When Netflix released their feature film Bird Box in 2018, many viewers were left questioning what the “monster” was that drove everyone to suicide. One of the online theories is that the monster represented “mass hysterical contagion,” nowadays known as mass psychogenic illness (MPI), where a single individual suffers a psychogenic illness that spreads to a much larger group.

SEE ALSO: 10 Indications That Western Society Is Collapsing

Generally, women and girls will succumb to MPI more than men, as they are more likely to be triggered by another affected individual. Unlike the film suggests, nobody has reportedly died from the symptoms, which include hyperventilation, dizziness, panic, faintness, abdominal pain, sickness, headache, weakness, and itching.

These following real-life cases of mass hysterical contagion all ended nearly as quickly as they started. However, the sufferers will not easily forget just how frightening and disturbing such an outbreak can be.

10 The Twitching Teenagers

In October 2011, cheerleading captain Thera Sanchez woke up from a nap to find herself violently twitching and jerking. Two weeks later, a senior from the same school named Lydia Parker began humming and swinging her arms around involuntarily. Eventually, the numbers swelled from two to 20 people (mostly teenage girls) affected at Le Roy Junior/Senior High School, near Buffalo, New York.

Parents were becoming increasingly concerned that the tics were caused by the school’s water supply or that the playing fields were contaminated. However, the country’s leading environmentalists agreed there was nothing that would cause these symptoms.

According to Dr. Laszlo Mechtler, who treated 15 patients at the Dent Neurologic Institute, the symptoms were worsened by social media and press attention. Mechtler explained, “One thing we’ve learned is how social media and mainstream media can worsen the symptoms. The mass hysteria was really fueled by the national media, social media—all this promoted the worsening of symptoms by putting these people at the national forefront.”^[1] By the end of the school term, many of the teenage girls who were affected had returned back to normal.

9 June Bug

In June 1962, 62 workers at a dressmaking textile mill in South Carolina began to show symptoms of nausea, dizziness, and “a breaking out over the body.” The workers believed that the outbreak was caused by bug bites after receiving a fabric shipment.

However, investigation by the US Public Health Service, concluded that there was no reliable evidence that the contagion had been caused by an insect. Instead, it was explained that working conditions in the 1960s were so poor that the stress spread both physically and mentally between coworkers. The “June Bug” itself also could have been manifested by the initial untrained medical staff, who were not familiar with such symptoms.

The June Bug outbreak can also be explained as a social contagion, which is where groups of people who have strong social ties are affected in the same way. The majority of the coworkers were women who were the main providers for their families, which meant spending many long hours together.^[2]

8 Tarantism

In Italy from the 15th to the 17th century, tarantism was a form of hysteria that was associated with a bite from a tarantula. The term is derived from the town of Taranto, Italy. Those who were convinced they had suffered a tarantula bite would experience heightened excitability and restlessness. They would break out into a form of frenzied dancing which would allow them to be “cured.”

In 1693, a doctor in Naples suffered two tarantula bites in order to disprove that they would result in any of the typical tarantism symptoms. In front of six witnesses, he experienced no physical changes.

Tarantism gave rise to the tarantella, in which couples dance quickly and flirtatiously with each other. Composers Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Carl Maria von Weber have all written tarantella music.^[3]

7 Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic

In 1962, the country of Tanzania (then known as Tanganyika) suffered a laughter epidemic that began with an outbreak at a girl’s school before spreading to the surrounding communities. More than 1,000 people were affected by chronic laughter that lasted several months. Symptoms also included hysterical crying, aimless running, and violent outbursts which could last anywhere between a few hours to more than two weeks. Fourteen schools were closed due to the epidemic.

It is believed that in this particular case, one schoolgirl fell ill with anxiety-induced laughter, which then set off other girls, and a chain reaction occurred throughout the region. Researcher Christian Hempelmann noted, “We build up some magical psychic pressure, and laughter lets us release it. Statistically in this case, this did not release anything. These people were suffering, expressing their suffering through that. Nothing got better because they laughed.”^[4]

6 False Anthrax Alarms

On October 5, 2001, a letter that tested positive for anthrax killed the Sun newspaper’s picture editor Bob Stevens, and the world went berserk. The anthrax antibiotic, Cipro, was one of the fastest-selling drugs on the market, and in Dallas, an airplane was forced to make an emergency landing when potato chips that were crunched into the carpet were mistook for anthrax. In England, Canterbury Cathedral and the London Stock Exchange were evacuated due to false alarms. During the month of the anthrax fatality, there were four letters sent in the US mail that tested positive for anthrax but more than 3,000 cases of both false alarms and hoaxes.

Also during October, newspapers reported huge rises in sales as people were in desperate need of more information, and the media was blamed for overhyping the anthrax threats. Steve Caprus, executive producer of NBC Nightly News, stated that all journalists must “deal with facts—not hyping or being overly dramatic.”^[5] Over the months that followed, five people died from inhaling anthrax, and 17 others were infected after exposure.

