‘War of the Worlds’ Emerges as a Cautionary Tale With Increase in Laser Attacks on Aircraft Mistaken for Drones

New Jersey’s drone war is entering a dangerous new phase with residents firing lasers at civilian aircraft they mistake for drones. The situation evokes Orson Welles’ 1938 “War of the Worlds” broadcast causing a Garden State panic — a myth that could turn real today.“In New Jersey,” according to an FAA statement released Thursday, “laser strikes are up significantly in the month of December,” with pilots reporting an increase of “269 percent over the same period last year.” The attacks threaten airliners, their passengers, and people on the ground.Laser pointers, available for as little as $5 on Amazon, are illegal to point at planes. Several states, including New Jersey, outlaw the practice; so does the federal government. The FAA can impose fines up to $11,000 per attack, $30,800 for multiple strikes, and jail terms of five years.Vigilantes taking matters into their own hands are some of the juiciest false stories about how New Jerseyans reacted to Welles’ broadcast about an alien invasion. It’s often claimed, for example, that frightened residents fired shotguns at water towers, mistaking them for alien walkers.Martians, as we know, did not invade Grovers Mill, New Jersey. But it seems plausible that a compelling news report could make residents react as if they’re under attack, inspiring the sort of mayhem they think they’re fighting.That Welles caused a panic is an article of faith for most people. When I tweeted about the myth last year as Communist Chinese spy balloons traversed America, one woman claimed that her mother knew two people who committed suicide, fearing the ravages of fleshy-headed aliens.In reality, Welles’ broadcast caused no deaths or panic. With tension ratcheting up over the drones, though, this risk is manifest in New Jersey’s busy airspace. A passenger aircraft could be crippled by a laser or other weapon fired skyward, causing a real disaster.Even military pilots sometimes judge passenger aircraft hostile and shoot them down, with more than 40 such instances since 1930. Two infamous examples are Iran downing an airliner arriving from Ukraine in 2020 and the Soviet Union destroying Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983.Last week, a Florida man, Dennis Winn, was ordered to pay $5,000 to Walmart for shooting down one of their drones. Nobody was hurt when it crashed, but some UAVs are as big as cars and — like planes whose pilots are blinded — there’s no guarantee where they’ll land.Responses from Washington aren’t soothing frayed nerves. On Tuesday at the White House, after over a month of sightings, President Biden offered his first comments. There is “nothing nefarious, apparently,” he said, and “so far, no sense of danger.”The qualifiers “apparently” and “so far” did little to reassure residents. Fear grows in the absence of facts, and someone always gives it a boost. After Welles’ broadcast, newspapers saw an opportunity to discredit their upstart competitors in radio. Wireless voices, readers were told, delivered fake news.Those claims helped feed the fable. In 2018, NPR’s Radiolab reported that 12 million people were glued to “War of the Worlds.” Slate debunked the claim, citing a C.E. Hooper survey of what people were listening to that night. “Only 2 percent answered a radio ‘play’ or ‘the Orson Welles program.’”None of the 5,000 households polled said they were listening to a “news broadcast.” Print outlets may have made the fake news stick, but they failed to inspire regulators to rein in radio. The FCC extracted only an informal agreement to shelve future fake news bulletins.Listeners knew that Welles’s program, which paused for regular commercial breaks during the “invasion,” was fiction. But today, something real is flying around over our heads. People tend to imagine something sinister is afoot when facts are scarce, and drones are just such a mystery.Expect more vigilantes to fire at unidentified aerial phenomena — once called UFOs — as drone sightings proliferate. Americans need a transparent government response to soothe their frayed nerves. Without that, the panic this time really will spread, and the risk of disaster will grow with it.

‘War of the Worlds’ Emerges as a Cautionary Tale With Increase in Laser Attacks on Aircraft Mistaken for Drones

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