# What do you think is the most insane, collective human event in history? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 14, 2012, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776 "2012-04-14T19:38:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/61 "2012-04-16T08:24:20Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > They didn’t eat the murdered individuals. Sometimes they wore the hide of the skinned victims for a few weeks, until they were rotting away. But they didn’t eat them. No, the general consensus is that they did eat the sacrificial victims. ---
**Author:** ![Becky2844](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Becky2844](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Becky2844)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/62 "2012-04-16T08:44:19Z")
> [@Blalron](#): > > [The Dancing Plague of 1518](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518) is, in my opinion, the most insane collective event in human history. I read a book suggested by somebody here on the Dope titled The Year 1000, I think. It’s divided by months, and July was considered the “gap” month because it lay between the last of the winter’s horde and the soon-to-come harvest. People were scraping the bottom of the barrel, making bread from molded grain, which had a hullencigenic (sp) effect that literally made them dance and gyrate. Could this be an explaination? My contribution is when Orsen Wells read _War of the Worlds_ over the radio in 1938. People ran screaming into the streets and stampeded the churches thinking the world was coming to an end. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/63 "2012-04-16T10:38:30Z")
> [@Becky2844](#): > > My contribution is when Orsen Wells read _War of the Worlds_ over the radio in 1938. People ran screaming into the streets and stampeded the churches thinking the world was coming to an end. I thought that was a [myth](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15470903). ---
**Author:** ![Jasper\_Kent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@Jasper\_Kent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasper_Kent)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/64 "2012-04-16T13:25:54Z")
> [@Becky2844](#): > > I read a book suggested by somebody here on the Dope titled The Year 1000, I think. It’s divided by months, and July was considered the “gap” month because it lay between the last of the winter’s horde and the soon-to-come harvest. People were scraping the bottom of the barrel, making bread from molded grain, which had a hullencigenic (sp) effect that literally made them dance and gyrate. Could this be an explaination? I think it’s a good theory. LSD was first synthesized from ergotamine, a chemical derived from ergot, a grain fungus that typically grows on rye. It’s one thing to have hallucinations when you know you’ve dropped acid; it’s quite another when they occur spontaneously to a person in the Dark Ages. No wonder they believed in demonic possession, witchcraft, and such. > **[Ergotism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergotism)** > > Ergotism (pron. /ˈɜːrɡətˌɪzəm/ UR-gət-iz-əm) is the effect of long-term ergot poisoning, traditionally due to the ingestion of the alkaloids produced by the Claviceps purpurea fungus—from the Latin clava "club" or clavus "nail" and -ceps for "head", i.e. the purple club-headed fungus—that infects rye and other cereals, and more recently by the action of a number of ergoline-based drugs. It is also known as ergotoxicosis, ergot poisoning, and Saint Anthony's fire. > Ergotism is the effect of long... > **[Dancing mania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania)** > > Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague, choreomania, St. John's Dance, tarantism and St. Vitus' Dance) was a social phenomenon that may have had biological causes, which occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected adults and children who danced until, allegedly, they collapsed from exhaustion and injuries, and sometimes died. One of the first major outbreaks w... ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/65 "2012-04-16T14:35:06Z")
I’ve still got to go with the Holocaust, for the simple reason that they actually _diverted stuff from the war effort_ to keep killing Jews. It’s not like they couldn’t have used those trains or those soldiers or certainly that labor while they were fighting a two front war - they deliberately prioritized the Final Solution over the _war_! Maybe they could have won the thing otherwise! That, to me, is what’s so nutty about it. ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/66 "2012-04-16T14:50:49Z")
I could be wrong but I remember reading that Verdun was the result of a very logical plan that got away from the person who created it. The German commander wanted to bleed the French in attrition and so picked Verdun as a place that France would bleed for while taking much less casualties themselves. It worked…however, the Germans started to believe the same thing and so threw themselves into the meatgrinder as well. The plan got away from the commander. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/67 "2012-04-16T15:12:52Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I disagree that the Holocaust ‘made more sense’ in any way, shape or form. That’s what gets my vote. The battle of Verdun, as many of the battles of WWI made a lot more sense, given the internal logic of mass attack and the inability of the generals or command staffs or planners to adapt their basic thinking and assumptions to the changing realities of more modern weapons, especially machine guns and artillery. The Holocaust, however, was an evil madness that gripped the German people. That it had it’s roots in historical events that lead up to it doesn’t mean it wasn’t completely insane. That Europeans had been persecuting the Jews for centuries before that, just not on an industrial scale, doesn’t excuse the insanity either. And the scale of it dwarfs even the bloody slugfests that the Europeans did to one another during the Great War. The Holocaust, in my opinion, is really not insane. If you were an educated German born in the early 20th century, you