Dear friends, I'd like to tell you a story.
A story that struck me deeply.
One of those stories that, even after reading them, stays etched in your eyes—like the trace of lightning in the night.
This story particularly shocked me.
A 21-year-old man entered his former school in Austria armed with a Glock and a shotgun.
He killed at least 10 people and then took his own life.
Alone.
No accomplices. No group. No support.
Just him, the weapons, and a radical act.
And I ask myself: how is it possible to reach this point, alone?
The first thing that stands out is the absence of fear.
Most of us tremble at the thought of facing an exam, a medical visit, a personal loss.
Yet some walk into public buildings armed to the teeth and unleash hell without hesitation.
As if it were the only thing they knew how to do.
As if they had nothing left to fear.
These people don't act on impulse.
They haven't "gone crazy all of a sudden."
They are emptied out, disconnected from the world, incapable of feeling empathy or dread.
They died inside long before their physical death.
Fear, for them, stopped existing.
And when fear dies, horror can be born.
These acts are never improvised.
They are prepared for months, even years.
Every detail is accounted for, every possibility imagined, every angle already rehearsed in the mind.
The final gesture is merely the execution of an inner ritual.
Silent. Clinical. Absolute.
They don't need accomplices because they no longer need the world.
They have already stepped out—slowly, quietly—from every human bond.
When they act, it is the body completing what the mind buried years before.
They don't do it because they are strong.
They do it because they no longer feel anything.
And if Columbine was the birth of the shared massacre,
this is the age of extreme solitude:
not two faces side by side,
but a single one, facing a humanity he no longer saw as his own.
www.bild.de
A story that struck me deeply.
One of those stories that, even after reading them, stays etched in your eyes—like the trace of lightning in the night.
This story particularly shocked me.
A 21-year-old man entered his former school in Austria armed with a Glock and a shotgun.
He killed at least 10 people and then took his own life.
Alone.
No accomplices. No group. No support.
Just him, the weapons, and a radical act.
And I ask myself: how is it possible to reach this point, alone?
The first thing that stands out is the absence of fear.
Most of us tremble at the thought of facing an exam, a medical visit, a personal loss.
Yet some walk into public buildings armed to the teeth and unleash hell without hesitation.
As if it were the only thing they knew how to do.
As if they had nothing left to fear.
These people don't act on impulse.
They haven't "gone crazy all of a sudden."
They are emptied out, disconnected from the world, incapable of feeling empathy or dread.
They died inside long before their physical death.
Fear, for them, stopped existing.
And when fear dies, horror can be born.
These acts are never improvised.
They are prepared for months, even years.
Every detail is accounted for, every possibility imagined, every angle already rehearsed in the mind.
The final gesture is merely the execution of an inner ritual.
Silent. Clinical. Absolute.
They don't need accomplices because they no longer need the world.
They have already stepped out—slowly, quietly—from every human bond.
When they act, it is the body completing what the mind buried years before.
They don't do it because they are strong.
They do it because they no longer feel anything.
And if Columbine was the birth of the shared massacre,
this is the age of extreme solitude:
not two faces side by side,
but a single one, facing a humanity he no longer saw as his own.
Grazer Amokläufer plante Sprengstoffanschlag
Arthur A. (21) richtete am Dienstag ein Blutbad an seiner ehemaligen Schule in Graz, dem Bundesoberstufengymnasium, ein Blutbad an.
www.bild.de
