-Planet Earth about to be recycled.
Your only chance is to leave with us.
-The '90s are bracketed by two cults,
each prepping for the end of the world.
-When they come busting in on my door with guns drawn
and pointed in the air,
that just ain't gonna happen.
-One trains for an apocalyptic battle
with the armies of Babylon.
-The US government on your doorstep,
ready to get it on with you.
-The other preps for its final exit from Earth with aliens.
-We were actually making application
for employment on their spacecraft.
-Their actions will send shockwaves through the nation...
-They were like lambs led to slaughter.
- that still echo to this day.
-We're taking back our country,
and it's gonna be biblical.
♪♪
[ Dial-up modems screeching ]
♪♪
-US and Russian military officers
are working side by side tonight to ensure
that no Y2K bugs trigger an accidental nuclear exchange.
-Let's go, guys. Let's go.
-As the '90s draws to a close.
There's growing concern that the Y2K computer bug
could wreak havoc on the nation.
-There is no one on this planet that can say
that the year 2000 problem doesn't affect me.
[ Thunder crashes ]
-But for some religious zealots,
the entire decade is one long string of events
proving the actual end of days is fast approaching.
-There's some trouble in the Middle East.
Let me tell you about it just quickly.
Iraqi and Kuwaiti troops have clashed at the border.
-The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
brings violence to the Holy Lands,
tornadoes ravage the American Midwest,
and some of the deadliest wildfires
on record put California in a chokehold.
-There are many people now who are sort of obsessed,
if you will, with the idea of the millennia.
-For some small groups of Christian Americans,
all these events point straight to Armageddon.
That final battle between the armies of Heaven
and the forces of evil that's prophesied
in the Bible's Book of Revelation.
-It was just in the air... The idea
that the end of the world was coming.
-Whether by nuclear devastation, environmental disaster,
or a plague that wipes out billions,
they're bracing for an apocalyptic event
to strike sometime in the '90s.
-Minus one minute.
-It might be the end of the human race
and not necessarily the world.
-My name is Alan R. Warren. I wrote the book
"Doomsday Cults: The Devil's Hostages."
When people get scared,
they start to look for something to calm them,
something to soothe their nerves.
So what better than a cult?
-For two cults in particular,
their apocalyptic beliefs will lead them down
a parallel path to their own self-destruction.
-I'm sure the news media, after we leave,
is gonna have a heyday comparing us to the Davidians.
-The first is the Waco Branch Davidians.
-We have what appears to be a fire going on right now
raging at the Branch Davidian compound.
-The second is Heaven's Gate.
-If you're just joining us, our top story, of course,
is the cult suicide near San Diego, California.
Officials said today the 18 men and 21 women
took their lives in stages over the past few days.
-How could these people choose to do something,
which, from my perspective, made no sense,
but from their perspective, made total sense?
I'm Benjamin Zeller. I'm a professor
of religious studies at Lake Forest College
outside of Chicago, Illinois.
I wrote a book on Heaven's Gate.
Alright. How to start.
-The Mass Suicide in Rancho Santa Fe, California,
doesn't mark the first time CBS News has reported
on the cult led by Marshall Applewhite.
-We tend to think about Heaven's Gate
as a 1990s phenomenon,
but to understand them, we have to step back
to the 1970s... The mid-'70s when they started.
-A mysterious couple appeared three weeks ago
circulating a flier proclaiming a UFO would soon be ready
to take whomever would follow them to another life,
another world.
-Heaven's Gate first made national news
in the wake of a public event they held in Oregon,
where they literally put posters up and said,
"Come to this little venue, this little Waldport Inn,
and we're gonna have a public meeting
and talk about UFOs and talk about how UFOs are real
and the Bible is real and the Bible is about UFOs."
And dozens of people show up.
-Today, there is a group of earthlings
who believe they're on their way to a rendezvous
with such a ship for a trip to the unknown.
-For Heaven's Gate, the Bible was interpreted
through the lens of UFOs and ufology,
these ideas about extraterrestrial contact
and that flying saucers have crash landed
and that the government is conspiring
to hide this from people.
The idea that they offered was you are not of this planet.
You have been on a spiritual quest,
and that's valid... Spiritual quest is good.
It's good to try meditating.
It's good to read different texts.
It's good to try different religions.
But what is better is to realize that none of those paths
will take you to the ultimate.
And that is what they called the next level,
which is outer space.
