The War of the Worlds (radio drama) are listening to a CBS presentation of Orson Welles and the "Mercury Theatre of the Air", in an original dramatization of "The War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells. The performance will continue after a brief intermission. The last third of the program is a monologue and dialogue. Professor Pierson, having survived the attack on Grover's Mill, attempts to make contact with other humans. In Newark, he encounters an opportunistic militiaman who holds fascist ideals in regards to man's relationship with the Martians, and intends to use Martian weaponry to take control of both species. Declaring that he wants
Black smoke (The War of the Worlds) narrator of what he "read of the destruction of Pompeii". The smoke is very dense, and can be avoided by climbing to higher places. Although Wells never explains the smoke's mechanism in the novel, he mentions that it may bind with argon to become toxic. In reality, argon cannot combine with other elements, with the marginal exception of fluorine, but chemical weapons were widely used in human warfare after Wells' novel was written, especially in World War I. Orson Welles' radio adaptation dramatizes the effects of the black smoke: The poison is depicted as being potent enough to render gas