Halloween

© Laurence B. Winn

October 1, 1999

In 1996, researchers reported that crevices in a meteorite named Allan Hills 84001 contained organic molecules. Highly magnified pieces of the meteorite revealed what appeared to be the fossils of “filamentous bacteria.” The meteorite in question had come from Mars. It was discovered in an Antarctic site which made contamination with organisms from earth unlikely. Ergo, there was life on Mars. Maybe, there is life on Mars.

One can almost hear the voice of Orson Welles in this, “We know now that in the early days of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns, they were being scrutinized and studied...Minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic regarded the earth with envious eyes, and slowly drew their plans against us.”

Thus the stage could be set again for what was surely the most successful of all horror dramatizations, if success is measured in terms of thousands sent screaming into the night. The first paragraph is recent news. The second is from Orson Welles' 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' novella War of the Worlds.

As far as we know, there are no other intellects in the cosmos, vast, cool, unsympathetic, or otherwise. But that does not prevent each and every diaphanous strand of evidence from weaving in our collective imagination a tapestry of civilizations vastly superior to our own. So, when Columbia Broadcasting System's Mercury Theater staged a radio version of Wells' thriller as a simulated newscast, its effect was to send thousands across the nation into a panicked frenzy, thousands who believed that they were facing an invincible army of Martian invaders.

The show aired coast-to-coast over WABC from New York on the evening of October 30, 1938. Coincidentally, just an hour and a half before War of the Worlds went on, electric lights alternately dimmed and brightened in Bergen County, New Jersey, creating a buildup for terror.

Most listeners ignored or missed the play's introduction. They failed to associate the play with the program listings. They ignored three announcements emphasizing the fictional nature of the play. The show went on the air at eight o'clock, and by 8:15 the nation was convinced of the reality of a Martian invasion.

In New York City, families rushed out of their houses, wet handkerchiefs over their faces, to flee what they believed to be a gas attack. A team of geologists traveled to Dutch Neck, New Jersey, five miles north of Princeton, to investigate the reported meteor fall that had brought the alien invaders. (In Wells' story, the Martians arrived in metal cylinders which descended through our atmosphere like shooting stars.) All they found was a gaggle of sightseers, also looking. The invasion seemed so real to many that they contacted police stations and newspaper offices to say that they had actually seen it. Later, one family was found huddled in a field, waiting for the end.

Historical timing is one explanation offered for the ease with which people were deceived. Americans had been hanging on their radios for weeks listening to news about the Munich crisis and the Hitler appeasement. The Mercury Theater "reporter" at the site of the Martian landing, whose frantic tone still sends the hairs on the nape of the neck bristling, had modeled his performance on the live radio report of the Hindenberg airship disaster.

But historical timing does not fully explain what happened in 1968, when WKBW, Buffalo, NY, pulled the same Halloween stunt on a local audience. Despite weeks of promotion and letters to enforcement agencies to warn them of the broadcast, despite numerous announcements on the air during the show, police switchboards lit up with thousands of calls from panicked listeners. The report actually drew responses from police and fire departments, and even a unit of the Canadian National Guard. (See Jerry Stern's "Wars of the Worlds" web site.)

More than six decades after Orson Welles' 1938 broadcast, and with full knowledge of its history, those news bulletins can still chill the blood. As Welles himself later explained, it was Mercury Theater's way of throwing on a sheet and saying "Boo!" for Halloween.

We know now what would happen if alien explorers touched down on planet earth tomorrow morning. Our own history suggests that, in any encounter between cultures, the less technologically advanced of the pair disappears. And we suspect that the Taino of Hispaniola would no more have believed in Spaniards in 1492 than we do in "Grays" right now.

Genocide is not just a European thing. In Samuel Eliot Morison's Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), we learn that the Caribbean tribes Christopher Columbus encountered on his voyages to the "Indies" were in the act of transitioning to extinction at the hands of other, more advanced indigenous cultures. (In this case, "advanced" means possessing agriculture, seagoing canoes and marginally superior weapons.) The invasion of Spaniards hastened the process, of course. As Morison notes, "It is sad but significant that the only Indians of the Caribbean who have survived are those who proved both willing and able to defend themselves."

As pointed out in "The Economics of Discovery", voyages of discovery tend to be expensive. If the voyage is to pay for itself, as is often required, then discoveries must be exploited. That is the European secret of success, and it may well be universal.

The only human system of exploration not based on exploitation that history records is that of China in the Ming Dynasty.

In 1405, Emperor Yung Lo, a megalomaniac of heroic proportions, sent out expeditions with messages of his grandeur. The fleet numbered 317 ships, the smallest of which, at 180 feet, rivaled in size the steel-hulled, square-rigged freighters of the 19th century (like San Diego's Star of India). While the Portuguese proselytized and plundered their way down the African coast, China's armada of peace ranged the Indian Ocean and China Sea with gifts of gold statuary and high praise for whatever religion was in place. (See "Protector of the Seven Seas" and "The Eunuch Columbus" for details.)

The overall effect of this strategy was to break the bank. The Great Withdrawal of 1433 cut short China's age of discovery. Historian Daniel Boorstin, writing in The Discoverers, informs us that "The bureaucrats sensibly argued that the imperial treasure should be spent on water-conservation projects to help farmers, on granary projects to forestall famine or on canals to improve internal communication, and not on pompous and reckless maritime adventures."

Thus China doomed itself to be the discovered rather than the discoverer, and consequently to centuries of stagnation, degradation, chaos and tyranny.

The inescapable lesson (one of them, anyway) is that those who touch on interstellar shores are far more likely to be exploiters than benefactors, because history and economics select against the latter.

How do we explain the behavior of our own American bureaucrats in the last years of the 20th century, those who have systematically dismantled a program that once held promise to populate the solar system by the turn of the millennium? Surely educated men and women of such standing in society are familiar with the Chinese example.

Could it be that intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarding the earth with envious eyes, have slowly drawn such plans against us, and inoculated the ranks of the powerful with saboteurs of such skill, that we are turned inward and prevented from defending ourselves?

Which is my way of saying "Boo!" to you this Halloween.