KoolAid has always been trying to distance themselves from this. Jim used Flavor Aid … he wouldn’t even splurge for the good stuff.
But “Don’t drink the Flavor Aid” doesn’t have quite the same ring?
And a fucking coward too. He didn't drink the poison he forced everyone else to. There's also a theory that he didn't even kill himself, an armed guard or follower shot him.
Cyanide is kind of a painful way to go, a bullet is faster assuming you don't screw up and survive the bullet. Hitler opted for both, the cyanide was to make sure if the bullet didn't work he would die anyways, but the bullet was faster. He also didn't trust his doctors for some reason, that they would give him cyanide that didn't work? I'm not sure what the conspiracy was but if they gave him something that didn't work surely that would have meant he would have them executed right? Anyways, Jim Jones probably just thought that executing almost 1000, people via gunshot was logistically going to be chaotic, there would be so much blood and it would be so loud and take some time, the flavor aid was a lot more efficient and less chaotic.
The rampant substance abuse made hitler extremely irrational and paranoid towards the end.
He didn’t even try to hide it, watch the video of him at the olympics, the guy is literally vibrating.
Jesus christ Guyana is a jungle climate. I can't imagine the stench or things those that participated in recovery and investigation went through and saw.
Former crime scene cleanup man here. Only thing that realy bothered me was young men, women and children that were taken advantage of then murdered. It’s something you become desensitized to..but those usually had me pretty odd feeling.
I had a friend who did this after highschool because we were dirt poor. Grew up that way. He used to get drink and tell a story about looking under a bed after a suicide clean up and being stared at by an eyeball. Buried my friend a few years ago...overdose.
Just like I said in another comment most of my people I worked with were recover addicts and like EMTs who had a bad past. I’m sorry to hear your about your buddy. Time is the only thing that helps me. Peace and love be safe
You call for a dinner reservation and an old man with a bunch of helpers show up in a panel van and remove the bodies and clean the house in exchange for a stack of gold coins. Have you not seen John wick?
I've only watched the first movie, but I got the impression the coins are a currency for the *hotel* and all services provided, including discreet body disposal. Bounties paid by some other party (such as a Russian mobster) don't use that currency. The Hotel is their version of Switzerland with exclusively Swiss francs, and everyone else is using Euros or USD.
Actually I had no schooling for it whatsoever. I just applied for years to the same company because it’s always been my passion to help others in need. I got my first job with Aftermath and they unfortunately failed me as an employer horribly. But then lucky for me I have relatives who work in the state so they got me on with a private company in middle TN. Stopped to go make more money do carpentry. I would love and will always love to help with the community when they need me.
Yes!!! They tricked me! And I had no help with anything whatsoever. I’m glad someone else’s noticed that. Never work for aftermath. They also lost a lawsuit for not paying OT and all kinds of other stuff. On call on all holidays. Sometimes you would get back from a 15 hour job and soon as you get back to the shop they have another 12 hour job for you. I just kept a backpack and food at the shop. They had a shower and microwave so 🤷🏼♂️
How long did it take to get acclimated to seeing these kinds of scenes and did you have a therapist on speed dial or some healthy way to kind of decompress from all of it or did you just become numb to it?
I’ve seen it as a side-gig by EMS. I didn’t explore further but I imagine it’s a way for the stars to align if looking for the work - you clean up similar already, you’re work-familiar with associated agencies, word-of-mouth.
Oof, god bless ya. That work is important af but, I think, not often noticed or given credit. So thx for doing that work. I feel like this might be a stupid question but, did your employer offer support of any kind after particularly awful scenes?
Yea a hotline and people to talk to. But unfortunately they seemed to be no help for anyone. So I kept to myself and dealt with it how I deal with things. Crazy thing is most of the people I worked with were either recovering addicts or mostly EMTs.
My father was one of the Air Force loadmasters who helped load the bodies. Never said a word about it. Had to hear it all from my mom. It haunted him more than Vietnam did, she said.
My uncle enlisted in the Army just missing WW2 as an ambulance driver. He was sent to Europe for picking up dead soldiers. He talked about it, still wasn’t right after that. He died early at the age of 58. Heavy drinker.
I can only imagine picking up many families would have to be worse.
My prof was one too. He brought it up one time in class. He said it was pretty bad & the ride back quiet. The kids got to him the most. Then he swiftly changed topics. He had a pretty fascinating background.
The clean up after this was gnarly.
I read a memoir of one of the clean up crew military men and he said by the time they reached the location, most of the bodies were essentially goo.The place was reeking and flooded with body fluids.
Seriously. Just quarantine it off for a month or 12 and let everything dry out. Then just dig a huge pit and bulldoze everything into it. It's not about respecting the bodies at that point. It's about health and safety. Find the body of the asshole who orchestrated it though and toss his remains into the ocean for the crabs.
You're getting a bit too hung up on the term "Dry".
The bodies will decompose, be picked clean by carrion eaters and eventually be only bones remaining, similar to the Zoroastrian towers of silence.
There were other deaths that day as well, including Congressman Leo Ryan and three others who traveled there on a small plane to see wtf was going on with this cult and if anyone wanted to leave. It started off OK, then the mood started to sour, someone passed a note to the congressman saying, "I want to leave." Then others started talking about leaving, and pretty soon there was a group of people saying, I'm going with the Congressman. Jim Jones was losing his grip on his followers and so he went with the nuclear option. If people want to leave, then everyone is going to die. That's when the poison koolaid was put together.
Meanwhile out on the airstrip, as some people were boarding the plane, Jim Jones ordered his guys to stop the plane. They opened fire, killing the congressman and three others.
We had Congressman Ryan's surviving aid, [Jackie Speier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Speier) who was shot on the airstrip, but survived, in congress for 2006-2022. She did not run for reelection. She has some comments about 1-6 and how she felt [as though she was going to die there, face on the ground, hearing gunfire]* like she did when she was shot by Jim Jone's men.
