According2Sam #98 'Zombies'

3 years ago
4

The day before Halloween in 1938 a CBS Radio program aired that caused mass hysteria. This was a time before television, before the internet and social media, when everyone got their information and media from news papers, and radio. The CBS series was 'The Mercury Theatre on the Air', and the episode that cause the hysteria on this day was called, 'War of the Worlds'. It was an adaptation of a fictional novel that was being preformed as a Halloween special, but many Americans believed it was real and that they were in danger from an alien invasion from outer space. The scale of the hysteria caused by this broadcast was small. Not everyone was listening, but of those who happened to be listening to the program that day the panic was real and widespread. If this was a social experiment the reaction to the broadcast would have demonstrated how easily media could be used to whip the public into a frenzy of fear, and also how a greater medium, reaching more people, over and over again for a long period of time, could cause a greater, prolonged, mass hysteria. How is the reaction to the pandemic and the unvaccinated like the reaction to 'War of the Worlds', but greater, and how is this hysteria causing the zombie apocalypse? Join the conversation and get answers to these questions and more on According2Sam episode #98.

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