On Oct. 2, 1959, CBS introduced Americans to The Twilight Zone with a story about a man wandering through an abandoned town with no idea how he got there.
The answer brought the strange new television series directly into the military anxieties of its time. Mike Ferris was actually an Air Force astronaut candidate who had spent roughly 484 hours alone in an isolation chamber during a simulated mission to the moon. His empty town was a hallucination. Isolation had broken him.
The episode arrived less than six months after NASA introduced the Mercury Seven, America's first astronauts, to the public. That collision between science fiction and contemporary fear would become familiar territory for The Twilight Zone.
Creator Rod Serling knew military life firsthand. He served as an Army paratrooper with the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment during World War II, fought in the Philippines and returned home with a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. His family later described combat memories and nightmares that followed him long after the war ended.
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