Black smoke (The War of the Worlds) Black smoke (The War of the Worlds) The black smoke, or black powder, is a fictitious poisonous gas in H. G. Wells' 1898 science fiction novel "The War of the Worlds", used by the Martians to eliminate groups of humans, especially artillery crews, and conveyed by shells fired from a gun-like ""black tube"" carried by the Tripods' whip-like tentacles. Any animal inhaling this deadly smoke is killed almost instantly, but the smoke becomes harmless on contact with water. The Martians would dispel it after each use with jets of steam, leaving only a residual, "cindery" black powder, which reminds the
The War of the Worlds (radio drama) to hoax broadcasts that "the anecdotal nature of such reporting makes it difficult to objectively assess the true extent and intensity of the panic. Bartholomew sees this as yet more evidence that the panic was predominantly a creation of the newspaper industry. In a study published in book form as "The Invasion from Mars" (1940), Princeton professor Hadley Cantril calculated that some six million people heard "The War of the Worlds" broadcast. He estimated that 1.7 million listeners believed the broadcast was an actual news bulletin and, of those, 1.2 million people were frightened or disturbed. Media historians Jefferson Pooley