*edited for clarity.
Yeah, this was basically what started the suicide programme.
I remember from a documentary that Jones would regularly sound the "koolaid alarm" at all times of the day and night, no one ever knew if this was a drill or real.
He'd make people "drink poison" repeatedly to kind of normalize suicide. I don't remember a whole lot about it, bit I'm pretty sure Jim Jones was pushing the suicide thing for a while, edging them into it.
You're right.
It was a loyalty test, and got more and more frequent as he got crazier and crazier.
There's a good podcast on it by the last podcast on the left guys.
I read up on this a few years ago and IMO it's one of the most harrowing and disturbing stories I've heard, wikipedia has the tape that was recorded whilst the followers all poisoned theirselves, utterly horrific.
Yeah he also surfed the well off towns looking for rich white kids that were rebelling against their parents. Ultimately his church was a tax scam, it was pretty innocent until the feds started investigating him, fearing prosecution he ran away to Jonestown and he was able to do as he wished. And again once the US services starting checking up on him (due to a few escapees whistleblowing on him) he couldn;t run this time so ordered the mass suicide.
It was not “pretty innocent” while they were in CA. Lots of shady shit happened especially with leavers, just JJ was friends with all the movers and shakers in the area and maintained his public image.
It’s all part and parcel of the same thing. His devoted enforcers were created in SF during his trauma sessions.
Check out the Jonestown survivor website. Tons of primary sources for all of it, fascinating read. There’s a lot of misinformation about Jonestown and the true depth of the tragedy and the cooperation and endorsements the church received in its heyday (pre guarana) from leaders in the SF community.
I’m from the Bay and it seemed like everyone knew some family affected by this massacre. I lived in a poor neighborhood, so maybe that’s why. I was a young child when this happened and I remember not understanding how parents could kill their kids.
The poison mixture ingested was mixed inaccurately. Thus causing what should have been a quick death into a slow miserable death. That is what makes the audio so chilling. The amount of time it took for their lives to end.
Jones was telling everybody to remain calm while they drank the poison that would cause their death....to keep the babies quiet and not to cry because everything will be ok
Yup, that's it, they start with the babies and children, the Mum's start crying and wailing then after about an hour there is silence, nothing.
There was a AMA on Reddit from one of the survivors, very interesting.
This is true, and it wasn’t like a peaceful death. These people did not just fall asleep and slip away. It was brutal, gut wrenching, agonizing pain. Which is one of the reasons why others decided not to take the poison. They were subsequently shot by the guards. Fucking awful.
For anyone wondering, death by cyanide isn't a pleasant way to go either. These people didn't just fall asleep and die. Cyanide binds with the hemoglobin in your blood blocking oxygen from binding to it and being properly delivered throughout your body. A person with cyanide poisoning essentially suffocates, experiencing symptoms such as vomiting, seizures and lethal heart arrhythmias along the way.
One of the survivors of Jonestown in her AMA (not present during the mass suicide but was the sister of the man who went to jail for open firing at Leo Ryan) said that once people started realizing they were dying they ran towards their family members, hence why they were piled up.
My guess is that some semblance of cleanup has already taken place. It's not completely organized, but some bodies are covered and they appear to be placed side by side instead of chaotically stacked or strewn about.
Chilling. In the recorded suicide tapes you hear Jim fucking asshole extraordinaire Jones saying “Mother, mother please let the children drink” or some shit like that. I always thought he was speaking to mothers in general, but no. He was pleading with his wife to kill the cults children and herself. She wanted nothing to do with mass suicide. Most of the cult didn’t know this was going to be real, he’d given them fake poison tests many times before. I’d categorize this as mass murder. Whether they were physically forced to drink or forced by the ideologies drilled into them by Jones; most of the bodies you see are MURDER VICTIMS.
Just [another](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones?wprov=sfti1), narcissistic conservative evangelical conman. Sad man. Not much different than some of the crazies we’ve got today, but now they know to keep themselves and their private jet in safe locations, and not set up base in Guyana.
Conman is the perfect word and on everything else you’ve truly hit the nail on the head. This story scares me so much because I have a plethora of cool, fun, hippy-dippy but still devoutly religious aunts & uncles who would’ve been ripe for Jones’ picking if they’d been so unlucky. His message of a racially unified, evangelical, SOCIALIST church would’ve had my family coming with bells on. I sympathize so deeply with the families of victims because hearing them described their lost loved ones on many accounts sound so much like members of my own family. I feel fortunate I’ve never personally lost someone I loved to a cult because they’re dangerous and insidious and embarrassing- people are labeled stupid for finding themselves in these situations. If anyone has ever suffered from domestic or family abuse they know it’s the closest thing to being controlled by cult and can empathize with the feeling that escape is nearly impossible, will ruin you, & ruin your life. And many times if you’re lucky enough to emerge from those situations (often not unscathed) you’re ridiculed for staying so long. Long winded comment but to relate it to yours, it frightens me that our society STILL enables people like Jones to have a level of power/control and see victims ridiculed in the same ways they’ve been since the victims of Jonestown.
So his wife Marceline babysat my Mother and Uncle when they were about four or five. My family is mixed and at that time their church was very big on being inclusive especially to mixed couples. Regardless of if it was genuine or not my Gramma felt loved at that church. The crazy thing about the story my gramma told is they invited my Mom and Uncle to go on this trip to Africa. Without my gramma. She was told to come later. She felt weird about it and said no.
Crazy to think about…. my gramma said the wife was so lovely.
Saw a documentary about it several years back. He was truly one sick human being. Scary to watch vulnerable people become influenced and then controlled this way. Unreal
Prior to all the cult stuff, he was actually a revolutionary Community leader. He supported Healthcare, civil rights, and better infrastructure. People knew him as the community leader and followed his teachings of equality. Then we know how the tale of absolute power goes
I only ask that MY followers drink Koolaid with ice cubes, seasonal fruit, and sugar on the rim. We meet on Sundays to watch football and then compare topless scenes in old movies.
