Most Terrifying Mass Suicides

The act of suicide itself is one very fearsome to behold. Constantly, in every corner of the globe, people are faced with the dangers outside their doors coming from ravenous armies or murderous psychopaths. Suicide looks into the idea of an “enemy within” that can be just as dangerous as outside forces. This monumental thought of taking one’s own life has the possibility to spread though—many people taking their lives in response to a single stressor. Most of the time these mass suicides have some type of occult or religious tie-in or are a last ditch military effort by the losers of a war or battle. However, suicide pacts of frustrated groups of people seeking social change can also be considered to be mass suicides if large enough. While the reasons for these horrendous events can vary, the fact that they can happen at all is quite shocking. Accounts of mass suicides have been recorded from ancient history up to the present day. Here is a look at some of the most terrifying mass suicides in the human experience.

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The People’s Temple was a cult lead by a man named Jim Jones. Jones originally set up his church in San Francisco, California, but there was so much outside interference since they were in a hugely populated area. To make his followers more withdrawn, he arranged a settlement village in Guyana—a small country on the northern coast of South America. For months, Jones attempted to negotiate a mass exodus of his Jonestown followers to the Soviet Union but once Jones had killed a U.S. congressman and a reporter who had come to investigate Jonestown, he claimed that the Soviet Union would not take them. Rather than have his cult torn apart, Jones arranged a mass suicide. However, many of the followers were forced to take the poison at gunpoint, making the incident a case of murder as well. All 909 followers, including Jones himself and nine others in the nearby city and airstrip, died from poison in this 1978 mass suicide. Two hundred seventy-six victims were children.

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During the early years of the Common Era (C.E.), the Romans were still on their quest to expand and dominate as much of the world as possible even though they had lost a good deal of territory. Yet, the people who were conquered and the lands that were taken never took the prospect of being ruled by the Romans lightly as high taxes and different cultural laws were not something about which to be happy. In 73 CE, a Roman regiment set siege upon the Sicarii Jewish hilltop community known as Masada. Rather than become slaves of the Romans, all 960 members of the village decided to leave the earthly realm. Each man was in charge of killing his wife and any children before the men drew lots to kill each other until the last one killed himself.

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Another group of people, this time in continental Europe, felt that they would rather die than live under Roman control. The Germanic tribe known as the Teutons led a very successful military campaign against the Romans during the latter part of the 2nd century BCE. However, after the Battle of Aquae Sextiae (an area located in what is now southern France) in 102 BCE, the Teutons suffered a major loss. Even their king Teutobod was captured and carried away in chains. The Teutonic married women and their children were to be taken as slaves by the Romans. The women pleaded with the Roman leaders to have them be servants in the temples of Venus and Ceres so that they would not become prostitutes. When the women found out that their request to be priestesses had been denied, they killed their own children before strangling each other in the night to keep from becoming Roman sex slaves.

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Toward the end of World War II, Eastern Germany was in great fear of the Soviet Red Army. The Nazi Army was severely declining in power and resources but the Red Army was moving into Europe with amazing speed and force. As the Red Army progressed though, word got out of the atrocities they were committing along the way—including rape, murder, and pillaging. The people of Demmin knew that the Red Army would get to their village very soon in the spring of 1945. The city was handed over to the Red Army without a fight but resistance was still strong in the local people. Almost 900 people drowned themselves in the nearby Peene River and Tollense River or poisoned themselves to keep from being play things of the bloodthirsty Red Army over the span of both April and May of 1945. While the citizens of Demmin did not commit suicide at exactly the same time, the closeness of the suicide acts and the fact they killed themselves for the same reasons makes this incident a mass suicide.