Rod Serling's Fatal Crate

During World War II, Rod Serling watched a food crate dropped from a plane kill a fellow soldier while they were serving in the Philippines. The moment burned in the idea that death can hit for no heroic reason, just bad timing and dumb luck. Later, Serling kept coming back to that kind of irony and randomness in his writing. You can feel it all over "The Twilight Zone," where ordinary moments flip into tragedy in seconds.

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