If you are swept away in the dream, you are being urged to find something, or someone, to hold onto in waking life to regain stability.
If you dreamed that the earth was cracking open beneath you, this threat may be echoed in changes at work or insecurity within a relationship.
An explosion may reflect sudden changes in waking life or the release of emotion. What damage has the explosion inflicted in the dream? If anything was broken, interpret its symbolism; if someone was clinging on to you in the dream, who are they? If you dreamed you were in danger of thunder or lighting, again this may refer to emotional turmoil in waking life; but a dream about being struck by lighting could refer to sudden insight.
If you dream that you are falling into a dark hole, is there some situation in waking life out of which you feel you cannot climb?
Dreams featuring alarms may be caused by car or house alarms that go off in the night; if there is no external stimulus of this sort, and your dream features a house alarm, does this allude to your family? Does someone need protection at this time? Was the alarm effective in the dream? If the alarm failed to go off, this is an extremely significant symbol.
If your dream features a car alarm, this may allude to some kind of rash behavior and, as men often equate cars with sexuality, you may want to consider it in this context.
Dreams can also often warn of dangers of which we may be unaware in waking life. For example if you dream of overspending, this may suggest you are expending too much emotion on a particular person.
If you dream of escaping from a prison to a happy landscape, this may be a warning that you need to relax more. There are other practical warning dreams. For example, you may dream that your car brakes fail and in waking life find that this is indeed the case. There is usually a simple explanation as your unconscious mind may have registered the fault, but this kind of dream should not be ignored (see ACCIDENTS, ACTION AND ADVENTURES). Similarly dreams of bodily aches and pains and other signs of poor health are also worth taking note of.
See also SICKNESS AND HEALTH.