On October 30th, 1938: An Intercontinental Radio News bulletin interrupts regularly scheduled music programming, alerting listeners to a meteor strike in rural New Jersey. What follows is nothing less than a Martian invasion cooked up by the fiendishly clever Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre players and presented as a series of simulated news bulletins. Known as the night America panicked, this does illustrate how quickly people not paying attention can conclude the wrong thing from the media. People swore that tier towns were under attack. I can't help but wonder how far the panic may have spread today with our higher speed forms of media such as the Internet. I can just see all of the Facebook and Twitter post from people seeing the Martian invasion machines now. This radio drama caused changes in in laws governing how things are presented on mass media. Of course the Internet does not have these laws.
So at 8pm, turn down the lights and prepare to be invaded. We hope Security officer will relax and enjoy it as the fun drama it was meant as.
