UFO Mythology Meets History
The Mass Panic Over ETs Myth
Would people really freak out when they learn that ETs are real?
Accompanying the rise of public awareness of UFOs in the late 1940s was the idea that people will panic in the streets at the idea that there are extraterrestrials. This assumption is still a frequent part of conversations about UFOs and is central to multiple narratives about the phenomena, in particular the Disclosure narrative. But would there really be a mass panic when we learn that we are not alone in the universe?
Reasons to Believe No
Exhibit A for the mass panic idea is the reaction to the infamous “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast of 1938. Orson Welles and his radio theater company adapted H.G. Wells’s Martian invasion novel and presented it as a realistic but fake news broadcast. On that night, the day before Halloween, some people did panic, unfamiliar with the relatively new medium of radio and the idea of a fictional news broadcast. However, the commonly believed idea that the…
