Why 918 people commit suicide at Same time

Jim Jones was born in Crete, Indiana, USA, on May 13, 1931.Jim Jones began mobilizing around racism and racial integration in the 1950s, when he founded the Peoples Temple (1955 in Indianapolis, Indiana); from the start he welcomed Black and white members to worship together—rare at that time in the Midwest—and openly preached against segregation, which made his church stand out as a progressive, interracial movement long before the civil rights laws of the 1960s.

Jim Jones became politically active in the early 1970s after moving the Peoples Temple to California, where he built alliances with influential figures in San Francisco and Los Angeles, supported liberal causes like housing and racial equality, campaigned for Democratic candidates (notably helping George Moscone win the 1975 San Francisco mayoral race), and in return was appointed to the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission in 1976, eventually serving as its chairman.

In his speeches, Jim Jones often said he wanted a world of racial equality, justice for the poor, an end to capitalism, and a socialist society where everyone shared resources fairly.

Jim Jones went toward Jonestown because by the mid-1970s he was facing growing media investigations, lawsuits, and testimonies from defectors.

Jim Jones took his followers from the United States to Guyana in the mid-1970s. There They make Jones town and community far from U.S. racism, capitalism, and government scrutiny.

On November 18, 1978, gunmen from Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple murdered U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan , evidence strongly shows that Jim Jones ordered the attack on Congressman Leo Ryan.

After Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered, Jim Jones told his followers that the U.S. government would invade Jonestown, torture the children, and destroy everything they had built, leaving them no choice but to die “with dignity.”

Armed guards surrounded the pavilion to stop escape. Parents were ordered (or pressured) to give poison to their children first. Many adults drank under pressure, while others were injected. Thus 918 people commit suicide at Same time and die . In these suicide 300 children also died.

Jim Jones also died in Jonestown on November 18, 1978. Jones was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head. Investigators could not say with absolute certainty whether he shot himself or was shot by someone else on his orders.

Guyanese police and military were the first to find the dead, and then the U.S. government took over the recovery operation.Americans were horrified that more than 900 of their fellow citizens, including nearly 300 children, had died.

Jonestown is remembered as the first and largest mass suicide–murder of its kind in modern history. The Jonestown tragedy in 1978, with about 918 deaths, was the largest single deliberate loss of American civilian life until the 9/11 attacks in 2001, when 2,977 people were killed. In the U.S.A history, Jonestown is remembered as the Jonestown Massacre.

Sadly, Jonestown is not the only mass suicide in history, though it is the largest in modern times. Heaven gate is an another example :-

Heaven’s Gate was a cult led by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles in the United States whose members believed that Earth was about to be “recycled” and that salvation required leaving their physical bodies to board a spaceship following the Hale–Bopp comet, and in March 1997, 39 followers, dressed uniformly and ingesting a lethal combination of phenobarbital and alcohol, committed mass suicide in a California mansion, having lived for years in a communal, highly controlled lifestyle that renounced personal possessions, sexuality, and family ties.

The 918 people who committed suicide at the same time did so because they blindly followed Jim Jones. We should never follow politicians or religious leaders blindly. Before following someone, we should investigate whether their ideology is right, whether they will give us real benefits, whether they will help our country progress, and whether they will bring justice. Before trusting anyone, we should think a thousand times. The Jonestown tragedy is an example of what happens when people blindly follow someone.