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Mars Attacked, 65 Years Ago Today
Jodrell writes "Forget solar flares, and the upcoming Halloween festivities - tonight marks the 65th anniversary of the broadcast of Orson Welles' radioplay version on The War Of The Worlds."
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The Martian Government has determined that the people of Earth are harboring biological weapons. Prepare to be liberated.
I wonder what sort of panic would ensue if someone were to do a similar broadcast now?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
They could have just checked Snopes
That's because they only issued a warning saying it was fictional at the beginning and the end of it. There were no warnings while it was playing, so of course people thought it was real.
Just thinking about Mars Attacks makes War of the Worlds seem Utopian.
You can get the audio for the show here. Not the best fidelity, but still...
Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble... can't we just go to Starbuck's for coffee?
Did anyone else read the headline as we attacked Mars?
...even if only to get the Martian Terrorists.
Maybe if an updated modern-day equivalent reading (perhaps, special effects on the news) were to happen today, we could scare the current administration into launching a manned Mars mission
John Bigboote points out:
"It's not my goddamn planet, understand, monkey boy?"
Where are we going?
Planet 10!
When?
Real soon!
You can find an MP3 version of the original broadcast at http://www.unknown.nu/mercury/. (Be nice -- the server is slow even when not being slashdotted.)
It reminds me of an april fools documentary which seemingly had evidence and proof that the moon landing was faked. It had all sorts of high profile people finally coming out and stating that it was faked. Even Buz Aldrin was in on it.
The documentary gets sillier and sillier until in the final credits, the interviewees start asking to see the script again etc. etc. Had me going for a while too.
Then isn't it about time for some payback?
I am sick of living on a planet so full of peaace lovers.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Speaking of said invasion, what has become of YoYoDyne Propulsion's assets, anyways. I'd be interested in seeing what company took advantage of the severe drop in their stock prices after Buckaroo Bonzai "visited" their HQ back in 1984...
then again, it was probably Enron, which is why it still has no value today...stupid monkeyboys...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
You were fooled by our insidious language, which makes it virtually impossible to distinguish between simple past tense and passive voice.
What the headline said was:
Mars attacked [Earth], 65 years ago today.
What you thought it said (and what it actually might have said if Slashdot were a newspaper) was:
Mars attacked [by] Earth, 65 years ago today.
Bloody hell..and they call this a language?
From my grandfather, who worked at a gas station about 20 miles from the "landing site" He said of all the people that stopped at the station that night, half were leaving to get away from the aliens, and the other half were driving towards it!
I've heard parts of the original Orson Welles broadcast. With all the media we're exposed to, there is absolutely no way we'd be fooled by it today.
Even with good editing and falsified television footage, I still doubt such a thing would fool us. We've seen way too many alien movies and such to be fooled. Something more believable and fear-inducing, such as falsified terrorist threats and terrorist attacks might do it.
I would also point out that it would make it even more difficult to pull such a hoax now due to the fact that we have so many more media sources now. Back then there were only a few radio stations. Now we have the Internet, radio, television, etc. It would certainly look strange if one channel/station was covering it and everyone else seemed oblivious to it.
I believe it was first broadcast on American radio on Sunday, October 30th just after 8pm EST. Interestingly, from the "It can't happen again" department, an adaptation of the show played in Quito, Ecuador in 1949 and caused riots. The radio station building was set on fire after citizens discovered it was a fraud. More recently, it cause problems in northen Portugal in 1988. For more details see this csicop page.
the farmer who took his rifle and fired shots at the town water tower, thinking it was a spacecraft.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Something like it happened in 1984. Excellent made for TV movie called Special Bulletin. Made up to look like a realtime broadcast of a nuclear terrorist incident. I remember people were alarmed when they saw it, despite the disclaimers and the fact that it took place in the fictional studios of the "RBS" network. Occasionally hokey, it was well written and acted, with a humdinger of an ending.
H.G. Wells was *not* Orson Welles' father. (If nothing else, notice the difference in the last names.) See http://www.bway.net/~nipper/biobirth.html.
Something that contributed to this was the fact that most of the people who missed the beginning did so for the same reason that advertisers try (at times) to make their comercials entertaining.
This night of the week was popular on the radio for a couple of shows on competing networks. People would listen to the begining of the program, which was nearly always entertaining, decide the next part was dull, and retune to another station.
If you have not listened to the radio drama, there are a few segments where there is some so-so ballroom dance music being played, that apparently was just good enough that people decided to listen. This got interupted with what sounded at the time like a very reasonable public service anouncement that got them.
Personally I think this would be the equivalent of tuning in to the latest episode on Survivor, deciding watching the first segment, deciding to see what else is on, see that a couple of well known stars are being interviewed, and seeing the interview be pre-empted by what appears to be a news story about the Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam, and the George Washington Bridge's all being hit by simultaneous terrorist strikes. If your first move isn't to check CNN, or HNN to see if they are covering these stories, you might be forgiven for believing that you were seeing real events.
-Rusty
You never know...
Instead today, the public is often manipulated not by what they see/hear through the media, but what they are kept from seeing/hearing. Through censorship or spin, you are told what you need to be told so that your opinions and beliefs about what is "true" match what the teller has in mind, and you are not told things that will counter those goal beliefs.
ONe has only to compare the major U.S. news outlets with news reporting throughout the world to see examples. Not that news reporting in other countries is any less censored/spun to advance THEIR goals.....
Idealism and dreams lead to greatness.