5 St. John’s Dance

In 1374, there was an outbreak of uncontrollable dancing in the streets of Aachen, Germany, which still baffles experts even to this day. The writhing of the bodies, sometimes referred to as “St. John’s Dance,” would drive sufferers to exhaustion.

In his 1888 book The Black Death and The Dancing Mania, Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker describes:

They formed circles hand in hand, and appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were swathed in cloths bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack.^[6]

4 Elsa Perea Flores School

Elsa Perea Flores School in Tarapoto, Peru, fell victim to an outbreak of hysteria affecting nearly 100 children at the school. During the summer of 2016, the children, mostly aged between 11 and 14, claimed they saw terrifying visions of a man in black trying to kill them and also experienced seizures. They experienced fainting attacks, muscular convulsions, delirium, and repeated screaming.

One pupil described her experience, saying, “It’s disturbing for me to think about it. It’s as if someone kept on chasing me from behind. It was a tall man all dressed in black and with a big beard and it felt like he was trying to strangle me.”^[7] Another added, “Several children from different classrooms fainted at the same time. I got nauseous and started vomiting. I heard voices. A man in black chased me and wanted to touch me.” Locals put the hysteria down to demonic possession and claimed that the children must have been playing with an Ouija board before the attacks.

3 Blackburn Fainting Frenzy

During the summer of 1965, more than 300 people in Blackburn, England, began to suddenly faint with no prior symptoms. Princess Margaret was scheduled to visit the newly restored Blackburn Cathedral, and the crowds gathered in their thousands to await her arrival. Then, one by one, people began to collapse on the ground. The ambulance staff who attended the scene said the fainting was due to being stood around in the hot sun.

The following day, 98 pupils at St. Hilda’s Girls’ School also began to suddenly faint without explanation. They were rushed to the hospital, and mattresses were laid out in the hallways to cope with the sudden rise in patients. One ambulance driver recalled, “As fast as we took them away, new cases from classrooms in other parts of the school were being brought in.”^[8]

A year later, a report in the British Medical Journal by a pediatrician and a London psychologist confirmed that this was a case a mass hysteria or, as noted, an “epidemic of over-breathing.”

2 Resignation Syndrome

A mystery illness observed in Sweden has been dubbed “resignation syndrome.” Children of asylum-seekers would withdraw completely, unable to open their eyes, speak, or even walk. Eventually, they did recover, but the illness baffled medical experts for more than two decades. Dr. Elisabeth Hultcrantz, a volunteer with Doctors of the World, revealed, “When I explain to the parents what has happened, I tell them the world has been so terrible that [their child] has gone into herself and disconnected the conscious part of her brain.”

Resignation syndrome was first reported in the 1990s. From 2003 to 2005, more than 400 cases were noted. Karl Sallin, a pediatrician at the Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital, said, “To our knowledge, no cases have been established outside of Sweden.” More recently, in 2016, Sweden’s National Board of Health stated that numbers had decreased; there were 169 cases that year.^[9]

1 Coca-Cola Scare

In June 1999, Coca-Cola withdrew 30 million cans and bottles from the shelves in Belgium after more than 100 people claimed the product made them ill. It was reported throughout the country that many people, including children, became suddenly sick with “stomach cramps, nausea, headaches and palpitations” after drinking bottled Coca-Cola. After the Belgian government was swamped with complaints from citizens concerned about airborne toxins, an investigation took place. However, four members of Belgium’s Health Council suggested that the epidemic was a case of mass hysteria.

In a public letter, the health council stated, “It is probably significant that a company with such high visibility and symbolic image was involved in this episode. Besides the important role of the media, the scale of the outbreak may have been amplified by the radical measures taken by the health authorities, as well as deficient communication by the Coca-Cola company.”^[10] Coca-Cola quickly recovered from the epidemic, and sales were back on the rise within weeks of the event.

Cheish Merryweather is a true crime fan and an oddities fanatic. Can either be found at house parties telling everyone Charles Manson was only 5’2″ or at home reading true crime magazines.
Twitter: @thecheish

Mass hysteria is a psychological phenomenon which has been documented since the Middle Ages. Political turmoil, environmental stress, fear of the unknown, and the need for social acceptance from our peers can often cause us to behave in an irrational manner, and throughout history, close-knit groups, such as schools and small communities, have experienced inexplicable episodes of mass hysteria.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Bizarre Cases of Mass Hysteria

Many times, a single unusual incident with a logical explanation has escalated into an epidemic in which those close by imagine they are experiencing similar symptoms. From bizarre behavior to imaginary illnesses, there have been a number of epidemics of mass hysteria throughout history.

