Word: berserker
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...Fremont, Ohio, a middle-aged husband recently went berserk and tried to beat his wife to death. When the police arrived, he threatened to shoot anyone who interfered. In that common situation, many a U.S. policeman might have whipped out his own gun and shot first, even if the suspect regrettably died in the process. Instead, one Fremont policeman squeezed off a stream of tear-gas-like liquid that hit the crazed husband in the face and instantly brought him to his knees, stunned, docile-and alive...
...North Carolina judge, was a topnotch graduate student in English at Nashville's Vanderbilt University. He was a big man, 6 ft. 2 in. and 220 Ibs., and as far as anyone knew he was gentle and re strained. One night last January he went berserk: three policemen tried to subdue him. Ever since, Nashville has been up in arms over the fact that in the subsequent fight he was killed by the police...
...menace of the psychotic killer is the more frightening because he may seem a model citizen until he goes berserk. Many of them "have a feeling that there is a demon within themselves," says Los Angeles Clinical Psychiatrist Martin Grotjahn, "and they try to kill the demon by model behavior." Sensing aggressive impulses that frighten them, adds a Manhattan analyst, "they live the opposite of what they feel. They become gentle, very mild, extremely nice people, and often show a compulsive need to be perfectionistic," which is one reason why people can always be found to describe a murderer...
Unhappily, the prohibitions are not foolproof-vixens disturbed by a low-flying plane can go berserk and murder their cubs. And sometimes the prohibitions are limited to members of the immediate tribe-rats never bite rats that belong to their own colony, but two colonies of rats have been known to meet in a pitched battle that leaves hundreds of dead on the ground. These bloodbaths, Lorenz suggests, are epidemics of mass psychosis; they serve no rat-preserving purpose that he or any other naturalist can see. In general, he concludes ominously, a species is less often annihilated...
...Many psychiatrists agree. Among the examples they cite: an average of twelve LSD "bad trip" victims a month land, out of their minds, in New York's Bellevue Hospital; two LSD-using youths were discovered in Hollywood last October devouring grass and tree bark; a college student went berserk on an airliner bound from Los Angeles to San Francisco, tried to force his way into the pilot's cockpit before being subdued, a young male user in Los Angeles tried to stop a car on Wilshire Boulevard by saying "Halt," was hit and killed...