KUOW is continuing the delightful tradition of broadcasting the famed Mercury Theater on the Air Halloween broadcast of The War of the Worlds tonight. It seems, no matter how many times I have heard it, just as successful (script link) in creating an atmosphere of credible tension and urban apocalypse. Listen.

Now I look down the harbor. All manner of boats, overloaded with fleeing population, pulling out from docks.

Streets are all jammed. Noise in crowds like New Year’s Eve in city. Wait a minute… The… the enemy is now in sight above the Palisades. Five — five great machines. First one is crossing the river. I can see it from here, wading… wading the Hudson like a man wading through a brook…

A bulletin is handed me…

Martian cylinders are falling all over the country. One outside of Buffalo, one in Chicago… St. Louis… seem to be timed and spaced…



Now the first machine reaches the shore. He stands watching, looking over the city. His steel, cowlish head is even with the skyscrapers. He waits for the others. They rise like a line of new towers on the city’s west side…

Now they’re lifting their metal hands. This is the end now. Smoke comes out… black smoke, drifting over the city. People in the streets see it now. They’re running towards the East River… thousands of them, dropping in like rats. Now the smoke’s spreading faster. It’s reached Times Square. People are trying to run away from it, but it’s no use. They’re falling like flies. Now the smoke’s crossing Sixth Avenue… Fifth Avenue… a… a hundred yards away… it’s fifty feet…