10 Dancing Plague Of 1518

We’ve all been tempted to “dance till you drop” when out partying or clubbing. But during the Middle Ages, residents of a French town actually died from dancing.^[1]

In 1518, a case of dancing plague broke out in Strasbourg, in the French Alsace region. Starting with one lone dancer, the footloose outbreak led to over 400 people eventually taking to the streets, dancing nonstop for days on end. Many collapsed from exhaustion, some apparently dying from heart attack or stroke. The Dancing Plague lasted for over a month. Those affected were predominantly female. Few historic notes exist to document the exact cause of the plague.

Town leaders were highly unamused with the ongoing displays of frenetic dancing. Learned physicians at the time suggested that the cause was “overheated blood” in the brain during the hot July days. It has been more recently suggested that a fungus, ergot, in the wheat fields (and thus in people’s bread) may have been the cause. The ergot would have produced reactions similar to LSD.

9 Tanganyika Laughing Epidemic

In 1962, three students at a boarding school in Tanganyika (modern-day Tanzania) began laughing uncontrollably. Their laughter was contagious and soon spread to 95 students at the school.

Bouts of uncontrolled hysteria lasted from a few hours to more than two weeks. Victims also experienced bouts of crying, pain, and fainting. Teachers were unable to conduct lessons with the bouts of hysterical laughing, and the school was forced to shut down for two months while the epidemic was brought under control.

However, the hysteria reportedly spread to surrounding villages and to a number of surrounding schools. Altogether, over 1,000 people were affected.^[2]

Possible toxins from contaminated food or chemicals were ruled out as a cause of the epidemic. No definite medical cause could be found for the laughing disease, which was blamed on the stress of the strict boarding school regime.

8 Mad Gasser

During World War II, residents of the town of Mattoon, Illinois, became convinced they were under attack from a phantom anesthetist who was attempting to gas them as they slept. Victims complained of a strange odor in their homes before being struck with symptoms ranging from paralysis to coughing, nausea, and vomiting.^[3]

The first report came at the end of August 1944, when a resident awoke to a strange smell and suffered a fit of nausea and vomiting. His wife was paralyzed and unable to leave her bed. Police received over 20 similar reports of “gassings” over the following two weeks. Panic ensued as the nightly “gassings” became more prevalent, but no firm sighting of a culprit ever occurred.

All victims made complete and speedy recoveries. Investigators explained the incidents as combinations of odors from a nearby industrial plant and mass hysteria in reaction to reports of a nocturnal prowler.

7 Meowing Nuns

Nuns in religious orders across France and Germany went barking mad during the 15th century. During medieval times, many women entered convents against their will, being forced into a life of celibacy and poverty by their parents. They were condemned to a life of austerity and manual labor. So it is probably no surprise that convent life caused some bizarre behavior from the inmates.

In 1491, a nun in a large French convent began meowing like a cat. Her sisters soon followed her in this strange behavior until the convent was overcome with a “cat imitation” plague. The surrounding villagers were disturbed by this daily caterwauling, to the point that a platoon of soldiers were stationed outside the convent. The nuns were told they would be beaten with rods if they continued to meow.

Various nunneries across the region reported similar epidemics of nuns imitating cats, dogs, and birds, as well as biting viciously. At the time, “demonic possession” was the explanation for the epidemics. However, the repressive conditions in which the nuns lived causing a form of mass hysteria is a more likely explanation.^[4]

6 Strawberries With Sugar Virus

In 2006, over 300 Portuguese schoolchildren were hit with an unexplained illness. Patients complained of dizziness, breathing difficulties, and rashes. The strange illness only affected schoolchildren and was reported in numerous schools around the country.

A teen soap opera called Strawberries with Sugar was identified as the problem. An episode had aired a few days before the outbreak, in which a strange virus was striking children at the show’s school. Apparently, watching the episode had led to children believing that their everyday ailments or allergies were in fact an outbreak of the deadly virus they had seen on television.^[5]

5 Meissen Trembling Disease

Several German schools were hit with an epidemic of trembling in 1905.^[6] A student in Meissen began trembling and twitching as she wrote in October of that year. By May the following year, over 200 students at surrounding schools had been afflicted with the unexplained twitching epidemic. The tremors only occurred when the students were given writing tasks and were not present when performing other lessons.

All the students were high performers, indicating that the stress of having to achieve good grades combined with reports of other instances of the trembling disease contributed to the hysteria. Students were “treated” with electric shocks to “cure” the tremors, which soon subsided after a rest from writing.

4 Hollinwell Incident

A swooning epidemic hit a group of schoolchildren in England’s East Midlands in July 1986.

Over 500 schoolchildren had traveled from all around to compete in a marching band competition. All were assembled and ready to perform, when suddenly, they began collapsing. Around 300 children and adults ultimately dropped at the Hollinwell showground. Mass panic erupted, with emergency crews called in to deal with the growing crisis.^[7]

Victims later complained of having experienced a sore throat and a burning sensation in the eyes. Initial investigations considered a gas leak or contamination from crop dusting as being possible causes of the mass fainting episode. The incident was officially explained as a form of mass hysteria, caused by a combination of tiredness from a long journey to the contest, the heat of the day, and preperformance jitters.