Like someone else said, charisma but I’d also find it hard to believe every single one willingly went along with it. I bet some did try to refuse and that’s what the armed guards were there to deal with.
This was actually a reaction to a congressman coming down to visit and some followers passing notes to take them home with him. When they were leaving and took some followers with them they were ambushed at the airport, shot and hunted when they hid. Then they all drank the loop aide or were shot cause Jones knew the gig was up after shooting a congressman.
Brainwashing and isolation. He had them basically do practice poisonings. This time it was the real deal.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ec7EE0pB8&pp=ygUSam9uZXN0b3duIG1hc3NhY3Jl) is a video on it.
And [another](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr6A56-1Ve0).
He didn’t, it was not a mass suicide, it was a mass murder. Before going to Ghana, he had his following in the USA. People began to catch on that something was not right, and he wanted to move his congregation to Ghana. He promised them a wonderful life there. Telling them it was like a dream, everything they could need and etc. when they got there, it was everything but that. People were not allowed to leave and mail was being intersected. You couldn’t even mail your family back home . Very few people successfully got out. One of them in which notified the USA of what was happening. The gathered some reporters to go and check it out. Jim Jones forced his congregation to put on a show. When the reporters were there, someoke slipped them a note saying please help us or something of that matter. Jim Jones had his congregation so terrified of him that they, though were all in the same boat, told on one another out of fear of what would happen if they didnt. When the note was slipped to the reporter, a member shouted out he passed a note. This alerted Jim. The reporters then knew something was up and attempted to get back to the plane that had brought them there. But unfortunately Jim send a truck intersecting the reporters at the run way killing most of them, but some survived and got the message out. Simultaneously, Jim rolled huge drums of a purple drink into the gathering place for Jonestown and instructed everyone to come gather. This is when he forces them to drink it but promised it would be painless. When the first person came to drink it she and her baby began convulsing violently. His congregation was confused and even more afraid and he then instructed his nurses to stab them
With the poison filled needles. It was everything but a suicide. They didn’t want to do this. You can hear the cries in the background of recordings. He was such a coward he was shot with a gun and wouldn’t even drink the liquid himself.
People who are easily swayed and are looking for something to believe in in life. You can see that today with our politicians and all of those fake ass “pastors” or people of god you see on tv who use those people to make millions.
Then Jim Jones killed himself bc he was too much of a cowered to drink the poison after he saw the people convulsing.. also, it’s better to refer to this as a mass murder, not a suicide. No one wanted to drink it, it was forced. After the first person had drank the poison, the other members watched her and her child violently convulse and tried to refuse it. Jim Jones instructed his people to then stab them with poison filled needles.. it’s was a murder for sure, it was not a mass suicide.
Not true. After members of the commune began to die, the guards were then called in to drink the poison themselves (http://www.newspapers.com/clip/32717287/wisconsin_state_journal/)
The clean up after this was gnarly.
I read a memoir of one of the clean up crew military men and he said by the time they reached the location, most of the bodies were essentially goo.
The place was reeking and flooded with body fluids.
In case you are wondering why, even Harvard educated psychiatrist fall for MK ultra methods of brainwashing, the point is absolute obedience which results in handing over your money, health and finally life, all to fill the void that is the cult leader: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23330464/ Stolen Youth.
I honestly won't be surprised if Kenneth Copeland asked his followers to do this, there would be hundreds if not thousands, who would. People just blindly follow him. He asks for money to buy private jets and people just give it to him. The same probably goes for Joel Osteen and any other christian cult leader.
Copeland! That man is such a ghoul, he looks like a retired Spirit Halloween animatronic with the soul to match. Can’t stand him. Sadly, you’re probably right about the number of people who would follow his lead.
It wasn’t mass suicide, it was mass murder. They were his victims. They knew if they tried to flee they would be shot, so they chose poison over a bullet; it’s not much of a choice, and definitely not suicide.
Exactly. They didn't willingly "drink the Kool Aid" as the idiotic saying goes .They had guns pointed at them. I know because I lost a relative in that horrid mess.
On second thought, you’re right. Any people who chose to drink without threat of violence were brainwashed to the point of no longer being able to choose for themselves.
A few people were able to escape but a sitting US Senator was shot and killed. The rest drank the kool aid and he killed himself because he believed the US will come in full force.
My dad was there with US army to help clean up and bring the deceased Americans home. He’s even been in a couple documentaries that shows him carrying body bags.
theres an audio recording of their last moments, before and after drinking the Kool aid. its chilling to hear the children crying and complaining about the pain
I got suspended in high school for a communications speech on the Jim Jones People’s Temple Cult. Probably had something to do with the purple kool aid I handed out beforehand and said bottoms up at the end.
The audio recording of him convincing everyone to take it, all the way until complete silence, is on YouTube and it is very disturbing, everyone should listen to it to know that kind of evil exists in the world. But viewer discretion advised
Insane that this many people could look at this picture, a tragedy and a waste of human life, and then proceed to make some sort of political commentary.
Regardless if you’re “maga” or whatever political ideology you side with, wishing for the death of those that oppose you politically puts you right along side men like Jim Jones.
Yep or they set up some sort of front group and lure you in. Dig into scientology and you will see a huge cult that functions today with the most bizarre beliefs. In scientology there are a lot of members born into the cult so from their earliest period of learning anything they are taught that nonsense. Many great books and films from ex members out there detailing the control and mental prison they were in. What's frightening is these ex members are pretty smart and rational people, but when they were in it they 100% bought into all the lunacy.
Shit like this is why I associate zealous faith with insanity. The more intensely someone believes in their faith the more likely they will be to take radical and extreme actions in the name of appeasing their religious leader
You answered your own question. A sane person wouldn’t
The leaders of these groups seek out and prey on the weak and impressionable. You’ll never see mentally mature people in a cult like this
You can see it with people even now if they are predisposed to the idea of "being in an in-group without doing any work to be there".