The idea was that you would leave
behind your human identity,
your human level, but that included your family,
your possessions, your loved ones,
and join them on this... this attempt to leave our planet.
-[ Playing harmonica ]
-For that, you have to abandon your humanity
and try to act like a next-level alien.
-They said they came from evolutionary level above human
and that they drove physical spacecrafts,
that we were actually making application for employment
on their spacecraft.
My name is Sawyer.
I was part of Ti and Do's group
that became known as Heaven's Gate for 19 years.
[ Playing flute ]
I can do a little saxophone, if you wanted, too.
It's in the car, though.
We're talking about a place that has existence
outside of time of the human kingdom
and outside of the environment
or the section of space
that we refer to as the universe.
Ti is Bonnie Lu Trousdale Nettles
and Do is Marshall Herff Applewhite.
They were here to bring updates to the Bible
and to fulfill prophecy.
-These are the two claiming to be millions of years old.
-Ti and Do actually come to decide
that they are two beings
referred to in the Book of Revelation
as the two witnesses.
The job of the two witnesses is to preach the truth of Heaven
and then to be martyred, to be killed on the streets.
-We're going to be martyred at the completion
of this testimony,
and when we are, after three and a half days,
we're gonna walk up.
Just get right up, and you're gonna watch us.
-Through the technology of the extraterrestrials,
they're going to be restored to life.
They can then demonstrate to the world the reality of
this extraterrestrial technology and that the Bible
is simply a record of extraterrestrial investigations.
-Those people who choose to go away will be picked up by a UFO
and they will be leaving this earth forever.
-Why didn't you decide to go?
-I'm too human.
-This was an extreme group.
They say, "Come join us.
We're gonna live out at campgrounds.
You're gonna spend the day meditating
and trying to overcome your humanity."
Didn't appeal to a lot of people.
And increasingly, it was hard to get converts.
So, at one point, after being heckled,
Ti stood up and she said, "The harvest is closed.
We're gonna turn inwards.
We're gonna effectively go underground.
We're going to stop proselytizing,
stop holding these meetings.
We're gonna focus on overcoming our humanity."
-But when one of the co-founders succeeds
in overcoming her humanity,
the intended result doesn't happen.
-In the mid-'80s, Bonnie Lu Nettles
gets increasingly sick.
She has cancer, which spreads,
and then eventually she passes away.
And she does not, as far as anyone can tell,
get picked up by a UFO.
-Ti's vehicle died in 1985,
and it did change the group in the sense that Do believed
that Ti was his old member.
So Do had to operate alone.
-When that happened, Applewhite changed
and he started looking at things in a different light.
-Death of the body or losing the body,
losing the vehicle, essentially has no long-term effect on me.
-Yes, he was distraught, but he got over it very quickly,
and for all intents and purposes, that I could see.
-Now alone, as sole leader of the group,
Applewhite makes a profound shift in his philosophy.
-Do is effectively, for members of the group,
he is Christ reborn and he is the second coming,
and that's a big transition.
And the group really has a sudden shift towards the idea
that, well, perhaps
they're not gonna, in an embodied form,
get onto the spaceship and fly off,
but it might be something in a more metaphysical,
metaphoric, spiritual level.
That's what opens the door a decade later to the suicide.
[ Birds cawing ]
-If the death of Bonnie Lu Nettles opens the door
to members of Heaven's Gate taking their own lives
in 1997...
-Sure, we know it's the same Christ who...
- then it's this man that blows that door
right off its hinges.
-David Koresh was dangerous,
irrational, and probably insane.
-At the start of the '90s,
the number-one book among American Christians
is a fictionalized account of the end of the world
called the "Left Behind" series.
-It's a retelling of the Book of Revelation.
Hundreds of millions of people being killed,
with demons and angels fighting and meteors falling
and rivers of blood and government conspiracies,
and this was... this was pop Christian culture.
-The books remain New York Times best sellers
through the early '90s.
And while Heaven's Gate continues its self-exile,
another group preaching Armageddon
is about to grab the nation's attention.
-The groups we tend to think about,
when we... when we're thinking about doomsday cults,
well, Heaven's Gate is one of them,
but probably the best example might be
the Branch Davidians in Waco.
Both think they're interpreting the Bible
and thought they were standing
at the precipice of the... of the end times.
-But for the Branch Davidians, the end times come
a little bit sooner than they do for Heaven's Gate.
-On February 28th in 1993, I was sitting at home.
I was then living in Dallas. My phone rang.
