Dropping Names

The performers used the names of familiar places in New Jersey and New York as the setting for the alien attack, and the events seemed to unfold in real time.(7)

The dramatization also incorporated news reporters, government officials and other characters that Listeners would expect to hear in an emergency situation. The characters sounded authoritative and used official sounding jargon from their “fields of expertise.”(7) Most of the names used were slightly altered versions of actual people. At one point during the broadcast, a “secretary of the interior” with a voice just like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's announced a nationwide emergency warning.(2)