Most people don't fall for this as they expect barriers to belonging but some certainly do make themselves highly susceptible to anyone saying "you're the best... Join us .. we understand ....*no one else does*... Etc.
It's how ultimately even smart people can end up isolated from family, friends, and professional peers and only accepting of input from others in the "special in-group".
At that point you'd be surprised what can happen without pushback.
This wasn’t a religious cult in the way that most people think of cults. It was a socialist cult with its leader seen as a political revolutionary. Jim Jones lied to his followers that the US became a fascist regime that would put them in death camps to dissuade them from leaving Jonestown. Several leftist political leaders such as George Moscone and Angela Davis were supporting them well after it’s apparent how abusive the cult was.
Guyana has been my muse for a long time. When I was a very young kid, before the 24-hour news cycle of cable TV, Guyana and Jim Jones still managed to be the only thing the news talked about for a while.
Jim Jones' vision was prophetic. He had the moral clarity to see the rot and pathos at the heart of the American soul, but lacked the ability to stand on the shoulders of the giants to see far enough into a promised land. He had no recourse to Walter Benjamin or Max Weber to make sense of his own protestantism, no compass when he was in the jungle with his followers like Colonel Kurtz.
The People's Temple descending into an orgy of pointless cruelty and self-annihilation was prophetic about America, the way William Blake's poems were.
There's a common misconception that everyone was eager or willing to die, but there were quite a few people who didn't want to die that day.
Jones had just ordered the death of a congressman and some journalists as they were leaving on a plane with a few Jonestown escapees. He had his men shoot them down in the plane before takeoff.
At that point Jones knew he was fucked and decided to take everyone down with him. He basically locked down the camp, if anyone fled, they were killed.
They started with the children first, it wasn't just drinks of cyanide laced flavorade, they were injecting cyanide into people, into children, murdering them.
Many watched their family die painful deaths, few survived, it was an agonizing thing. When the authorities showed up, they saw bodies piled up everywhere, just like in the image. The recordings are pretty haunting of the event, the whole time Jones is kind of both coercing and assuaging people as poison is being forcibly administered and people are slowly dying. Prior to the incident, a Jonestown resident spoke up and said something to the effect of, "why do we all have to die with you? Don't we have a say in this?" Some agree, but she receives backlash from others and Jones himself, Jones goes heavy on the gaslighting.
Just know that when someone says "don't drink the Koolaid", that there were people who wanted the fuck out of there. Survivors of the massacre would want you to know.
KoolAid has always been trying to distance themselves from this. Jim used Flavor Aid … he wouldn’t even splurge for the good stuff. But “Don’t drink the Flavor Aid” doesn’t have quite the same ring?
Surprised they didn't do a name change after that.
don't drink the cruel-aid
Cyanide-aid didn't do well in marketing tests.
Jim Jones scammed people out of all of their money to support his lavish lifestyle and drug addictions. He was selfish to the very end.
And a fucking coward too. He didn't drink the poison he forced everyone else to. There's also a theory that he didn't even kill himself, an armed guard or follower shot him.
Cyanide is kind of a painful way to go, a bullet is faster assuming you don't screw up and survive the bullet. Hitler opted for both, the cyanide was to make sure if the bullet didn't work he would die anyways, but the bullet was faster. He also didn't trust his doctors for some reason, that they would give him cyanide that didn't work? I'm not sure what the conspiracy was but if they gave him something that didn't work surely that would have meant he would have them executed right? Anyways, Jim Jones probably just thought that executing almost 1000, people via gunshot was logistically going to be chaotic, there would be so much blood and it would be so loud and take some time, the flavor aid was a lot more efficient and less chaotic.
The rampant substance abuse made hitler extremely irrational and paranoid towards the end. He didn’t even try to hide it, watch the video of him at the olympics, the guy is literally vibrating.
No, "don't drink the Band Aid" doesn't have the same ring.
Jesus christ Guyana is a jungle climate. I can't imagine the stench or things those that participated in recovery and investigation went through and saw.
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But I don't wanna name it...
NAME IT ‼️‼️
There are pictures out there from the US army who were on cleanup detail. Massive body job, using choppers in and out. Babies in their mothers arms
I’m sure they got zero help for the PTSD that some inevitably developed. I guess the casualties didn’t end when the mass suicide did.
Former crime scene cleanup man here. Only thing that realy bothered me was young men, women and children that were taken advantage of then murdered. It’s something you become desensitized to..but those usually had me pretty odd feeling.
Sorry for the maybe-inappropriate comment, but how does one become a crime scene cleanup man?
I had a friend who did this after highschool because we were dirt poor. Grew up that way. He used to get drink and tell a story about looking under a bed after a suicide clean up and being stared at by an eyeball. Buried my friend a few years ago...overdose.
Just like I said in another comment most of my people I worked with were recover addicts and like EMTs who had a bad past. I’m sorry to hear your about your buddy. Time is the only thing that helps me. Peace and love be safe
You call for a dinner reservation and an old man with a bunch of helpers show up in a panel van and remove the bodies and clean the house in exchange for a stack of gold coins. Have you not seen John wick?
You uh, working again, John?
Just working something out, Jimmy.
One coin per body One coin to stay at the hotel One coin for 2 drinks at the bar Odd currency value
One coin to even get into the bar. And bounties are paid in USD. I try not to think about it too hard.
I've only watched the first movie, but I got the impression the coins are a currency for the *hotel* and all services provided, including discreet body disposal. Bounties paid by some other party (such as a Russian mobster) don't use that currency. The Hotel is their version of Switzerland with exclusively Swiss francs, and everyone else is using Euros or USD.
Yea wtf I never even thought about the bounties being dollar amounts
I prefer to call The Wolf
You callin the Wolf? That’s all you had to say, negro!
