Nightmare Fuel / DEFCON

• A game that is a Deconstrucion of the "Global Thermonuclear War" game from WarGames. Watching cities all around the world, possibly even yours, vanish with dry, clinical tallies of the dead is terrifying. "The only winning move is not to play", indeed.
  • Consider that you are bearing witness to the most devastating war humanity has ever experienced. The end of an average game results in anywhere from 300 million to almost 1 Billion people dead all over the world. To think that one war chunked off around 10-14% of the world's 7 billion population is nothing short of horrifying, and that's just the beginning. Millions more will die from radiation, destroyed infrastructure and lack of supplies, starvation, exposure, collapsed society, sudden and violent climate change, and long term medical problems resulting from the incredible nuclear devastation.
• The game's tagline is EVERYBODY DIES, what did you expect?
  • Actually: If you look closely, it's a website address.
• Repeat after me, over and over: "It's Only A Game". (Particularly for some of us who grew up during the latter years of the Cold War when it seemed like this could become Real Life at any moment.)
• Usually during the Big World setting, it brings haunting memories when a missile strikes Kansas City or somewhere near Sheffield.
• While the soundtrack is your normal haunting music (including Adagio for Strings, which is already bad enough), listening closely reveals what is either faint coughing (reflective of radiation sickness) or quiet sobbing in the background.

  • Apparently, both, from people around you in the command centre. Presumably, those not giving the orders, like you, are watching The End of the World as We Know It on The Big Board.
  • Listen to it with headphones on. This isn't always that bad, but when it happens right as enemy nukes impact Chicago?

  • By inspecting the file names a number of the ambient sounds become apparent for what they're meant to be. There are both male and female versions of choked coughing, as well as the woman sobbing in despair. Even more disturbing, though, is discovering what sounds like a distorted announcement over a PA system is really the Lord's Prayer.
    • Oh, and then there's a whole slew of ambient noises which sound like a distorted choir—all of them labeled "souls." You are hearing the cries of souls lost in the nuclear fire—even more terrifying if you already have familiarity with hearing the souls of humanity scream from watching End of Evangelion's Instrumentality sequence.
    • This is similarly awful if you consider games like Metro, where the nuclear destruction is so complete that it destroys the afterlife, dooming those trying to survive in the rubble to never reach heaven or hell.

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