https://medium.com/@petter.amlie/could-a-robot-turn-us-all-into-cult-members-43fb08e7f083

In March 1997, a 911 emergency call was made that seemed so absurd the dispatchers struggled to take it seriously. The caller reported a mass suicide in a mansion in an affluent neighborhood in San Diego. When the police arrived, they were shocked to find the bodies of 21 women and 18 men lying neatly on bunkbeds, all with brand new Nike shoes and upper body draped in purple cloth.

The 39 dead were all members of the Heaven’s Gate cult, started by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles (who died in 1985). Marshall, who’s cult name was changed into Do, had convinced his followers that the earth was merely a “soil to grow souls”, and that it was soon to be recycled by its creators. The only way to live on was to leave planet earth through suicide, where they would meet up with extraterrestrial beings of the “next evolutionary step” and co-exist in a state of absolute bliss.