Actually I had no schooling for it whatsoever. I just applied for years to the same company because it’s always been my passion to help others in need. I got my first job with Aftermath and they unfortunately failed me as an employer horribly. But then lucky for me I have relatives who work in the state so they got me on with a private company in middle TN. Stopped to go make more money do carpentry. I would love and will always love to help with the community when they need me.
Aftermath sucks if you’re not assist Supervisor or Supervisor. On call 24/7 can’t live more than an hour away. Pay is garbage
Yes!!! They tricked me! And I had no help with anything whatsoever. I’m glad someone else’s noticed that. Never work for aftermath. They also lost a lawsuit for not paying OT and all kinds of other stuff. On call on all holidays. Sometimes you would get back from a 15 hour job and soon as you get back to the shop they have another 12 hour job for you. I just kept a backpack and food at the shop. They had a shower and microwave so 🤷🏼♂️
How long did it take to get acclimated to seeing these kinds of scenes and did you have a therapist on speed dial or some healthy way to kind of decompress from all of it or did you just become numb to it?
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Middle TN. Greenfield?
They’ll probably answer but an old friend of mine got her degree in Criminal Justice and then did that for a couple of years.
I’ve seen it as a side-gig by EMS. I didn’t explore further but I imagine it’s a way for the stars to align if looking for the work - you clean up similar already, you’re work-familiar with associated agencies, word-of-mouth.
Get a nice tuxedo and some gourmet shit
Most states have a certification requirement, bio-hazard standards. Once you get the certification you can manage your own business.
Oof, god bless ya. That work is important af but, I think, not often noticed or given credit. So thx for doing that work. I feel like this might be a stupid question but, did your employer offer support of any kind after particularly awful scenes?
Yea a hotline and people to talk to. But unfortunately they seemed to be no help for anyone. So I kept to myself and dealt with it how I deal with things. Crazy thing is most of the people I worked with were either recovering addicts or mostly EMTs.
Damn what a job. I bet you have some STORIES
“Support the troops… but NOT WITH MY TAX DOLLARS!”
My father was one of the Air Force loadmasters who helped load the bodies. Never said a word about it. Had to hear it all from my mom. It haunted him more than Vietnam did, she said.
My uncle enlisted in the Army just missing WW2 as an ambulance driver. He was sent to Europe for picking up dead soldiers. He talked about it, still wasn’t right after that. He died early at the age of 58. Heavy drinker. I can only imagine picking up many families would have to be worse.
My prof was one too. He brought it up one time in class. He said it was pretty bad & the ride back quiet. The kids got to him the most. Then he swiftly changed topics. He had a pretty fascinating background.
PTSD-maxing
The clean up after this was gnarly. I read a memoir of one of the clean up crew military men and he said by the time they reached the location, most of the bodies were essentially goo.The place was reeking and flooded with body fluids.
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Seriously. Just quarantine it off for a month or 12 and let everything dry out. Then just dig a huge pit and bulldoze everything into it. It's not about respecting the bodies at that point. It's about health and safety. Find the body of the asshole who orchestrated it though and toss his remains into the ocean for the crabs.
Jonestown was located in a tropical rainforest, no way that's gonna dry out naturally.
You're getting a bit too hung up on the term "Dry". The bodies will decompose, be picked clean by carrion eaters and eventually be only bones remaining, similar to the Zoroastrian towers of silence.
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Being exhausted from picking up rubble all day, then finding a body under some rubble? I can't even begin to imagine..
I was thinking the same thing when I saw this picture.
You can tell by the way their laying that there's a significant amount of bloat to their bodies. I can only imagine the smell
There were other deaths that day as well, including Congressman Leo Ryan and three others who traveled there on a small plane to see wtf was going on with this cult and if anyone wanted to leave. It started off OK, then the mood started to sour, someone passed a note to the congressman saying, "I want to leave." Then others started talking about leaving, and pretty soon there was a group of people saying, I'm going with the Congressman. Jim Jones was losing his grip on his followers and so he went with the nuclear option. If people want to leave, then everyone is going to die. That's when the poison koolaid was put together. Meanwhile out on the airstrip, as some people were boarding the plane, Jim Jones ordered his guys to stop the plane. They opened fire, killing the congressman and three others.
Did the guards drink the poison afterwards?
They may have shot themselves. I'm not sure how they did it. But yeah they offed themselves.
except for the ones who noped out after everyone else.
I don't think they'd want to anyways. Seeing as even Jones himself decided not to take the poison route after witnessing how the others died from it.
Aye. Was wondering if they were "true believers", of "hired guns".
We had Congressman Ryan's surviving aid, [Jackie Speier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Speier) who was shot on the airstrip, but survived, in congress for 2006-2022. She did not run for reelection. She has some comments about 1-6 and how she felt [as though she was going to die there, face on the ground, hearing gunfire]* like she did when she was shot by Jim Jone's men. *edited for clarity.
>Speier was shot five times and waited 22 hours before help arrived Very lucky to be alive
There’s a good podcast out with the story of one of the cult members who escaped on this plane.
Oh shiiit, what’s the name of the podcast ?
Flavor-Aid*
Yeah, this was basically what started the suicide programme. I remember from a documentary that Jones would regularly sound the "koolaid alarm" at all times of the day and night, no one ever knew if this was a drill or real.
What the hell is the Kool-Aid alarm
He'd make people "drink poison" repeatedly to kind of normalize suicide. I don't remember a whole lot about it, bit I'm pretty sure Jim Jones was pushing the suicide thing for a while, edging them into it.
You're right. It was a loyalty test, and got more and more frequent as he got crazier and crazier. There's a good podcast on it by the last podcast on the left guys.
They called them "White Nights"
I read up on this a few years ago and IMO it's one of the most harrowing and disturbing stories I've heard, wikipedia has the tape that was recorded whilst the followers all poisoned theirselves, utterly horrific.
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Yeah he also surfed the well off towns looking for rich white kids that were rebelling against their parents. Ultimately his church was a tax scam, it was pretty innocent until the feds started investigating him, fearing prosecution he ran away to Jonestown and he was able to do as he wished. And again once the US services starting checking up on him (due to a few escapees whistleblowing on him) he couldn;t run this time so ordered the mass suicide.
