Jonestown

I watched this ~90-minute PBS documentary about Jonestown tonight:

The documentary was exceptionally well-made and turned Jonestown from an vague, almost hypothetical place for me to a very real and terrifying event. Interviews of people who were at Jonestown along with surprisingly comprehensive video and audio from the events make them come to life.

In reading a bit about this after watching the documentary, I found out that the Peoples Temple facility was about a half mile from my apartment. That scares me. Over 900 people died in Jonestown, many from around here. The event caused the largest loss of American civilian life from a non-natural disaster until 9/11.

In an interview on the subject I heard on NPR a couple of weeks ago, a survivor mentioned that he’s always offended when people use the phrase “drink the kool-aid”. I’d never really thought about that before…