 2004 and made for higher ground. In the split second after that strange mobile phone alert went off, only I had the wherewithal to recognise the emergency, and to act.
But my vigilance has bought us mere seconds.
My wife and I are just too close to ground zero. There is no way that we can make a refuge in the house. There can be no shelter. The house will be obliterated when the shockwave reaches us.
As the noise begins to roar and the ground shakes, I have the sudden realisation that we’re truly doomed. There is no time to think – we have just seconds left. This is it.
