Fear and Mass Hysteria Reaction Paper

Fear and Mass Hysteria Reaction Paper

            Fear, it is an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger. It is also known as alarm, anxiety or dread. This emotion causes the humans normal response to something change and to react in an irrational and sometimes self-destructive way.  HIV, AIDS, bad grades, a virus epidemic, germs, zombies, ghosts and 9/11 are many things that cause or caused fear in a person’s daily life.  

            Some fear is based on truth, such as HIV and AIDS. Other fears are rumor based, like zombies and ghosts. Sometimes fear is just watching the mind-blowing crash of two planes into the twin towers in New York over a television and watching family, friends, and acquaintances dying in an instance and some running for their lives. 9/11 is the most recent and biggest fear that the United States has been faced with recently and fear shows itself in many ways to us every day.

            The events of 9/11 caused fear in millions of people in the snap of a finger. Al Qaeda put many fears into the homes on families. They were a group of extremist terrorist that wanted the United States to suffer. Many family members and friends where lost in minutes all because of an extremist terrorist attack.  This fear of losing our family members and friends is the same fear the Salem Witch Trials brought to many people. The fear of others dying in and instance without warning or time to defend themselves. During 9/11 people could only stand by and watch as the towers fell to pieces with many people inside. At the same time, during the Salem Witch Trials people would also just stand by and watch as people they knew would be killed because of false accusations. Many people were persecuted in both instances because of something as simple as a religion or game being taken to an extreme.