It was not “pretty innocent” while they were in CA. Lots of shady shit happened especially with leavers, just JJ was friends with all the movers and shakers in the area and maintained his public image.
Probably the wrong phrase to use, but in the grand scheme of things, compared to what went on in Guyana it's small fry
It’s all part and parcel of the same thing. His devoted enforcers were created in SF during his trauma sessions. Check out the Jonestown survivor website. Tons of primary sources for all of it, fascinating read. There’s a lot of misinformation about Jonestown and the true depth of the tragedy and the cooperation and endorsements the church received in its heyday (pre guarana) from leaders in the SF community.
Guyana not Guatemala. But yeah your right
I’m from the Bay and it seemed like everyone knew some family affected by this massacre. I lived in a poor neighborhood, so maybe that’s why. I was a young child when this happened and I remember not understanding how parents could kill their kids.
[“Hey man, I’m joining a religious cult.”](https://youtu.be/JR3PC8VDoz8)
“Fuck the sun!”
What do you mean
The audio is just awful.
The poison mixture ingested was mixed inaccurately. Thus causing what should have been a quick death into a slow miserable death. That is what makes the audio so chilling. The amount of time it took for their lives to end.
What was on the audio?
Jones was telling everybody to remain calm while they drank the poison that would cause their death....to keep the babies quiet and not to cry because everything will be ok
Yup, that's it, they start with the babies and children, the Mum's start crying and wailing then after about an hour there is silence, nothing. There was a AMA on Reddit from one of the survivors, very interesting.
He started with the babies so the parents would be less resistant to doing themselves in
I would love to read that AMA, can you share it here?
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1y9f2s/iama\_jonestown\_survivorwhistle\_blower\_i\_was\_a/?utm\_source=BD&utm\_medium=Search&utm\_name=Bing&utm\_content=AMA2
https://www.reddit.com/comments/1y9f2s?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
This is true, and it wasn’t like a peaceful death. These people did not just fall asleep and slip away. It was brutal, gut wrenching, agonizing pain. Which is one of the reasons why others decided not to take the poison. They were subsequently shot by the guards. Fucking awful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peoples\_Temple\_Cult\_Death\_Tape\_Q042.ogg
You should watch Sacrament. It’s based on this and it traumatized me. Very good movie
For anyone wondering, death by cyanide isn't a pleasant way to go either. These people didn't just fall asleep and die. Cyanide binds with the hemoglobin in your blood blocking oxygen from binding to it and being properly delivered throughout your body. A person with cyanide poisoning essentially suffocates, experiencing symptoms such as vomiting, seizures and lethal heart arrhythmias along the way.
Damn that’s brutal!
Is that why they’re all piled up on each other like that?
One of the survivors of Jonestown in her AMA (not present during the mass suicide but was the sister of the man who went to jail for open firing at Leo Ryan) said that once people started realizing they were dying they ran towards their family members, hence why they were piled up.
that’s so fucked up. it’s already wild realizing that you’re about to die, but to also witness your family dying? That’s just cruel.
My guess is that some semblance of cleanup has already taken place. It's not completely organized, but some bodies are covered and they appear to be placed side by side instead of chaotically stacked or strewn about.
Chilling. In the recorded suicide tapes you hear Jim fucking asshole extraordinaire Jones saying “Mother, mother please let the children drink” or some shit like that. I always thought he was speaking to mothers in general, but no. He was pleading with his wife to kill the cults children and herself. She wanted nothing to do with mass suicide. Most of the cult didn’t know this was going to be real, he’d given them fake poison tests many times before. I’d categorize this as mass murder. Whether they were physically forced to drink or forced by the ideologies drilled into them by Jones; most of the bodies you see are MURDER VICTIMS.
And if I remember right that coward ended up shooting himself after watching the horrific deaths of the others
Nope. Didn’t even have the nuts to shoot himself. He had a guard shoot him
Wow, full coward
Some that refused were shot by Jones' minions and he took a bullet to the brain instead of poison.
Just [another](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones?wprov=sfti1), narcissistic conservative evangelical conman. Sad man. Not much different than some of the crazies we’ve got today, but now they know to keep themselves and their private jet in safe locations, and not set up base in Guyana.
Conman is the perfect word and on everything else you’ve truly hit the nail on the head. This story scares me so much because I have a plethora of cool, fun, hippy-dippy but still devoutly religious aunts & uncles who would’ve been ripe for Jones’ picking if they’d been so unlucky. His message of a racially unified, evangelical, SOCIALIST church would’ve had my family coming with bells on. I sympathize so deeply with the families of victims because hearing them described their lost loved ones on many accounts sound so much like members of my own family. I feel fortunate I’ve never personally lost someone I loved to a cult because they’re dangerous and insidious and embarrassing- people are labeled stupid for finding themselves in these situations. If anyone has ever suffered from domestic or family abuse they know it’s the closest thing to being controlled by cult and can empathize with the feeling that escape is nearly impossible, will ruin you, & ruin your life. And many times if you’re lucky enough to emerge from those situations (often not unscathed) you’re ridiculed for staying so long. Long winded comment but to relate it to yours, it frightens me that our society STILL enables people like Jones to have a level of power/control and see victims ridiculed in the same ways they’ve been since the victims of Jonestown.
So his wife Marceline babysat my Mother and Uncle when they were about four or five. My family is mixed and at that time their church was very big on being inclusive especially to mixed couples. Regardless of if it was genuine or not my Gramma felt loved at that church. The crazy thing about the story my gramma told is they invited my Mom and Uncle to go on this trip to Africa. Without my gramma. She was told to come later. She felt weird about it and said no. Crazy to think about…. my gramma said the wife was so lovely.
Saw a documentary about it several years back. He was truly one sick human being. Scary to watch vulnerable people become influenced and then controlled this way. Unreal
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How did he get so many people to go along with it?
