Death Cult: IRA Hunger Strike (1981 Documentary)

This 1981 documentary looks at the culture within the IRA terrorism movement to commit mass suicides - with convicted terrorist criminals starving themselves to death in order to heighten tensions on the street of Northern Ireland and therefore lead to more murders and bombings outside jail. Many academics have compared the IRA's mass suicide death cult with some of religious fundamentalist cults like the Jonestown mass suicide in 1978 which led to the deaths of 909 devotees.

Mass suicide is a form of suicide, occurring when a group of people simultaneously kill themselves.

Mass suicide sometimes occurs in religious settings. Defeated groups may resort to mass suicide rather than being captured. Suicide pacts are a form of mass suicide that are sometimes planned or carried out by small groups of depressed or hopeless people. Mass suicides have been used as a form of political protest, which shows that they can also be used as a statement-making tool.

Attitudes to mass suicide change according to place and circumstance. People who resort to mass suicide rather than submit to what they consider an intolerable oppression sometimes become the focus of a heroic myth. Such mass suicides might also win the grudging respect of the victors. On the other hand, the act of people resorting to mass suicide without being threatened – especially, when driven to this step by a charismatic religious leader, for reasons which often seem obscure – tends to be regarded far more negatively.

- During the late 2nd century BC, the Teutons are recorded as marching south through Gaul along with their neighbors, the Cimbri, and attacking Roman Italy. After several victories for the invading armies, the Cimbri and Teutones were then defeated by Gaius Marius in 102 BC at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae (near present-day Aix-en-Provence). Their King, Teutobod, was taken in irons. The captured women committed mass suicide, which passed into Roman legends of Germanic heroism: by the conditions of the surrender three hundred of their married women were to be handed over to the Romans.

- In the 700s, the remnants of the Montanists were ordered by Byzantine Emperor Leo III to leave their religion and join Orthodox Christianity. They refused, locked themselves in their places of worship, and set them on fire.

- In 1336, when the castle of Pilėnai in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was besieged by the army of the Teutonic Knights, the defenders, led by the Duke Margiris, realized that it was impossible to defend themselves any longer and made the decision to commit mass suicide, as well as to set the castle on fire in order to destroy all of their possessions, and anything of value to the enemy.

- In 1792, Revolutionary France abolished slavery in its Caribbean colonies. However, in 1802 Napoleon decided to restore slavery. In Guadeloupe, former slaves who refused to be re-enslaved started a rebellion, led by Louis Delgrès, and for some time resisted the French Army sent to suppress them – but finally realized that they could not win, and still they refused to surrender. At the Battle of Matouba on May 28, 1802, Delgrès and his followers – 400 men and some women – ignited their gunpowder stores, committing mass suicide while attempting to kill as many of the French troops as possible.

- In the final phase of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, many of the fighters besieged in the "bunker" at Miła 18 committed mass suicide by ingesting poison rather than surrender to the Nazis.

- Germany was stricken by a series of unprecedented waves of suicides during the final days of the Nazi regime. The reasons for these waves of suicides were numerous and include the effects of Nazi propaganda, the example of the suicide of Adolf Hitler, victims' attachment to the ideals of the Nazi Party, a reaction to the loss of the war and, consequently, the anticipated Allied occupation of Nazi Germany.

- On 1 May 1945, about 1,000 residents of Demmin, Germany, committed mass suicide after the Red Army had sacked the town.

- Japan is known for its centuries of suicide tradition, from seppuku ceremonial self-disemboweling to kamikaze warriors flying their aircraft into Allied warships and banzai charge during World War II. During this same war, the Japanese forces announced to the people of Saipan that the invading American troops were going to torture and murder anyone on the island. In a desperate effort to avoid this, the people of Saipan committed suicide, many jumping from places later named "Suicide Cliff" and "Banzai Cliff".