War of the Worlds

An account of Orson Welles' 1938 radio drama broadcast that inadvertently started a mass panic.

I have always been suspicious that the American public was so stupid that it believed a radio play about Martians was somehow real, and was whipped into a frenzy. I generally believed that Orson Welles himself had more or less created the legend after the fact.

This may still be true, but at least some people did seem to panic, enough that the FCC got involved. Those interviewed here... I don't know if these are actual people, or actors reading lines from letters. Some of it is incredible, such as the comment that Americans ought to be sterilized or that a "radio dictator" should be appointed to prevent the radio from being used by the people.