It was my boss who said, "There's been a shoot-out,
they're a bunch of religious nuts.
It sounds like your kind of people.
Get down there."
I'm Lee Hancock. I'm a journalist
and worked for 24 years for The Dallas Morning News.
Let's start with David Koresh.
Do you consider yourself a prophet?
-Let me say this much. I consider myself
someone who's found grace in the sight of Christ.
And if I can be a prophet to you
by giving you a study about the Bible,
then, yeah, I'd say I'm a prophet.
-David Koresh was the child of a single mother who had him at 14,
spent some time in East Texas living with his grandmother,
who took him to a Seventh-day Adventist church.
The Seventh-day Adventists are a religious group
that focus a lot of their attention on the end times
when Christ will return
and there will be a great conflict,
and the believers will go to Heaven
and everyone else will suffer and go to Hell.
Well, there was an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventists
called the Branch Davidians.
-The Branch Davidian were founded in the 1950s
and built their new Mount Carmel Center
on the outskirts of Waco, Texas.
-By the early 1990s,
David Koresh had taken complete control
over the Waco compound.
-He said he'd had a vision and he was the Messiah come back
and was the figure
that was going to bring the end of the world.
-The followers started buying into it.
They really believed
that he was who was being talked about in the Bible.
He was the new Jesus.
-He was a very exciting figure
and he had a photographic recall of the Bible,
so he could take you to Daniel and Isaiah and then Revelation
and back again in a way that just dazzled people.
-In that day, quote-unquote, it says,
"Lord, you will not be ashamed for all your sins
you committed against me."
-And so those folks who followed him
absolutely believe
that he was the Messiah.
-Like Marshall Applewhite over in Heaven's Gate,
David Koresh claims to be the second coming sent
to help humanity reach the next level
after Armageddon destroys the planet.
For Applewhite, that means a trip to Heaven in a UFO,
but for Koresh, it's a much more violent picture.
-He taught that if you were going to die for God,
you had to kill for God.
And the outside evil forces of the world were gonna come in
and they were going to have to fight
and they were gonna go up in a fiery battle.
They're a laugh riot. [ Chuckles ]
-It's not just their different visions
of how the world will end
that sets the Branch Davidians and Heaven's Gate apart.
-Hi, Alex. [ Laughs ]
-It's also how they approach their sexuality.
-For Heaven's Gate,
abandoning their humanity was key because in their mind,
it was about going... Going beyond this earth,
and that culminated in... In celibacy.
- [ Laughs ] - Ideally, that meant
not just sort of external sexuality
in terms of actually you couldn't have sex.
That was just the beginning.
But the idea was that you would eventually, after long enough,
give up even your sex drive.
-Welcome to "Beyond Human."
-They wanted to be basically space angels,
these genderless beings who...
Who didn't need to eat or to sleep
or to procreate or even to breathe.
It was... It was perfection.
It's what you find in an ancient text talking about the angels.
-These... These flesh vehicles, I mean...
-Some students desired to have their vehicles neutered,
and I'm one of those students that did that.
And I can't tell you how free that has made me feel.
I've been here long enough from the time
I had that operation to know the freedom that it offers me.
-Castration in the group was never a requirement.
It was always an optional thing to do,
and the reason for that is because
they don't have any sexuality in the next level.
They don't reproduce.
Their bodies don't even have the plumbing for it,
and so we have to prepare our mind for that ahead of time.
Otherwise, they don't really want us to be
on board their spacecraft.
And so, yes, I wanted to be castrated.
-There are different stories about how
the castrations come up.
What everyone agrees on is actually it was members
of the movement rather than Do himself
who thought that one way to alleviate their constant anxiety
about controlling their sexuality
was simply not to have any sexuality.
-When Do ask me about it, he asked me
if I had any reservations, and I said to him,
"Well, my vehicle isn't looking forward to it,
but I'm overriding my vehicle."
But then he said, "Who's gonna go first?"
And so what we did when we had a situation like that
where it didn't matter, we would do a coin toss.
And so the coin toss was to decide
whether we wanted to go first or not.
♪♪
-Sawyer loses the coin toss and never gets castrated.
But eight other members, including Applewhite,
do go through with the procedure.
♪♪
The Waco Branch Davidians, on the other hand,
have their own questionable method
of controlling their sexuality.
-For the Branch Davidian, their interpretation of the Bible
called for celibacy from some members,
but it actually called for their leader,
David Koresh, to take multiple wives,
including underage women and girls.
