The Martians Are Coming! Happy Hallowe’en
Happy Hallowe’en! If you want to mess with your kids’ heads, put this old radio play on speakers without warning them, but don’t let them see the screen. Speakers only.
It is Mercury Theater On the Air’s 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds with Orson Wells at the helm of it. No commercials or breaks, no explanations, just actors and sound effects, and much more effective than any of those movies that have been made about this matter.
There was a disclaimer broadcast at the beginning of this show, but if people tuned in a few minutes late, they’d have missed the disclaimer and became – well, concerned. Some people did leave New Jersey for “safer” places.
As the Smithsonian article says, some people became upset, called police stations, newspaper offices and radio stations to find out what was going on. But the panics reported in the press were mostly exaggerations, like that’s anything new, right?
And here it is, in its entire silly glory with Orson Wells in charge. He sold no wine before its time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0K4ApWl4g
How would anyone pull off something like that today? Simple: shut down the internet, all of it and wireless telecomm. Shut down all satellite communications, too. One bodacious solar EMP would likely fry cell towers, power stations, and high power lines. Even radio stations might go off the air, if their power source failed and nothing could get out.
Remember, we have a full generation of people whose entire lives are embedded in electronic junk and if that shuts down, so will their minds. If only there were some way to really blow their minds…. (nefarious laughter follows)
Alexa is not your friend…. she knows what you’re up to….
Happy Hallowe’en!!
Category: Usual Suspects, YGBSM!!
Classic!
Yes, classic. I have a DVD of the 1953 movie with Gene Barry. I still enjoy that from time to time!
Siri and Alexa. The classic example of no matter how sweet they seem or imagined beautiful they are purported to be, somebody, somewhere is tired of putting up with their crap! Every electronic device I have came with an on/off switch. Some even have a channel changer. Get a grip snowflakes; on something besides your phone.
I think that the heat ray guns in the various WOW movies are under some stage of development and testing now.
So would they be affected if a big EMP burst hit the Earth?
I read the book, War of the Worlds, published in the late 1890s. Makes for a good book with regards to literature. One of the under current themes of the book addressed what some saw as a “real invasion” back in those times… The Industrial Revolution.
Industrialization, standardization, machinery, etc., had been eliminating traditional agricultural related jobs.
Many of the war vehicles that the Martians used sounded like late 19th Century factory machinery. People were “herded like cattle” and used as fertilization for the “matiforming” of our world.
Lots of symbolisms in the novel.
It’s like how the modern “Terminator” movies use, as one of the subvert themes, the advances of technology and robotics and their effect on traditional employment. Robotics “eliminating” jobs that humans could do…
I had to switch my car Sirus XM from old radio shows (148)to 50’s (005) music because of the upcoming halloween they were playing Inner Sanctum and other horror radio shows which I really don’t care for.
I live about 10 minutes from Grover’s Mills where the “invasion” took place. Last night the local coffee shop had a seance to try and contact Mr. Welles. Tonight they are going to play the original broadcast….
I like Ex’s use of the word “bodacious”. You just don’t hear that enough anymore.
Thank you!
Airing out the vocabulary closet on a regular basis is a good thing to do.
It’s especially pleasing when you get to use such less widely known words as bodacious, pepperpot, fustercluck, sybilant, mullion-eyed and exorbitant around millennials whose vocabulary is almost entirely riddled with obscenities.
Memories from a time when you could have an Illudium Q-36 space modulator and no one gave you any shit about it.
Very angry indeed!
Why does Marvin the Martian remind me of Don Lemon?
HAHAHAHAHA 🙂