"We interrupt this broadcast..."

On Sunday 30 September 1938, the Mercury Theatre of the Air broadcast a Halloween radio drama on CBS, narrated by Orson Welles. The broadcast was an adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds, in which aliens from Mars land on Earth, with the intention of attacking and colonising the planet.

The show consisted of urgent news flashes without commercial breaks, with shocked reports of strange explosions on Mars, and of a meteorite landing in New Jersey. To the shouts from the panicked radio reporters the meteorite opened, and a tentacled, pulsating Martian emerged, incinerating the crowd with heat rays. Huge tripods climbed out of the crater and began to destroy power stations, bridges and railroads, massacring the local army. All the time reporters screamed of casualties, and millions of refugees took to the roads. Planes crashed and poisonous gas was released as the machines waded across the Hudson into New York City. The White House made an urgent appeal for calm.

Of course, the programme was a complete hoax, but the mass hysteria it induced was real. People rushed into the streets, thousands called the police and many grabbed guns, jumped into their cars and headed for the mountains. Phone lines were down, a power cut caused further panic, and frightened neighbours knocked on each others' doors for news of the disaster.

After the panic had died down there was a public outcry, and an embarrassed Orson Welles was severely criticised. CBS promised never again to use the phrase "We interrupt this programme..." to introduce drama. However, the show produced a huge reaction. Within a month more than 12,000 articles had been written about the broadcast, while Adolf Hitler, a careful and creative manipulator of crowds and propaganda, claimed it showed the 'decadence and corruption of democracy', presumably wondering how it was even possible for a public entertainer to play such a hoax on an entire nation.

Why did people believe the broadcast? In 1938, radio was a relatively new media, and the programme format was a novelty. Certainly, listening to the broadcast today it seems almost comical that people might believe it, and the actors' voices sound like.....actors' voices. But in 1938 people were not subjected to a 24-hour media bombardment and were not "plugged into" the television or computer as they are today. They were less practised in differentiating between drama and news.

The context in 1938 was that of the build up to the Second World War and the end of a huge depression, so it is not surprising there was paranoia in the air. The show also reinforced the relatively new science fiction genre, with the idea of aliens as "little green men from Mars".

Despite this, it is surprising what people will believe even today, and what can cause mass hysteria.

In the 1970s there was the Villejuif leaflet hoax which claimed that safe foods such as citric acid were in fact cancer-inducing. People rushed to inform their friends of the danger of these foods and, over more than a decade, the leaflet was passed to more than seven million people, circulating in schools, companies and even hospitals.

In 2001, in New Delhi, people reported the sighting of the Monkey Man, a monster covered in thick black hair, with a metal helmet, metal claws and red, glowing eyes. Some people reported being scratched or bitten by the creature, and some were so frightened on "sightings" that they jumped to their deaths from high buildings. Police even issued wanted posters and the Russian newspaper Pravda reported the reappearance of Monkey Man on a Moscow-bound flight.

Then, in May 2006, when an actor in the popular Portuguese youth soap opera "Morangos com Açúcar"  showed  symptoms of rashes, breathing difficulties and dizziness, 300 children at 14  Portuguese schools suddenly developed exactly the same virus. 

It is unclear how people would react today if faced by a huge threat, whether real or perceived. But it seems unlikely that people would be any calmer today than they were in 1938, once fear had truly seized their imagination. That fear has yet to be tested, but a meteorite hurtling towards Earth, an exploding sun or a true global plague would provide the answer. Let's hope we never have to find out.