3 Blackburn Faintings

Schoolchildren in the UK town of Blackburn were hit with a fainting epidemic which lasted several days in 1965.

The fainting frenzy began while people were waiting outside the Blackburn Cathedral for Princess Margaret to arrive to officially open the restorations. An early start to the day, with several hours standing in the sun, were initially blamed when 140 children fainted on the grounds.

However, the following day, another 98 patients were hit with the mysterious fainting epidemic at a nearby school. By the end of the week, over 300 children had been affected.

The schools were closed and carefully inspected for a possible cause, with fumes from a nearby factory initially blamed for the fainting episodes. Mass hysteria, leading to overbreathing, brought on by the excitement of the royal visit was finally declared the cause of the fainting fits.^[8]

2 Wurzburg Screaming Epidemic

A nunnery in Wurzburg, Germany, was hit by a screaming epidemic in 1749. As with the meowing nuns a few centuries earlier, it was probably brought on by a combination of boredom and frustration at being forced into a religious life.

The sub-prioress, Sister Maria Renata, initially denied entry into the convent for a young woman who was prone to convulsions. Her decision was overturned, and other sisters within the community began imitating the young woman’s behavior, showing signs of “demonic possession” during services. Victims experienced episodes of screaming, writhing, foaming at the mouth, and entering a trancelike state.

The sub-prioress was coerced into confessing to witchcraft and was beheaded for her crimes against the Church, ending the screaming sessions from the other nuns.

1 Face-Scratcher

In poorly educated communities, villagers will often turn to folklore and mythology to explain the unknown. A belief that aliens were scratching the faces of victims at night sparked mass panic in a town in Uttar Pradesh.

In 2002, residents were reporting a “brightly lit object” that “flies sideways” attacking victims, leaving scratch marks on their faces. Reports ranged from football-sized objects to a UFO the size of a large tortoise that flew at victims, leaving scratches and burn marks.

From an initial isolated incident, rumors of the alien attacker soon spread, sparking widespread panic. Nighttime vigilante groups were set up to scare away the face-scratcher, and residents demanded police capture the extraterrestrial assailants. The only confirmed deaths, however, were from police firing into large crowds to disperse protesters who had gathered to demand action.^[10]

Explanations for the phenomenon ranged from an insect plague to “lightning balls” striking victims as they slept outside. The face-scratcher disappeared suddenly once the monsoon season arrived.

Lesley Connor is a retired Australian newspaper editor who contributes articles to online publications and her travel blog.

Everyone knows what you mean when you refer to a weapon of mass destruction these days. We typically categorize them in one of three ways: either nuclear, chemical, or biological. Essentially is any weapon that can cause mass death and destruction fairly quickly. The term dates back to 1937 when it was apparently coined by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

At the time, he was referring to aerial bombardments in Spain that used what today we would think of as standard ordinance. Obviously those weapons evolve to become bigger and more destructive. And in the future, we can look forward to those weapons evolving to be even worse.

10. Antimatter Weapons

The term antimatter brings to mind some kind of Star Trek science fiction imagery. It barely sounds like a real thing. Unfortunately, it is real and the potential for antimatter to cause serious damage is ripe for the picking.

Antimatter is any material composed of what you would call antiparticles. The theory behind antimatter is that every particle in the universe has kind of a mirror image of itself. It is the same thing with an opposite charge. The example most often given is that an electron has a negative charge but a positron has a positive charge. They both have the same mass but they are opposites. This is significant to the world of weapons of mass destruction because when matter and antimatter meet they can no longer exist together so they destroy each other in a spectacular way.

Antimatter was considered theoretical for a long time until evidence of its existence was discovered. When cosmic rays hit the Earth’s atmosphere they produce antimatter. Thunderstorms also seem to produce positrons sometimes. And the Large Hadron Collider is able to produce matter and antimatter as well.

When matter and antimatter meet the result is not just destructive, it’s bafflingly destructive. Particle physicist Frank Close has been quoted as saying that if you destroy a kilogram of antimatter it produces about 10 billion times the amount of energy that you get from destroying a kilogram of dynamite. That works out to 1,000 times more energy than nuclear fission. So if you were able to harness enough antimatter you could probably destroy the entire planet with not a lot of effort.

9. Genetic Weapons 

Genetic weapons are what happens when you take biological weapons to the next, terrifying level. These are weapons that are targeted to specific genetics, which means that you could take a standard biological weapon (anthrax, for instance) and tailor it so that it would only infect people with certain genetic traits. That means if you wanted to only eliminate a certain ethnic group you would be able to do so.

