[dragonwriter]

> In 1978, 918 people committed suicide at Jonestown

Almost certainly not; somewhat more than that died related to the cult on the day in question, but many of them, including at the compound, were murdered either outright (as occurred in the mass killing/assassination used deliberately by Jones to justify the call to suicide as the only option for his followers, painting a picture that they would otherwise be killed for their association with the act, an idea that had been carefully prepped by extensive prior indoctrination into the idea that they were targeted), or coerced into taking the poison.

But closed coercive authoritarian cults are a separate phenomenon than any that would explain the “dancing plague”.