-At that time,
he started implementing his own rules and lifestyles.
He started having sex with a lot of the females,
whether they are married or not.
This was a problem because he started doing this
with girls as young as 12.
-He came up with the "New Light."
That was a teaching that said
not only could he have multiple wives,
but no one... No man could have wives
and he was going to take all of their wives,
every member of the group.
-Some of the members that had their wives
that were now having sex with David Koresh
or having his child, some of them left rather upset,
so they ended up making complaints.
-So how's God gonna talk?
-Those complaints, along with reports
that Koresh is stockpiling weapons,
finally make their way to the ATF and the FBI,
who team up to go and arrest Koresh.
-Heavily armed law-enforcement officers have now
totally surrounded a ranch outside Waco, Texas.
-To Koresh and his followers,
the arrival of armed federal officers outside their compound
is the confrontation
they've been preparing to fight all along.
-It looks like David Koresh's prophecies are coming true.
You know, there is Babylon, the US government,
on your doorstep ready to get it on with you.
-♪ There's a mad man living in Waco ♪
♪ He's bowing his knee to bed ♪
♪ Won't you help, Mr. Sheriff? ♪
♪ So we won't fail ♪
-The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms,
after a months-long investigation,
was going in with a major operation to arrest Koresh
for gun violations and search the compound
for evidence of illegal weapons.
In their search warrant,
they included allegations of child abuse.
He's sleeping with underage children
and he may be leading them in a suicide pact.
The problem was that Koresh and his group had been tipped off,
so they had an hour to prepare,
And when the ATF pulled up
to this remote compound on a barren plain,
the Davidians were ready for them.
I mean, they had enough weaponry for a small army
and enough weaponry to take on the federal government,
which they did.
-Sounds like they're firing now.
And he says that y'all are making the move
and they're gonna defend themselves
to the last men, so [speaks indistinctly]
[ Gunfire ]
[ Speaking indistinctly ]
-We're trying to stop the ambulance.
- Why? - We're trying to stop the ambulance.
-We're trying to stop the ambulance now.
Hold your fire. Please hold your fire.
-4 agents were dead, 17 were wounded.
A number of Davidians, including Koresh, were wounded.
Two were actually killed by ATF gunfire.
-Well, I've been hit through...
Ah! Watch out. Okay. [ Groans ]
I've been... I've been hit to the stomach,
and I think it broke my pelvic bone.
-With Waco, the most important element is who shot first...
Was it the ATF or was it the Waco compound?
-The Davidians would later say and Koresh would later claim
that ATF shot first.
-And there's still a fight about that today.
There's still people that take sides.
If you think that the ATF did the first shot,
it's because you... you feel the government is intrusive.
And if you're on the other side, then you think, of course,
the Waco, they were the bad people.
David Koresh was holding them hostage
and he's the one that did the first shot,
so it's his fault.
-After that first gunfight,
federal officers lay siege to the compound...
while the media lay siege to the federal officers.
-This was day 16 of the standoff in central Texas.
-The tense standoff between cult leader David Koresh
and federal agents is now entering its fourth week.
-This was the 48th day of the standoff between...
-To help contain the situation,
the ATF and FBI call in support from the local military base.
-There was a point the head of the hostage rescue team said,
"Well, I'm gonna bring in an Abrams tank."
And so literally they ordered an Abrams tank to come up.
The problem with that was that if you are a Davidian
looking at this army amassed outside
with the biggest tank in the US arsenal, you know,
it looks like David Koresh's prophecies are coming true.
Koresh taught his followers and they fervently believed
the only way to get to Heaven
was to go with him through this fiery ending
where they knew that they were gonna die.
-When they come busting in on my door with guns drawn
and pointed in the air
and someone fire at me, then I'm gonna lay down
and die for anybody.
It just ain't gonna happen.
-After a 51-day siege,
federal agents bring it to an end
by driving a tank straight into the compound.
News networks from all over the world beamed their
live coverage to millions of households.
Also watching are members of Heaven's Gate.
-Well, we began to see on the news the experience
in Waco, Texas,
with the Branch Davidians and David Koresh.
We were following the news every day on that.
At one point, we were watching TV,
and that's when the fire started.
-We have what appears to be a fire going on right now
raging at the Branch Davidian compound.
-And we're watching it live and we were all aghast
that that happened
and that, you know, all the military presence
and everything that was happening there.
