A World Changed Forever:
The War of the Worlds and the Twentieth Century

"It was ... the rout of civilisation, ... the massacre of mankind." —H.G. Wells

Known in varying parts of the world as The Day of Great Fear, The Martian Revelation, and The Awakening, October 30, 1938 will be remembered forever, regardless of what it is called.

The initial wave of Martian cylinders landed outside major metropolitan centers worldwide, including Paris, Moscow, Peking and New York. Their intention appeared to be two-fold: to demoralize us with their technological superiority, and to disrupt communications to hamper our attempts to organize against them. They took our governments by surprise, and few realized the scale of their threat, so most of our initial military engagements lacked the manpower and firepower to effectively deal with the Tripods and their lethal heat-rays and black smoke. Only the Provisional Government of the Republic of China and the National Socialist Party of Germany managed to contain the invaders during the initial skirmishes, but even they were unable to contend with the Martians once their reinforcement cylinders arrived.

It was clear that the Martians had documented our world extensively from space, as they immediately set about destroying all railways and major roadways, and severing telephone and telegraph lines. Ships were more difficult for them to ground, so they razed ports and harbors, while targeting passenger ships as a warning to any civilians who would board them. Radio signals presented a unique challenge to them, as radio transmitters were mobile and not easily spotted. Governments and their military forces relied heavily on radio communications until the Spring of 1939, when the Martians completed their world-wide network of jamming devices, leaving the airwaves silent.

On realizing the scale of the threat, most governments declared martial law. Nations who had excessively large invasion forces, such as the United States, took an additional step, seizing all private property (individual and corporate) with promises of compensation that few expected would be kept. Currency was considered worthless, which was a great relief to the citizens of Germany and those Americans affected by the Great Depression. Weapons production shifted from factories to makeshift bunkers that had to be moved regularly, operating twenty-four hours a day. Despite the sweatshop conditions and constant threat of attack, citizens gladly wore themselves to the bone to repair the military's armaments and vehicles. In return, governments provided them access to rationed foods and seized high-range material goods which they would not have been able to afford otherwise. Jewelry, fine clothes and furniture were distributed to those who worked consistently, lending hope that those who survived the war would be far better off than when they were before.

It was all for naught. The world's armed forces exhausted themselves with only minor victories against the invaders. Even switching to guerrilla tactics did little against an enemy who could not be reasoned with, nor had the slightest interest in our opinions. Soon, the Martians began to gather clusters of survivors into large "pens" which they had their prisoners construct in each region. Conditions in the pens were deplorable and the Martians took a small portion of their prisoners away each day, never to be seen again. The remaining populations were allowed to stay in nearby homes, and even farm the land to feed themselves, on the condition that they kept no animals for meat or milk. The Martians would capture more prisoners for their pens every month, leaving no guarantee that anyone would be safe. It appeared that the prisoner selection process differed depending on the local Martians' tastes. Some Martian groups took only old people. Some took only young. Others were indiscriminate. It was believed that we were finally seeing the Martian's true face and they were not as unified as they had appeared.

Some of the more desperate resistance groups switched to targeting the pens, either by killing those within or poisoning them in hopes that the poison would be passed to the Martians when the prisoners were harvested. These turned out not to be viable strategies, as the Martians would just collect more prisoners and force them to build their camps elsewhere.

We can only guess, now, at the Martian's future plans. Among the most awe-inspiring mysteries they left us were the foundations of three gigantic construction projects: one by the Yellow River in central China, one along the Rhine river in Germany and one by the Rio Indio in the Republic of Panama. They had cleared out miles of land in a circular formation and begun reinforcing the ground with metal beams that went deep into the earth. Scientists and sociologists have debated for years over their purpose, but it is likely we will never know for certain the Martians' intent.

Regardless, it is fortunate the Martians were never able to complete these projects, as every schoolchild knows and for which they thank God every day. The simple bacteria, viruses, parasites and other organisms to which we have become immune or accustomed, virtually devastated the Martians' biology. The vast majority of them perished within six months of arriving on Earth, though it was nearly a year before the world was free of their control. Those who had occupied cities in the northern- and southern-most climes, where conditions were much more like their native Mars, held out much longer, and several multi-national military actions were required to eliminate them. The last Martian died in captivity in a U.S. Government research facility on March 4th, 1940.

The invaders left behind an incredible amount of technology and scientists around the world have spent the intervening decades studying it in every detail. Some of the devices yielded to their research efforts and provided us with leaps forward in our own technology. For example, we owe everything we know today in the fields of aviation and aeronautics to the fleets of half-finished flying machines found at Newark Airport in New Jersey and Gatwick Airport in London. But for every Martian device we learned from, there were dozens that left researchers dumbfounded. One of the most perplexing of these were the helmet-like objects found attached to many of the prisoners in the Indian and African pens. Even today, seventy years later, scientists have not been able to deduce their purpose.

And what of the Martians' weapons? The heat-ray and the black smoke? These were to prove the most costly in terms of scientific research. Studies of the heat-ray devices were among the first carried out, particularly in the U.S., England, Germany and Japan. The most successful work was performed from 1939-40 by Professor James Bradford of M.I.T., who had first-hand experience studying the projectors as part of the Boston Resistance. But even his efforts yielded more data about the fuel the Martians used for the heat-ray—a substance which proved impossible to replicate due to its volatility in the presence of moisture—than about the devices themselves. His early experience with the instability of the projectors had warned him about the care needed in studying them. He was convinced our technology at the time was too inferior. His reports, however, did little to deter other nations from attempting to dissect and analyze the heat-ray.

It took two tragic events to bring all heat-ray research to a halt: the explosion at the U.K.'s Ealing Laboratories in 1940, which killed over 70 people, and the malfunction of a prototype heat-ray created by scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Research Institute in Berlin, which utterly destroyed the historic Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria in 1941, where the device was being demonstrated to several high-ranking members of the National Socialist Party as a "triumph of German technological engineering".

But the most horrific tragedy resulting from research into the Martians' weapons was not an accident. Experiments carried out by members of Japan's infamous Unit 731, based in Harbin, Manchukuo (now Northeastern China), began with testing the residual dust left behind after the black smoke had settled. These experiments were conducted on nearly 5,000 live subjects — mostly Chinese and Korean civilians — before the Japanese armed forces set about creating an arsenal of chemical bombs from the hundreds of canisters of unused black smoke left behind in the Japanese territories after the Martians' demise. These bombs were used liberally in the conquest of China and it is believed nearly 300,000 people were killed before the supplies were exhausted.

The deaths of the Martians left the world in a precarious position. Virtually every nation had been drained, emotionally, militarily and economically. Some took advantage of the situation. The National Socialist Party of Germany annexed its neighboring countries by force, citing desperately-needed resources, and the Italian government extended its regime of martial law indefinitely. Japan returned to its incursions into China by attacking the city of Changsha. The nations of the world hardly had time to put themselves together to face these threats, but at least this time, they faced men of flesh and blood...the same as them.