The problem with dreams and idealism is that the idealists often dream of gulags or gas chambers.
My grandfather, for one, welcomed our new Martian overlords.
A pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth.-Mark Twain
Well, he is if you think about it. I wonder if at the end of the radio script was the line "By the way, listening audience, 'YHBT. HTH. HAND.'"
Why is 65 significant? I don't remember celebrating last year at 64? Is it just because it's a multiple of 5? I mean, can we celebrate insignificant events like this on multiples of 10 at least, if not 25?
65 sounds like one of the years used for sales at a furniture store.
Never underestimate the power of fiber.
The fact that we regard this radio broadcast as fiction shows the how effectively the conquering Martians have infiltrated all organs of the state.
Yes, and you can download an MP3 of them conversing in 1940: http://www.unknown.nu/mercury/ (scroll to bottom)
A fews years ago, a few friends and I decided to mark this occasion in what we thought was a pretty interesting manner. We, being native Jerseyites, took a trip out to the location where the "meteor" (sparking the invasion and spooking the local population) originally impacted - Browns Mills, NJ - and making some of our own "crop circles". We were drunk and not very skilled at this endeavor, but the end result turned out pretty nicely we thought. We kept at it while too and make them farily large and noticable. We did this in the dead of night, and whether or not the farmer in question caught the meaning of what we did, I'm fairly certain we gave him something to scratch his head over and ponder the next morning.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
You could just order the CD online at Amazon. The CD is great.
[Please type your sig here.]
Actually, there was a disclaimer between the two acts. But the first act ran uninterrupted for a long time. The broadcast is one of the reasons why broadcasters have to self-identify at least every 15 minutes.
Also, most people missed not only the disclaimer at the beginning, but also the opening monologue, tuning in at the fake weather report or later when people turned the dial away from Charlie McCarthy. It is the first documented incident of channel switching. Listeners were so gripped that they never switched back.
And congrats for getting the date right. Many people mistakenly think the broadcast was October 31st, 1938. It was indeed October 30th, 1938.
Also, 50 years ago, the George Pal movie The War of the Worlds opened in theaters.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Yes, and you can download an MP3 of them conversing in 1940: http://www.unknown.nu/mercury/ (scroll to bottom) No idea why this was modded down. (I've already posted to this thread, otherwise I'd mod it up.)
A pity that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension got the date wrong.
But then so did the TV series War of the Worlds (transcribed script). The series attempted to establish that the 1938 broadcast was an actual invasion, but was a scout force sent in advance of the 1953 invasion depicted in the movie. They suggested that Orson Welles and men from the government came by following that attempted invasion and concocted a panic-inducing script to cover up what really happened.
Except the radio broadcast was on the 30th and the eyewitnesses had it occuring on the 31st. Meaning Welles (and not Howard Koch) wrote the radio play in at most -1 days, probably less. Now that's a neat trick.
The site is mine, and I need to resume updating it. It's written from the perspective of the series, and so incorporates the mythos, yet also serves as a collection of tellings of the story, including comic books and arcade games. It suffers from a lack of airing of the TV series. I just haven't been able to keep up my own interest in it.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
They didn't issue a "warning" because it didn't occur to anyone that it might be taken seriously. "War of the Worlds" wasn't intended to be a hoax, and anyone willing to intellectually engage even slightly with the show would have been able to tell that it wasn't true.
... anyone actually in New York could simply look out at the sky and see if it was glowing. According to the broadcast within the broadcast, 3 million people had left the City, thousands were jumping into the Hudson River, and the location of the advancing fires were very specifically described.
The originating news service is fake, the prestigious hotel in New York from which the show was supposedly broadcast didn't exist, the famous band leader at said hotel was also fictitious. There are many references to non-existent broadcasting services and locations, and as the show continues, and they're describing the swathe of destruction left by the aliens as they advance on New York City (with 20 minutes left in the show)
So for a one hour show, the first 40 minutes are concerned with the initial "attack" and the fake documentary; even if that confused some people, there is absolutely NO WAY that anyone could mistake the last 20 minutes for anything other than radio drama. Orson Welles describing the actions of his character travelling through a wasteland of destruction and death, meeting a National Guardsman in hiding and engaging him in conversation and great inspirational speechifying.
"War of the Worlds" was the 17th broadcast episode of the Mercury Theatre. It aired weekly on CBS, in the same time slot, and with the same cast. The thing that REALLY makes you wonder about the American populace, is that Orson Welles was a constant fixture on the radio -- he was the original voice of The Shadow -- on multiple networks, and he appears prominently in the show. It's not like you'd mistake that voice for someone else.
Welles was on the radio as The Shadow from September 1937 until September '38. The Mercury Theatre on the Air began in July 1938. Considering the length of the broadcast day, and the lack of dense programming, that means that everyone knew who Orson Welles was.
Oh well. As H.L. Mencken is often misquoted as saying, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
In particular, I've been told that quite a few people were in the habit of listening to the opening of the Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy show, during which they did a comedy dialogue shtick (with W.C. Fields occasionally dropping in), then switching over to Welles's show.
And anyone who thinks the public would have to be pretty stupid to fall for the "alien invasion" should remember that this took place in a time when one of the most popular entertainment shows in the country was a ventriloquist performing on the radio.
rj
I'm surprised nobody has linked to official website, where you can listen to the entire broadcast.
They're offering a transcript, MP3 files and a Real Audio stream as well as in-depth background information.
In God We Trust, Others We Monitor