'Wow, it really worked ': 70s TV show causing worldwide panic today • Hacker News Board

Re: 'Wow, it really worked ': 70s TV show causing worldwide panic today

#51

Post by snypher » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:56 AM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #26

0xmattf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a mermaid "documentary"* I watched as a gullible 15 (?) year old. It aired on Animal Planet, if I'm not mistaken. I thought it was absolutely real. _Mermaids are real_. I used to tell everyone to watch it... Years later, I found out it was completely fake; the end credits even tell you it's fake (I missed that). I had a hard time believing anything after that realization. * - Mermaids: The Body Fou…

Similar thing for Discovery or History channel show about Dragons. It went on about how they could breath fire by eating platinum rich ore from their dens or something. I was very confused - why would an otherwise reputable channel show absolute fiction, and if it was true why wouldn't this be all over the news. Then at the end they said it was fictional. What garbage.

Did you think the documentary about dragons was real? Seems like it would have been obvious given the subject. Or maybe, does your perception of the channel's reputation change the lens you view the content with?

Re: 'Wow, it really worked ': 70s TV show causing worldwide panic today

#52

Post by giantg2 » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 10:59 AM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #37

giantg2 wrote: post #28

The 4000 out of 700000 number doesn't seem quite right to me. That seems like maybe an average rate being applied to a cohort that doesn't match the average population. It would be more telling to compare deaths that were suspicious and missing persons numbers than all deaths. That said, I would assume the government would monitor statistics like this as part of standard counter intelligence operations so they could…

Oddly enough this exact topic came in another thread, and CDC mortality tables [1] are kind of eye opening for those who don't realize how brief life is. Take just the 25-44 year old bracket (which is probably conservative here given we're speaking of an older cohort) and the death rate is approximately 140/100k per year. For a sample of 700k people that'd be about 980 per year, around 1800 over 22 months. Their esti…

"because pretty much all deaths at younger ages are unusual."

I would think most of those deaths are car accidents, heart attack, stroke, cancer, and drugs. I would not call those suspicious circumstances.

Re: 'Wow, it really worked ': 70s TV show causing worldwide panic today

#53

Post by giantg2 » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 11:06 AM UTC

snypher wrote: post #51

giantg2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar thing for Discovery or History channel show about Dragons. It went on about how they could breath fire by eating platinum rich ore from their dens or something. I was very confused - why would an otherwise reputable channel show absolute fiction, and if it was true why wouldn't this be all over the news. Then at the end they said it was fictional. What garbage.

Did you think the documentary about dragons was real? Seems like it would have been obvious given the subject. Or maybe, does your perception of the channel's reputation change the lens you view the content with?

Clearly I questioned it the whole time, hence the confusion.

"Seems like it would have been obvious given the subject."

Same thing for the mermaid show mentioned before.

"Or maybe, does your perception of the channel's reputation change the lens you view the content with?"

Channel reputation is the wrong word. Channel programming type would be more appropriate. This was back when those channels had educational programming and not the garbage shows they have today. It's more like finding a fiction book in the section that's supposed to be non-fiction.

Re: 'Wow, it really worked ': 70s TV show causing worldwide panic today

#54

Post by brokenmachine » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 5:54 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #24

jghn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in the car listening to Howard Stern. Someone called in about it. They treated it as a joke at first. As it started playing out they realized that not only was it real but it was more than just a simple accident. THat's when I flipped over to the news radio station.

Once the event was underway, I recall Howard Stern providing rather good up-to-the-minute reporting about the event, by way of guests calling in. While the mainstream news was floundering around with stale info and generally not really knowing what was going on, you could get pretty decent information from the Stern show. Apart the occasional guest callers just calling in and shouting "baba booey," his coverage was q…

I'm Australian but I downloaded that show to listen to it.

It was surreal hearing him say, "we're under attack" when the second plane hit.

He did a great job.

Re: 'Wow, it really worked ': 70s TV show causing worldwide panic today

#55

Post by somenameforme » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 6:49 AM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #52

somenameforme wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly enough this exact topic came in another thread, and CDC mortality tables [1] are kind of eye opening for those who don't realize how brief life is. Take just the 25-44 year old bracket (which is probably conservative here given we're speaking of an older cohort) and the death rate is approximately 140/100k per year. For a sample of 700k people that'd be about 980 per year, around 1800 over 22 months. Their esti…

"because pretty much all deaths at younger ages are unusual." I would think most of those deaths are car accidents, heart attack, stroke, cancer, and drugs. I would not call those suspicious circumstances.

There's some data on that here [1] - page 19. It depends on the exact age range. For everybody under 45 the leading cause of death is unintentional injury by a wide margin. It's unclear what percent of that would be car crashes. Cancer and other stuff catches up pretty quickly in the 45-54 age range and becomes overwhelmingly dominant by the 55+ group. So it depends on exactly what age range we're talking about.

[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr74/nvsr74-10.pdf