It weirds me out that some people are so amenable to this kind of thing, enough to kill themselves.
I can still reach my cousin-in-law on an AOL email named after the comet mixed with his last name. Yes, it was cathartic to type this out and hit post.
Great! And good for you trying to stay informed despite a different definition of what constitutes a fulfilling life. Some of us enjoyed following news more closely, even during our teenage years.
I learned once I got to college on the East Coast in the late 90s that the rest of the country automatically thought “cult compound siege and fire” instead of “Baylor,” when they heard the name of the nearest big city to where I grew up, so took to describing my hometown as being “about an hour north of Austin” instead of “30 minutes south of Waco”.
Austin was always far, far cooler than Waco, but that always felt a bit pretentious, as my hometown is a lot more like Waco than it is Austin… which is probably why I ended up running off to the East Coast for college.
> Increasingly aggressive techniques were used to try to force the Branch Davidians out. For instance, sleep deprivation of the inhabitants through all-night broadcasts of recordings of jet planes, pop music, chanting, and the screams of rabbits being slaughtered. Outside the compound, nine Bradley Fighting Vehicles carrying M651 CS tear gas grenades and Ferret rounds and five M728 Combat Engineer Vehicles obtained from the U.S. Army began patrolling. The armored vehicles were used to destroy perimeter fencing and outbuildings and crush cars belonging to the Branch Davidians. Armored vehicles repeatedly drove over the grave of Branch Davidian Peter Gent despite protests by the Branch Davidians and the negotiators.
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> Criticism was later leveled by Schneider's attorney, Jack Zimmerman, at the tactic of using sleep-and-peace-disrupting sound against the Branch Davidians: "The point was this—they were trying to have sleep disturbance and they were trying to take someone that they viewed as unstable to start with, and they were trying to drive him crazy. And then they got mad 'cos he does something that they think is irrational!"
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> At around noon, three fires broke out almost simultaneously in different parts of the building and spread quickly; footage of the blaze was broadcast live by television crews. The government maintains the fires were deliberately started by the Branch Davidians. Some Branch Davidian survivors maintain that the fires were accidentally or deliberately started by the assault.
Koolaid is a sugary, flavored drink powder that is mixed with water. It was a staple for many kids in the 80’s and 90’s.