would probably have read a lot of “expert” opinion explaining why Aryan/Nordic/Teutonic peoples were better, smarter, and more highly evolved then all other races, and claiming that there was plentiful scientific and historical evidence to back it up. Of course we can say that anyone reading that stuff should have been able to see the many, obvious flaws in the reasoning, but the fact is that most people accept what the experts say most of the time. Once you had a large population taught to believe firmly in theories of racial superiority, it was inevitable that someone somewhere would take those theories to their logical conclusion. Personally I think the winner for most insane event in human history was Chairman Mao’ Great Leap Forward. The basic plan was this: start with a country where the vast majority of the population still depended on subsistence farming. Force almost every able-bodied person to stop farming and work in crude industrial settings making worthless iron. Then add on further regulations punishing anybody who produces, stores, or distributes food. The result, not surprisingly, was a massive food shortage. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Bredin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@John\_Bredin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Bredin)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/68 "2012-04-16T15:35:39Z")
Having followed the link provided by **Qin Shi Huangdi** , and assuming the statistics therein aren’t grossly exaggerated, I’m going to second his suggestion. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/69 "2012-04-16T15:37:17Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I’ve still got to go with the Holocaust, for the simple reason that they actually _diverted stuff from the war effort_ to keep killing Jews. It’s not like they couldn’t have used those trains or those soldiers or certainly that labor while they were fighting a two front war - they deliberately prioritized the Final Solution over the _war_! Maybe they could have won the thing otherwise! That, to me, is what’s so nutty about it. Actually no. The passage of troops was always a priority and while technically anything is a diversion from the war effort in a total war scenario, most of the roundups were in 40-41, when they were most certainly not fighting a two front war. Also remember that the Germans were not fully mobilised until 1943-1944, German Industry continued to make civilian goods until Speer took over. It was madness, they ideas behind it were the epitome of madness but from the Nazi POV (and that of anyone in their situation) it made sense. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/70 "2012-04-16T16:38:43Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Personally I think the winner for most insane event in human history was Chairman Mao’ Great Leap Forward. The basic plan was this: start with a country where the vast majority of the population still depended on subsistence farming. Force almost every able-bodied person to stop farming and work in crude industrial settings making worthless iron. Then add on further regulations punishing anybody who produces, stores, or distributes food. The result, not surprisingly, was a massive food shortage. This is what I came to post. I’d also put in the Soviet collectivization of the farms, but I think the great leap forward was worse because they had the soviet mistakes to look back on to know it wouldn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/71 "2012-04-16T16:50:20Z")
I’d go with WW2 as a whole. Not so much because of the Holocaust or individual, punctual bits of war madness ; but the sheer concept of it because most of the folks who engineered it - be it the politicians, the voters, the industrialists, the generals and of course the nations’ leaders had already been through WW1. They’d gone through this shit, seen the horror of modern warfare, felt what an artillery barrage was like, dug mining tunnels, starved in trenches, watched countless of their best friends and brothers and uncles and cousins die in seconds to machine gun fire… and they still figured “Well that was fun, let’s have more of that for our sons”. That boggles my mind to no end. WW1 was supposed to be “the war to end all wars” - except it didn’t. That fact is cuckoo crazy. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/72 "2012-04-16T16:55:33Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > That boggles my mind to no end. WW1 was supposed to be “the war to end all wars” - except it didn’t. That fact is cuckoo crazy. I’m not sure you’ve thought this all the way through. Even if Europe was sick of war, what exactly were they supposed to do about Hitler? He wasn’t sick of war at all. ---
**Author:** ![figure9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f0a364/32.png) [@figure9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/figure9)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/73 "2012-04-16T16:59:46Z")
Trying to find new sources of fossil fuels while your planet is dying from CO2 poisoning seems insane to me. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/74 "2012-04-16T17:10:13Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Re; the Aztecs - note that it says “sacrifices were consequently ‘nearly always… friends of the [Royal] House’- meaning warriors from **allied states** ” not from the Aztecs themselves. Which tells me that it was a way of making sure your allies stayed your “allies” rather than your “Rebellion” - cull their warriors and remind them who is top dog all in one memorable ceremony. More or less. What we have here is an example of “a cursory glance at Aztec practices culled from Wikipedia and [Cracked.com](http://Cracked.com) appears to make no sense whatsoever,” which is different from “Aztec society made no sense whatsoever.” While it’s true that the sacrificial victims of the Flower Battle were complicit in the system to some degree (it was considered “an honor”), and it sounds crazy to us, it’s not particularly _more_ crazy than a lot of other human folly. And by the way, they were adult warriors. They were “children” only in the sense that their parents were probably still