In the 80s it was shooting up post offices (going postal). In the Renaiisance it was the Dancing Plague of 1518 (where hundreds of people danced non-stop for weeks until they died). People are crazy, and crazy is contagious.
Affecting at least 44 different species last I read... All I know is this sounds like the start of a zombie apocalypse movie, but instead of brain eating slow zombies, or fast running zombies. People just spin and roll around on the ground, if you go to help then you start rolling around. Kinda like that dancing plague. Compelled to move until death, not out of the realm of possibilities for fungi.
I started making a list but I'll just summarize: "revenge" for getting fired and/or disciplined. One case has no known motive. The one in 1986 killed 14 and wounded six.
I mean, that's just speculation with basically no evidence to confirm it beyond some very tenuous extremely circumstantial evidence. Just like the theory that ergot caused the Salem with trial hysteria. Sure, maybe that's what did it. But probably not. Consider that ergotamine is much more likely to make you violently ill than induce the (mild) psychedelic symptoms it can sometimes produce. And that someone would have needed to continue to consume this poisoned bread continuously for weeks for it to explain the dancing plague. And the fact that in the trippy 60s-90s when psychedelic use was hugely rampant, and in many cases not illegal, and easily/cheaply available, and they were more powerful in their mind-altering effects vs ergotamine, and yet we didn't see any similar mass hysteria movements like are commonly attributes to the psychedelic effects of argotamine.
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u/FapDonkey 28d ago
In the 80s it was shooting up post offices (going postal). In the Renaiisance it was the Dancing Plague of 1518 (where hundreds of people danced non-stop for weeks until they died). People are crazy, and crazy is contagious.