On the evening of October 30th 1938, Orson Welles and the players of his Mercury Theatre were preparing to broadcast their latest series of weekly literary adaptations. The Halloween production of H.G.Wells’ “The War of the Worlds” should have been no different to any that had gone before, but before the hour was up, Welles would find himself at the center of a storm of controversy. What should have been a simple if innovative retelling of a tale of alien invasion had triggered one of the first great mass panics of the modern age.
I was only one year old at the time, but as I grew up, I heard my parents and others talk about the radio broadcast. Orson Welles thought too many people placed to much faith in radio broadcasts. They tended to believe everything they heard, especially the news broadcasts. So the first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast was presented as a series of simulated news bulletins about Martians invading earth.
Even though it was announced at the beginning of the show that the simulated news casts were not real, many failed to hear that part, and a mass panic ensued. People started to evacuate the cities to find hiding places in the rural areas. My dad was listening to the show while sitting on the front porch of our home. He said people were driving crazy down the street while others were running down the sidewalk. One man crashed his car into a utility pole, got out, and continued running on foot. It was really bad until they began announcing on the radio that there was no Martian invasion going on. It was only a show.
People do tend to believe what they hear on the news and in the media, especially the negative stuff. Looming doom gets the attention of those who are already fearful of life. They like to believe if it’s bad, it’s got to be true.
We could have another mass panic on our hands in 2012. The media is playing to the negative strains of “It’s the End of the World Again.” The media is hatching an all-out effort on this particular “end of the world.” There are books, television shows, movies, and other media all pointing to the date the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012. A date that supposedly coincides with ancient prophecies as well. Even some scientists have weighed in with stories of pole, and other earth changes.
Well, folks, it’s just not going to happen. No more than the 2K scare or any other man-made “end of the world.” One of my relatives still has a generator, and survival gear stored in the garage from the 2K hoax. These scares are great for the merchants, they sell more.
There are a great many reasons not to believe the current EOTW scenario. After all, calendars have to end somewhere, and one date is as good as another. Prophecies have been wrong, even scientists’ predictions can not be counted on. When I was young, I remember psychiatry predicting some day we could learn math through a syringe injection. Never happened, along with hundreds of other science predictions.
All of these things are nothing more than suppositions, theories, and opinions. There are no facts there, just people scaring themselves. Why do people scare themselves. Maybe they are bored, need to feel more alive, or maybe they just want to sell books, movies, TV shows, and merchandise, lots of merchandise.
But the main reason not to get upset, and worry about this sort of nonsense is who you are. This site is about near death experiences that show us we are spiritual beings, eternal spiritual beings, that are in the physical life on a temporary basis to learn about ourselves and others. This is not our home. We will return to the spirit world when our physical life here is over. It’s not the end of the world yet. If that should happen someday, no one will ever see it coming. So don’t be fearful. We are eternal.
© 2009, Lekatt. All rights reserved.