Occasionally history seems to echo Men In Black.

Edwards: Why the big secret? People are smart.

Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

Of course, we tend to think that craziness is something that only far-off or long-ago peoples catch. Surely our neighbors in the modern world wouldn’t fall victim to collective delusions as easily as those in the past. Right?

Duh duh duh!

Imagine my surprise, then, when I came across descriptions of an “epidemic” that took place right here in Seattle, a mere 57 years ago.

The case is commonly known as the “Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic.” It came on the heels of a media blitz regarding the recent hydrogen bomb tests in the Pacific at Eniwetok. And, like good news agencies everywhere, paper throughout the region were littered with dark headlines predicting doom and destruction. Everyone was convinced that nothing good could come of the tests.

Honestly, they had good reason to worry.

Then, on March 23, 1954 stories began to run in Seattle area newspapers about damage to car windshields in Bellingham, a city some eighty miles to the north. The damage was described as pits appearing in the glass and the police- along with the newspaper reporters- suspected vandals with BB guns. A manhunt was organized as the damage spread southward but no one could find the culprits. Police set up roadblocks to no avail. And soon there were too many cases for it to be deemed the work of vandals.

On April 14 morning newspapers reported that the damage was spreading and that it had reached a town 65 miles north of Seattle. Then that afternoon, reports came in cars at a marine base 45 miles to the north had been “peppered.”

Then the phenomena reached Seattle. That night and during the next day 242 people phoned the police telling of damage to cars. Over 3,000 vehicles were reported to be damaged. Motorists were stopping police cars on the street to point out damage to their vehicles and entire parking lots were affected.

Seriously, you have got to look at my windshield.

Police who examined damaged vehicles, like King County Sheriff Harlan Callahan, firmly believed that the damage was not normal wear and tear. They even found a possible cause for the pits near the damaged cars, small odd-looking metallic pellets that “reacted violently when a lead pencil” was placed near them.

Word spread quickly. Car owners covered their windshields as best they could with newspaper and kept their cars undercover if they were able. The mayor’s office quickly declared the manner not one for the police, deeming it to be something extraordinary rather than the work of vandals. They sprang into action- by telegraphing the governor and president asking for help.

Quickly! More windshields might be damaged!

But, just as quickly as the phenomena had appeared, it disappeared. Only 46 phone calls came in on the 16th, and only 10 on the 17th. A study done by the University of Washington environmental research laboratory was commissioned by the governor to try to figure out what, exactly, had happened.

Theories, of course, abounded. Some suspected that cosmic rays were the cause, or perhaps change in the earth’s magnetic field. Others, due to reports of witnesses actually observing glass bubbles appear before their eyes, said that it was sand flea eggs that had been laid in the glass and were only now hatching. And still others insisted that it was the Navy’s new ginormous radio transmitter up at Arlington that was causing the damage.

Some people blamed Gremlins. Honestly.

But, according to a study done shortly after the epidemic and published in the American Sociological Review, the theory that most people ascribed to was that it was a result of the dreaded H-bomb testing, either nuclear fallout or some kind of super-charged particles.

So which of these theories was the actual cause of the disaster? What had caused all the pits and scars in windshields all throughout Seattle?

Well, according to the research, none of them. The end report issued on June 10th stated that all of the reported damage was “overly emphasized” and “the result of normal driving conditions in which small objects strike the windshields of cars.”

Some small objects cause more damage than others.

They could not find a single instance where the evidence contradicted that theory, and much that supported it. For instance, most of the dings appeared on the windshields of older cars. In used car lots the brand new cars were unpitted while the old ones were damaged. Pits also appeared more often on the front of cars rather than the back. And, as for the strange reports of people witnessing damage right before their eyes? Researchers were unable to verify any of the stories.

Even the strange pellets could be explained away. They were cenospheres, small particles of unburned coal that were not unusual in Seattle. As the research team wrote, “they have been observed in years past and can be observed on cars in downtown Seattle today.”

The fact that these things on my car are perfectly normal is not very comforting.

Then what had happened? Well, much like the cenospheres, which had always been present but were only noticed when people started to look closely at their cars, it is now believed that people- upon hearing about damage to windshields- started examining their own windshields and spotted damage to them that they had never noticed before. They spread the word further, until the situation spiraled out of control and into the realm of mass delusion.

But, with all of the different theories, why did the public eventually decide on the H-bomb one? Of course the idea didn’t come out of thin air, the police themselves, as well as engineers and newspapers, cited nuclear fallout as a possible cause.

To be fair, no one was really sure what nuclear fallout really was.

Part of the reason may very well be that blaming the damage on the testing acted as pressure release for many people in Seattle who had been very worried about the press regarding it in the months before. The idea was that something bad was bound to happen because of the testing, but once the windshield damage started appearing that meant that there wasn’t any reason to worry any more. The “bad thing” had surfaced and it wasn’t anything to worry about.

Their fear had taken concrete form and, thus, they could do something about it. The act of lining their windshields with paper or cardboard, telling their neighbors or even reporting to the police gave them something to do to combat the danger, even if it was only magical thinking.

Other versions of magical thinking.

The ACR study goes on to mention that the very fact that the H-bomb was blamed is part of the reason why the epidemic was over so quickly. “In such a context it became meaningful for people to think that the pitting might have occurred in the space of a few hours or minutes on April 15th rather than over a longer period of time.”

So here we have a city that, for a few days in the middle of spring, imagined itself to be at the mercy of supercharged particles that somehow only affected glass windshields. To an outsider this seems like strange thinking indeed, but it wasn’t just the everyday people that were affected. The police department, the government, the military, engineers, the media, and scientists all got involved in the delusion. If this could happen even fifty years ago, who’s to say it couldn’t happen today?

And according to a 2001 article in the Los Angeles Times modern society may be even more prone to outbreaks of collective delusion than ever before due to the very nature of how quickly information travels these days and the tendency that mass media has to write about “frightening topics without putting them in the proper context.”

Seriously, just turn it on. Nothing good is on the news.

So the next time you get a email filled with horrible information, or a text regarding the latest virus set to destroy your printer, or a news story about what kitchen appliance is going to kill you this week, take a long, deep breath, remember Seattle, and try to look at the situation from all angles before deciding who’s to blame.

1 Comment

Blake on March 15, 2017 at 2:35 pm

Hello there! This blog post could not be written any better!
Reading through this post reminds me of my previous roommate!
He always kept talking about this. I’ll forward this article to him.
Fairly certain he’s going to have a very
good read. Thanks for sharing!

Modern Mass Delusions, Seattle and the Windshield Pitting Epidemic