Why did the airing of HG Well's novel "War of the Worlds" on the radio cause so much panic? What would it take to cause that type of panic from a Hoax like "War of the Worlds" in this day and age? First and foremost, the 1.2 million U.S. radio listeners who panicked on Halloween night, 1938, were part of a new technology that had not yet developed to the point in which the majority could critically analyze what came over the airwaves. To those early listeners, espcecially those who tuned in after the caveat about entertainment, the realism and stage-play of Orson Welles' broadcast sounded so real, and so plausible, that they could not help but believe it -- after all, it sounded like a news broadcast (Radio: Anatomy of a Panic, 1940). People have become far more cynical,...
Certainly, rather than one radio broadcast, the perpetrators would need to have global media pick up an event, or at least start a hoax small enough that it would spiral into the modern conscious as "real." This could be accomplished, say, with an ancient artifact proving the existence of an alien race; show footage of its discovery, validation by academics; then get comments from major governments and the Vatican and viola' - instant hoax.
What does George Orwell mean by saying in 1984 "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."? The past is another name for history -- he
