In all of recorded human history (about five thousand years) there are no cases of an asteroid, meteorite, or comet definitely killing anyone. There are times when pieces of these celestial bodies have entered the atmosphere, and there is one case where a meteorite may have killed a couple of people in Siberia in 1908, but those deaths are unconfirmed.
There have been plenty of movies that detail the destruction such an impact would cause on Earth, and there is little doubt that if something did hit, it would cause floods, earthquakes, and civil unrest. And if the object was big enough, it could wipe out all life on the planet.
Most experts say the chances of something hitting us directly are remote, so we shouldn’t be worried.
But what about the power of a comet to kill indirectly?
On March 26, 1997, members of the San Diego County, California Sheriff’s Department responded to a welfare check at a residence known to house a number of eccentric individuals. When they arrived on the scene, they found thirty-nine men and women between the ages of twenty-six and seventy-two dead from suicide by poisoning. The macabre scene became more bizarre as investigators looked around. All of the dead, male and female, were dressed in black tracksuits with Nike shoes. They all also had their heads shaved, and it was later learned that many of the men were castrated.
The investigators soon found a videotape explaining what had happened, and two survivors came forward. The dead were part of a religious cult, known as “Heaven’s Gate,” who believed that by committing suicide they would shed their bodies and catch a ride on a spaceship that was following the Hale-Bopp comet.
Needless to say, the world was shocked.
By 1997, religious cults were nothing new to America and the Heaven’s Gate cult mass suicide was not the largest in history—nine hundred eighteen people had committed suicide or were murdered as part of the Jonestown, Guyana/People’s Temple massacre in 1978. But the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide seemed bizarre because of its leaders and their ideology.
The Heaven’s Gate was led by Marshal Applewhite (known as “Do,” born in 1931) and fifty-seven-year-old Bonnie Nettles (“Ti,” born in 1927). The way in which the two met is a bit murky, although many sources say that Applewhite was a patient at a mental hospital where Nettles was a nurse in the 1970s. By the mid-1970s the pair had formulated a complex theology that combined elements of Christianity, theosophy, and New Age Ufology. By the late 1970s, the two had amassed a small following of former hippies and disaffected youth and began living communally as a traditional cult.
Ti and Do told their followers that their bodies were mere vessels and that after they “ascended” by acquiring more knowledge, they would shed their bodies and live as the aliens do: asexual and without any need for food, water, or even air.
To demonstrate his commitment to the cause, Do had himself castrated at a cheap, and no doubt less-than-reputable, clinic in Tijuana, Mexico.
As extreme as that may sound, extreme acts are part and parcel of most cults. It not only showed followers that Do was willing to walk the walk, but it also served as a litmus test for the true believers. The men who followed suit by also getting castrated became part of Do’s inner circle.
When Ti died of cancer in 1985, it only seemed to push the Heaven’s Gate into deeper cult territory. As the 1990s rolled around and the year 2000 loomed on the horizon, it began to take on the trappings of a millennial cult.
Millennial cults were somewhat common in the 1990s, and fear of comets passing by the Earth has also been recorded for centuries. But when those two things mixed with one of the most bizarre cults in modern history, they created a toxic cocktail.
On March 20, 1997, Do recorded a video-taped confession where he explained that he and twenty other male members and eighteen female members of Heaven’s Gate needed to shed their bodies to catch a ride behind Hale-Bopp. Then, beginning on March 22, in two groups fifteen and one group of nine, members began ingesting deadly amounts of phenobarbital. As they dozed off, they put plastic bags over their heads to make sure the job was done.
They were all going to catch that ride on the mother ship.
The result was the largest mass suicide to occur on American soil and also the deadliest comet—which never even hit the Earth.