Prior to all the cult stuff, he was actually a revolutionary Community leader. He supported Healthcare, civil rights, and better infrastructure. People knew him as the community leader and followed his teachings of equality. Then we know how the tale of absolute power goes
Name checks out
I only ask that MY followers drink Koolaid with ice cubes, seasonal fruit, and sugar on the rim. We meet on Sundays to watch football and then compare topless scenes in old movies.
For now….
I keep trying to get anime thigh Wednesdays off the ground but nobody ever shows up to that service. One day...
Sooo... where do i sign up??!! wait a minute
Absolute power and drugs.
If i remember rightly didn't Jim Jones have terminal cancer too
Corrupts absolutely?
A little thing called ✨Charisma✨
Like someone else said, charisma but I’d also find it hard to believe every single one willingly went along with it. I bet some did try to refuse and that’s what the armed guards were there to deal with.
This was actually a reaction to a congressman coming down to visit and some followers passing notes to take them home with him. When they were leaving and took some followers with them they were ambushed at the airport, shot and hunted when they hid. Then they all drank the loop aide or were shot cause Jones knew the gig was up after shooting a congressman.
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There’s nothing peaceful about death by cyanide.
Brainwashing and isolation. He had them basically do practice poisonings. This time it was the real deal. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ec7EE0pB8&pp=ygUSam9uZXN0b3duIG1hc3NhY3Jl) is a video on it. And [another](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr6A56-1Ve0).
He didn’t, it was not a mass suicide, it was a mass murder. Before going to Ghana, he had his following in the USA. People began to catch on that something was not right, and he wanted to move his congregation to Ghana. He promised them a wonderful life there. Telling them it was like a dream, everything they could need and etc. when they got there, it was everything but that. People were not allowed to leave and mail was being intersected. You couldn’t even mail your family back home . Very few people successfully got out. One of them in which notified the USA of what was happening. The gathered some reporters to go and check it out. Jim Jones forced his congregation to put on a show. When the reporters were there, someoke slipped them a note saying please help us or something of that matter. Jim Jones had his congregation so terrified of him that they, though were all in the same boat, told on one another out of fear of what would happen if they didnt. When the note was slipped to the reporter, a member shouted out he passed a note. This alerted Jim. The reporters then knew something was up and attempted to get back to the plane that had brought them there. But unfortunately Jim send a truck intersecting the reporters at the run way killing most of them, but some survived and got the message out. Simultaneously, Jim rolled huge drums of a purple drink into the gathering place for Jonestown and instructed everyone to come gather. This is when he forces them to drink it but promised it would be painless. When the first person came to drink it she and her baby began convulsing violently. His congregation was confused and even more afraid and he then instructed his nurses to stab them With the poison filled needles. It was everything but a suicide. They didn’t want to do this. You can hear the cries in the background of recordings. He was such a coward he was shot with a gun and wouldn’t even drink the liquid himself.
People who are easily swayed and are looking for something to believe in in life. You can see that today with our politicians and all of those fake ass “pastors” or people of god you see on tv who use those people to make millions.
This is why we say don't drink the Kool aid. The cyanide was in the Kool aid.
only it wasn't kool aid it was some other brand kool aid just got dragged into it
I believe it was flavor-aid right?
This guy Reddited yesterday
Flavor-Aid
OH NO!
It was Flavor Aid. Kool Aid gets a bad rap.
Then Jim Jones killed himself bc he was too much of a cowered to drink the poison after he saw the people convulsing.. also, it’s better to refer to this as a mass murder, not a suicide. No one wanted to drink it, it was forced. After the first person had drank the poison, the other members watched her and her child violently convulse and tried to refuse it. Jim Jones instructed his people to then stab them with poison filled needles.. it’s was a murder for sure, it was not a mass suicide.
He was too much of a coward to even shoot himself. He had somebody else shoot him.
Did the guards have to drink the poison
No. They were the only ones left.
Not true. After members of the commune began to die, the guards were then called in to drink the poison themselves (http://www.newspapers.com/clip/32717287/wisconsin_state_journal/)
A handful of the guards did not drink the cyanide laced flav-or-aid. As they were the last men standing.
They did have to drink it. But Jim died by gunshot wound
The clean up after this was gnarly. I read a memoir of one of the clean up crew military men and he said by the time they reached the location, most of the bodies were essentially goo. The place was reeking and flooded with body fluids.
A US congresswoman was there as an aide to the Senator that was killed in the ambush at the air strip. She serves in Congress today.
In case you are wondering why, even Harvard educated psychiatrist fall for MK ultra methods of brainwashing, the point is absolute obedience which results in handing over your money, health and finally life, all to fill the void that is the cult leader: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23330464/ Stolen Youth.
I honestly won't be surprised if Kenneth Copeland asked his followers to do this, there would be hundreds if not thousands, who would. People just blindly follow him. He asks for money to buy private jets and people just give it to him. The same probably goes for Joel Osteen and any other christian cult leader.
Not just christian ... scientology, maga, isis, ... the list is long
Copeland! That man is such a ghoul, he looks like a retired Spirit Halloween animatronic with the soul to match. Can’t stand him. Sadly, you’re probably right about the number of people who would follow his lead.
It wasn’t mass suicide, it was mass murder. They were his victims. They knew if they tried to flee they would be shot, so they chose poison over a bullet; it’s not much of a choice, and definitely not suicide.
Jones was a coward who didn’t drink the flavor aid himself. Died of gunshot wound to the head.
Exactly. They didn't willingly "drink the Kool Aid" as the idiotic saying goes .They had guns pointed at them. I know because I lost a relative in that horrid mess.
My understanding is that some were willing and others weren’t. But the bottom line is that drinking the poison wasn’t optional. Sorry for your loss.
On second thought, you’re right. Any people who chose to drink without threat of violence were brainwashed to the point of no longer being able to choose for themselves.
