Invasion of the Broken Windshields
Mass hysteria at its head-shaking best
Matt Abra, Volunteer
In an early episode of The X-Files, there is a terrific scene in which a pair of looters accidentally knock over a box of chocolate almonds in a supermarket. “Roaches!” a man screams, and soon the place is frantically vacated, save for special agent Dana Scully. With her infamous cool and composed exterior, she casually walks over to the spilled box and pops one of the almonds in her mouth. You see, the town had supposedly been overrun by a new species of killer cockroaches, and it didn’t take long before the entire population was teeming with madness and hurrying to escape.
The scene is a pitch-perfect depiction of the type of mass hysteria made famous by a few unforgettable incidents in history, not to mention a clever ode to the very deadpan reactions we always expected from the lead characters in comparison to all others on screen. Unfortunately, not everyone is as cool and composed. The typical human has such a strongly embedded passion for self-preservation and such a close-minded sense of tenacity that when trouble, or even the idea of trouble, comes knocking on his or her door, any sense of dignity can be quickly replaced by a fear of chocolate almonds.
Let us not forget the supposed alien invasion that threatened our planet back in 1938. Thousands of people fled their homes in hopes of escaping an impeding gas raid from Mars. There were even reports of several fear-stricken individuals actually committing suicide within the frenzy. Of course the panic was unfounded. It was the product of Orson Welles’ famous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, an event that still remains a truly legendary example of overreaction.
The fact that such a wide stretching hysteria could be induced by the simple turning of a knob exemplifies just how revolutionary the show was, never mind radios themselves. To this day, Welles’ broadcast can easily be considered as ground zero for the new age of media-created fear that has been imbedding itself in society more and more each day.
Jumping ahead 60 years, our modern advances in media had the entire world convinced that technology was about to turn on itself when the millennium changed over. Although the response to the Y2K scare could be described as more drawn out, and therefore more relaxed, it too proved to be a grand degrading example of our paranoia when the clock struck midnight and nothing happened. Nevertheless, before the big countdown countless citizens were emptying stores of their generators and living supplies in preparation for a new dark age that wasn’t meant to be.
Whether the panic was warranted or not, these events stand as evidence of our delicacy as a species, a delicacy that can be created by something as simple as word of mouth .No story better emphasizes this then a bizarre incident that happened over 50 years ago but may still stand as the most priceless bit of mass hysteria our world has ever seen.
If you’ve ever visited HistoryLink.org or indulged in the 17th edition of Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader you might have read a 2003 article by Alan J. Stein depicting what has come to be known as the “Great Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic of 1954.” If you were alive and informed in 1954 you may actually remember the strange phenomenon, as it even crossed the desk of U.S. president Eisenhower.
In the beginning . . .
It all started in a northern Washington town called Bellingham. In March 1954, reports of small pits in car windshields started coming in to local police, leading authorities to the conclusion that some sort of vandalism bandit was at large, most likely using buckshot or BBs, given the size of the holes. Word of the incidents started to spread and it wasn’t long before several other communities further south began to experience similar occurrences. Authorities in the towns of Sedro Woolley and Mount Vernon received the very same damage reports and by mid-April it appeared that the vandals had moved even further south into the town of Anacortes on Fidalgo Island.
By this time police were heavily involved and hoping to stop the spreading destruction. Road blocks were set up around Anacortes and every car leaving town was searched. Authorities were looking for anything that might be the tool of choice for a vandal interested in causing a ding or two. For now, let’s call him “The Ding Master.” But the Ding Master was not caught, and he seemed to be on course to hit Seattle within the week.
Helpless in Seattle
On the morning of April 14, 1954, Seattle newspapers reported the strange outbreak in Washington State on their front page. At that point already some 2,000 cases of windshield dings had been reported between Bellingham and Seattle. Sure enough, before the day was over, a person in Seattle phoned in with a complaint about his windshield, then a second person, and then a third. Then it exploded. Police officers were stopped in the street by people claiming to have been hit by the vandal, auto-sales lots were finding dings in their vehicles and even the police themselves were discovering evidence that their own cruisers had been victimized. The epidemic had broken out and hysteria was in full swing.
Some theories arise
After approximately 3,000 cases of windshield pits had been reported, it became very apparent that this was not the result of simple vandalism. The distances covered and sheer volume of the damage seemed to prove that the Ding Master was either a ghost, or they were dealing with something entirely different. Almost immediately a series of wild theories about the cause of the phenomenon started to formulate. Some thought that the radioactivity from recent H-bomb tests in the south pacific was to blame; others believed that the Navy’s new million-watt radio transmitter was “converting electronic oscillations to physical oscillations in the glass.” Arguably the most interesting idea was generated by a few people that claimed to have seen the glass of their windshields bubble right before their eyes. They believed it was caused by sand-flea eggs that had been laid right inside the glass, and that their eventual hatching was causing the glass to splinter. Regardless, the plague waged on.
Calls for aid and some simple solutions
Eventually President Eisenhower got wind of what was happening through a wire from Seattle’s mayor, as did Washington Gov. Langlie. Langlie enlisted a group of scientists from Washington University to look into matters. After examinations of 84 cars on the campus, the scientists came to the conclusion that the damaged vehicles had been “overly emphasized” and were just a result of your average case of windshield splints, whereby small objects had hit the glass of the car while being driven.
Meanwhile, local authorities were doing their own investigation. Pretty soon they had determined that the vast majority of the dings reported were on older cars, ones that had seen the road considerably more times. Within the auto lots, most of the new cars seemed to be untouched, while the used cars were full of pits. It all turned into one startlingly simple revelation — the pits had been there all along, it was just that no one had noticed them until then. By this point the story had taken on a life of its own, creating within the population a collective delusion brought on by the spread of rumors and false beliefs. As J. Stein points out, “For the first time people actually looked at their windshields as opposed to through them.”
A pitiable overreaction to pits
“The Great Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic” is certainly a fine example of the type of fear-spreading hysteria that could very well be the key to our undoing someday. Or it could be our saving grace. The people in Washington chose to believe something simply because the person next to them believed it first, opening their eyes to a new perspective that suggested danger. There are certainly those who believe this type of paranoia to be a good thing, that it prevents us from turning our backs on the potential threats facing humanity today, threats that could very well become the real end of the world. Whether such hysteria ultimately turns out to be our guardian angel or our nuclear war remains to be seen.