The idea of genetic weapons was dismissed in the past as being something that was not feasible or realistic. Advances in genetic science has proven that to be incorrect. According to a report called Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity II, our research into the development of vaccines and attempts to cure genetic conditions has enabled scientists to accurately map the human genome in a way that exposes certain genes that are specific to different ethnic groups. This information can then be exploited by rogue scientists to target those genes rather than use them to benefit mankind and cure diseases. The belief is that in the future, using this information, ethnic-specific biological weapons could be developed.

Other genetic weapons don’t have to use existing diseases; they can interfere with human RNA. By exploiting something called RNA interference, a genetic weapon could shut down important genes that are needed for you to live and function. This could be unleashed on an enemy population and have no effects on the attacking population. It wouldn’t be able to completely eliminate one side, but data suggests that as many as 20% of a population could be affected right away. And that certainly enough to cause some serious damage.

8. High-Powered Microwave

Star Trek made the word phaser part of everyday language. When you hear the word you know exactly what it means even though you’ve probably never seen such a thing before because what even is a phaser? Well, now PHASER is a real thing and the US military has it. It’s their name for a high-powered microwave weapon.  

Looking like a satellite dish fixed atop a shipping container, the PHASER is a cannon that emits radio frequency in a cone-shaped beam. Rather than using heat to destroy a target it can disrupt circuits with a burst of energy.

Currently this technology is being used defensively, the idea is that you would use the PHASER to destroy enemy drones. It takes one single microsecond for a shot from the PHASER to disable a drone’s electronics and destroy it. It’s also able to take out multiple drones with a single shot because of the shape of the beam it produces.

The PHASER is the first direct energy defense weapon that has ever been fielded. The Air Force spent just over 16 million dollars producing it in, and testing was set to be finished by the end of 2020. If the technology is able to prove itself in the field and it’s scalable then the future could see mobile PHASERS being used with regularity. Aircraft can fly over a population and with just a few bursts effectively destroy every piece of technology below, sending any city back to the Stone Age. 

7. Directed Energy

PHASER is not the only direct energy weapon that the military has in its arsenal these days. This umbrella term covers weapons including electro-magnetics, lasers, and microwave. Between 2017 and 2019 the US military doubled its spending on research into direct energy weapons. That went up to $1.1 billion. China and Russia are of course also investing heavily in these systems as well.

The benefits to using direct energy weapons over traditional munitions are fairly clear. To start with, they work at the speed of light. Unlike a traditional missile which could take some time to travel from source to target, a direct energy blast is going to hit a target almost immediately. As well they can be targeted far more precisely. You can use a laser to shoot somebody in the foot from space if you want to. The weapons are also scalable to take one small target or a much larger area as needed.

In May 2020, the US Navy released a video of USS Portland firing a high-energy class solid state laser at a drone, destroying it. The military is also developing what it calls the Indirect Fire Protection Capability High Energy Laser, which is said to be about 10 times more powerful than the one that the Navy uses. This kind of laser would be able to destroy incoming cruise missiles,  disable boats and helicopters, and blind enemy combatants. 

Because these weapons are powered by electricity they’re far more cost-effective in the long run than using bombs which can cost billions of dollars. It costs about $10 worth of energy to fire a laser. As long as you have electrical power, you always have ammunition. But it also means if you are on the attack with lasers, the enemy will never have that moment when you need to reload or you run out of ammunition.

6. Hypersonic Kinetic Energy

Back in 2004 the media called this weapon Rods from God. And for a long time nothing was heard about the hypersonic kinetic energy weapons system. However, it’s still in development and still poses an incredible destructive potential that rivals nuclear weapons.

Back in 1967, 107 countries signed the Outer Space Treaty. This treaty included a prohibition on using weapons of mass destruction from outer space. At the time, however, weapons of mass destruction were listed as nuclear, biological, and chemical. And a hypersonic kinetic energy weapon is none of those things.  In fact, these weapons are just tungsten rods. Twenty feet long and 1 foot in diameter. If these were to be launched from ,by the time they hit the earth they would bring with them the power of an intercontinental ballistic missile, laying waste to anything below.

Known as Project Thor, this was inspired by Lazy Dog bombs used during the Vietnam War. Those were pieces of steel that were two inches long and dropped from airplanes.  As they gained velocity they would hit the ground at about 500 miles per hour. No explosives needed and they could penetrate concrete nearly a foot deep.

Project Thor, or Rods from God, involves dropping tungsten rods the size of telephone poles from satellites in space. They can reach 10 times the speed of sound before they hit the ground. And when they hit the ground, they would go several hundred feet into it as well. That means if some target is hiding in a bunker they’re still not safe. Enough force would be released when the rods hit that it would rival a ground-penetrating nuclear weapon. And the added bonus  is that there is no fallout from the blast.

5. Geophysical Weapons 

The concept of geophysical weapons sounds a bit like the kind of stuff you might expect from a 1970s James Bond villain. These are the kind of weapons that are able to affect the climate and the environment, as well as the Earth itself in the form of seismic weapons.

