CARGO CULTS HAVE BEEN EATING PEOPLE

A couple of weeks ago, we ran an article about the “cargo cults” that live on the Pacific Island of Tanna. The cargo cults are semi-religious tribal groups whose members believe that if they perform rituals in honor of their idols—namely imaginary American WWII soldier John Frum and real-life racist monarch Prince Philip—a bounty of “cargo” (guns and stuff) will rain down on them from the sky. Oh yeah, they also believe that when this happens, everyone else in the world will die, leaving them behind as its sole proprietors.

And to be honest, all that sounded relatively harmless, if a little insane. But away from the relatively cuddly cargo cults of Tanna, events took a sinister turn in Papua New Guinea recently, where rumors began to circulate that members of a similar cult had murdered and eaten seven people.

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A BETTER EXPLANATION THAN BATH SALTS

Last week was a weird one, huh? I’m sure you know what I’m talking about by now, but if you somehow missed it, a bunch of people were caught eating and dismembering other people. Most notably, there was a guy in Miami who ate a homeless guy’s leathery homeless face. He was shot to death by policemen after he growled at them with a mouth full of flesh. Most people are blaming bath salts for these violent acts, which is the result of media-hyped churnalism that we called bullshit on earlier this week. Instead of the mysterious bath salts, there’s another potential source for this wild week in crime. It’s a drug-induced medical condition called Excited Delirium Syndrome (ExDS), and it is more horrifying than any sort of Bath and Bodyworks-inspired brain powder.

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