Wacky Dreams not Guaranteed

I have had these strange post-apocalyptic dreams since I was about 15; they're always a variant of the lone survivor (me) with a few recurring tropes. I wander the wasteland of an urban area scavenging for food and water when I encounter a fellow survivor that wants to kill me before I manage to kill them. We survive together against all odds, while the rest of the world is out there ravaged by famine and violent cannibalism. 

Now last night's dream was no different, except for one thing. I feel I was a survivor during what might have been an earlier timeline of events; perhaps during the height of the Cold War, the early 1980s. As I casually strolled about the decaying post-nuclear world intact from what seemed to have annihilated all mankind, I was surprised by a fellow human survivor, a woman. She awaited, silently lurking from a balcony in the building where I walked past and she was cocking a pistol she had pointed right at my head. When I heard the click of the gun, I looked up and her pistol failed to shoot when our eyes met. He woman quickly receded into the dark balcony and pulled out a barrel, rusted but uncovered and proceded to douse me with what seemed like tar. 

She asked me wearily to come up the stairs to the apartment where she lived and I did against my own better judgement. When I entered the place I could see a clear window at the far wall with a clear view of a plain infested with what seemed like cadavers and a few people walking amongst the dead. As I stood there admiring the decay of what remained of earth, music appears and it's not just any song, it's a dance theme from the 1980s but the name I cannot recall. We danced with what little energy we possessed and the dream faded away. 

This made me wonder about the show on amc - the walking dead. In this show I had momentarily thought the timline was also undefined or early 1990s but then  there is that one occasion where they arrive at a house where Carl, one of the protagonists finds a young kid's bedroom where he has a modern television and video game system. This was a dead giveaway to me that this catastrophe in their world happened around the present day in our world. Creepy.