Dawn Patrol

(Music, lyrics: Mustaine, Ellefson)

Thermal count is rising
In perpetual writhing
The primordial ooze
And the sanity they lose

Awakened in the morning
To more air-pollution warnings
Still we sleepwalk off to work
As our nervous systems jerk

Pretending not to notice
How history has forbode us
With the greenhouse in effect
Our environment is wrecked

Now I can only laugh
As I read our epitaph
We end our lives as moles
In the dark of the dawn patrol


"No guitar here, but in the original version, there was a heavy, dissonant guitar riff that was so strange I couldn't believe we were planning to record it. The song took shape in the studio." (Friedman, 2002)

This song examines the possibility of a nuclear holocaust; more specifically, what life would be like after the incident. Humans would be forced to live underground because the atmosphere would be so contaminated with radioactive pollution left over from the nuclear weapons.

References:

Dawn patrol is a military term referring to early-hours patrols by fighters.

The Dawn Patrol is the name of a 1930 movie by Howard Hawks. The movie is set in World War I and is about a British Royal Flying Corp. squadron. Because the movie was remade in 1938, the original movie has been retitled Flight Commander.