On This Day in History: October 30

War of the Worlds is Broadcast

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You’re surprised that people are stupid enough to embrace that QAnon bullshit? Guess you forgot about how some thought the War of the Worlds radio broadcast was real and Martians were invading and bringing their extra-large anal probes. It wasn’t a mass panic, however, but rather a small number that grew in the telling due to nefarious capitalistic maneuvering. It was enough of a thing that the police showed up at CBS studios and tried to halt the broadcast though.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: October 30, 1938--

The show, part of the radio drama series The Mercury Theatre on the Air, wasn’t even listened to by that many people. Broadcast on October 30, 1938, the one-hour program began by explaining it was an adaptation of the 1898 H.G. Wells novel War of the Worlds; they told listeners it was fictional. For the first 20 minutes it was presented as a typical evening radio broadcast that was regularly interrupted with increasingly dire news bulletins about the alien invasion of Earth.

Oh, no! Martians! Our mighty American military cannot stop it. We’re doomed. Fucking doomed I tells ya. Except lots of listeners weren’t necessarily paying that close attention, and didn’t think “Martians”, but thought the news of the “invasion” and “poison gas” meant those Nazi fucks were landing on American shores. It was 1938, after all. People were getting worried about that Hitler douche.

The broadcast was just approaching its midway break—with actor Ray Collins pretending to choke to death on air from alien poison gas—when the CBS supervisor received a phone call telling him to cease the broadcast. Then the police arrived and there was a struggle in the offices between cops and CBS producers trying to prevent them from bursting into the studio and stopping the show from continuing. In the aftermath, the media went wild with the story of mass panic.

Yes, there was some panic, but the extent was overblown, and it took many years to reach a consensus that it was “greatly exaggerated.” Rather than panic, most called local news outlets or police to ask dafuq was going on, only to be told the broadcast was fictional and to un-bunch their underwear.

Why did the story of mass panic gain such traction? Likely the newspapers were to blame. Always seeking a story to exploit, this one had the added benefit of making radio look bad, look unreliable as a news source. You can’t trust those dirty radio broadcasters, but you can trust us, the newspapers. Extra! Extra! Turn off your radio and buy our newspaper!

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