Over 70 years ago, a French town was hit by a sudden outbreak of hallucinations, which left five people dead and many seriously ill. For years it was blamed on bread contaminated with a psychedelic fungus—but that theory is now being challenged.
He also points out that it would have not have survived the fierce temperatures of the baker’s oven—though Albarelli counters that it could have been added to the bread after baking. While they disagree on the cause of the hallucinations, on one point they are united—the need for a French government inquiry to get to the bottom of what really happened in Pont-Saint-Esprit all those years ago.
Yeah, LSD and heat isn’t a good mix.
And I’m doubtful how well they could have dosed fresh baked unsliced bread. It’s the CIA, they could have physically gotten it on the bread, but they’d have to be doing something like spraying an incredibly diluted water solution on the bread, very lightly because anything more than a light spritz would roll off.
I could believe the CIA would dose a town, destroy evidence, and blame it on ergot in bread.
It just makes zero sense to use bread as the dispersion method. Especially since whatever method they settled on wouldn’t be viable on a population.
Would make a lot more sense to use some kind of aerosolized local agent. Especially if it was a slow sustained release in a place lots of people go into but don’t stay long, like a bakery. Or triggered to release at the door when people entered.
The least believable part of this is still thinking the bread from the cover story has to be related to what happened
Just watched a documentary about the Pont Saint Esprit of incident, found it interesting.