-You had this national trauma aired live
on national television.
You knew when you watched that fire,
you were watching more than 70 people,
including more than two dozen children,
dying in that fire right over your lunch hour.
-In the wake of Waco, Do Applewhite believed
that the government was going to come get them and kill them
and that ultimately this was an okay thing
because this is what would resolve the problem
of how to get themselves to the next level.
-He talked about how we might buy
a... a rifle or two
and use it... Not against anybody,
but to pose a threat so that
if the government thought of us as a fanatical cult
and that knew that we had weapons, that they might
be the instrument of our exiting our vehicles.
-Look at the camera. You look great.
-But suicide by cop was never a possibility.
-They had no interest, no ability to use weapons.
But ultimately, the government had no interest
in coming to get this group. They didn't break any laws.
This was a movement that paid their library fines in the week
before their suicides.
There was no interest from anyone in raiding them.
-For Heaven's Gate, a violent standoff
with law enforcement wasn't in their future,
which forces Marshall Applewhite to come up
with an alternate plan for his members to,
as he puts it, "shed their vehicles."
-This is your chance. I'm here.
I can take you out of here.
-The website says the group started in 1975 in Houston
and refers to this article in The New York Times
about the recruiting efforts of Marshall Herff Applewhite.
-In 1993, just months after Waco,
Heaven's Gate stages their comeback
when they take out a full-page ad
in a national newspaper.
-The group bursts into public consciousness again.
They do it in a couple of ways.
One is this 1993 USA Today ad,
which they take trying to explain that they're back
and that they're offering the one chance for humanity
to escape our planet and to achieve immortal life
in this perfected next level, heavenly state.
-We don't know if we're gonna take these flesh
bodies onboard that craft
or if we'll leave these flesh bodies behind.
-This time around, Heaven's Gate starts
blending their message with pop culture.
-There were members of the group who said,
"Hey, let's try to repitch everything we're saying
with the lens of science fiction.
Instead of calling Do Jesus Christ,
let's call Joe the captain."
-That year, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is pulling
in an average of 20 million viewers per episode,
and members of Heaven's Gate
become some of the show's biggest fans.
-They all had emblems on their shirts,
just like they were part of "Star Trek."
-Now, if you would hold your patch,
maybe we can zoom in on the patch that... Great.
-It's laughable now,
but people really believed it.
They were really into it.
-We watched "Star Trek: Next Generation,"
I guess you could say religiously.
And Do enjoyed them because he thought
that it was a good example of a crew
in the next level working on a spacecraft.
In a next level crew, there are no human behaviors,
there's no competition,
there's no relationships, no ego.
-We're gonna sail around and we're gonna
take care of planets and help civilizations,
and we're going to bring peace and tranquility
and we're gonna bring this sort of utopian ideal,
which goes back to Gene Roddenberry's vision
for "Star Trek."
-Heaven's Gate also starts exploring a real-life technology
that's just beginning to change the world.
-Ti and Do were always encouraging us to upgrade.
And so we got into technology and eventually became
the business known as Higher Source.
-Higher Source was a Web design and hosting company
that would create websites. They had a number of clients.
You have to remember, this was... this was a time
before there was software
which was easily automated making a website.
If you wanted to make a website,
you had to know HTML,
you had to know Java, JavaScript.
And these were all skills that they learned.
And these were skills that paid really,
really well back in the '90s.
This was a way in which the group could afford
to live comfortably.
By the end of the group's existence,
they were in a gated community,
they were in a mansion which they could comfortably rent.
-It's during this time period that Heaven's Gate
manages to attract a few new members.
-The Heaven's Gate cult recruited young members
across the country. This video was taken
at a recruiting session in New Hampshire.
-We're talking about a place that has a real existence
outside of time
of the human kingdom and outside...
-One person who signs on is 21-year-old Gail Maeder.
-There's our... So we're getting a little shadow on her, so...
There. Great.
-My sister was very much a hippie bohemian at heart.
There was always a lot of tie dye
and that type of thing.
I'm Dan Maeder.
I am Gail Maeder's younger brother.
You know, my first indication that anything had gone wrong
with my sister was when we received the flier
from the the group she had joined.
-"Dear Mom and Dad, just a little note
wishing everyone there the best.
I think my choices in life might puzzle you at times,
but I really want you to be aware that I'm doing
exactly what I want to and it makes me very happy."
- Can you hear okay? - Yes.
- Okay. - Thank you again.
