War of the Worlds
I've been listening to a recording of H.G. Welles' radioplay of the War of the Worlds, and while I know it's fiction, it's a little close to home. The "first cylinder" hit at Grover's Mills, NJ, around 30 miles from where we work. The "third cylinder" hit in the Great Swamp south of Morristown, just a few miles from smarriveurr's and my house in Plainfield. Most of New Jersey was purportedly a panic-stricken inferno under martial law. I'm fairly certain that, in 1938, I would have been quite uncomfortable, at the very least.