It has long been believed that the US military has a facility located in Alaska known as HAARP which stands for the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. Conspiracy theorists believe that this facility is researching high frequency radio waves and how they can affect the ionosphere in terms of being used as a geophysical weapon. 

Beyond Alaska, China has been making strides with technology that many feel could be used as geophysical weapons. They just recently  reported that they’ve had success controlling the local weather. So while it may sound a lot like fiction, it seems like China has at least had some success moving forward with these plans.

4. Cyber Weapons

In the modern world, mass destruction doesn’t have to take place in a way that can be described with explosions and rubble and big craters in the Earth. If you really want to cripple an enemy all you need to do is lay waste to their infrastructure. While destructive physical warfare with bombs and bullets will probably never go out of style, cyber warfare can cause more damage in a shorter period of time.

In theory, if you have the capability, launching a cyberattack can destroy an enemy from within. Communications systems, military systems, even a country’s power grid and financial infrastructure can all be either shut down or even erased. There’s just short of nothing in the modern world that is not run by computers and managed over a computer network. The ability to control an enemy’s weapon’s arsenals, to cripple their economy, to leave them literally in the dark can all be done from the other side of the world with a team of skilled cyber attack specialists.

3. Isomer Bombs

To understand what an isomer bomb might be you have to know a little bit about how nuclear works. Isomers are atomic nuclei that have the same mass and atomic number but different radioactive properties. If you were to design an isomer bomb, you would be able to rapidly change the state of these nuclear isomers. They call it triggering, because normally these nuclei decay very slowly but if you trigger them and If it works successfully you would be able to receive a massive burst of gamma and x-ray radiation.  So essentially it would be stable enough until you needed it to blow up on demand. The resulting burst of energy would be incredible.

At present, the idea of an isomer bomb, typically linked to the nuclear isomer of hafnium, is thought to be at least one hundred thousand times more energetic than a chemical reaction. One gram of hafnium contains the equivalent energy of 660 pounds of TNT. The energy produced is a transition of energy between nucleons so it’s actually a different kind of nuclear energy than either fission or fusion. It’s also entirely theoretical at the moment.

There’s something called the hafnium controversy that occurred in the ’90s, in which a team of researchers claim to have actually been able to cause an isomer reaction. No other scientists were able to duplicate the results however and many scientists consider it impossible.  That said, Russia has apparently been continuing research into the idea of an isomer bomb 

2. Psychotronic Weapons

If you have weapons that can destroy buildings, control the weather, destroy a country’s infrastructure, and scramble electronics, what else might be left?  The only thing you’re missing at this point is a weapon that can destroy your enemy from the inside. That’s where the field of psychotropic weapons comes in. These are weapons that are meant to affect the minds of soldiers in enemy combatants. Anything that’s meant to affect the consciousness and the brain of another person. Laid out like this it sounds utterly preposterous. What kind of weapon can control another person’s mind? Or make them see things that aren’t there? 

In 2018, research conducted into unexplained injuries suffered by American diplomats in Cuba concluded that there was a possibility the diplomats had been subjected to psychotronic weapons. It was believed that a microwave device was used and the resulting effect was brain injuries. When you’re subject to one of these attacks you can hear noises that sound natural but are actually coming from inside your own head. Even deaf people can hear when they’re being attacked with a microwave device. Sounds and words can be beamed directly into someone’s head. The effects can be painful and debilitating, even to the point of rendering a victim incapacitated. 

1. Brain Drones

Drones are fairly ubiquitous in warfare these days and have proven to be quite destructive. An unmanned aircraft flown from potentially the other side of the world capable of dropping bombs on any target is definitely something out of nightmares. The only thing that could make it worse is if that person on the other side of the world who is controlling it wasn’t actually there. And that’s what apparently DARPA has been working on for some time.

Autonomous drones powered by a neuromorphic chip are essentially artificial intelligence machines. This is all in the very early and rudimentary stages right now, and we’re not quite at the point of having Sentinels from the Matrix just yet. But the groundwork has been laid and the technology will continue to advance. The neuromorphic chips are hoped to be able to help these drones recognize their environment and respond accordingly. One extremely off-putting line from a 2014 article stated that there was hope that the chip would offer the potential ability for the drone to feel different levels of safety or affinity for different places. And while safety and an affinity for a place is good, it also implies that a drone might be able to feel the opposite at some point in time as well and potentially react defensively to that.

So while no one is promising the future of warfare is going to be emotional drones that know where they are and can react with fear to confrontation, it does seem like that is the road we’re heading down.

Throughout history there have been numerous events that were left mostly unexplained by those who witnessed them. Incidents where people all began to act mysteriously and demonstrate symptoms that seemingly made no sense, like nuns that bark or children that can’t stop laughing. As quickly as they come, they often fade away and few people are any worse for it. When these unexplained conditions pop up, mass hysteria is often the cause. 