I know you said this might be your last interview,
and if it is, I'm so grateful that you're doing it with me.
-I don't know how good we can do for you, but we'll try.
Gail was very much afraid of dying.
When our cat died, she didn't want to see him.
When her grandfather died,
she didn't want to go to the funeral.
I guess with everybody, it's a fear of unknown,
and I think maybe that was why she was a little bit afraid.
Heaven's Gate believed that by being in this group,
you could overcome anything on this earth.
You would go to Heaven, board a spaceship.
You would never know death. You would never know pain.
-Right about the time that that flier showed up
is when our entire lives became cults.
-Worried about Gail's safety,
the Maeder family travels from their home
in Long Island to Ohio for an anti-cult convention.
-At 13 or 14,
my parents started bringing me to the cult conventions
and some part of the back of my brain is thinking,
"Well, if you ever start a cult,
you're gonna want to know this,"
so I was paying attention.
And that all paid off the day that she did call,
and we all knew what to say, what not to say.
-She said, "Is there anybody else
who would like to speak to me?"
And my mother was there. She says,
"Hi, honey, how are you doing?
When are you coming home, baby?"
And she said, "Probably never, Grandma,"
and my mother said... broke down
and she said, "Oh, no, you can't do that, honey.
I have to see you. I have to see you."
-I met Gail in 1994
while we were holding public meetings.
She was in the group that I was an overseer of.
Gail was a young vehicle.
But people can make a big mistake
by thinking that a young vehicle
can't be very advanced in their soul development,
and I believe that she was.
-After Gail joins Heaven's Gate, two things happen...
Sawyer leaves the group to deal with personal issues
he feels are preventing him from reaching the next level
and Applewhite finally receives the sign from the heavens
that he spent the past two decades waiting for.
-They believe that there's a UFO traveling behind that comet
as it's coming close to Earth and using the comet as a shield.
-In the mid-'90s, conspiracy theories
start to go mainstream.
After Waco, fundamental Christians become convinced
that the government is out to get them.
-It is a millennium.
You've got a lot of conspiracy theorists.
Quite frankly, you've got a lot of people
who have a certain belief that this millennium
is going to be a holy war or a hate war.
-But for people who believe in the existence of aliens,
it's NASA that they believe is conspiring against them.
Then, in the summer of 1995,
two amateur astronomers named Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp
spot something NASA has seemingly missed...
A massive comet 30 miles in diameter
hurtling through space.
And Heaven's Gate believes there's a deeper truth
that's attached to it.
-The story of the end of Heaven's Gate
cannot be separated from the claims
that Hale-Bopp Comet had a companion.
This idea that there was a giant planet-sized UFO
trailing Hale-Bopp Comet
and that NASA and the government were conspiring
to hide it from the people.
Members of Heaven's Gate said,
"Aha, there's the marker we've been looking for."
-For Applewhite, this is his ticket to the stars.
-You can follow us,
but you cannot stay here and follow us.
-Some members of Heaven's Gate, I think, clearly did believe
that the companion was real.
Others believe that there was something there,
but it wasn't something we could see.
It was on... On a vibratory level.
We couldn't... We couldn't actually see.
It wasn't unreal. It just wasn't visible.
What they all agreed on was that we were all paying attention
and that this was their chance
to show the world the truth of their message.
-We don't care to be aborted by the body that we're wearing.
We care more to abort it, in proof to our Heavenly Father
that we're ready to leave this place.
-They thought a door was open... Well, a gate.
They thought the gates of heaven was open.
This was their chance to leave the planet
they didn't want to be on. They didn't want to be here.
They didn't see themselves as human.
They didn't see our planet as worthwhile.
They didn't see our society as worth saving.
This was the millennial group
and this was the end of the world.
-The website says, "If you study our material,
you will understand our joy,"
but instead, many are having difficulty
comprehending that,
how a group of people can kill themselves
in the belief that the afterlife can be found on a UFO.
-How do you feel about what is ahead for us?
-Oh, this...
this is the happiest day of my life. [ Laughs ]
-For those that we've left behind,
we're going on to something greater and better
and that we hope that someday you will understand this
and you might join us.
-Maybe they're crazy, for all I know,
but I don't have any choice but to go for it
because I've been on this planet for 31 years,
and there's nothing here for me.
-We wanted to let you know that you might need
to get someone else to finish up your website right now
and that we might see you all again and then we might not.
But we hope that you remember us as we were
and not how other people are going to try
and tell you that we are.
