Have you ever heard of the Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic of 1954? Well, if you have not, you are about to find out how human beings can create a collective clusterf*#k of idiocy. Introduce fear into some unknown phenomenon, and you will get people out of rational thinking and into irrational dementia. Here is the story.

In Bellingham, Seattle and other Washington communities in April, 1954 there was a discovery of strange pits in the windshields of cars. The original blame for this strange incident was placed on vandals, so when more and more people started to complain of the same damage, all available police were sent in to create road blocks and investigate. But, when more than 2,000 cars were reported to have the same pits within a short period of time, this was obviously not the work of vandals. So, what in the world could be the cause for this strange and freakish discovery?

Well, everything for hydrogen bomb fallout to sand flea eggs has been used to explain the damage. Now that this created a real public hysteria, scientists were brought in to evaluate the evidence. These scientists brought Geiger counters and did residue testing on the surface of the windows. Still, no real explanations were uncovered. Now that all types of media were covering this new outbreak, it caused more people to take a look at their “damaged” windshields. Officials were seeing that this epidemic was spreading all over the country.

They then brought in the University of Washington to help solve this enigma. The group of scientists from the university found the following:

The pits seemed to only exist on the windshield

It was obvious that their was a direct correlation with the age of the car and the amount of damage.

People are retarded.

They uncovered the answer that the pits were there all along, and were caused by road debris hitting the windshield while driving. People just never took the time to actually look at their windshields. Damn, I would have never thought of that. This incident became a text book example of what is now called collective delusion. Let this convey the message that William of Occam said best; “Plurality should not be posited without necessity”, or stop using crazy complex alien, H-bomb, sand flea, convoluted explanations for something that is obviously simple. You just have to evaluate the situation without your out-of-control emotions.