The year is 1938, Europe is tense with war looming in the future. Man is still 30 years away from walking on the moon and the telephone is not yet a common household appliance. Radio serves as the one medium that can provide people with up to the minute information on everything going on in the world. So if you were ask to me, “How would have you reacted from the ‘War of the Worlds’ broadcast?” I would answer “Full of manic panic.”
First off, I live in New Jersey about 50 miles away from New York City and a drivable distance – even in those days – from Grovers Mill. To say this story hit close to home, is a pun intended.
Many of those listeners, who did misinterpret the story as an alien invasion, missed the disclaimer in the beginning stating it was just a show. If I had done the same, I would have had little doubt what I was hearing was true for a variety of reasons: In those days radio listeners were not accustomed to hearing “We interrupt this program…” and then receiving a fake news report. People believed what they were listening to was true, so I believe I would have done the same.
The acting, sound effects, and overall production are all great quality. Even by today’s standards, the on-air reporting was totally believable, which is another reason why I would have believed the story to be valid. To hear masses of people yelling, police officials issuing Marshall Law, and news that people are dying by the hundreds is news that you cannot ignore.
By the point of the police’s Marshall Law in Mercer County I would have left my home and went to my neighbor’s house to discuss what was unfolding – which probably would have caused me to miss one of the announcements that this was all just an acted out story.
From a person living in the future’s perspective, the lack of communication would have been frustrating. Going to my neighbor’s house or calling the police station is about all I could do to verify if what was happening was real.
The reason’s I would have been full of manic panic is because it was not out of the question for another country, like Germany, to invade, especially in the New Jersey region. The world had just experienced World War I and was about to go into a second world war. This was a generation of people used to invasions and violence from other lands. It was not out of the realms of possibilities that this wasn’t an alien attack, but rather a declaration of war by a foreign country.
Once the eyewitnesses came forward and declared it was “invaders from Mars” I would have been even more terrified. This was in a time when we were still decades away from going into space and exploring the final frontier. We didn’t know that much about space and we didn’t know if any kind of life was in our solar system. Our capabilities as a global society to fight off these creatures would have been futile.
That point would only be backed up further when the reports of the machines tearing through the cities came in. A feeling of helplessness would have come over me.
It would not have taken long for me to act after listening to this report. I am an overly cautious person so my first instinct would have been to evacuate my family to the safest spot I could think of. I probably would have rounded up my family, packed up all the necessary belongings and started heading north -- away from the major cities like New York and Philadelphia. I would not have known where I was going, hysteria probably would have taken over my body. However, I would have left the car radio on so I could keep track of where these machines were moving. Because of that by some point, in the all the mania, I probably would’ve realized via the end of the show, another radio station, or my neighbors that it was all a planned hoax. This news probably would’ve made me feel an overwhelming amount of relief, anger, and embarrassment.
The Orson Welles radio broadcast would have not only tricked me but it would have sent me into a frightened panic of mania just like it did for many other listeners, tuning in on that infamous night.
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