And one last thing we'd like to say is 39 to beam up.
Thank you.
♪♪
-On this Easter Sunday, a day for celebrating life
and rebirth, the struggle goes on to understand
how 39 people could have chosen death.
-The Heaven's Gate exits took place over a three-day period.
They dressed in... In their uniforms,
and then, in ritual order,
they... they committed suicide.
They ingested poison.
-They thought they would just fall asleep
and then wake up their souls on the spaceship.
-They tied bags over their heads and suffocated to death.
This was the method recommended by a euthanasia handbook
that they had picked up.
The last two people didn't have anyone to clean up for them,
so they were found with the with the bags still over their heads.
-Danny saw it first, and he was the first one
to call in to the medical examiner,
and he said, "I think my sister's in this cult."
-Well, I just want to let everyone know how lucky
and happy I feel to be here
and let you know that what we're about to do,
certainly nothing to think negatively about.
We're all choosing of our own free will
go to the next level with Ti and Do.
And they are certainly not what...
-It was very strange watching my sister's goodbye video.
Aside from the voice, I would never have guessed it was her.
She looked that different with the short hair
and just so pale and so gaunt
that she... had it not been for the voice,
I wouldn't have recognized her.
-I guess that's really all I want to say.
-It was hard and it's still hard, so...
And I think it will remain hard
until I see her again someday.
-I understand the pain that her parents and loved ones
are experiencing by that, but I did not feel sad
when I found out that they left their vehicles behind
because I didn't think they were dead.
I thought their vehicles were dead,
and it's not real to me.
That we're not our vehicles.
-Despite the tragic deaths of members of Heaven's Gate
and the Waco Branch Davidians before them,
by the decade's end, they become a punch line.
- We made it! - Whoo!
- We made it! - But what drove them
to their fates will continue
to haunt the nation right into the new millennium.
-If we don't teach people to be better critical thinkers,
these type of things are gonna occur over and over again.
-And good evening from the crossroads of the world.
People from all over the planet have come here
to celebrate the arrival of the year 2000.
-In the last days of the '90s, it's not just doomsday fanatics
who are preparing for the end of the world.
Even military experts are bracing
for the millennium Y2K bug, a computer software problem
that many fear will lead to global catastrophes.
-Representatives from all federal agencies
are standing by, such as Energy, Defense,
and the State Department.
-Then, when the clock strikes 12:00...
-3, 2, 1!
- nothing happens.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Worldwide, according to US military spokesman,
all is quiet.
Can't do better than that.
-But the arrival of the 21st century
does little to ease the anxieties
that got triggered back in the '90s.
-For those of us living in 2020 today,
the idea that we live at a turning point
is no less powerful now than it was in the 1990s.
We don't have the Y2K bug.
We don't have the year 2000 to look forward to.
Instead, we have everything from 9/11 going into the pandemic
where we feel like the world is on fire.
-I think this planet has become a very, very hideous place.
They take control of you from cradle to the grave.
-Both Heaven's Gate and the Branch Davidians believed
that you couldn't trust the government
and couldn't trust society,
and that sort of conspiratorialism in the 1990s,
we thought it was extreme.
We thought it was violating social norms.
-That was the beginning movement of the distrust
for the government, and that same movement
has become very, very dominant in the US.
-By 2020, it was in the White House,
and the idea... And in Congress...
The idea that you could believe in conspiracies
and that that there were deep state working against us.
I mean, this is now part of our mainstream American culture.
-[ Chanting indistinctly ]
-We're taking back our country,
and it's gonna be biblical.
-The things that are happening in the world,
there's so much manipulation and deceit going around.
It's... It's come to a head like never before on this planet.
♪♪
-What's the difference between a cult and a religion?
And I still don't have a real answer to this day.
- [ Chuckles ] - Okay.
-Everyone on this planet and in this society
longs for a better life or the idea of Heaven.
My God, we live in a Christian country
where the whole foundation is leaving to Heaven when you die.
-All I can say is I'm hoping that she was happy
in whatever she did.
She was a pleasure to have for as long as I had her.
-I feel like I wish I would have overcome
what I could have overcome while I was with the group
in order to exit with them, yes.
That doesn't mean I don't love my vehicle's daughter.
And so I'm not, like, crying over spilled milk kind of thing.
That wasn't the way of the next level.
I don't... I don't feel guilty about it.
I-I enjoy being alive at this moment, yes.