10. The Cuban Embassy Attacks

One of the biggest and scariest stories of 2016 and beyond dealt with a series of bizarre illnesses that befell American diplomats at the US Embassy in Cuba. Numerous people came down with serious issues ranging from memory loss to hearing loss to actual, physical brain damage. The Trump White House accused Cuba of deploying some kind of secret sonic weapon against the Embassy. But subsequent research has made this less plausible.

Today, if you look at the Wikipedia page for the attacks, there is a section that dismisses the idea of mass hysteria thanks to JAMA research that concluded the victims had suffered physical trauma. That makes it seem pretty cut and dry. However, that was dated from 2018. 

Other researchers reviewed the data and came up with some critical errors. The reports that staffers at the embassy were riddled with physical ailments offered no context. There is no data whatsoever to back up claims that people suffered injuries, including the nature of the injuries, how they were evaluated, or anything else.

Much of the data relied on for reports cited in the media were based on self-reporting.The idea that the trauma was inflicted by a new sonic weapon took off, except that no one in the world has ever made such a weapon and even those that have tried, like the US government, have had little success with anything similar to what happened in Cuba because physics don’t allow things to work that way. 

What the condition did seem to mirror very well were the symptoms of mass hysteria outbreaks.

9. Salem Witch Trials

Possibly America’s most famous case of mass hysteria, and one of its darkest, the Salem Witch Trials show just how extremely dangerous mass hysteria can get. In the span of one year in the late 1600s, nineteen women were executed by hanging as witches while hundreds more faced persecution for the made up crime. More died in prison and from additional methods of torture.

The local priest had set up an environment where citizens were shamed publicly for their transgressions. When his children began having fits, he accused locals of devilry. Dozens were arrested and put on trial to face bizarre and nonsensical tests to prove whether they were witches. One of the tests involved simply touching someone having one of these fits. If the fit stopped, the person was a witch. Even the presence of a mole, then known as a witch’s teat, was considered direct evidence of witchcraft.

8. Monkey Man

Some cases of mass hysteria seem easier to believe than others. But there’s long been a powerful thread of the supernatural and unbelievable behind many cases that makes it even harder to understand how any of it could have been believed by anyone, let alone many people. Few cases of this are more dramatic than the Monkey Man of New Delhi.

In 2001, residents of New Delhi began reporting sightings of a terrifying half-man, half monkey. The creature traveled across rooftops and had razor sharp metal claws as well as a helmet, presumably for safety.

People reported being attacked and injured by the creature. Worse, several people even died in what was believed to have been attempts to escape the monkey man that resulted in them falling from rooftops. Police were unable to keep up with all the reports, and most of the injuries were chalked up to animal bites rather than supernatural monkey man bites. 

The hysteria was believed to have been fueled not just by superstition but by rolling blackouts that were leaving people unexpectedly in darkness at random times. That likely exacerbated fears and made the situation worse. 

The situation got bad enough at some point that gangs of vigilantes were roaming the streets and had even beat up a very short man, assuming he was the monkey man in question. 

7. Halifax Slasher

In 1938 in Halifax, England, a man with shiny buckles on his shoes and a mallet began attacking women. Two women claimed the man attacked them and set off a panic that saw people taking to the streets in an effort to hunt the villain down. 

Within the first week other attacks were reported, and the weapon changed from a mallet to a knife or razors. Scotland Yard was called to help with the investigation. Vigilantes attacked those that they felt might be the slasher, and things spiralled out of control. Local businesses closed up shop in fear and the panic spread to other towns where attacks also started being reported.

Eventually one of the victims caved in and admitted they had made the attack up and actually harmed themselves. Others did the same, and eventually five of the so-called victims were charged with public mischief.

6. Tanganyika Laughter Incident

Laughter is the best medicine, some people say, but that can’t be the case when laughter is also the problem. That was the case of an incident in 1962 in Tanzania when one girl at a school started laughing and couldn’t stop. School officials tried to make her stop to no avail and laughter contagious as it sometimes is, spread to other students. Nearly 100 of the school’s 159 students were affected. The event started in January and was still going on in March when the school was forced to shut down.

The laughing epidemic spread beyond the borders of the school. People in other towns and other schools fell victim. Some people were affected for days, some for weeks. But it spread around enough that over 1,000 victims were claimed in total and 14 different schools had to be closed over the course of several months. 

Looking back on the incident, most researchers have concluded that the laughter was anxiety-borne. There were a number of contributing factors that were causing excessive stress to students at the time. Unknown expectations of the British run schools and thr fact that the region has just gained independence were likely major causes of unrest in people’s minds. 

