DEFCON/Nightmare Fuel


 * A game that is a Defictionalization of the "Global Thermonuclear War" game from War Games. 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.
 * The game's tagline is EVERYBODY DIES, what did you expect?
 * Actually: If you look closely, it's a website adress.
 * 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.)
 * While the soundtrack is your normal haunting music (including Adagio for Strings, which is already bad enough), listening closely reveals faint coughing while it is playing.
 * Normal? It's totally disturbingly awesome.
 * Coughing? It sounds like quiet sobbing.
 * It could be either one (and the coughing ties into radiation sickness).
 * 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.