STILL HERE!
You may have heard or read about it, too.
You seem to have taken it calmly, but there are people who actually went into a blue tizzie over the approach of a newly discovered asteroid which passed by Earth at some 530,000 kilometers, which is just a bit
more than the Moon.
Most of them had never even heard of the asteroid, called
2002 NY40, until it was mentioned on the Evening News on TV the night before it came closest to Earth and said to be hurtling toward us .
The newscasts always us seemed to point out that it was coming toward us but that it would miss Earth by a comfortable margin, but our of “Nervous Nellies” blithely heard it as “might miss us” rather than “will
miss us.”. “Might” was impetus enough. So armed, they went public!
Can’t you imagine the rapidity with which the rumor machine set out to make it become a fact? The present day fervor was much slower, of course, the Orson Well’s “ The War of the Worlds” scare. I remember that time
vividly. It was October 30, 1938 - the day before
Halloween. I was at People’ Drug Store in downtown Roanoke, Va. seated on a stool at the soda fountain having a chocolate milk shake when I heard parts of the drama coming from the radio. Those were the days when stores kept
radios blaring for their patrons as entertainment. I knew it was a dramatic thing being done in a newsy format on radio by “Mercury Theater” actors. I didn’t think too much about it until a short time later I heard that people
somewhere accepted the radio reports as being news reports of an actual invasion of the country by outer world attackers from Mars! We just had radio, then. There was the telephone, of course. Perhaps some had used telegraph
wires as well - but the word spread rapidly that the enemy had landed as a “huge flaming object” on a New Jersey farm. The Martian invaders were quickly advancing on all parts of the nation.
The next morning the papers were full of stories about what happened. I remember one couple in southwestern Virginia who had cautiously taken an ax to the trees holding their radio antennae aloft, because
it was being said that the invading critters could come into ones home by way of the radio waves! People, it seems, left their homes and went anywhere else they could go, seeking a safer haven and that helped spread word of the
strange attack. Many wore wet towels around their heads and face because they had been told that was a way to stay alive with the enemy doing gas attacks in advance of their invading troops of monsters.
Not everyone went for it, of course. Those of us at the soda fountain were listening to the play, but no on seem excited about it being anything other than a radio adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel from about 1872. The
program had opened with a disclaimer stating that what was about to be heard was a dramatization and not the real thing. Unfortunately, and this stands as a classic boo-boo of early radio, that disclaimer was not repeated until
forty minutes later. No one in my immediate circle of either family or friends panicked, but there were enough gullible individuals “out there in radio and telephone-land” to stir up events and real trouble.
I suppose we could say that ignorance was at the base of such reactions, but that would be unfair in many cases, because many who fell for it were, sensible folks in most things. Radio plays on human emotions as it
as it still does, but then, with far greater power and novelty than many realize. It was the first real demonstration of how radio was going to influence the public seriously. Science Fiction existed in books, of course and pulp magazines
carried shorter material of that type, but the general run of magazines did not. We now find adventure through science-fiction of advanced media including films such as the “Star Wars” series, and others. Our concept of space
then was rather limited and vague. Religious evidence and astrological lore were often a major guide to any studies concerning the outer portions of our Universe. To more people than you might imagine, the Moon was still made of
green cheese.
Even though we have learned a lot about outer space, some of us would rather retain the haunting mystery and fearful potential as we imagine it might be and a cataclysmic collision of heavenly chunks is a fiery
favorite.
It missed us again. That was August 18, 2002. It must have done so. We’re still here. Otherwise, this might have ended....”We’re here. And still...very still.”
A.L.M. August 19, 2002 [c815wds]