alive. > [@MrDibble](#): > > some scholars think that the cattle killing was a deliberate attempt by some leaders (the prophet girls’ uncles) to force the tribes into such a position of desperation that they’d fall on the settlers. Certainly there’s a long history of trying to corner your own people into a desperate course of behavior (see Conquistadors burning their ships, the French Army deliberately putting paratroops in jeopardy to spur other troops to reach them, and so on). > [@MrDibble](#): > > Personally, my vote goes to the Chinese Sparrow War of 1958. I know within the broader context of the Cultural revolution it makes a kind of sense, but seriously? No-one thought that one out? And 30 million deaths later… Eh, about that same period, the US was wiping out its sparrow population with DDT. > [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > Not true. The Stalingrad area needed to be secured to guard the northern flank of the advance into the Caucuses, and the city itself was an industrial center. There was a definite military purpose for advancing into the area, though the way the operation was conducted represented a crucial strategic blunder by the Germans. Stalingrad didn’t need to be _secured_, just that flank needed guarding. The Germans way overcommitted – regardless of how the battle was conducted, the mistake was committing major forces (as well as trying to seize an urban center). > [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > My vote goes to the Battle of Verdun. Meh. Verdun was a deliberate choice for a strategic purpose (attrition). The German command actually said “We will bleed France white!” The fact that it subsequently went horribly wrong doesn’t mean it was some aberration of logic – _most_ battles of the period went horribly wrong. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/75 "2012-04-16T17:47:18Z")
> [@QuarkChild](#): > > Adopting communism as an economic system. And country after country ending up adopting it! 100 years later we’re still suffering the after-effects. Think of all millions upon millions of people who’ve starved to death or died from war or other causes as a result of Karl Marx. Unfathomable. And he was well-meaning, too. I am going with the Holocaust as well, however, this cannot be ignored (the OP uses the word ‘collective’). Runner up for \*\*North Korea \*\*- massive prison state, cult of personality, gulags and disappearances of whole families, starvation, the population physically smaller in stature to their cousins in the south; yet with cities for “show” with no cars on their roads, rockets, the worlds 4th largest army. Going on for 50+ years. Insane is a gentle way of describing that society. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/76 "2012-04-16T18:33:55Z")
> [@QuarkChild](#): > > Adopting communism as an economic system. And country after country ending up adopting it! 100 years later we’re still suffering the after-effects. Think of all millions upon millions of people who’ve starved to death or died from war or other causes as a result of Karl Marx. Unfathomable. And he was well-meaning, too. I hear an axe grinding. Communism was a direct result of the horrors committed in England and Europe in the early days of capitalism. It was sort of the libertarian ideal … employers offered wages, you could take them or leave them, there were no unions or employment laws so the hours were insane, the wages were literally starvation wages, children worked in conditions that resulted in death, injury and illness … Communism or something like it was literally FORCED into being. Communism wasn’t madness, it was a sane and human response to outrage. It didn’t work out as the people who set it up hoped it would, but that’s par for the course in human history, as this thread amply demonstrates. I look at [conditions in places like Foxconn](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103798/Revealed-Inside-Apples-Chinese-sweatshop-factory-workers-paid-just-1-12-hour.html) and think, “We have learned nothing.” ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/77 "2012-04-16T19:43:52Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I don’t think this is correct. If it were then every incorrect argument would be also logically unsound. IIRC what makes the logic proper is that IF the premises are correct then the conclusion is correct. > > Your example (and the Nazi example) are ones of sound logic, but incorrect premises. In Philosophy 101 terms a deductive argument is _valid_ if it is impossible for its conclusion to be untrue if its premises are true. A deductive argument is _sound_ if it is both valid and has entirely true premises. **colonial** feels strongly that the soundness of the Nazi argument is relevant to this thread. Personally I see plenty of value in noting that their argument was valid even if their premises were insane, compared to human events that were both insanely illogical and based on insane premises. ---
**Author:** ![Becky2844](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Becky2844](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Becky2844)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/78 "2012-04-16T20:42:41Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > I thought that was a [myth](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15470903). I don’t know, I was going by what my mother told me. It must have happened on a Sunday, Tuesday or Wednesday night because that’s when everybody went to church, and she said a woman burst in yelling about the end of the world. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/79 "2012-04-16T20:49:55Z")
> [@Becky2844](#): > > I don’t know, I was going by what my mother told me. It must have happened on a Sunday, Tuesday or Wednesday night because that’s when everybody went to church, and she said a woman burst in yelling about the end of the world. October 30, 1938 was a Sunday. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2012, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776/80 "2012-04-16T20:58:09Z")
The inquisition. Surely nobody expected that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-is-the-most-insane-collective-human-event-in-history/618776.md?page=5)