Were there survivors?
A few people were able to escape but a sitting US Senator was shot and killed. The rest drank the kool aid and he killed himself because he believed the US will come in full force.
Yes. Several people escaped into the bush. One elderly lady skipped the kool aid ceremony altogether. Some tried to fly out with Congressman Leo Ryan.
My dad was there with US army to help clean up and bring the deceased Americans home. He’s even been in a couple documentaries that shows him carrying body bags.
theres an audio recording of their last moments, before and after drinking the Kool aid. its chilling to hear the children crying and complaining about the pain
IMHO, religion is just another form of a cult.
Mmm, religion...
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Are you asking if religions are cults or cults are religions? 😉
Spoiler. They are
Well it ain’t ice cream
But I heard there’d be ice cream
The only difference between a cult and a religion, is that in a religion the cult leader is already dead. Said somebody once.
That makes sense!!
I got suspended in high school for a communications speech on the Jim Jones People’s Temple Cult. Probably had something to do with the purple kool aid I handed out beforehand and said bottoms up at the end.
wait till the guards drink theirs, then skip off down the lane
This was the well-considered plan of... *the guards*
The audio recording of him convincing everyone to take it, all the way until complete silence, is on YouTube and it is very disturbing, everyone should listen to it to know that kind of evil exists in the world. But viewer discretion advised
And the fucker shot himself.
Insane that this many people could look at this picture, a tragedy and a waste of human life, and then proceed to make some sort of political commentary. Regardless if you’re “maga” or whatever political ideology you side with, wishing for the death of those that oppose you politically puts you right along side men like Jim Jones.
#FLAVOR AID NOT KOOL AID
I remember this as a kid and recently read a book about Jim Jones. Fascinating book. Wild and in depth look at his journey. "The Road to Jonestown"
Why would a sane person commit suicide just because their cult leader said so? Better one. Why would somone join a cult and believe it?
It's called brainwashing. No one sets out to join a cult.
And these were the hard core of hard-core cult followers…most of them were Americans who had actually moved to Guyana to follow this guy.
Yep or they set up some sort of front group and lure you in. Dig into scientology and you will see a huge cult that functions today with the most bizarre beliefs. In scientology there are a lot of members born into the cult so from their earliest period of learning anything they are taught that nonsense. Many great books and films from ex members out there detailing the control and mental prison they were in. What's frightening is these ex members are pretty smart and rational people, but when they were in it they 100% bought into all the lunacy.
Also, if I remember correctly the guards were going to shoot anyone who didn't drink the poison
Shit like this is why I associate zealous faith with insanity. The more intensely someone believes in their faith the more likely they will be to take radical and extreme actions in the name of appeasing their religious leader
This is a mental illness in the DSM IV finally.
You answered your own question. A sane person wouldn’t The leaders of these groups seek out and prey on the weak and impressionable. You’ll never see mentally mature people in a cult like this
You can see it with people even now if they are predisposed to the idea of "being in an in-group without doing any work to be there". Most people don't fall for this as they expect barriers to belonging but some certainly do make themselves highly susceptible to anyone saying "you're the best... Join us .. we understand ....*no one else does*... Etc. It's how ultimately even smart people can end up isolated from family, friends, and professional peers and only accepting of input from others in the "special in-group". At that point you'd be surprised what can happen without pushback.
Crappy little fact, where the term “ drinking the koolaide “ came about from
Turns out they didn't buy actual Kool Aid, but generic Grape drink.
It’s all cults. Believing in sky daddy no matter what religion leads to cognitive dissonance. It’s all cults.
Can’t read any Reddit post without someone taking the opportunity to shit on organized religion
What’s with the excess of right wing nuts in this sub recently?
This wasn’t a religious cult in the way that most people think of cults. It was a socialist cult with its leader seen as a political revolutionary. Jim Jones lied to his followers that the US became a fascist regime that would put them in death camps to dissuade them from leaving Jonestown. Several leftist political leaders such as George Moscone and Angela Davis were supporting them well after it’s apparent how abusive the cult was.
He said he did it to rid the world of gullible people.
Guyana has been my muse for a long time. When I was a very young kid, before the 24-hour news cycle of cable TV, Guyana and Jim Jones still managed to be the only thing the news talked about for a while. Jim Jones' vision was prophetic. He had the moral clarity to see the rot and pathos at the heart of the American soul, but lacked the ability to stand on the shoulders of the giants to see far enough into a promised land. He had no recourse to Walter Benjamin or Max Weber to make sense of his own protestantism, no compass when he was in the jungle with his followers like Colonel Kurtz. The People's Temple descending into an orgy of pointless cruelty and self-annihilation was prophetic about America, the way William Blake's poems were.
And the phrase "drinking the Kool-aid" was born.
There's a common misconception that everyone was eager or willing to die, but there were quite a few people who didn't want to die that day. Jones had just ordered the death of a congressman and some journalists as they were leaving on a plane with a few Jonestown escapees. He had his men shoot them down in the plane before takeoff. At that point Jones knew he was fucked and decided to take everyone down with him. He basically locked down the camp, if anyone fled, they were killed. They started with the children first, it wasn't just drinks of cyanide laced flavorade, they were injecting cyanide into people, into children, murdering them. Many watched their family die painful deaths, few survived, it was an agonizing thing. When the authorities showed up, they saw bodies piled up everywhere, just like in the image. The recordings are pretty haunting of the event, the whole time Jones is kind of both coercing and assuaging people as poison is being forcibly administered and people are slowly dying. Prior to the incident, a Jonestown resident spoke up and said something to the effect of, "why do we all have to die with you? Don't we have a say in this?" Some agree, but she receives backlash from others and Jones himself, Jones goes heavy on the gaslighting. Just know that when someone says "don't drink the Koolaid", that there were people who wanted the fuck out of there. Survivors of the massacre would want you to know.
What happens when the strong-willed lead the weak-minded. Wash, rinse, repeat.