Hi, it's Don here. Just jumping in to say that this episode is not suitable for minors,

it contains mentions of gun violence, sexual assault, and death.

If you're not comfortable with that, please do take a look at our archive, and we'll see you next time.

Orange and blood-red tongues of fire leap upwards as acrid black smoke billows into the atmosphere,

obscuring the sun and turning the midday sky, a murky yellow.

The wooden frame of a blazing building groans and collapses.

The walls and roof, barely visible through the inferno and smoke, crumble into wreckage.

It is an apocalyptic scene of flame and chemical fumes, the culmination of a long and

agonizing standoff between federal agents and an extreme religious sect who lives and operates

out here in the scrub brush of central Texas. What was a messianic community, invented for deliverance and salvation,

instead has become a killing ground, the nightmare ending for some 80 sect members,

including 25 children.

April 19, 1993, the Day of Reckoning for the Branch Divideons, here outside

Waco, Texas, has finally arrived.

Good day, glad to have you here. I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hip.

The most notable events of our times are remembered, usually not because of a few eyewitness reports,

but because media imagery has been viewed by millions. Places and people otherwise distant and obscure are instantaneously imprinted upon our collective consciousness,

especially now in the digital age.

But back in the 1990s, it was cable, broadcasting live from Waco, Texas, as federal agents with tanks and armored personnel carriers moved onto a remote compound of buildings,

occupied by a religious sect called the Branch Divideons.

Suddenly, we all knew the name, David Koresh, and all the odd and uncomfortable rumors behind the apocalyptic cult he led.

And then we watched, amazed and appalled in real time,

...