The following is an article from the September '94 (Vol. 2, 
#9) issue of The REALL News.  It may be reprinted by other 
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                       The Panicky Guy
                     by Martin Kottmeyer

[A review of Jerry Kroth's _Omens and Oracles: Collective
Psychology in the Nuclear Age_. Praeger, 1992.]

   Jerry Kroth is a pyschohistorian who believes that
dreams foretell the future. He grants that parapsychologists
have not proven the reality of literal precognitive dreams,
but he thinks the case for a class of symbolic "oracular
dreams" is more secure. Such dreams provide a vague
architecture in which the future might be revealed, but
inexactly and metaphorically. He also argues that news
events should be treated as dreams with some big events
being the equivalent of big dreams. Their numinous character
distinguish oracular function.
   The book offers psychological commentaries on the
Jonestown mass suicide, the breakdown of Russia, our
involvement in southeast Asia and the politics of Israel,
and ends with a section on how the Reagan era brought about
an implosion of the American collective ego that portends
"danger and foreboding" as we approach the millennium. As he
did say that this is a vague process up front, it would
probably be unfair to criticize the nonspecificity of this
concluding prediction. You have got to wonder if it is worth
the time and effort invested in the analytic effort given
the meager outcome.
   I became interested in this book because a reviewer at
the _Journal of Psychohistory_ praised a chapter in it on
"The Oracle of Orson Welles" as brilliant. The story of the
Panic Broadcast has been frequently retold in the UFO
literature, usually as a reason for why the government
refrains from admitting the reality of the alien presence.
Thousands of people were spooked on Halloween of 1938 when
Orson Welles retold the classic H.G. Wells story _War of the
Worlds_ in the forum of realistic radio news stories. The
fright and flight constituted a sociological phenomenon that
amazed many people.
   For Kroth, the Panic Broadcast is a numinous big dream
that symbolically portended the beginning of the Second
World War 10 months later with Germany's invasion of Poland
on Sept. 1, 1939. The invaders of Mars link up to this event

via ancient collective symbols to the Teutonic war-gods of
Tiw and Thor and Hitler. For example, the broadcast Martians
fire heat rays; Tiw fires lightning bolts. Hitler's SS wore
lightning emblems and used the strategy of the blitzkrieg
(lightning war). The Martians are described as bear-like;
the bear is sacred to Thor. Thor is linked to the swastika
and iron cross and thus to the Third Reich. Mars is red, and
so is the Nazi flag. Halloween and the program's Mercury
Theatre name also have mythological significances which
alerted people on the unconscious level that they were
receiving a warning of the Holocaust to come, a dress
rehearsal for the real panic that was unfolding in Europe.
That Orson Welles shares a similar name with H.G. Wells is
deemed meaningful. Just as Orson Welles' broadcast preceded
World War II, the original H.G. Wells preceded and predicted
World War I.
   Kroth admits there are pitfalls to such interpretations
and expresses the hope that he is wrong. Major appearances
of _War of the Worlds_ preceded the first two world wars,
and in October 1988, _War of the Worlds_ put in another
appearance, this time as a prime-time television series. The
unspoken corollary is that a third world war might be in the
offing.
   I've necessarily omitted a lot of details, but it should
give you a flavor of the style. Psychological theorizing
admittedly obliges loose chains of association sometimes,
but I found this unusually airy and reckless because of what
you must overlook for this analysis to make sense.
   The original H.G. Wells story was not formulated as a
prediction, but was conceived as a fictional turnabout of a
prior holocaust: England's decimation of the Tasmanians in
the last century. Just as the Tasmanians were wiped out
because of British technological superiority, the British
are wiped out because Martians were technologically
advanced. Kroth, in a footnote, identifies the Martians in
the radio broadcast as projections from the American shadow-
self. The Martians, however, are unchanged from the original
story, which was written by an Englishman. Wells was clearly
under the sway of the rhetoric of degeneration concepts
which flourished in London after 1885 because of fears of
the burgeoning underclass then oppressing the city.
   The numinous power of the Panic Broadcast would seem
inextricably bound to pre-World War II American mental
complexes by Kroth's argument, but similar War of the Worlds
broadcasts were done in the Orson Welles' style in 1944
Santiago, Chile, and 1949 Quito, Ecuador, and they produced
panics even worse than the original. Panic is not driven by
subtle forces. Neil J. Smelser has convincingly argued in
_Theory of Collective Behavior_ that the two ingredients
needed for a panic are a believable threat of death and an
awareness that a means of escape will soon be blocked off.
Welles' broadcast was describing people dying by
asphyxiation with poison gases and provided position reports

of the rapidly advancing menace. Escape was possible, but
one had to act fast. Contrary to UFO lore, and implicitly
Kroth, the mere announcement of aliens, even aliens tailored
to the specifications of our subconscious, should not create
a panic if Smelser's argument is as sound as it seems.
   My favorite part, though, is Kroth's seeing the October
1988 TV series as an oracle of war. It was far less numinous
than the 1954 George Pal movie version of _War of the
Worlds_ which inspired it. The Pal version did not presage a
war. The series had mediocre ratings and was cancelled after
a year or so. What is astounding, however, is that you must
overlook a certain numinous event that happened one year and
one month later. The Berlin Wall toppled and the Cold War
ended . . . . As oracles go, this is not my idea of
brilliance.

[Martin Kottmeyer is a frequent contributor to The REALL News.]