5. The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

You’d be forgiven for not knowing much about the town of Mattoon, Illinois. With a population under 20,000 people, it’s a tiny place that isn’t well known for much. Except for the Mad Gasser who plagued the town in the 1940s and who also didn’t actually exist. 

For several weeks, residents in the town reported being attacked by a stranger who exposed them to poisonous gas. Witnesses also corroborated these reports, assuring police they had seen the gasser at work. 

According to reports, victims would be at home and notice an unusual smell. They would then suffer symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and paralysis. Despite this, police never found a shred of evidence that the gasser existed. In fact, they were able to find much more evidence that there was no gasser, and the strange smells all had easy to pinpoint explanations from spilled nail polish to animals. 

4. Charlie Charlie

The Charlie Charlie Challenge, an adaptation of a much older game simply called “the pencil game” reportedly summoned forth nefarious spirits from beyond and led to death and suicide. None of that was true but it didn’t stop countries like Fiji and Libya from banning the game outright to protect vulnerable children.

The idea of the game is simple. You place a pair of pencils on a sheet of paper, one balanced on the other to create what looks like a plus sign. You have things like names written in each of the four segments of the sheet of paper that are bordered by the pencils. Players ask a question like “which boy likes me?” and the pencil rotates on a pivot point to point at one of the four names you have written on the sheet of paper.

Because the pencil is very precariously balanced, it can move with very little force. Even breathing near it will cause it to rotate. In principle it’s very similar to how a Ouija board works, seemingly moving of its own volition even though there are easy to understand forces at work.

In 2015, however, this game got out of hand. Renamed “Charlie Charlie,” the idea was that kids were asking a spirit or demon to move the pencil. Most stories called it a Mexican demon, despite the English name. Four girls in Colombia ended up going to the hospital as a result, screaming and hysterical, believed to be victims of the supernatural forces at work. Doctors diagnosed it as mass hysteria and nothing more. 

3. The Clown Panic

In 2016, the world was in the grip of clown panic. Chiefly centered in the United States, it had spread to many other countries including Canada, the UK and others. There was a widespread belief that evil clowns were roaming the streets. By October there were dozens of reports coming in every day about sinister clowns. 

The clown panic seems to have started as the result of a single viral marketing stunt in Wisconsin. And stunt was a generous term. A man dressed as a creepy clown was simply standing in street corners looking like a clown.

After that, reports began rolling in from all over the country. Clowns with weapons, clowns making threats, clowns looking ominous. And as near as anyone could tell, none of it was real. Not a single clown actually did anything ominous or dangerous during the entire event.

Police were receiving anonymous reports of clowns trying to lure children and little to no evidence to back anything up. But each subsequent story made national news, and that put more fuel on the fire. The panic lasted for months, throughout the summer and well into the fall. 

By October most media sources were openly calling it all a hoax since no genuine harm had been caused and no real arrests had been made, just false arrests based on false reports. 

2. The Dancing Plague

One of the oldest known cases of mass hysteria took place all the way back in 1518. The incident was actually used as a partial basis for a plot point in Buffy the Vampire Slayer back in the day as well. The residents of Strasbourg, Alsace were struck with an inextricable urge to dance. It became known as the Dancing Plague.

The incident started in July. A woman called Frau Troffea took to the street one day and began to dance. She danced for a day and then two days. She danced for an entire week and by week’s end, she had three-dozen back up dancers. By the time August rolled around, as many as 400 residents of the town were busting moves in the streets.

Doctors, already at a loss to explain most well-known illnesses, settled on “hot blood” as the cause. So the cure was basically an “if you can’t beta ‘em, join ‘em” situation. The town erected a stage and hired a band. 

Instead of fixing the problem, the dancers were just pushed to their breaking point. Reports that people danced themselves to death circulated after the fact and whether or not they are true is still up for debate. 

1. Puppy Pregnancy Syndrome

Generally speaking, mass hysteria is a limited scope phenomenon. It happens for a defined period of time then it goes away when people realize the thing they fear is not real. Such is not the case with puppy pregnancy syndrome in West Bengal, India. This strange mass panic keeps popping up again and again over the years. 

Puppy pregnancy syndrome is tragically very much what it sounds like. Victims are bitten by dogs and then convinced that the dog bite has impregnated them with puppies. The vast majority of people in one small village are convinced this is a very real thing.

According to their beliefs if a dog in a clear state of sexual arousal bites a human, the dog saliva transmits the fetal dogs to the human bloodstream. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman, the dog babies will take root. That means men are in a far worse position than female bite victims as, according to the belief, they are doomed to birth puppies through their urethra. 

Men are convinced they will die during the delivery process. As a result, there are so-called experts in town who can perform rituals to abort the puppies and save human lives. This must be especially important when you consider some female victims have claimed that they could even hear the puppies in their abdomen barking in the night. 

As silly as it sounds, the syndrome has had serious, real consequences. Victims had to be medicated to overcome serious fears of dogs and obsessive compulsive disorders.