Dive deep into the fascinating psychology of panic surrounding the infamous Orson Welles broadcast, The War of the Worlds, which aired on October 30, 1938. This dramatic presentation by the Mercury Theatre on the Air unexpectedly provided an “unexpected ‘experimental’ situation”, culminating in a mass movement and a “tidal wave of terror that swept the nation”. This video explains the meticulous academic investigation into the event, documented by Hadley Cantril in The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic.
Explore how the sheer dramatic excellence and realism of the program caused thousands of Americans to become panic-stricken. The broadcast was an adaptation of H. G. Wells’s imaginative novel by Howard Koch. The realism was heightened by using the format of “news bulletins” to interrupt Ramon Raquello's dance music and his orchestra at the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York.
Credibility was established through reports from authoritative, if fictional, experts:
Professor Richard Pierson of the Princeton Observatory reported “explosions of incandescent gas” on Mars.
Reporter Carl Phillips provided terrifying eyewitness accounts from the Wilmuth farm near Grovers Mill, New Jersey, the initial landing site of the object, which was initially “believed to be a meteorite”.
Later, military and government figures, including Brigadier General Montgomery Smith, Captain Lansing of the Signal Corps, and the Secretary of the Interior, described martial law and urged calm.
The terror stemmed from vivid descriptions of the invading creatures emerging from a huge metal cylinder. The Martians were described as having bodies “large as a bear” and glistening “like wet leather,” with eyes “black and gleaming like a serpent” and V-shaped mouths. Their devastating weaponry included a mysterious Heat-Ray (which instantly incinerated people, including the commentator Carl Phillips, whose charred body was later identified in a Trenton Hospital) and clouds of poisonous black smoke dispensed from giant tripod machines.
The resulting panic saw millions praying, crying, and fleeing frantically. This unique sociological event prompted the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Princeton Radio Project to allocate a special grant from the General Education Board for a detailed analysis of why approximately one million people were frightened or disturbed. Cantril, with assistance from Hazel Gaudet and Herta Herzog, documented the lack of critical ability in many listeners, attributing suggestibility to emotional insecurity, lack of education, and the widespread anxieties stemming from the contemporary global threat of war scare and prolonged depression. Cantril’s study offers profound insights into how listeners’ pre-existing fears, phobias, and fatalism contributed to their vulnerability to the Martians’ simulated attack.
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